Roland Cashel Volume Ii Part 60

"It was Cashel himself,--I knew him at once; and I tell you, Jones, he would have known _me_, too, for all this disguise, when a gleam of day came to shine."

As for Cashel, he stood gazing after the departing vehicle, with a strange chaos of thought working within.

"Am I then infamous?" said he at last, "that these men will not travel in my company? Is it to this the mere accusation of crime has brought me!" And, slight as the incident was, it told upon him as some acrid substance would irritate and corrode an open wound,--festering the tender surface.

"Better thus dreaded than the 'dupe' I have been!" said he, boldly, and entered the inn, where now the preparations for the coming day had begun. He ordered his breakfast, and post-horses for Killaloe, resolved to see Tubbermore once again, ere he left it forever.

It was a bright morning in the early spring as Cashel drove through the wide-spreading park of Tubbermore. Dewdrops spangled the gra.s.s, amid which crocus and daffodil flowers were scattered. The trees were topped with fresh buds; the birds were chirping and twittering on the branches; the noiseless river, too, flowed past, its circling eddies looking like blossoms on the stream. All was joyous and redolent of promise, save him whose humbled spirit beheld in everything around him the signs of self-reproach.

"These," thought he, "were the rich gifts of fortune that I have squandered. This was the paradise I have laid waste! Here, where I might have lived happy, honored, and respected, I see myself wretched and shunned! The defeats we meet with in hardy and hazardous enterprise are softened down by having dared danger fearlessly,--by having combated manfully with the enemy. But what solace is there for him whose reverses spring from childlike weakness and imbecility,--whose life becomes the plaything of parasites and flatterers! Could I ever have thought I would become this? What should I have once said of him who would have prophesied me such as I now am?"

These gloomy reveries grew deeper and darker as he wandered from place to place, and marked the stealthy glances and timid reverences of the peasants as they pa.s.sed him. "It is only the jury have called me 'Not Guilty,'" said he to himself; "the world has p.r.o.nounced another verdict.

I have come from that dock as one might have risen from an unhonored grave, to be looked on with fear and sorrow. Be it so; mine must be a lonely existence."

Every room he entered recalled some scene of his past life. Here was the s.p.a.cious hall, where, in all the excesses of the banquet, laughter had rung and wit had sparkled, loud toasts were proffered, and high-spirited mirth had once held sway. Here was the drawing-room, where grace and female loveliness were blended, mingling their odors like flowers in a "bouquet." Here, the little chamber he had often sought to visit Lady Kilgoff, and pa.s.sed those hours of "sweet converse" wherein his whole nature became changed, and his rude spirit softened by the tender influences of a woman's mind. Here was his own favorite room,--the spot from which, in many an hour s.n.a.t.c.hed from the cares of host, he had watched the wide-flowing river, and thought of the current of his own life, mingling with his reveries many a high hope and many a glorious promise. And now the whole scene was changed. The mirth, the laughter, the guests, the hopes, were fled, and he stood alone in those silent halls, that never again were to echo with the glad voice of pleasure.

The chief object of his return to Tubbermore was to regain possession of that doc.u.ment which he had concealed in the cleft of a beech-tree, before scaling the approach to the window. He found the spot without difficulty, and soon possessed himself of the paper, the contents of which, however, from being conveyed in a character he was not familiar with, he could not master.

He next proceeded to the gate-lodge, desirous to see Keane, and make some arrangement for his future support before he should leave Tubbermore. The man, however, was absent; his wife, whose manner betrayed considerable emotion, said that her husband had returned in company with another, who remained without, while he hastily packed a few articles of clothing in a bundle, and then left the house, whither to she knew not.

Roland's last visit was to Tiernay's house; but he, too, was from home.

He had accompanied Corrigan to Dublin, intending to take leave of him there; but a few hurried lines told that he had resolved to proceed further with his friends, and darkly hinting that his return to the village was more than doubtful.

Wherever Cashel turned, desertion and desolation met him; and the cutting question that ever recurred to his mind was, "Is this _my_ doing? Are these the consequences of _my_ folly?" The looks of the villagers seemed to tally with the accusation, as in cold respect they touched their hats as he pa.s.sed, but never spoke: "not one said G.o.d bless him."

He twice set out for the cottage, and twice turned back,--his over-full heart almost choked with emotion. The very path that led thither reminded him too fully of the past, and he turned from it into the wood, to wander about for hours long, lost in thought.

