My Lords of Strogue Volume I Part 3

And now the _melee_ became general, for some weavers who had lingered in the rear gave the alarm; the Liberty-boys sallied forth again, and the chairmen, hewing their staves in twain, belaboured all impartially, adding to the general disturbance. This was no vulgar riot now, for blood had been twice drawn--that of the privileged cla.s.s--and gentlemen, fearing for their sons who were only armed with keys, rushed out from club and tavern to form a bulwark round the gownsmen against the rage of the infuriated soldiery. Thus sons and fathers were smiting right and left below, whilst mothers were screaming from the windows; and the peeresses saw more than they came out to see ere swords were sheathed and peace could be restored. They had lingered, many of them, at Daly's till past the tea-hour, to inspect the illuminations before adjourning to the Fishamble Street Masquerade; and crowded in a bevy round the club-house door as the dying earl and his distracted love were borne into the coffee-room; while the collegians retired backwards in compact order, silent but menacing, till the gates of Alma Mater opened and clanged to on them.

The peeresses had bawled as loud as Madam Gillin, and now cried with one voice for pouncet-boxes. The one of their order whom the tragedy chiefly concerned uttered never a word. With dry eye and distended nostril my lady looked on the prostrate figures--the still one of her lord--the picturesquely hysterical form of the hated Gillin--and bit her white lip as the frown, which was become habitual, deepened on her face. Little Doreen looked on in unblinking wonder, till her father clasped his fingers on her eyes to shut out the horrid sight from them. Members entered hurriedly by the private way from the Parliament Houses, and smirked and looked demure, and, feeling that they had no business there, retired on tiptoe. The peeresses felt that a prospective widow is best left alone, and one by one retreated, skimming away like seamews to gabble of the dread event to scandalmongers less blest than they, leaving the two women to face their bereavement and speak to each other for the first time. Strange to say, these rivals had never had speech together in their lives.

Madam Gillin choked her sobs after a while and revived, sitting up stupidly and staring half-stunned, as she picked with mechanical fretfulness at the feathers of her fan. The shock of so sudden a misfortune took her breath away; but, perceiving the haughty eyes of her enemy fixed gloomily upon her, she rallied and strung up her nerves to face the mongrel daughter of the Sa.s.sanagh.

My lady--erect and towering in martial frock and helm--pointed with stern finger at the door. Of her own will the real wife would never soil her lips by speaking to this woman; but she, a.s.suming a dogged smile as she rearrayed her garments, tossed her head unheeding, till Arthur Wolfe took her hand and strove to lead her thence. She pushed him back and leaned over the impromptu bed which lacqueys had built up of chairs and tables; for at this moment my lord moved, opened his eyes which sought those of his mistress, and, struggling in the grip of Death, essayed to speak. His wife moved a step nearer to catch his words, but, consistent to the end, he motioned her impatiently away.

The face of the countess burned with shame and wrath as she turned to the window, and, clasping her eldest-born to her bosom, pressed a hot cheek against the panes. He could not forbear to humiliate her, even before the club-servants--before vulgar little Curran and the foolish neophyte--before the horrible woman who had usurped her place in his affections. Was it the hussy's mission to insult her always--to cover her with unending mortification? No! Thank goodness. That ordeal was nearly overpast, but she would forget its corroding bitterness never!

My lord's sand was ebbing visibly. In an hour at most he must pa.s.s the Rubicon. Then the minx should be stripped of borrowed plumes and turned out upon the world, even as Jane Sh.o.r.e was centuries ago.

Ignominy should be piled back upon the papist a hundredfold. She knew, or thought she knew, that my lord was too careless to have thought of a last testament. At all events, a legacy from a Protestant to a Catholic was fraught with legal pitfalls. But she started from false premises, as her astonished ears soon told her.

My lord, raising himself upon his elbows, spoke--slowly, with labouring breath; for his life was oozing in scarlet throbs through the sword-gash, and grave-damps were gathering upon his skin.

