My Lords of Strogue Volume Ii Part 13

'It must be Biddy. She hates Master Terence, does she?' he muttered to himself. 'Why? maybe she thought him comely, and he would have naught to do wid her, being so tight entranced by Mistress Doreen, G.o.d bless her! Faix, she's a bad lot--taking to sodgers! And I thought her fit for Paradise. I saw her just now by the quickset beyant, in her velvet hat and feathers, and my lord saw her too, no doubt. I'll tell the masther who 'tis that's working the mischief, and set his mind at rest.'

'Half-confidences are worse than none, my lord,' blurted out Curran.

'If you'd really do the lad a turn, speak out. Why give him a nut to crack?'

'Betwixt you and me, sir,' Clare said with hauteur, 'there can be nothing but animosity. I try to make things as pleasant as I can, and you publicly insult me. I purposely fire wide; you try all you know to kill me. I would gladly have been your friend.'

'Begorra! such a friend,' growled Curran, 'as I'd help out of mee cabin with mee boot! But never mind us. We're talking of this lad.

Who's his enemy--who is it that's playing devil's capers among honest men? We know that they're not all saints who use holy water!'

Lord Clare was still looking away into the darkness, while Phil followed the direction of his glance, and said nothing.

'Don't press him,' Terence said, with coldness as chilling as the chancellor's. 'If he chooses to make confession for conscience' sake, so be it---I will be under no personal obligation to his clemency.'

'Silly boy! I want to save you, and, like the other a.s.ses, you pose and mouth heroics!' Clare said impatiently. 'Your name was on the list of those scatter-brains who were caged to-day, but I struck it through with my own pen. Yet I tell you fairly that if you commit yourself beyond a certain point, I shall be powerless to protect you. I should bring more odium than I dare upon the Government, if I were instrumental in stringing up a lot who deserve the rope, and saving the worst of all because he happened to be my old friend's son. I can't do more than I am doing. Even Mr. Curran here should tell you that. I tell you that you have an enemy who would gladly destroy you.

You must guess who it is. Who is there whom you have injured? I tell you further that Lord Camden has signed a warrant for your arrest, which I believe is in his bureau. He deplores with me that one of the aristocracy should be a cause of scandal. But he may be called upon to permit execution of that warrant, and, acting as you do, I don't see how he can refuse to let justice take its course. Had you no enemy it might probably lie snug enough. But that enemy will ferret it out ere long, I fear. My boy, I earnestly implore you to leave the country.

Every port shall be left open. Go to Paris--Vienna--Rome--anywhere. If you are short of funds I will provide them--come! I would so gladly see you gone,' he concluded after a pause, during which Terence's heart was touched, and Curran stared at this new aspect of the lord chancellor. 'For if I mistake not, such events will happen here ere long as will cause the best-balanced mind to quake.'

What a pity that he uttered those last few words! Curran beheld again the well-known Lord Clare. Terence became hot with resentment.

'If you are preparing a St. Bartholomew,' he said, 'why should I be specially favoured? Murderer!'

'Murderer?' echoed Curran, with a scorn which incensed the chancellor.

'Worse than murderer! Common butcher of your fellows! You have netted the leaders--you will goad the leaderless sheep to leap after them.

You will drive them to rise against you. Then you'll ma.s.sacre them for rising. You'll turn your artillery against the helpless peasants.

You'll mow them down like gra.s.s. You know their peculiarities--so far you are Irish. With a cudgel or a shillalagh there's none can beat 'em. But they're bad at firearms. Firearms! The use of gunpowder's been forbidden them for ever so many years!'

'On my honour, it's provoking to save people despite themselves,'

affirmed the exasperated chancellor. 'If the boy's hanged it'll be your fault, Curran.'

'I wish for no mercy,' said moody Terence, 'from such hands as yours, my lord. I remember Orr. So will you on your death-bed. Here comes Ca.s.sidy again. Come, Mr. Curran, we'll stroll to his chambers for a gla.s.s of claret.'

The trio departed together arm-in-arm, and Lord Clare looked after their retreating figures with extreme vexation as, mounting his horse, he rode slowly to Ely Place.

CHAPTER X.

THE BIRD AND THE FOWLER.

The three allies retired to Ca.s.sidy's chambers, to laugh at their ease over Lord Clare's discomfiture.

'Bedad! he's losing his nerve,' Ca.s.sidy a.s.serted, as he poured a ruby b.u.mper down his throat. 'Did ye see how wild he aimed--like a gossoon that had never blazed? Maybe he's of the same kidney as the spalpeen in the play who betune the sheets is frighted by the Banshees.'

'Richard the Third at Bosworth?' suggested Mr. Curran. 'If he gets his deserts the chancellor's death-bed will be a fearsome spectacle.'

'It must be an awful thing to have innocent blood upon your conscience,' Terence mused. 'Yet how many are there among us now whose arms are steeped in it to the shoulder! Is it not strange that confessions of murder are nearly always of some single case? Wholesale murderers don't seem to be so troubled. The heart must be callous, I suppose, before it becomes capable of wholesale murder. Hence Shakespeare was wrong as to his ghosts on Bosworth Field. Richard slept undisturbed the sleep of the infantine and just.'

