My Lords of Strogue Volume Iii Part 6

The marble beauty! Her scorn ate into his flesh like vitriol. He had, with long patience, shown a fict.i.tious better side to her in vain. It was with fiendish pleasure that he exposed the real one.

But the contempt which knitted the maiden's brow and distended her finely-cut nostrils proved too much for the giant's pot-valour. He tried to wink with the slyness which used to keep supper-tables in a roar, but shrank under her steady glance, and retiring with a growl, discomfited, slammed the door. Then, the spell removed, cursing himself and her, he went through a pantomime of anathema, battering the panels from within with heavy fists till the turnkeys ran out, supposing him to have been attacked.

'She treats me like dirt!' he gnashed out between foul oaths. 'Yet, plaze the Lord, I'll brand myself on her memory till her dying day.

d.a.m.n her! A fight, is it? A fight be it--deadly--to the last gasp.

We'll see if her ladyship will be so hoity-toity then!'

The frown pa.s.sed not from the maiden's face with the vanishing of Ca.s.sidy. _He_ there, in apparent authority! His presence boded little good to either of the dear prisoners.

What a queer character was Ca.s.sidy's! Outwardly merry and good-humoured, he was by nature coldly fierce, calculating, callous.

Reckless of life himself, its value to others made no impression on him. Playful and unpitying, commanding the smile and heeding not the sigh, he was a human paradox. The more Doreen considered him the less could she understand such a person, being herself true and impulsive and open as the day.

'We will go to Ely Place at once,' she said hurriedly. 'Lord Clare must and shall help us.'

The ladies walked their horses in order that panting Mrs. Gillin might tell all she knew. Tone's doom was fixed. Of that she was sure.

Neither the chancellor nor anybody else could avert his pa.s.sing. But Terence--so careless and so joyous a short while ago--his case was harrowing. Both were specially interested in him. Madam Gillin had heard for certain that his trial was to come on within a week, and that his henchman had been well triangled only a few hours since to extort evidence against his master. His butchers had even stopped their practical joke at intervals in order to give him time to pull his thoughts together. Did he say anything? Nothing that the narrator was aware of. Her nurse, old Jug, witnessed the scourging, and scurried home all of a tremble at the horrid spectacle. In her presence he had writhed and shrieked for mercy--had gnawed his tongue lest it should escape control--had swooned--and was then tossed upon some straw--half dead, but faithful so far.

Sara clung to her saddle-pommel as she listened, lest she too should swoon; and it dawned upon Doreen that they were out on a fool's errand. Life is a bitter gift to many; yet, charged as we are with illusory hopes, what suffering must be ours ere we master its full bitterness! She came out imagining that mercy was alive, that justice was only torpid, that she could plead with human creatures to whom justice and mercy were precious. How mad! For mercy she saw with terrible clearness the triangle; for justice, the shade of Ca.s.sidy.

The Valley of the Shadow was of weary length, and she was groping in it darkly still. Nothing could come of this expedition; of that she felt convinced. Tone and Terence would be hanged. Terence, who held her heart--she knew it now with no tinge of shame, and gloried in it.

She promised herself to be present at his trial, strengthening him by her sympathy. He might not be hers in this world. She had refused the boon of his affection when he had offered it; had presumed to preach to him--worse--had doubted him. Blind, fatuous girl! How justly punished! He was to die a martyr, blessed in that his life was to be in mercy shortened. She would tend his lowly bed, plant flowers on it, then take the veil and spend in prayer and vigil such days as it might be her lot to linger through. They would not be many. Heaven was very deaf. Surely this little boon of a speedy flitting might be vouchsafed to her jaded spirit? The tendency to asceticism which is buried more or less deep in all of us was a.s.serting itself in this dark hour over Doreen. She looked forward to the cloister and the monastic habit with exultation.

By the time the party turned into Ely Place, Doreen had lost her courage and her hope. She felt as shy almost as Sara--panted only for the swift coming of the shot that she might stagger away into the covert.

Strange! There was a party at Lord Clare's. All the windows were ruddy with light, filtering through cosy curtains. Incongruous spectacle!

Sedans were ranged in rows; their bearers could be heard yelling in an adjacent tavern. The entry-door was wide open lacqueys in sumptuous liveries hurried in and out; there was a clatter of knives and forks, the popping of corks and shouts of laughter.

Miss Wolfe was aghast. This contingency had not occurred to her. It never struck her that at such a moment men could be found who were capable of making merry.

'Let us go home!' timid Sara urged. 'What can we do? It's dreadful!'

Mrs. Gillin laughed bitterly, and clutched Miss Wolfe's bridle.

