My Lords of Strogue Volume I Part 4

Theobald Wolfe Tone--ardent, patriotic, fired by the golden thoughts of youth, and bursting with Utopian schemes--was just such a catspaw as was wanted. His bright earnest face beamed with the rays of truth; his pure life compelled respect; his rapt eloquence lured many to his side, despite the warnings of their judgment. Though a Protestant, he was scandalised by the Penal Code. He wandered like a discontented young Moses among his enslaved countrymen. From pamphleteering he took to declamation, and, like many another, became convinced by his own discourse. He started a society among the Presbyterians of Ulster for the encouragement of universal love, and dubbed it the Society of United Irishmen. It grew and flourished at Belfast, for all Irish projects which were bold and enterprising came into being in the north. In spite of Mr. Wolfe, of Curran, of Lady Glandore (who took up her brother's _protege_), young Tone abandoned the Bar, and deliberately developed into an incendiary. He travelled over the country haranguing crowds, addressing meetings, demonstrating home truths, exhorting all to join the cause which should promote concord amongst Irishmen of all persuasions. A bloodless revolution was to be organised like that of '82, but on a surer basis. Instead of five hundred thousand, five millions of men were to stand up as one to demand a clear ratification of their rights, and, really united at last, would be certain of the crown of victory. Vainly his friends warned him off the precipice, declaring that the world was not ripe for a millennium, that the heart of man is desperately wicked, that five millions of men never were yet of one mind, that even a dozen Irishmen never yet agreed upon any given subject whatsoever. Tone was infatuated with his Utopian scheme, prepared like the pure-souled enthusiast that he was to give up his all to bring about its furtherance. What better catspaw could be selected by Mr. Pitt than this artless apostle in whom was no taint of guile?

If Tone's society had been left alone, it would have dwindled as over-virtuous for this world. It must be persecuted (so Mr. Pitt determined) till it flourished like a bay-tree. Then Tone and the United Irishmen must be stamped beneath the heel, and it would be odd indeed if they did not drag their tottering country in their downfall.

So Mr. Pitt sat down to play a game of chess with unconscious Theobald, permitting him to frisk his pieces about the board till he chose to take them one by one. The game was heartless, for the players were deplorably ill-matched. What could a knot of earnest youths do against the forces of established government--a government which was not squeamish as to the weapons it employed? Master Tone was agitating for the Catholics, was he? Out with a relief bill, which, by bestowing illusory concessions, should exasperate the ultra-Protestants. Then with lightning-speed, in dazzling sequence, a host of contradictory enactments, such as should keep the ball a-rolling. Towns were garrisoned with English troops, armed a.s.semblies suppressed, public discussions forbidden, the sale of ammunition prohibited, conventions of delegates rendered penal. A deft touch of personal persecution besides, and the United Irishmen would become martyrs.

Before they could fully understand this complex phalanx of decrees, Tone and his lieutenants--driven by events as by a remorseless broom--found themselves transformed from a harmless debating club into a secret society, proscribed and outlawed. They discovered, too, that an illegal Star Chamber--a threatening Wehmgericht--had been created somehow to spy out their ways; that a secret council was established in the Castle, which was garnished with bristling bayonets, and supplied with paid informers.

They buffeted like beasts in a net. The more they struggled, the more entangled they became. Then, hot-headed to begin with, they grew frantic. Must it be war? they howled. War be it then, though you have arms and we have none. With the sacred cause we will win or perish.

Tear your colours from the staff, O people; m.u.f.fle your drums and beat your funeral march if ye are not prepared to stand in the breach with us, to fall or conquer, for G.o.d and motherland!