He sought and found relief in planning out something for his future life. The discovery of the murderer--the clearing up of the terrible mystery that involved that crime--had become a duty, and he resolved to apply himself to it steadily and determinedly. His unacquitted debt of vengeance on Linton, too, was not forgotten. These accomplished, he resolved again to betake himself to the "new world beyond seas." Wealth had become distasteful to him; it was a.s.sociated with all that lowered and humiliated him. He felt that with poverty his manly reliance, his courageous daring to confront danger, would return,--that once more upon the wild prairie, or the blue waters of the Pacific, he would grow young of heart, and high in spirit, forgetting the puerile follies into which a life of affluence had led him. "Would that I could believe it all a dream!" thought he. "Would that this whole year were but a vision, and that I could go back to what I once was, even as 'the buccaneer,' they called me!"

His last hours in Tubbermore were spent in arrangements that showed he never intended to return there. His household was all discharged; his equipages and horses despatched to the capital to be sold; his books, his plate, and all that was valuable in furniture, were ordered to be packed up, and transmitted to Dublin. He felt a kind of malicious pleasure in erasing and effacing, as it were, every trace of the last few months.

"I will leave it," muttered he, "to become the wreck I found it--would that I could be what I was ere I knew it!"

The following day he left Tubbermore forever, and set out for Dublin.

CHAPTER x.x.xII. ON THE TRACK

"And with a sleuth-hound's scent, Smells blood afar!"

It was nightfall when Roland Cashel entered Dublin. The stir and movement of the day were over, and that brief interval which separates the life of business from that of pleasure had succeeded. Few were stirring in the streets, and they were hastening to the dinner-parties whose hour had now arrived. It was little more than a year since Cashel had entered that same capital, and what a change had come over him within that period! Then he was buoyant in all the enjoyment of youth, health, and affluence; now, although still young, sorrow and care had worn him into premature age. His native frankness had become distrust; his generous reliance on the world's good faith had changed into a cold and cautious reserve which made him detestable to himself.

Although he pa.s.sed several of his former acquaintance without being recognized, he could not persuade himself but that their avoidance of him was intentional, and he thought he saw a purpose-like insolence in the pressing entreaties with which the news-vendors persecuted him to buy "The Full and True Report of the Trial of Roland Cashel for Murder."

And thus it was that he, whose fastidious modesty had shrunk from everything like the notoriety of fashion, now saw himself exposed to that more terrible ordeal, the notoriety of crime. The consciousness of innocence could not harden him against the poignant suffering the late exposure had inflicted. His whole life laid bare! Not even to gratify the morbid curiosity of gossips; not to amuse the languid listlessness of a world devoured by its own ennui; but far worse! to furnish motives for an imputed crime! to give the clew to a murder! In the bitterness of his torn heart, he asked himself: "Have I deserved all this? Is this the just requital for my conduct towards others? Have the hospitality I have extended, the generous a.s.sistance I have proffered--have the thousand extravagances I have committed to gratify others--no other fruits than these?" Alas! the answer of his enlightened intelligence could no longer blind him by its flatteries. He recognized, at last, that to his abuse of fortune were owing all his reverses; that the capricious extravagance of the rich man--his misplaced generosity, his pompous display--can create enemies far more dangerous than all the straits and appliances of rebellious poverty; that the tie of an obligation which can enn.o.ble a generous nature, may, in a bad heart, develop the very darkest elements of iniquity; and that he who refuses to be bound by grat.i.tude is enslaved by hate!

He stopped for an instant before Kennyf.e.c.k's house; the closed shutters and close-drawn blinds bespoke it still the abode of mourning. He pa.s.sed the residence of the Kilgoffs, and there the gra.s.s-grown steps and rusted knocker spoke of absence. They had left the country. He next came to his own mansion,--that s.p.a.cious building which, at the same hour, was wont to be brilliant with wax-lights and besieged by fast-arriving guests, where the throng of carriages pressed forward in eager haste, and where, as each step descended, some form or figure moved by, great in fame or more ill.u.s.trious still by beauty. Now, all was dark, gloomy, and deserted. A single gleam of light issued from the kitchen, which was speedily removed as Roland knocked at the door.

The female servant who opened the door nearly dropped the candle as she recognized the features of her master, who, without speaking, pa.s.sed on, and, without even removing his hat, entered the library. Profuse in apologies for the disorder of the furniture, and excuses for the absence of the other servants, she followed him into the room, and stood, half in shame and half in terror, gazing at the wan and worn countenance of him she remembered the very ideal of health and youth.