'Do you know what they're at?' she whispered, glancing round lest any one should hear her. 'It's a merry-making, true enough; but there's business at the bottom of it. I know more than I'm supposed to know, I tell you. The members of the Houses are chap-fallen. Their consciences are working inconveniently. Dinners are being organised by those in office to raise their drooping "sowls," in case, at the last moment, they should waver in their allegiance. We know what they're driving at--sure, it's splendid! The friends of Government dine together and drink toasts, and hob and n.o.b with l.u.s.ty choruses, and swill claret as pigs swill wash, to keep their loyalty at boiling-point. While the friends of Erin sit in ashes, and the scrag-boy's worn to the bone with villain's work! It's a quare world, isn't it, Miss Wolfe?'

The little party was beginning to enlist attention. Women on horseback did not often linger out so late. The gold braid upon their habits, the plumes in their hats, proclaimed their superior position.

Obsequious yeomen sprang up as though out of the ill-paved street; lackeys surrounded them. What could be done for their honours? Sure, half the aristocracy was pledging my lord chancellor. Glorious, gay dogs! Was aught amiss? Sure, 'twas a pity to spoil fun! Which of 'em did the ladies want to see? A private hint might be conveyed to the lucky ones.

The soldiers leered at the ladies who dared to be out at such a time of night--with stringent orders as to curfew, too! It was like the impudence of their craft to dare seek their gallants at the chancellor's own door. Reckless, bold baggages! Insolent, good-looking hussies! Madam Gillin was preparing for a fray. She was a good hand at bandying retorts, and perceived at once the suspicions of the bystanders; but she was not destined to show her prowess on this occasion, for the astonished hall-porter recognised the ladies, and waddled out to welcome them as quickly as amazement and short breath would permit.

'Is it Miss Wolfe, good luck? Sure his lordship your father's here.

Will I call him?'

'No. I wish to see Lord Clare,' Doreen stammered, her courage oozing strangely. 'Don't tell him that 'tis I.'

Sara, who all along had been supported in this singular adventure by the valiance of her friend, saw that Doreen was breaking down. The amazon--the cool, calm heroine! If she gave way, then must the case indeed be desperate. The poor gentle little thing instantly broke down, too, in most lamentable fashion. Tears rolled down her cheeks; blonde elf-locks hung over her eyes. She was a piteous object, if a lovely one, to look upon, and refused all Madam Gillin's rough attempts at comforting.

Lord Clare came forth with a napkin in his hand. A silhouette, with arm upraised, appeared on the window-curtain, and the thick, quavering voice of Lord Glandore rang out above the din of gla.s.ses. 'A toast! A toast!' he shouted. 'The Hero of the Nile, who has taught the French their bearings!' Doreen shivered. An English toast from the lips of Terence's brother. Alas! it signified little now what should befall the French. Ireland was beyond succour. Summoning together with a desperate effort the shreds of her wavering purpose, she implored the chancellor to go at once with her to the Castle. If the matter were clearly explained, the Viceroy would exert his right of clemency. Tone might be saved. At least his pa.s.sing might be postponed, which practically would come to the same thing. The trial of Terence might also be put off. In the confusion of troublous days like these, a few weeks make all the difference. A little time works wonders; each grain of trickling sand is priceless.

Lord Clare lifted the two girls from their saddles; bade a groom take the horses to his stable, and prepare a coach forthwith.

'Come within,' he said gravely. 'It is not fitting that you should play the knight-errant thus; you might be insulted. What would your father think of it?'

He paced up and down his study in silent meditation until the carriage was announced, while Madam Gillin's clack was stilled by awe, and the two girls watched his every movement with breathless eagerness. Then, striking his hands together as though his web of thought were complete, he stood opposite to Doreen with a glance less like the alligator's than his was usually.

'I've done my best already with Lord Cornwallis,' he said; 'but he heeds me no more than a crazy table. I begged him to quash this last trial; to show leniency with regard to your cousin. He retorted that he was forbidden to be lenient; that he had promised to let the trials run their course; that I had myself to thank for it, having complained of him to Mr. Pitt. I cannot stop this trial. Mr. Pitt is as ungrateful, I find, as other men. He made use of me, then flung me aside without the least compunction. I see it now--too late. As for the other----'

Doreen sank on her knees before the chancellor.

'As for Tone,' he went on, severely, 'it is right and fit that he should die. I would not move a finger to save him from the hangman.

The mischief-maker! Come, my carriage shall take you back to Strogue.

An officer shall ride behind to protect it.' Then, seeing how distressed she looked, he took her hand, and continued, in a kinder voice, 'I'm not so heartless as you imagine. Girls should not trouble their pretty heads with politics, which they are unable to understand.

You think it very shocking to be giving feasts at such a time? Yet both your cousin Shane and your father are here for state reasons.

These festivities have a political meaning. Now, get you home and go to bed to refresh your roses. My word! Madam Gillin, if I mistake not?