Fate gave Mr. Pitt a cruel game to play, but he was not one to blench at phantoms. It was a game beset with difficulties--tortuous, dirty, dark. So he turned up his cuffs and played it like the bold man he was, without flinching; in an age, too, when the end was acknowledged to justify the means. The crime which he had to commit was of his master's ordering, and must lie at his door--at the door of good King George, that well-meaning stupid boor. On his shoulders and no others must be laid the horrors of '98--of that hideous carnival which, though it took place but eighty years ago, stands without rival in the annals of human wickedness. Some, maybe, will hope that this chronicle is overdrawn. Unhappily it is not so. There is no historical fact recorded in these pages in connection with that bitter time for which there exists not ample evidence. The cruelty of devils lies dormant in each one of us. From 1796 to 1800, it had full play in Ireland. There is no doubt that if Mr. Pitt had been allowed his way, he would have dealt fairly by the sister island; that he intended a broad emanc.i.p.ation of the serfs, an honourable course which would have landed him on his father's pinnacle. But his hands were tied in two ways. First by the bigotry of George, who loathed with a lunatic abhorrence all opinions which differed from his own; secondly, by the upheaval of '89, which, by overturning established dogmas, opened out awful vistas of new danger to the body politic. The position being what it was, he cut his coat according to his cloth, accepted what he could not help, and arranged that a religious feud must be fomented to boiling-point, in order to make its suppression an excuse for political slavery.

To carry out this project he needed a trusty coadjutor; one who was crafty, ambitious, selfish, clever, unprincipled, and, above all, Irish; and this _rara avis_ he found in the Irish chancellor, Lord Clare (whose acquaintance we made in 1783, when he was Fitzgibbon, attorney-general). This man he reckoned up at once at his true worth, and set him accordingly to fight the battle with the patriots. A better tool it was not possible to find, for he despised his countrymen for their unpractical romance, looking on them as stepping-stones for his own personal aggrandis.e.m.e.nt. His domineering airs had in the intervening time coerced to his own way of thinking a host of weatherc.o.c.k viceroys, had raised him to the woolsack, rendered him supreme in the law courts. Mr. Pitt begged this glorious creature to make a trip to London, and proceeded to open his mind to him, or rather that murky cupboard which he exposed as such to the admiration of his dolls, when he chose to cajole them into the belief that they were colleagues.

'We have an ensanguined path to tread, my dear Lord Clare,' he said, with raised eyebrows; 'but it is the shortest and the safest. We must coax on these boys to displays of rashness till they shall drive the most respectable to take refuge in our bosom. A prison shall cool the ardour of the fanatics. Gold shall be the portion of those who waver.

b.l.o.o.d.y, say you? Is not Ireland already traceable in the statute-book as a wounded man in a crowd is tracked by his wounds? A few transitory troubles--mere spasms, nothing more--and our patient will be calm. Let the jade be tied hand and foot, and we'll mop up the blood and she will come to hug her chains. As for you, my dear lord,' he went on with a familiar smirk, which warmed Lord Clare with pleasure, 'you will be a gainer in several ways. Your talents are wasted in that poky little house on College Green. We want men of your kidney at St.

Stephen's, 'fore Gad we do!' and Lord Clare took the bait, and the English premier rubbed his hands behind his back. It was but a new phase of a time-honoured policy. Chancellor and patriots should be made to plunge their paws into the fire; then Mr. Pitt in his ambush would quietly eat the nut.

So the new society of United Irishmen pursued its desperate way, upheld in fainting moments by the ardour of its young apostle; and the chancellor returned home to set traps to catch his feet; and in order to facilitate his movements a new viceroy was sent over--a gabbling weak man, who would do as he was bid; whose private life was irreproachable; who in public was an idiot; who would obey the chancellor in all things; whose name was my Lord Camden.

As might have been expected, Theobald fell into the snare. His lieutenants were locked up. Undismayed, he prated, with increased vehemence, of a bondage worse than that of Egypt, called on the men of Ulster to break down the Penal Code; pointed out that the oppressor was as vicious as an Eastern despot, that the oppressed was disfigured into the semblance of a beast. The awakened Presbyterians answered to his call; and, when they had sufficiently committed themselves, the watchful chancellor put down his claw on them. Tone's career was short. Very soon he too was cast into gaol, while small fry were allowed to flap their wings till their mission, too, should be accomplished. But Mr. Pitt, if a strong, was not an ungenerous foe. He respected the young man, who was made of the stuff which makes heroes.

By his command Theobald was incarcerated in Newgate for a brief s.p.a.ce, to chew the cud of his vain imaginings, and then was given back his liberty on condition of departing from the country which he loved.

Sadly he accepted the boon which was tossed to him--for choice lay 'twixt exile and the Kilmainham minuet; despatched his faithful wife before him to America; and (Mr. Pitt and the chancellor permitting) called his closest friends around him once again ere he shook their hands for the last time. He stands in the gloaming now, bareheaded, to pour out a last burning exhortation to his disciples as we take up the clue of this our chronicle, whose thread shall no more be broken.

