The Catholic World Volume Ii Part 38

"Hanged!" In a second his burthen was laid on the camp-bed, and the sergeant laid prostrate by a blow that would have almost felled an ox.

The guard now interposed; and from them he learned that the party in question had been several times seen to leave the city, in defiance of Sir Hardress Waller's orders. Twice already she had been flogged back, but she came out again, that day, at noon, and was by the general's orders sentenced to execution. The soldier added that an old rebel [Footnote 39] calling himself her father, when he heard of the sentence, offered himself in her stead; but Sir Hardress ordered him to be instantly flogged back. "She was to have been hanged," he continued, "at sunset, but she broke loose from them and ran toward his tent as he had seen."

[Footnote 39: A Fact. _Vide_ "Ferrar's History of Limerick," page 64. ]

"Touch not a hair of her head, on your peril," exclaimed Herbert as the {245} corporal concluded, and kissing the pallid lips of his wife, he rushed out of the tent to seek the general, just as returning consciousness revealed to Eily the name of her deliverer.

"Walter, my own dear husband. Oh! come back, don't leave me," were the last words he heard as he flew toward the tent of the commander-in-chief, more like a maniac than anything else.

"By the bones of St. Pancras, he's either mad, or she is," said a tall weaver from Lambeth, who wore the badge of a lance-corporal.

"Ay is he, and sore wrathful to boot," replied his rear-rank man, with a grin--he was a butcher from Newgate. "But we are the sufferers, and shall, I fear, be late for supper. The gallows, however, is ready to hand, thank G.o.d, and we shall make short work of it when the captain returns."

The name of G.o.d on the lips of such a miscreant, and on such an occasion, makes us almost shudder. But, reader, these were Cromwellian times, and such were Cromwellian customs.

Herbert found Ireton and his second in command seated at the supper table--and h.e.l.l could not have unchained two such incarnate demons on that same evening. The object of his visit was soon explained. But it seemed only to supply subject of mirth to his superior officers.

"Pooh, pooh! man," said the commander-in-chief, "you are, I fear, grown quite a papist, too soft-hearted entirely. I wonder how you would act had you been at the _battue_ in Drogheda or Wexford?" and Ireton sipped his hock with a devilish leer.

"But, general, she is my wife," gasped Herbert.

"Folly, man!" rejoined Waller; "no faith to be kept with heretics, you know, and all these Irish are such. You will easily find another, I trow you, when we sack the city one of these fine days."

Herbert heeded not the coa.r.s.e jest of the speaker, but, turning to the general, implored him to torn a serious ear to a matter on which the happiness of his life depended. But Ireton seemed inclined to laugh it off as an excellent joke.

Driven to desperation, the brave soldier, who never before feared or supplicated any man, sank on his knees, and with tears of agony besought him to cancel Waller's iniquitous sentence. He even asked him to do so in memory of the act by which, at the risk of his own life, he saved his at Naseby. And Ireton seemed almost inclined to relent, and hope began to brighten in the heart of the suppliant, when a whisper from Waller to the general blasted them for ever. He had himself in person given the order for execution, and his callous heart was too obdurate to feel compunction even for a bad act. Summoning an orderly, he gave him some instructions in an undertone; and Herbert was directed by his commander-in-chief to make his report of the progress of the trenches under his command in the King's Island. This was but a feint to turn his attention from the main object of his visit. His report was, however, quickly made, and as there was no other pretext for detaining him he arose to depart. There was something more then fiendish in the laugh of Hardress Waller as he wished him safe home, and a good night's rest.

That night, a heart-broken man knelt beneath the gibbet erected on the green sward in front of King John's castle. For him all earthly happiness was now over; and there, in the presence of the pale moon that looked silently on his sorrow, that cold October night, he vowed eternal fealty to his wife in heaven, eternal hatred to her murderers.

There was a strange admixture of reverence and irreligion, of love and hatred, in his feelings and sentiments, no doubt; but the camp of Cromwell was but an indifferent school for the culture of Christian ethics. Beside, his brain was, for the time, astray from sorrow and outraged feeling; he followed but {246} the dictates of human pa.s.sion unrestrained by either reason or religion. His heart and his hopes were already buried in the grade that was soon to close over the remains of his first and only love; and, from that night out, though his life was a long and a chequered one, he was never known to smile, till he became an inmate of the monastery where we found him at the commencement of our narrative.

