My Lords of Strogue Volume I Part 7

Her own heart was exceeding heavy, she knew not why, except that she saw visions of Robert in peril, such as she was thankful to think were only visions. If aught befell him, she would lie down and die--of that she was quite sure--foolish virgin! She had bestowed her pure heart unasked. Would he who held it value the priceless gift?

My lady and Lord Clare looked at Arthur Wolfe in consternation. Where did the naughty damsel learn such a song? Of what dangerous stuff was she made to presume to chant it before the chancellor himself? 'It is the cloven foot,' her aunt thought with fury. That terrible blot!

Anxieties were thickening. Something must be done, or the girl would go to perdition even faster than she galloped across country.

Arthur looked wistfully at his sister, then at his child, who, the paroxysm past, was a cold statue again--haughty, unabashed. To look at her, you would feel a.s.sured that she had done right, while all the rest were wrong. Some people are incorrigible, and Miss Wolfe was evidently one of them. Her father suspected shrewdly that she had learnt the song at Curran's. He knew that she worshipped Tone, and that she had been in the habit of meeting him at the Priory. But he never had the courage to stand between the Catholic and the Protestant champion of her faith. As usual, he temporised, striving to serve two masters, and, as usual, suffered for his weakness.

Lord Clare read him like a book, and was disgusted with his friend.

Wolfe's sensitive conscience was constantly racked by doubts which a natural diffidence magnified into bugbears. Clare's inflexibly ambitious mind despised the hysterics of the country which he governed; brazen and hard, he was a fit tool for Mr. Pitt. As he looked at Arthur, who hung his head over his daughter's escapade, he decided that this was a square peg in a round hole. As attorney-general, acts might be demanded of him by-and-by, from which he would shrink with lamentable want of character. What if he were to shillyshally when prompt action was urgent! He might upset the deftest schemes, overturn the most skilful combinations, by his bungling. Only a few minutes ago, his tell-tale face had shown how he disapproved of the one witness project. What a pity it was that the inoffensive fellow had ever been promoted, for as a simple lawyer he would have been pushed by events into the background. Well, well! He must be tried, and trotted forth to test his mettle. If he were proved wanting, there would be nothing for it but to pa.s.s him on again--to shelve him somewhere in the Lords, where he might drone harmlessly.

But this outrageous bit of scorn--his daughter! My lady must have a hard time with her. She was going awry, as hysterical girls will; yet surely the dowager was more than capable of coping with this febrile phase of a strong nature half developed? Then the astute idea pa.s.sed through the schemer's brain of how convenient it would be if the budding Joan of Arc could be used as an unconscious spy upon her party. An ingenious notion, but one difficult to carry out--a delicate game, which would have to be worked through the countess, who was a crotchety soured woman, with a nice sense of honour, who would slave night and day for a cause which she esteemed a rightful one, but who would rather cut off her hand than stoop to what she knew was a meanness--provided that it did not affect her interests.

My Lord Clare could not forbear smiling when, glancing round the party, he noted the effect of the song. My lady dumbly furious; Arthur apologetic; Doreen herself indifferent; Terence uneasy and taken aback. One savage breast alone had music soothed; and Terence, who revered his chief, thanked Ca.s.sidy with a nod for having withdrawn him from further contest. Once with his huge machine between his feet, he was invulnerable even to Erin's wrongs, sc.r.a.ping himself into a condition of ecstatic beat.i.tude, from which there was no fretting him.

any more. There he sat, crouching like a black-beetle on a kitchen boiler, his underlip protruded, his face lighted with satisfaction, his head nodding to the time, and his frenzied eye fixed on the coat-of-arms upon the ceiling, as though to invoke its supporting monsters to turn and c.o.c.k their ears. My Lord Clare's smile faded presently; he hated music nearly as much as he hated Curran.

'Turn out the lights!' he cried. 'I wonder your ladyship has patience with the fellow's grimaces. And you, my lad,' he continued seriously, addressing Terence, 'accept the lesson of the times and avoid enthusiasm. In this country it leads to the halter. Steer your course wisely. Take a safer pilot to guide your inexperience than yonder hurdy-gurdyman, so that you may find yourself on the winning side at last. There is no doubt which that will be.'

'I will use my own judgment,' replied Terence, simply, with a dignity which would have won approval from his cousin, had she not just descended into the pleasaunce to recover, amid the influences of night, her natural calmness of demeanour.

'That beast's din addles my brains,' went on the chancellor, rising to depart. 'Drive back with me, Arthur. I have a special subject to talk to you about. You must take a bolder course in politics. The ball is at your feet. We must teach you to find pluck enough to strike it.'

Wolfe smiled gently as he answered:

'I'll take a drive with pleasure, but you'll find me terribly deceitful; for I must grub up money for my daughter's sake; and yet, in certain ways, I'm an impracticable person--a mule with his feet together. Vacillating you think me. In some things you'll find I'm adamant.'

All were glad when at last the chancellor departed. Even my lady admitted that he could be crabbed at times. He was gone, but, like the gentleman in black, he left an evil savour in his wake.

Startled from reverie by the clang of the hall-door, Curran threw aside his bow and scratched his elf-locks pensively.

'No!' he said. 'These laws which they are continually framing are too dreadful. If the testimony of one witness is to be sufficient to convict us, then, are we foredoomed; for any one may be summoned to join in the Kilmainham minuet by the malice of a discharged groom, or the greed of the meanest cowboy. Trial and evidence are not children's baubles; they were not even established for the sole purpose of punishing the guilty; their most precious use is for the security of innocence.'