'Gillin dear!' he gasped, with a diabolical emphasis to disgust his wife. 'I have loved you, for you were always gay and cheerful and forgiving, not glaring and reproachful like that stony figure there! I leave you well provided for. The Little House is yours, with the farm and the land about it; in return for which I lay a duty on you. My lady will not be pleased,' he continued, with a look of hate; 'for she will never be able to drive out of Strogue without pa.s.sing before your doors. And she must live there--there or at Ennishowen, or by my will she will forfeit certain rights. Lift me up. I can hardly breathe.'

Both Wolfe and Curran made a movement of indignation as the departing sinner exposed his plans. What a fiendish thing, so to shame a wife whose only apparent crime was a coldness of demeanour! Well, well! The Glandores were always mad, and this one more crazy than his forefathers.

My lord marked the movement, and, turning his glazing eyes towards his second son, smiled faintly. 'Not so bad as you think,' he panted. 'I have bequeathed the Little House to your daughter, Gillin, to be held in trust for you, then to be hers absolutely--to pretty Norah, who, at my wish you know, was baptised a Protestant. I will that the two families should live side by side, in order that his mother may do no harm to my second child, whom she abhors. I do not think she would do him active wrong. But we can never tell what a woman will do if goaded. Swear to watch over the boy, Gillin; and if evil befall, point the finger of public opinion at his mother. She will always bow to that, I know. Bring lights. Hold up my little Terence that I may look at him. Lights! It is very dark.'

A candle was brought in a great silver sconce, but my lord had looked his last on earth. Vainly he peered through a gathering film. The child's blonde locks were hidden from his sight; and then, feeling that the portals of one world were shut ere those of the other were ajar, he was seized with a quaking dread like ague. The devil-may-care swagger of the Glandores was gone. He strove with groans to recall a long-forgotten prayer, and the spectators of his death-bed were stricken with awe.

'Gillin,' he murmured, in so strange and hoa.r.s.e a voice as to make her shudder. 'It is an awful wrong we've done. Why did you let me? Too late now. I cannot set it right, but she--call my lady--why is she not here?'

The tall countess was standing sternly over him, close by, with crossed arms, but he could not see her.

'I am here. What would you?' she said; as white as he, with a growing look of dread.

'That wrong!' he gurgled. 'That dreadful thing. Oh, set it right while you have time; for my sake; for your own, that you may escape this torment. If I might live an hour--O G.o.d! but one! We three only know.

If I could----'

The wretched man made an effort to rise--a last supreme effort. A spasm seized his throat. He flung his arms into the air and fell back--dead.

Doreen, the brown-eyed girl, cowered against her father and began to cry. The boys, who looked on the work of the White Pilgrim for the first time, clung trembling in an embrace with twitching lips. The two women--so dissimilar in birth and breeding--bound by a strange secret link--scrutinised each other long and steadily across the corpse, as skilful swordsmen do who would gauge a rival's skill. They were about to skirmish now. In the future might one be called upon to run the other through? Who can tell what lurks behind the veil?

The countess winced under the insolent gaze with which Madam Gillin looked her up and down. With a tinge of half-alarmed contempt she broke the silence.

'Arthur,' she said, 'take that chit away. With her mother's craven soul in her, she's like to have a fit. At any rate, save my conscience that. Fear not for me, though they _have_ all run off as if I were plague-stricken. Mr. Curran I dare say, or some one, will see me taken care of. You will have details to look to for me. Take the girl hence.

No. Leave the boys.'

Arthur Wolfe departed, taking with him Doreen and his G.o.dson Tone; and Mr. Curran, nodding to them, withdrew to the antechamber.

The women were alone with their dead. My lady stood frowning at the usurper, who, no whit abashed, laid a hand upon the corpse and said, in solemn accents: 'So help me G.o.d--I'll do his bidding. Do not glare at me, woman, or you may drive me to use my nails. I know your secret, for your husband babbled of it as he slept. It is a fearful wrong.

Many a time I've urged him to see justice done, no matter at what cost to you and to himself. But he was weak and wicked too. I suppose it is now too late, for you are as bad as he, and vain as well of your murky half-caste blood!'