The remainder of the siege was a blank chapter in his life. By nature a soldier, he got through his duties fearlessly but mechanically, without the slightest feeling of interest in any enterprise in which he had a share. To him defeat or victory was a matter of utter indifference; and it was in this mood he entered the fallen city, as the sun was sinking, on the 27th of October, 1651, and took up his quarters with Ireton, in the old Dutch-gabled house which is still standing, and adjoins the Tholsel in Mary street. It is more than probable that his reason would have altogether succ.u.mbed beneath the terrible shock it had sustained, were it not for some new incidents that now occurred to awaken it for a time to activity.

By sunrise on the 29th, the Cromwellian garrison beat to arms. It was the signal for the a.s.semblage of the Irish troops in the old cathedral of St. Mary's, where, in accordance with the third article of capitulation, they were to lay down their arms. It was not Fennell's fault that they escaped the fate of the soldiers and women of Drogheda and Wexford. He had done his work of treachery well; and we cannot venture to say what his feelings were when he beheld his brave but ill-fated countrymen a.s.sembled round the altar to deposit at its rails the weapons they had so long and so gallantly wielded in the cause of one who was afterward to despoil their children of their lawful heritage, and sanction its appropriation by the murderers of his father. Ah! no Irishman can ever forget the ingrat.i.tude of the second Charles. But Walter Herbert thought little of the ceremony gone through that morning in the old church of the O'Briens till all was over. As the disarmed garrison marched down the long aisle of the cathedral many of them dropped dead--it might have been of the plague, or it might have been of a broken heart. Among the dead were two whose faces he had not looked on for years--Terence and Donat O'Brien, his wife's brothers. The sight awakened a new thought within him--that of his child whom he had not yet seen--and but few moments elapsed ere he was standing in front of the old corner house opposite the church of St. Nicholas. But its appearance was sadly changed since last he saw it. Gable and chimney bore evident marks of the enemy's cannon, while all around wore an air of desolation and sorrow. He looked up into one well-remembered window, but no fragrant geraniums were now there, as of old; no lark carolled the cheering song he so often listened to, with pleasure, some nine years before; balcony, and shutter, and curtain had disappeared. The whole house seemed in mourning. Even his knock rang through the house as through a sepulchre--so he thought. Twice he repeated it; and, at length, an aged head peered cautiously through a dormer window, and asked who was there. His answer quickly brought down the old domestic; but a flood of tears was her only welcome, as she opened the door and admitted him She had been the nurse of Eily and her brothers in childhood, and partly his own in sickness; and was now the survivor of all her old heart loved; of all, save one, a blue-eyed, curly-headed boy, who now hid behind her, evidently scared at the presence of a visitor in that desolate dwelling. A few words of greeting on the part of old Winny or Winifred a.s.sured him that he was known and welcome; and a few words of fondness addressed to the child soon restored his confidence. He was even, ere long, seated {247} contentedly on his father's knee, playing with sword-buckle--for that fair-headed, blue-eyed boy was the only child of Eily O'Brien and Walter Herbert. And as he gazed with pride on his beautiful boy, new hope and a new sense of duty sprang up within him. He felt that there was even yet something to live for. To protect that half-orphan child and his sorrowing grandsire would from that moment be the sole duty of his life, the sole solace of existence; and to this he pledged himself in Eily's little room, to which he ascended with his youthful companion, who, at his nurse's bidding, now called him father, and twined his little hands round his neck as he kissed him. The sudden roll of drums at length announced to him that it was time to depart, and fondly embracing his child once more, he hurried out of the house. He would never have left it did he then but know that in so doing he was bidding his boy farewell for ever.