A strange companion for my lady's niece! Good-night. For his sake I will not tell your father of this escapade.'

And so the maiden's effort was as vain as the little lawyer's was. She sat sedate and still as the coach rattled on, murmuring once, in an undertone, 'That I, who never kneel to any one but G.o.d, should have knelt at that man's feet in vain!' She thought of Theobald. What was he doing? Was he praying, or sleeping a last sleep? It must need all a soldier's courage to walk calmly to a scaffold. A cause should be a good one that has power to produce such martyrs.

While Curran and Doreen were straining every nerve for him, Tone stared moodily out into his prison-yard and watched the building of a new gallows there. 'A soldier's end was all I asked,' he sighed, 'and they even deny me that small grace.'

In the evening he took a tender farewell of Terence, and moved into an adjoining cell, which, as for a distinguished person who was condemned to death, had been set apart for him.

'Let us sit together to the last,' Terence objected, with a mournful smile. 'Why should we be parted who are both hovering on the confines of eternity? Well, come in and look at me again before you go.'

Theobald embraced his friend with clinging warmth, and whispering once more, 'We shall meet again,' withdrew. When the gaolers came to lead him to the gallows-foot they were too late. His body lay cold upon the pallet. An ensanguined mark was on his throat. He had escaped the scrag-boy--cheated 'Jack the Breath-stopper'--and was gone!

CHAPTER V.

THE ALTAR OF MOLOCH.

Though Shane roared out gay toasts to the health of Nelson, he was by no means happy in his mind. No dwelling could be more disagreeable than Strogue. His supposed partic.i.p.ation in the capture of the arch-martyr was speedily punished by the people. His cattle were houghed. It happened to be a late season; all his corn was cut and trampled in one night by unseen avengers. He was in constant dread of Moiley, of being sent to his account from behind a hedge--ignominious exit for a king of Cherokees. He even felt inclined to do as many fellow-proprietors did, namely, to barricade himself in his Abbey and endure a state of siege till better times should come. In order to curry favour with the executive he underlined his open disavowal of his brother's acts, spoke flippantly of traitors; an unfeeling course which did not raise him in the esteem of blunt Lord Cornwallis. That n.o.bleman expressed his opinion of Pat in no measured terms, vowing, as testily he poked the fire, that the Irish were unfit to govern themselves; that, independent of the benefit which would accrue to England, the sooner a legislative union could be brought about, the better it would be for Ireland herself. The few months of his residence in Dublin had melted all his scruples on that head. On principle, Mr. Pitt's game was an iniquitous one. There could be no two opinions as to that. But the new Viceroy was not long in discovering that a union would materially improve the condition of the people by freeing them from the persecution of bigoted factions, provided that the King could only be brought to allow that the Catholics should be permitted to exist. After all, how could a scuffle about a union affect the lower orders? Under home-rule were they not always slaves? Did they not profess to hate the yoke of English and Anglo-Irish equally? It would be a change of masters; a change from tyranny to mildness; for it was understood by Lord Cornwallis that the Reign of Terror had been brought about to disgust the country with its ruling cla.s.ses; and that that result being attained, a skilfully contrasted millennium was to be inaugurated instantly. The members of the senate had been cajoled, with a few exceptions, into disgracing themselves beyond redemption. Could they be coaxed a stage lower--just one? Possibly. The Marquis Cornwallis, so far as his private honour was concerned, drew the line at this. He would supervise the stew, without direct personal interference in its brewing. It did not behove a man who had won immortal laurels in the field, to stoop to put salt on the tails of the Irish Lords and Commons. No! That unworthy work must be done by the chancellor and such others as were ready to paddle in the _cloaca_. This is how it was that, despite the paling of his star, my Lord Clare was giving dinners--symposia intended to act as birdlime to fluttering legislators--feasts at which hints were dropped of the future emoluments that awaited the complaisant. Mr. Pitt's ball was rolling steadily to the goal, while my Lord Clare swept clear its course. The b.l.o.o.d.y drama was all but concluded now. One more trial and the pageant at the Sessions-House would come to a close, and those who had escaped so far would probably be permitted to disappear in the medley. Nearly all had been tried who could be safely sentenced; there were some left whom it would be best not to try. The last serious state-trial must be got over without more ado--a trial complicated by private venom and a series of false statements which were twisted into attempted murder as well as treason; a trial which must be so conducted as to bear sifting by the opposition, examination by the scrutiny of Europe--a trial wherein both sides would wrestle with all their strength and cunning. Which was to enact Jacob, and which the angel?