Madam Gillin drew back a step; for, stung to the quick by the beginning of her speech, my lady made as if to strike her foe with the toy-bayonet; but, reason coming to the rescue, she tossed it on the ground. This last insult was too much. To speak plainly of such shameful things to her very face! The brazen hardened papist hussy!

But vulgar Gillin laughed at the fierce impulse with such a jeering crow as startled Mr. Curran in the antechamber.

'Do you want fisticuffs?' she gibed, with a plump white fist on either hip. 'I warrant ye'd get the worst of such a tussle, my fine madam, for all your haughty airs--_you_--who should act as serving-wench to such as I. Nay! Calm yourself. I'm off. This is the first time we've ever spoken--I hope it may be the last, for that will mean that you have behaved properly to your second son. I've no desire to cross your path; you cruel, wicked, heartless woman!'

Lady Glandore, her thin lips curling, took Terence by the hand for all reply, and bade him kneel.

'Swear,' she said in low clear tones, drawing forward the astonished Shane, 'that you will be faithful to your elder brother as a va.s.sal to a suzerain, that you will do him no treason, but act as a junior should with submission to the head of his house.'

The little boy had been crying with all his might ever since they brought in that ghastly heap. Confused and awed by his mother's hard manner he repeated her words, then broke into fresh sobs, whilst Madam Gillin stared and clasped her hands together as she turned to go.

'Sure the woman's cracked,' she muttered. 'What does she mean? The feudal system's pa.s.sed. No oath can be binding on a child of twelve.

Maybe she's not wicked--only mad--as mad as my lord was. Well, G.o.d help the child! What's bred in the bone will out! Deary me! There's something quare about all these half-English n.o.bles.'

Mr. Curran waited, according to agreement, lest anything should be required by my lady; and though by no means a lady's man, was not sorry so to do, for the conduct of the countess in her sudden bereavement had been, to say the least of it, extraordinary, and he was curious to observe what would happen next. There was something beneath that haughty calmness which roused his curiosity. Was she regretting the past, conscious only of the sunshine, forgetful now of storms; or was she rejoicing at a release? Holding no clue, conjecture was waste of brain-power.

So Mr. Curran resolved to reserve his judgment, and turned his attention to what was going on without, while the servants stole backwards and forwards, improvising the preparations for a wake.

The proceedings outside were well-nigh as lugubrious as those within.

A thick mist and drizzling rain were descending on the town, turning the roads to quagmires, the ornamental draperies to dish-clouts, the wreaths to funereal garlands. The illuminations, concerning which expectation had been so exercised, flickered and guttered dismally.

Groups of men in scarlet, their powder in wet mud upon their coats, reeled down the greasy pavement, waking the echoes with a drunken view-halloo or a fragment of the Volunteer hymn. Some were making an exhaustive tour of the boozing-kens; some staggered towards the lottery-rooms in Capel Street, or the h.e.l.ls of Skinner's Row; some were running-a-muck with unsteady gait, and sword-tip protruded through the scabbard for the behoof of chairmen's calves; while some again, in a glimmer of sobriety, were examining the smirched stockings and spattered breeches which precluded their appearance at Smock Alley. Chairs and coaches flitted by, making for Moira House or the Palace of his Grace of Leinster, for all kept open-house to-night, and Mr. Curran's crab-apple features puckered into a grin as he marked how fearfully faces were upturned to Daly's, where one of the elect was lying stiff and stark. But the grin soon faded into a look of sadness, as, like some seer, he apostrophised his countrymen.

'O people!' he reflected, 'easily gulled and hoodwinked, how long will your triumph last? This is but a grazing of the ark on Ararat--a delusive omen of the subsiding of the waters. Our bark is yet to be tossed, not on a sinking, but on a more angry flood than heretofore.

Eat and drink, for to-morrow you die. What was your ancestors' sin that ye should be saddled with a curse for ever? Your land was the Isle of Saints, yet were ye pre-doomed from the beginning; for when the broth of your character was brewed, prudence was left out and discord tossed in instead. And the taskmaster, knowing that in discord lies his strength, plays on your foibles for your undoing. How long may the prodigy of your co-operation last? Alas! It pales already.