The beating to arms announced the commencement of the mock trial of two dozen individuals, whom Ireton had already virtually sentenced to death, by excluding them from the protection guaranteed to the remaining citizens in the terms of capitulation. How readily would Herbert have saved every one of them, but his vote was only effective in one case, that of the gallant Hugh O'Neil, the city governor. The rest were condemned, by a majority, to die; and it was not without a tear he beheld that long file of brave and resolute men led forth to the scaffold. Priest and layman, soldier and citizen, were alike sacrificed, and for no crime save that of loving and defending their native land. And what Englishman, thought he, would not readily be guilty of the same offence? All pa.s.sed silently from the death-chamber; all, save one, a venerable man, who, with Father Woulfe, was arrested in the lazar-house while administering the last sacraments of the Church to its plague-stricken inmates, soon to be deprived of all spiritual ministry. Herbert thought he recognized him, as he stood erect and fearless in the council-hall, and with hand pointed toward heaven, summoning Ireton to meet him, ere a month, at its judgment bar. He had certainly seen him before, but dressed in white serge, and not, as now, in purple. Nay, if he remembered rightly, he had been Eily's confessor, and, with the parish clergyman's permission, had married them privately in the church of St. Saviour, having first obtained a promise, freely granted by Herbert, that the children of that union, if such there were, should be brought up in the religion of the mother. What would he not have done to preserve the live [life?] of that venerable, heavenly-looking man! The last of Ireton's victims was one whose presence among the condemned he witnessed with astonishment. He had seen him closeted for hours with that same Ireton; and knew him to have been promised lands and money for certain services to be rendered to the general. But treachery was met with treachery; and Fennell, the traitor, ended his days on the same scaffold with Terence O'Brien, the bishop and martyr.

The last guard was relieved on the day of execution--it was the eve of All-Hallows--and the clock of the town-hall was just chiming midnight as Herbert, who was the officer of the night, commenced his rounds. As he pa.s.sed along, in silence and alone, by the Dean's Close, on his way to the castle barracks, he was suddenly stopped, at the head of an arched pa.s.sage, over which an oil lamp feebly flickered, by an individual closely wrapped up in a large, dark frieze over-coat. To draw his sword was his first impulse; but a single glance at that wan face, whose gaze was sadly fixed upon him, changed his purpose in an instant. And, though armed to the teeth, he trembled in presence of that defenceless old man, and stood in silence before him.

{248}

"Don't you know me, Walter?" said the stranger.

"Alas! too well," was his reply. "But can I hope that you will ever forgive me?"

"My creed tells tells me to forgive even my--but I believe you never meant to be such"--and the old man extended his hand to Herbert.

They stood alone--with no eye upon them save that of the all-seeing One, and, in his presence, Walter fell on his knees, protesting his purity of intention, and asking the old man's blessing. And Conner O'Brien, for it was he, with head uncovered, blessed the stranger for the first time, and, raising him up, clasped him to his bosom as his son--the husband of his darling Eily, now sleeping with her mother in Killely.

Herbert was about to respond, with a fervent a.s.surance of his undying love and devotion to her, when the old man stopped him short, and, drawing him into the recess of the bow way, asked him if he might now rely on his friendship and protection.

"Henceforth, as G.o.d is my witness," earnestly replied Herbert, "your interest and mine are but one."

"Good!" returned his companion. "Then, when occasion presents itself, you will procure a pa.s.s for myself and a friend in whose safety I feel the deepest interest. For my own life I care not, as I have no one save you and my grandson now remaining to care for." Then the old man, despite his resolution, sobbed aloud. "But my friend," he continued, after a few moments, "cannot yet be spared. We cannot afford to lose him, and it is solely on his account--though he knows nothing of my project--that I have waited here to meet you."

After some further brief conversation, they parted with a fond embrace --the old man to his friend, and Walter to the barracks. When his watch was ended, he lay down to enjoy, for the first time during many months, a peaceful slumber of several hours.

The 1st of November, 1651, dawned brightly on the old city of Luimneach, and its now shattered fortifications--brightly on the brown heath of the Meelick mountains--brightly on the waving woods of Cratloe--brightly on the rapids at the salmon weir, and on the snowy sails of the English transports at anchor in "the pool"--brightly on the gory head of Terence O'Brien, Bishop of Emly, impaled on the center tower of the city--brightly, too, on his murderer, Henry Ireton, as he reviewed the body of troops destined for the siege of Carrigaholt Castle; for G.o.d "maketh his sun to rise upon the good and bad." Ere the sun set the vanguard of that body had left the Cratloe hills far behind them, on their march westward; and Herbert was second in command of the first division. He was well mounted, and with him rode two peasants thoroughly acquainted with the country, and destined to serve him as guides. Of late his soldiers remarked that he had grown unusually silent and morose, and few of them cared to intrude on him uninvited. Thus it happened that, during the march, he rode considerably in advance, though always within sight of his detachment, with no other companions than the two guides.