The little lawyer looked so horror-stricken, that both my lady and the giant burst out a-laughing.

'Come,' said the former, wresting the violoncello from his grasp, 'your music carries you too far. Lord Clare was out of sorts, and played upon your fears. Thank heaven he is no Blunderbore, or he would not be my welcome guest. Now to bed. Sara looks worn out.'

'He has no sense of right and wrong,' grumbled Curran.

'For shame! You are both good men. What a pity you can only agree in looking at each other through distorted gla.s.ses!'

'Faix, her ladyship's right,' acquiesced Ca.s.sidy, with a grin. 'You magnify the number of the informers. I should be sorry to believe there are half as many as you think.'

'Did not Tone say you were simple?' asked Curran, sadly. 'So there's some one watching the Emmetts? Can you guess? No! Nor I; but they must be warned. Clare is brewing some new devil's haricot, and will dip Arthur's ladle in it, if he may. What a net it is that they are winding about Erin! Pray G.o.d that we and ours may escape entanglement!'

CHAPTER VI.

MY LADY'S PROJECT.

Doreen stood by the crazy sun-dial, looking at the milky way, and reflecting upon the chatter which had a.s.sailed her ears. Consigned to Moiley! The dragon of the new _regime_ was beginning to show that his hunger was insatiable. The prisons were filling apace. Lord Clare had hinted that worse was yet to come, that the shadow of the gibbet was to stretch across the earth, that hemp would soon be at a premium. But there were two Moileys--two G.o.ddesses of vengeance and retaliation, ready to strike, one for the oppressor, one for the oppressed. If their blood was roused, who might foretell what havoc they would make ere they sheathed their swords again!

The rustle of my lady's skirts recalled the maiden to herself, and she perceived her aunt descending into the garden. It was seldom that my lady changed her routine in the smallest particular. What could be the cause of this sudden fancy for star-gazing?

'A lovely night,' exclaimed her ladyship. 'How sweet the roses smell!

I vow it is a sin to go to bed.'

'Shane seems to think so,' returned Doreen. 'He never comes in till the small hours.'

My lady looked sharply in her niece's face, but was nothing there save a settled sadness.

'Come,' she said, 'Curran and his child are gone to rest. We'll take a turn in the pleasaunce.'

They sauntered through the golden gate and down a leafy avenue, in silence, while owls and bats flitted past their heads and circled away among the foliage. My lady had something to say, and did not know how to say it. Doreen was thinking of the dear wanderer, who was tossing on the sea by this time. Presently my lady said abruptly:

'Doreen, you must change your ways.'

The damsel's nostrils dilated a little; but, biting her lip, she answered nothing.

'You are twenty-two,' pursued her aunt. 'It is time that you gave up playing Miss Hoyden, and settled down into a respectable married woman.'

The girl walked on without a word, wondering what was coming next, while her aunt, growing exasperated at what she was pleased to consider stubbornness, bent down to sniff a rose which wept gems upon her dress.

'Does it trouble you,' she said, wiping the dew from her skirts carefully with a handkerchief, 'that Shane should stop out so late?

The Glandores were always rakes, but were none the worse for that. For my part I hate a milksop.'

Poor lady! The late lord had given her little experience of the milksop!

'What can it signify to me what he does?' asked Doreen, with a tinge of bitterness. 'He is drinking to King William now, no doubt, if not insensible beneath the table.'

This was awkward, for my lady desired to make the best of Shane, and the fact of his doing homage to the Immortal memory was not likely to be pleasing to a Roman Catholic. So she turned her batteries.

'You are wild, and will come to shipwreck,' she declared, 'if we do not set some one to look after you. The way you behaved just now was most deplorable. Your poor father looked wretched; but the dear soul is a goose. Unless you mend your ways you will find no one to marry you at all, which will be dreadful, and a disgrace to all of us. Your behaviour to Terence is not quite seemly, for you forget that he is grown up, and that you should not trifle with an inflammable youth.'

This shot went home. Thoroughly taken aback, Doreen cried:

'Terence! You must be jesting, aunt! He is my first cousin, almost my brother. You will accuse me of flirting with Shane next.'

'That is quite another matter,' replied my lady, coldly, for she was nettled at the contemptuous manner in which the girl spoke of her favourite son. 'I say you must be married before you disgrace us all, which you certainly will do unless curbed, being half a plebeian born.'

The blood flooded the girl's face, and she clasped her bosom with both hands to still the indignation rising there. For my lady, when annoyed beyond a given point, was apt to make sneering remarks about the late Mrs. Wolfe which filled her child with rage.

'What do you mean?' she exclaimed haughtily. 'There is no _must_ about the matter. You should have learned by this time that I will not be driven by any one on earth; certainly not by you.' Then recovering herself, she went on more softly: 'What a puzzle you are! Sometimes so kind, sometimes so cruel! I think you really care for me; you were so good to the motherless little one. If my mother had lived I might have been different. A Miss Hoyden, am I? I have never had any one in whom to put my trust, to whom I might tell my troubles; and a heart closed up, without sympathy, is a sore thing for one of my age!'

The girl's voice died away, and her aunt felt uncomfortable.

'To-day,' Doreen resumed, 'I went to see Ally Brady, who is dying, and nearly threw myself upon the neck of the lady who is nursing her. She looked so kind and hearty as her tears fell for the peasant-woman, and she clings to the prescribed creed as I do. It was Mrs. Gillin, of the Little House.'

My lady looked up sharply.