To-morrow is your supreme trial of strength, and your chiefs are at daggers-drawn. What will be the end? What will be the end?'

He shook himself free from the dismal prospect of his thoughts, for since Madam Gillin bustled out my lady had been very quiet. He peeped through the doorway. No! She had not moved since he looked in an hour ago; but was sitting still with her chin on her two hands--gazing with knitted brows at the body as it lay, its form defined dimly through the sheet that covered it.

Terence, lulled by tears, had fallen asleep long since upon the floor.

Shane walked hither and thither, biting his nails furtively; for he was a brave boy who feared not his father dead, though he trembled in his presence whilst alive. Had he dared he would have gone forth into the street to see the gay folks, the lights, and junketing, for he was high up in his teens and longed to be a man. But it would not do to leave the mother whom he loved and dreaded to the protection of Curran--the low lawyer. He was my lord now, and the head of his house, and must protect her who had hitherto protected him. He marvelled, though, in his slow brain, as it wandered round the knotty subject, over the pa.s.sage of arms betwixt the ladies; their covert menace; the oath the little lad was made to swear. It was all strange--his mother of all the strangest. Protect her, forsooth! The uncompromising mouth and square chin of her ladyship--the steely glitter of her light grey eye--showed independent will enough for two. Clearly she was intended to protect others, rather than herself to need protection. But her manner was odd, her frown of evil augury. At a moment of soul-stirring woe, such calmness as this of hers could bode no good.

All through the night she sat reviewing her life, while Shane walked in a fidget, and patient Curran waited. She brooded over the past, examined the threatening future, without moving once or uttering a sound. She was deciding in her mind on a future plan of action which should lead her safely through a sea of dangers. Was she as relentless as she looked? Was this an innately wicked nature, set free at last from duress, revolving how best to abuse its liberty; or was it one at bottom good, but prejudiced and narrow, chained down and warped awry, and dulled by circ.u.mstance?

CHAPTER IV.

BANISHMENT.

Years went by. The volcano burned blithely, and the upper orders danced on it. No court was more like that of a stage potentate than the court of the Irish Viceroy. No ridottos were so gorgeous as those of Dublin; no equipages so sumptuous; no n.o.bles so magnificently reckless. Mr. Handel averred in broken German that he adored the Hibernian capital, and gave birth to his sublime creations for the edification of Dublin belles. The absentees returned home in troops, finding that in their mother's mansion were many fatted calves; and vied with one another, in the matter of Italian stuccoists and Parisian painters, for the display of a genteel taste. But, as the poet hath it, 'things are not always as they seem.' The crust of the volcano grew daily thinner. What a gnashing of teeth would result from its collapse!

The Grand Convention fell a victim to its leaders, and from a mighty engine of the national will shrivelled into an antic posturing. Mr.

Grattan (the man of eighty-two _par excellence_) perceived that he was overreached; that perfidious Albion shuffled one by one out of her engagements, that the independence, over which he had crowed like a revolutionary c.o.c.k, was no more than an illusory phantom. The Renunciation Act was repealable at pleasure, he found, and no renunciation save in name. The horrid Poyning, the objectionable 6th of George III., tossed into limbo with such pomp, might become law again by a mere pen-scratch. Ireland was decked in the frippery of freedom, which, torn off piecemeal, would leave her naked and ashamed.

The Volunteers, perceiving that their blaring and strutting had produced nothing real, looked sheepishly at one another and returned to their plain clothes. After all, they were a.s.ses in lions' skins; their a.s.sociation a theatrical pageant of national chivalry, which dazzled Europe for an instant till men smelt the sawdust and the orange-peel and recognised in the helmet a dishcover. During all this vapouring and trumpeting, England had held her own, by means of the subservient Lords and the heavily mortgaged Commons. The parliament, too base for shame, smiled unabashed; the Volunteers, conscience-smitten and in despair, broke up and fell to pieces. The Catholics were as much serfs as ever. Derry, whose conscience was troubled with compunctious visitings, went so far as to propose that the Catholics (burning source of trouble in all altercations) should emigrate _en ma.s.se_ to Rome as a bodyguard for his Holiness; but the latter, dreading an incursion of three million savages, which would have been like an invasion of the Huns, declined with thanks the present, and the laudable scheme was given up.