With one of them he seemed well acquainted, and the soldiers remarked that he conversed freely with him on the road. The other seemed to speak but seldom, and then only to his brother guide. This, however, was no matter of surprise, as it was supposed he spoke in Irish, a language almost utterly unknown to the English commander. And such, in reality, was the fact. Whether he understood English or not, he spoke in his native tongue to O'Brien, who, as the reader may have guessed, was Herbert's other guide on the evening in question. As they approached Ennis the old man seemed much excited, alleging, as his reason, that he feared being recognized; but it was not difficult to perceive that his {249} anxiety was more for his companion than himself. They succeeded, however, in reaching their destination, and encamped near Kilfiehera to await the arrival of the main body from Kilrush. Under pretext of exploring the wild coast of Kilkee and Farahee, Herbert left the camp at sunrise, attended solely by the two individuals who had been his companions on the march from Limerick. He returned alone, however, in the evening, and rumor went abroad that he had been deserted by his guides amid the wild recesses of the coast.

This new piece of treachery on the part of the Irishry, after being warmly denounced round the Cromwellian camp-fires that night, was forwarded next morning to Limerick, to be faithfully chronicled, with many other facts of like authenticity, in "Ludlow's Memoirs." Herbert was too much overjoyed at the escape of his father-in-law and the friend in whom he seemed so deeply interested, to give himself any concern about the camp-fire gossip, or Ludlow's version of the matter.

The next week found him again in Limerick. Sudden news of the alarming illness of the general had reached the camp, and the expedition to the west was, for the time, abandoned. Herbert found his new post a trying one--to keep watch and ward with Hardress Waller, one of his wife's murderers, beside the dying bed of another. Waller was Ireton's confidant, the ready instrument of all his infamy; and Herbert was selected by the general to attend him as the only surviving officer attached to his own regiment since it was first raised in Nottingham, the native county of both. To escape from his post was impossible.

Nothing short of suicide could free him from it; and the thought of his little son, if no higher motive, prevented him from putting an end to his existence. Night after night was he doomed to sit by the bed-side of the dying man and listen to the wild ravings of remorse and blasphemy that, almost every moment escaped his plague-stained lips. He would start up betimes, and, with the frantic look of a maniac, call for his sword to ward off the fiends that seemed to mock his tortures; and then he would sink back exhausted, still wildly raving of Charles Stuart, and Terence O'Brien, the "Lord's anointed,"

as he now called them, whom he had murdered. Nay, he would clutch Herbert's hand, and, with tears, implore his forgiveness. But Hardress Waller stood there too, and a look from him would again rouse the murder-fiend within him. All feeling of compunction would then pa.s.s away; and grim despair again lay hold of him. Oh! it was a fearful sight--that death-bed of despairing remorse. It never left Herbert's memory, and was the commencement of that change that ultimately converted the Puritan soldier into a Christian monk.

Ireton died in his house in Mary street on the 26th of November, 1651, still "raging and raving," says the chronicler, [Footnote 40] of the unfortunate prelate, whose unjust condemnation he imagined hurried on his death. Herbert was of the party appointed to guard the remains to England, and, before setting out, hastened to his father-in-law's house to bring his child with him. But, alas! he found it empty, and not the slightest trace of Winny or the boy. Nor could any one tell him what had become of either. With a bursting heart, he set out with the funeral cortege to Cork, and thence to Bristol, resolved never more to draw sword in Cromwell's cause. Arrived in London, he delivered up his charge, and at once quitted the kingdom, without waiting for the lying in state at Somerset House, or final interment in Westminster Abbey, of Ireton's plague-stricken corpse. Though pledged never again to serve in the ranks of the monsters whose atrocities in Ireland made him so often blush for his native country, he could not yet entirely wean {250} himself away from his old profession. After a few months pa.s.sed in idleness and _ennui_ on the continent, during which he vainly tried to forget the loss of his wife and child, he entered the Earl of Bristol's regiment as a volunteer, and faithfully maintained the cause of King Charles till his restoration. It was when forming part of his body-guard at Lord Tara's residence in Bruges, where the exiled monarch occasionally resided, that he first met with the Capuchin fathers, and was by them received into the Catholic Church. With the king he returned to England, but only to have all his sad recollections awakened by meeting once more with his old enemies, Waller and Ireton.

[Footnote 40: Burke, "_Hibernia Dominicana_."]