It is the lovely evening of the 12th of July, 1795. The scene a triangular field known as 'The Garden' on the sh.o.r.e of Dublin Bay, from whence may be duskily distinguished on the one side the cupolas and spires of the city; on the other, at the end of a promontory jutting out into the sea, the ivy-clad walls of Strogue Abbey, bowered in umbrageous woods. Joy-chimes are wafted on the breeze, and now and again a puff of smoke shows as a white spot across the bay, and a second later the boom of a royal salute shakes the hollyhocks and causes the little group to shiver. It is the anniversary of William, who saved us from wooden shoes. Mr. Curran--apart from the rest--beats his cane testily upon the ground, and murmurs: 'Lord Clare is justified in despising them. The pack of fools! Jigging round Juggernaut at this minute with orange lilies and foolish banners! Even so Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Will my countrymen learn wisdom? Of course not. Never.'

The evening light shines full on the face of the young enthusiast, marking in relief the deep cuts chiselled by premature sorrow on his cheek. He is effeminate-looking but genteel, with long lank hair simply caught back behind. His thin figure appears more slight than usual, his pale face more wan, in the anxious eyes of his companions; his hands more thin and feverish as one by one he clasps with a lingering pressure those that are held out to him.

'Thanks, friends!' he says, with a weary smile. 'It was idle in me to bid you take the oath once more; for having once sworn I know you will be faithful. Yet will it be as music to mine ears, as I roam in a foreign land, to recall the solemn cadence of your beloved voices.

Nay--weep not! Be of good cheer. See these flowers around, and take courage with the omen. Mark how they droop and sink--grieving together for the dying-day. A few hours of sleep and they will wake refreshed again, and lift up their loving heads unto the sun, with dew-tears of gladness glistening upon their eyelids.'

'Oh, Theobald, what will become of us when you are gone?' cries out Robert Emmett, a boy of seventeen. 'You carry hope with you in the folds of your mantle. Once gone, we shall be left in darkness, groping.'

Tone shuddered, and fought with himself against presentiment.

'I have watched over the cradle of Liberty,' he whispered, dreamily.

'G.o.d forbid that I should ever see its hea.r.s.e.' Then pa.s.sing his palm across his eyes as if to shut out a nightmare, he said, laying a hand on the broad shoulder of a young man beside him, 'Courage, boy Robert!

True, I go from you. But here is the Elisha who shall take up the mantle which I leave a legacy with Hope wrapped in it. Look up to your brother Thomas, Robert--the wise and prudent, the sage man in counsel.

Follow him as you have followed me; faithfully, truly, till I return.

For I shall return, if G.o.d so wills it, I promise you. This night I sail for America, but am under no promise to stay there. I shall make my way to France, and lay our grievances at the feet of the Directory.

There is nothing for it but to amputate the right hand of England. Oh, how I hate the name of the thrice accursed! France is the surgeon who shall do the job. I would fain give a toast before I go, if Doreen will lend the flask she hugs so carefully.'

'It is for your journey, Theobald,' was Doreen's soft answer.

'Never mind me,' he returned, with a.s.sumed gaiety. 'Let us pour a last libation to our common mother.'

A man who had been spreading his great length upon the gra.s.s, now jumped up with an oath. A giant he was; evidently, from his dress, belonging to the half-mounted cla.s.s. His big kindly flat face was shaded by a Beresford bobwig, under which twinkled a pair of roguish eyes set in a sallow skin. His buckskin breeches were worn and greasy; his half-jack-boots were adorned with huge silver spurs; while a faded scarlet vest (fur-trimmed, though it was summer) closed over his broad chest; and a square-cut snuff-coloured coat, with all the cloth in it, hung from his brawny shoulders.

'Theobald!' he shouted, in a voice which sent the owls whirling seaward, 'you shall not go from us. Why not lie hidden somewhere, and direct us still? Can we not be trusted to keep the secret? You look at things too blackly. We need no French help, but can win our way as the Volunteers did--by moral force; or if we must fight, can quite look after ourselves. Don't tell me. These English are not ogres.'