Far-sighted folks became aware that the pretty tricks of the puppets were due to an English punchinello. The fantoccini did credit to their machinist, who was skilful at pulling of wires. Who was he? Why, Mr.

Pitt the younger, who would have his dolls jump as he listed, though they should come to be shattered in the jumping. Mr. Pitt, the British premier, set his wits to work to keep all grades and cla.s.ses squabbling. At one time, to exasperate the Papists, he gave an extra twist to the penal screw; at another, he untwisted it suddenly to anger the Orangemen. Coercion and relief were two reins in his skilled hands wherewith he sawed the mouth of poor rawboned Rosinante, till the harried animal came down upon its haunches. He established a forty-shilling franchise which gave votes to the poorest, most ignorant, and most dependent peasantry in Europe. This he declared was the divine gift of liberty. Nothing of the sort. It merely placed a fresh tool in the hands of large proprietors who were dying to be bribed and charmed to have something new to sell.

Though the Volunteers ceased to be a cause of uneasiness, it was plain to Mr. Pitt that a repet.i.tion of their military fandango must be made impossible. How was this to be accomplished? As it was, they had left behind them, when they vanished, the nucleus of a disease--a small but st.u.r.dy band of patriots, who were not to be bought or cajoled.

Unless treated in time, this spot might inflame and grow contagious.

How was it to be treated? That was the grave question whereon hung the peace of Erin. The honest handful saw the rock on which the Convention had split, and were humble enough to try and remedy the error.

Theobald--romantic young _protege_ of Arthur Wolfe--was the first to show them the true case, to demonstrate that Ireland's harmony was England's disappointment; that the only hope for motherland lay, not in a commingling of a few red uniforms, or a picturesque mixing of social grades, but in a compact welding together for the common weal of the different religious creeds which had distracted the land with its dissensions since the Reformation. 'Till this is done,' he said, 'the Sa.s.sanagh will toss us as a battledore a shuttlec.o.c.k. Establish the grand principle of liberty of conscience, bridge the abyss of mutual intolerance, stay the carnage of the first emotions of the heart! If the rights of men be duties to G.o.d, then are we of the same religion. Our creed of civil faith is the same. Let us agree then to exclude from our thoughts all things in which we differ, and be brethren in heart and mind for our mother's sake.' The words of the romantic young apostle touched his hearers on their tenderest chord, and they swore to learn wisdom by the past, and live in amity for ever. The quick revulsion from bigotry to tolerance was not so amazing as it seems, for Theobald Wolfe Tone was but the visible expression of the spirit of his age--the abuse-abhorring spirit which distinguished the eighteenth century, and culminated in the French upheaving of '89.

That sanguinary outburst, which blew into the elements a long-rooted despotism, and which clenched the new-fangled faith enunciated in the War of Independence, had an enormous effect on Ireland--an effect of which Mr. Pitt availed himself for his own purposes with his usual tact. The principle of '89 made its way to England, where the genius of the Const.i.tution prevailed against its allurements; then pa.s.sed across the Channel, where it was eagerly received by men who were being hounded on to recklessness. The adverse religious sects which had just vowed eternal amity, seeing what pa.s.sed in Paris, looked on one another with alarm. The Catholic clergy grew suspicious of the reformers who extolled the conduct of France, because the new _regime_ had produced Free Thought, or rather had endowed the bantling with strength which the great Voltaire had nourished. People were startled by bold views which were new to them. The timid looked down a chasm to which they could perceive no bottom, and shrank back. A fanatical few were for going all lengths at once, and demanding the help of France to produce an Irish upheaval. At this juncture a friendly English policy--a judicious combination of discipline and conciliation--would have allayed the brewing storm. But it was not the intention of British ministers that the country should be tranquillised just yet.

Quite the contrary. They resolved to stir up such a tempest as should frighten Erin out of her poor wits, and drive her to distrust her own strength and her own wisdom for the rest of her natural existence.