Theobald Wolfe Tone having vanished from the scene, the eyes of Dublin were still turned fearfully to the selfsame cell at the provost, wherein the companion of his last hours lingered. The people counted the moments that were left to him. Coronachs were crooned in secret before their time in many a cabin, with beatings of the breast. None doubted but that Charon, resting on his oars, awaited his next fare with confidence. As Terence himself expressed it--he stood on an isthmus between two lives. If one was desperately turbid, was it not better cheerfully to turn his back on it, and plunge with courage into the other?

Strogue Abbey from within, was no more pleasant to its owner than from without. Doreen's serenity, which for years had made Shane uncomfortable, a.s.sumed now a preternatural repulsion. Odours as of gravecloths seemed to emanate from her garments. The phosph.o.r.escence of the charnel-house was a nimbus to her head. Her brow was circled by the calm that appertains not to mundane matters; which chills the creeping souls of those who cling to earth. Instead of being shocked that Theobald should have evaded the offices of the scrag-boy, she was content. Her hero was beyond the reach of vulgar slings and arrows.

His fretted rope was snapped; the boundary was pa.s.sed, the inevitable plunge taken, and he slept. A few brief days of swiftly speeding hours and Terence would be conveyed with him in the boat of Charon, who was waiting, to a less rugged sh.o.r.e. A little, little patience, and he too would sleep. Then she, less blessed than they, would withdraw from the troubles that weighed her down, and, meekly kneeling, would await the unveiling of the White Pilgrim. What a message was his! 'Home to the homeless; to the restless rest!' Doreen's manner had something awful about it which scared another besides Shane--poor Sara, whose Robert was unscathed and well. The cairngorm eyes of the elder damsel were opened to their full width with the far-seeing blindness of a somnambulist. Her obstinate moods and perverse waywardness were quelled. She went about her avocations with mechanical deliberation; dusted her cousin's fishing-rods and guns in his little sanctum, as if he were only gone away upon a visit; wore her best clothes to please her aunt; tendered regularly each morning to cousin Shane a corpse-cheek whose coldness took away the little appet.i.te which he could boast of; conversed calmly about events--all but the one event, which for that matter each member of the household was equally desirous to shun. Strogue was full of spectres, and they rattled their bones in grim concert.

Councillor Curran, who looked like a moulting bird, grey-skinned, unkempt, essayed to speak words of comfort; but she seemed not to understand. What comfort could there be for one whose fairest prospect was the cloister and the grave? Theobald had pa.s.sed; a procession of young shades like Banquo's sons had pa.s.sed; Terence was prepared to join the shadowy convoy into spirit-land. Why prate of comfort? Had not Mr. Curran done all that might be done by man to prevent this hideous nightmare? Then he murmured something of a postponement--of a delay which might save the life of the last victim; but Doreen only shook her graceful head. It was better, she averred, to put aside illusions, and look straight into Truth's hard face. The postponement of the trial was impossible, and it was better so, for a speedy end was the best boon for a true Irishman to pray for. Mr. Curran's heart died within him to hear this girl, in the full flush of youth and beauty, speaking of this life as though existence had no charms.

If his stately cousin was a kill-joy in the household, Shane's mother was no better than she. My lady alternated between fevered activity, without apparent object, and helpless la.s.situde. Her own ghost kept faithful watch and ward over the countess. When Lord Clare told her gently that all hope of saving her son was gone, she gave herself over to the phantom hand and foot; and her old friend blamed himself for rushing, as we all have a p.r.o.neness to do, to hasty conclusions of blame. It was evident that my lady was not indifferent to the fate of her younger-born. On the contrary, she was overwhelmed by a remorseful, fascinating ecstasy, which haunted her day and night--something connected with Terence in the past, which took from his mother the power to reason in clear sequence. She blinked like a white owl in the great chair in the tapestry saloon, heeding goers or comers no more than drifting leaves--engrossed all day by withering meditation till Doreen announced to her that it was time for bed. Then she permitted herself to be undressed and laid upon her back without a word, and blinked on at the ceiling through the still hours; and then was dressed and propped up again in the great chair. Some said she was broken; some that her circulation was weak; some that paralysis was imminent. Lord Clare and Curran alone amongst her friends perceived that it was her mind that was diseased--that there was a rooted sorrow festering there which no mortal hand might have strength to pluck away.

News of the countess's state was brought by Shane to the Little House, whither he escaped whene'er he could, to forget his dismal home in the company of Norah. But his welcome there was no longer what it used to be, even though through his good offices the dreadful infliction of soldiers' wives had been removed. Madam Gillin felt too strongly the heartless selfishness of Lord Glandore to be decently civil to him, even though by civility her child might win a coronet. For a host of reasons, her sympathies were all with Terence. When Shane talked querulously about his mother, she listened eagerly, seeing in fancy the dying man at Daly's, who implored his stern wife to save herself from the torment he then suffered. But she would not. Nemesis, if slow of foot, is sure--her vengeance complete, if tardy.