'Oh, stay with us, dear Theobald!' cried eagerly Robert Emmett, the boy of seventeen. 'Ca.s.sidy is right. We will have no help from France--for that would imply bloodshed--the blood of our own brethren--and the curse of G.o.d is upon fratricide.'

Tone shook his head, and answered bluntly:

'No! That was all very well twelve years since; but the day for a peaceful revolution's past. On the heads of those who forced us to seek foreign aid shall the blood-curse be. Our omelette can't be made without a breaking of eggs. For three years we've dribbled in and out of Newgate and Kilmainham, and know all their holes and corners, and dread neither prison any more. We must strike, and that sharply, but are not strong enough alone.'

'Theobald!' observed Mr. Curran, from his gra.s.s-knoll, 'it's a Upas-tree you've planted. Take heed lest it blight the land.'

'We must not be led away by a morbid anxiety about a little life,'

rejoined the apostle. 'I go a solitary wanderer, but shall return with an army at my back--and then!' He paused, as though delving into futurity, and the prospect which he saw upon its mirror was rea.s.suring; for with new courage he turned to his band and said: 'Keep together, Protestant and Catholic, for _L'Union fait la Force_, and Britain will try to divide you. Come what may, hold on by one another.

Thomas Emmet, old friend! as a literary man and editor of the "Press,"

it is your duty to keep this before the public. Study the tactics of the foe, that one by one they may be exposed in time. And you, Ca.s.sidy,' he continued, laying a hand tenderly on the giant's arm, 'keep watch over your too ingenuous nature, lest you find yourself betrayed. In your way you are a clever fellow, but, like most people of your bulk, unduly innocent. I speak with loving authority to you, for is not your sister my dear wife, who, next to Erin, holds all my heart? You are too servile to Lord Clare, Ca.s.sidy, who, himself an Irishman, is the bitterest enemy that Ireland ever had. Beware lest he twist you to his purpose, for the undoing of us all. You are also on too intimate terms with Sirr--the town-major--that shameful jackal of my Lord Clare's.'

'You would not suspect me, Theobald!' cried the giant, ruefully. 'I'm not more wise than others, but I mean well.'

'No, indeed!' returned his brother-in-law. 'Would to G.o.d that we had more such hearts as yours amongst us! But keep watch and ward, lest you be overreached, for you are simple.'

'My Lord Clare is partial to me, and tells me many things,' apologised the giant, with a twinkle in his eye. 'Maybe I'm not so stupid as I look, and can unravel a fact from a careless hint. As for Sirr, I don't care two pins for him; yet who knows how useful he may prove to us? He has apartments in the Castle--is hand and glove with Secretary Cooke; through him we may be able to tamper with the soldiery, turning the arms of Government against itself, for the town-major is no man of straw.'

But Tone shook his head.

'It is ill dealing with traitors' weapons,' he retorted. 'In a pa.s.sage of wits, you will certainly be worsted, for you are too open, too blundering.'

Ca.s.sidy looked demurely at the rest, with his whimsical half-smile, as though to ask whether this verdict on his character were a compliment or not; and handsome Doreen smiled back on him in her grave way as she handed the flask and cup to Tone, and twined her arm round Sara Curran's waist.

A pretty picture were these two girls--who loitered a little amongst the darkling flowers, while Tone was speaking his farewell. Doreen had fulfilled the promise of her childhood, and was now a statuesque woman of two-and-twenty, with rich warm blood mantling under an olive skin--soft eyes of the brown colour of a mountain stream, shaded by long silken lashes--and an aquiline nose whose nostrils were as finely cut and sensitive as were her aunt's. People wondered where she got her scornful look, for Mr. Arthur Wolfe (attorney-general now) was the most peaceable and quiet of men, while all the world knew that her retiring mother had faded from excess of meekness. Her aunt, Lady Glandore, had watched her growth approvingly, for the tall supple form was what her own had been--as was the swan-like neck and head-toss.

She approved and seemed quite to like her niece till she remembered that she was a Papist and a blot on the escutcheon; then she despised her, yet never dared to touch forbidden ground save in a covert way; for Doreen had a temper, when roused, as self-a.s.serting as her own, and her aunt was grown old before her time; too old to rise without an effort at the sound of the war-trumpet.