Ca.s.sidy seized the bottle, and poured himself out another b.u.mper. 'I hate this city at night!' he said. 'Since General Lake's curfew order, it is like a sepulchre. I vow it's pleasant to hear the patrol, or the jolly sodger-boys returning home. What, Mr. Curran, are you off? These are ticklish times for night-journeys. Be not too venturesome. Better stop here. Sure I'll be glad to give you hospitality till morning.'

'And leave my Primrose to fret alone at home? No, thank you. She'll be dying to hear how her favourite is going on. I must say I'm as relieved as she can be that he should leave for England. One half-fledged victim saved at any rate out of the nest from the maw of Moiley.'

'What was Lord Clare talking of when I came up?' asked the giant, abruptly.

'He was advising this imprudent young gentleman to make for other sh.o.r.es,' grunted Curran, strapping on spatterdashes for his ride; 'and he was right.'

'You know you don't think so in your heart,' Terence retorted. 'With Tom Emmett and others at Kilmainham, it is more necessary than ever that Ca.s.sidy here and I should be vigilant. We've put our hands to the rudder, you know. We must summon hither some of the head men from Cork, at once. If Ca.s.sidy agrees with me, we'll write the letters before morning. It is essential that the gaps in the central committee should be filled up.'

'Can't you see how you are playing into their hands? Poor flies, whose feet stick in the web!' Curran sneered. 'You break from one mesh to catch in the next. Each time you break away, the struggle becomes harder; because the spider gums his lines, and your legs are sticky with the gluten! Little by little, by small crafty hawls, the executive are draining the society of all its master-minds. When they shall be safely snared; when no leaders with any pretension to worth are left, then they'll bring about a rising. The plan shows intimate knowledge of Irish nature capped by British phlegm. It's enough to make a man with his wits about him pitch himself headlong down the nearest well.'

'We will be very prudent,' Terence said. 'Yet of what avail is prudence with secret sleuthhounds on our track?'

Honest Phil, who had been squatting in a corner on the floor, with his gaze fixed upon his master, could bear this talk no longer.

'Faix! it's meeself that knows who 'tis. Ochone! sad's the day, I know it,' he murmured in the voice of tribulation.

The three turned eagerly round. 'You know who 'tis!' they cried out in chorus.

Then Phil related all he knew of Biddy--interlarding the narrative with many groans, in that the golden-tressed darling of his heart should, by turning out such a shocking monster, seem to impugn his taste.

Ca.s.sidy emptied the claret bottle, then flung it on the ground in his boisterous way--swearing, with ogrish snapping of the jaws, that he'd be even with the traitress; that he would throttle her with his own big fingers.

Knitting his brows Mr. Curran walked up and down, his hands behind his back. Terence stared at his henchman, bewildered by this new light.

After a pause Mr. Curran spoke. 'Phil's right and wrong,' he said.

'The woman may have betrayed much. But now her teeth are drawn--that's as regards the present, I mean. What a labyrinth it is! She may rake up old stories of the past, of which "juries of the right sort" will make the properest use--but she can tell nothing that has happened since the "Irish Slave" was burnt.'

'Her mother Jug Coyle's still living at the Little House,' Ca.s.sidy suggested; 'maybe she----'

'Impossible. We know now that after the destruction of the shebeen this precious young lady went to live in barracks with the soldiers.'

'Murther! and I've kissed her often,' the giant sighed with contrition, as though by that unlucky fact virtue must have gone out of him.

'Anyways,' added Terence, 'she could never have had a hand in the arrest at Cutpurse Row. Somebody supplied a list of delegates. Who was it? It's terrible not to know!'

'Therein lies the hopelessness of the whole affair,' declared Mr.

Curran, preparing to depart. 'Blindman's-buff's nothing to it. With such wriggling in the gra.s.s it's simply putting honest heads into the wild beast's mouth for nothing. I won't say what I should think about it were circ.u.mstances otherwise. But as the wretched case stands, it would be a great load off my mind, my dear boy, if you were out of the _bagarre_.'

Ca.s.sidy scrutinised the face of Terence narrowly, who wore a look of moody uncertainty. 'Councillor Curran's right,' he said at length.

'Better show a clean pair of heels, and save your neck.'

The young man glanced up in anger, and the other smiled with a good-humoured nod.

'It was kind of Lord Clare,' Curran went on, walking hither and thither, much perturbed--'it certainly was kind of him to speak as he did. Maybe he's not so bad as I think. If so, the Lord forgive me!

That there should be a warrant for you ready signed is not surprising.

Warrants are pretty nearly dead letters just now, but it would not do to kidnap the brother of Lord Glandore without proper authority; and this secret foe that he spoke about is too sharp to do things unwarily. Once taken, your life's not worth a pin's fee with the Staghouse crew, ready to swear anything, and some one prepared to dictate. Who have ye ever injured, Terence?--think.'

'My Lord Clare said all that!' exclaimed Ca.s.sidy, disconcerted.