"If we only knew your honor was coming home tonight--"

"I did not know it myself, good woman, at this hour yesterday. Let me have something to eat--well, a crust of bread and a gla.s.s of wine--there's surely so much in the house?"

"I can give your honor some bread, but all the wine is packed up and gone."

"Gone! whither, and by whose order?" said Roland, calmly.

"Mr. Phillis, sir, sent it off about ten days ago, with the plate, and I hear both are off to America!"

"The bread alone, then, with a gla.s.s of water, will do," said he, without any emotion or the least evidence of surprise in his manner.

"The fare smacks of the prison still," said Roland, as he sat at his humble meal; "and truly the house itself is almost as gloomy."

The aspect of everything was sad and depressing; neglect and disorder pervaded wherever he turned his steps. In some of the rooms the remains of past orgies still littered the tables. Smashed vases of rare porcelain, broken mirrors, torn pictures--all the work, in fact, which ruffian intemperance in its most savage mood accomplishes--told who were they who replaced his fashionable society; while, as if to show the unfeeling spirit of the revellers, several of the pasquinades against himself, the libellous calumnies of the low press, the disgusting caricatures of infamous prints, were scattered about amid the wrecks of the debauch.

Roland saw these things with sorrow, but without anger. "I must have fallen low indeed," muttered he, "when it is by such men I am judged."

In the room which once had been his study a great pile of unsettled bills covered the table, the greater number of which he remembered to have given the money for; there were no letters, however, nor even one card of an acquaintance, so that, save to his creditors, his very existence seemed to be forgotten.

Wearied of his sad pilgrimage from room to room, he sat down at last in a small boudoir, which it had been his caprice once to adorn with the portraits of "his friends!" sketched by a fashionable artist. There they were, all smiling blandly, as he left them. What a commentary on their desertion of him were the looks so full of benevolence and affection!

There was Frobisher, lounging in all the ease of fashionable indifference, but still with a smile upon his languid features; there was Upton, the very picture of straightforward good feeling and frankness; there was Jennings, all beaming with generosity; and Linton, too, occupying the chief place, seemed to stare with the very expression of resolute attachment that so often had imposed on Cashel, and made him think him a most devoted but perhaps an indiscreet friend. Roland's own portrait had been turned to the wall, while on the reverse was written, in large characters, the words "To be hung, or hanged, elsewhere." The brutal jest brought the color for an instant to his cheek, but the next moment he was calm and tranquil as before.

Lost in musings, the time stole by; and it was late in the night ere he betook himself to rest His sleep was the heavy slumber of an overworked mind; but he awoke refreshed and with a calm courage to breast the tide of fortune, however it might run.

Life seemed to present to him two objects of paramount interest. One of these was the discovery of Kennyf.e.c.k's murderer; the second was the payment of his debt of vengeance to Linton. Some secret instinct induced him to couple the two together; and although neither reason nor reflection afforded a clew to link them, they came ever in company before his mind, and rose like one fact before him.

Mr. Hammond, the eminent lawyer, to whom he had written a few lines, came punctually at ten o'clock to confer with him. Roland had determined to reveal no more of his secret to the ears of counsel than he had done before the Court, when an accidental circ.u.mstance totally changed the course of his proceeding.

"I have sent for you, Mr. Hammond," said Cashel, as soon as they were seated, "to enlist your skilful services in tracing out the real authors of a crime of which I narrowly escaped the penalty. I will first, however, entreat your attention to another matter, for this may be the last opportunity ever afforded me of personally consulting you."

"You purpose to live abroad, sir?" asked Hammond.

"I shall return to Mexico," said Roland, briefly; and then resumed: "Here is a doc.u.ment, sir, of whose tenor and meaning I am ignorant, but of whose importance I cannot entertain a doubt: will you peruse it?"

Hammond opened the parchment, but scarcely had his eyes glanced over it, when he laid it down before him and said,--

"I have seen this before, Mr. Cashel. You are aware that I already gave you my opinion as to its value?"

"I am not aware of that," said Roland, calmly. "Fray, in whose possession did you see it, and what does it mean?"

Hammond seemed confused for a few seconds; and then, as if overcoming a scruple, said,--

"We must both be explicit here, sir. This doc.u.ment was shown to me by Mr. Linton, at Limerick, he alleging that it was at your desire and by your request. As to its import, it simply means that you hold your present estates without a t.i.tle; that doc.u.ment being a full pardon, revoking the penalty of confiscation against the heirs of Miles Corrigan, and reinstating them and theirs in their ancient possessions.

Now, sir, may I ask, do you hear this for the first time?"