Doreen was dutiful to her aunt in most things; but on the subject of her oppressed religion was a very tigress. If Lady Glandore permitted herself too broad a sally, those eyes with the strongly-marked black pupils would shoot forth a cairngorm flame--that ma.s.s of dark brown hair which hung in natural curls after the Irish fashion down her back, would shake like a lion's crest, and my lady would retire from the field discomfited. Yet this occurred but seldom, and folks could only guess how the Penal Code burned into her flesh by a certain unnatural quietude and an artificial repose of manner beyond her years.

Of course she adored Tone, the champion who had wrecked his life on behalf of three million serfs who were her brethren, and under his guidance became quite a little conspirator, niece though she was of an ultra-Protestant grandee, daughter of the attorney-general, who, as such, was crown prosecutor of her allies. It may be asked, how came her aunt to permit the girl to form such dangerous ties? The damsel was wayward, and the aunt a victim of some secret canker, over which she brooded more and more as her hair blanched. A hard tussle or two, and practically she lowered her standard. The girl went whither she listed, and chose as bosom friend Sara Curran, daughter of the member of parliament, to whom her father was deeply attached; and who had on the occasion of her uncle's tragic end struck up a queer friendship with her aunt, which flourished by reason of its incongruity.

Doreen, from the time she could first toddle, had been accustomed to scour the country on ponyback in company with her cousins, and these rides--more frequently than not--had for object the Priory--a comfortable nest which Curran had taken to himself near Rathfarnham--where they were regaled on tea and cakes by little Sara, the lawyer's baby child. Sara and Doreen became fast friends as they grew up--the faster probably because Doreen, who was the elder by several years, was strong as the sapling oak, while Sara was clinging like the honeysuckle.

Of course Curran, whose business kept him for many hours daily in the courts of law and House of Commons, could desire no better companion for his pet than the niece of the Countess of Glandore--the daughter of his friend and superior, Arthur Wolfe; and so as her cousins grew into men and left her more and more alone, she frequented more and more the Priory, where no one mocked her faith, and where she frequently met Theobald.

Wolfe-Tone and the Emmetts met frequently at Curran's, and their large-minded talk and broad generous views seemed to her like the wind which has pa.s.sed over seaweed, compared with her aunt's narrow drone, the vain self-vaunting of my Lord Clare, the drunken ribaldry and coa.r.s.e jests of her cousin Lord Glandore. So she, in her goldlaced riding-habit, had come too to the tryst that she might look on her hero once again; and for propriety's sake had brought as escort Papa Curran and gentle Sara, who, though only sixteen, was already casting timid sheep's-eyes at the younger of the two Emmetts--a gownsman at this time in the University.

Bashful Sara had relapsed into tears several times during Tone's discourse--a pale, fair, pretty creature she was, with a dazzling skin and light-blue eyes--and showed symptoms of hysteria when the patriot proposed a final libation. Not that she had any reason for emotion (such as Doreen might with more reason have displayed), being the eye-apple of a prosperous barrister who professed the dominant faith; but she knew that young Robert, whose shoes she would have knelt and kissed, was deeply bitten with the prevailing mania, and maybe she had besides a dim presentiment of the trouble which was to pour later upon her head and his. Be that as it may, she sank upon the ground now and sobbed, while Tone held forth the cup which Doreen had filled with a steady hand.

'A toast, dear friends--the last we may drink together!' he said; and gazed on the plashing waters, which glowed with the last gleam of the sun that was no more. 'I give you Mother Erin! May she soon be decked in green ribbons by a French milliner!'

Again and again did Doreen, a calm Hebe, fill the goblet, which was drained by each man present with a murmured 'Amen!'

The sun had died behind the Wicklow hills; still the Protestant chimes brayed fitfully across the sea, though the cannon at dusk were silent.

Far off from the direction of Strogue Abbey came a noise of galloping hoofs, which grew gradually louder and louder, while every man looked at his neighbour as though expecting some new misfortune. No wonder they were uneasy, for their proceedings were watched, and a new disaster happened daily. Presently Mr. Curran, established as vidette, descried a well-known horseman, who pulled up sharply in the road, and dismounting, vaulted lightly over the wall.

'Terence!' he exclaimed with mixed feelings, as he beheld a finely-grown young man, whose round face was remarkable for mobile eyebrows, a fearless eye, and puckers of fun about a sensitive mouth, 'what are you doing here? Be off!'