Ireton! some astonished reader will exclaim. Why, surely, we buried him years ago, and are not expected, we presume, to believe in ghosts in this enlightened nineteenth century of ours.

And yet we must repeat what we have written. On his return to London, Walter Herbert again stood face to with Waller and Ireton--the former, with a smile of hypocritical adulation, welcoming the return of him whose father he had aided in murdering--the latter, a hideous spectacle, first dangling on a gallows at Tyburn, and then grimly staring at the by-pa.s.sers--if those sightless sockets could be said to stare--from the highest spike on Westminster Hall. It was a shocking sight to Herbert--that ghastly skeleton and that ghastly head--and recalled to his memory, with sadness and horror, another but far different head which, ten years before, he saw set up, pallid and blood-stained, on the castled tower of Limerick. G.o.d is very just, thought he, as he pa.s.sed on, with a shudder.

On his return to England Herbert found himself friendless. All his relatives had died, or perished on the battle-field, during the civil wars, and of his child there was still no trace. All he could learn was that he had been sent to his grandfather, then resident on the continent; but where the grandfather resided, there was no means of ascertaining. Tired of England, and the cruelties and perfidies he daily saw endorsed by the sign-manual of one who, he imagined, should have learned toleration and honor in the school of affliction--in hopes also of meeting with his child--he quitted his native land for ever, and joined the ranks of the Duke of Lorraine, the old ally and friend of his former commander, the Earl of Bristol. With him and Sir George Hamilton he fought the battles of Spain for nigh fifteen years; and his last achievement in her service was one of the brightest on record. With a few resolute companions he held his ground for two entire days in the shattered citadel of Cambrai, though the battery to which they returned shot for shot was under the personal inspection of Louis XIV. and the renowned hunchback Luxemburg. The bursting of a sh.e.l.l laid him senseless, and when, after a long and painful illness, he was again restored to health, he resolved, in thanksgiving, to devote the remainder of his days to the exclusive service of G.o.d, in the convent where he first learned to know him.

During the recital of the foregoing narrative, which, for brevity's sake, we have given consecutively, and in our own words, Brother Francis was frequently interrupted by his youthful auditor, as new light was thrown by him on events in his family history which, till then, he had never heard satisfactorily cleared up. He had already learned from his mother that his grandfather had been an English officer, supposed to have fallen in Cromwell's wars, though a vague report reached the family that he was seen in Spain after Cromwell's death. Of his grandmother, he only heard that she died young, and that her father resided for a considerable time in Brussels, with his grandson, whom, at his death, he confided to the care of none guardian of St. Antoine's at Louvain, who was his brother-in-law, and who had brought the boy, when a mere child, from Ireland. {251} He further learned that, after the completion of his studies, and contrary to the wish of his uncle, who intended him for the ecclesiastical state, his father embraced the profession of arms, and, shortly after his marriage, embarked with the French troops sent by King Louis to Ireland. He fell at the siege of Limerick, and his widow died of a broken heart soon after the intelligence of her husband's death reached her. He was himself then but a boy, and was placed by his mother's relatives at the Benedictine college of Douai, whence he pa.s.sed, in due time, like his father, to the ranks, and was then serving, as we have already seen, in the Duke of Vendome's anny.

"But you did not say who the other person was that accompanied you on the march from Limerick to Carrigaholt, or what became of him or his companion," resumed the young soldier, when he had concluded.

"That remains to this day a mystery to me," replied his grandfather, "for I never saw either after we parted that evening. I left them on a lofty isolated rock off the coast of Clare, to which they were conveyed, as the surest place of safety, by a few poor fishermen, then dwelling in a ruined keep on the verge of the cliff's, which, if I remember rightly, they called Dunlicky. Had I much curiosity I might have possibly learned the stranger's name, but I never inquired, and probably, as I did not, my father-in-law never told me. Certain it is that he must have been a person of high distinction, as all addressed him with marked respect, I might almost say reverence, and seemed most devoted to him, though, as far as I could see, he possessed no earthly means of remunerating them--nothing, in fact, save the half-military, half-rustic garments in which he was clad. And as they left him and his companion in one of the two small huts that served as a shelter in stormy weather for the few wild-looking sheep that browsed on the island, they promised soon to return with such necessaries as he might require during his stay among them. On returning to the canoe that brought us from the mainland, I remembered that I heard something fall from the stranger as he stepped ash.o.r.e on a ledge of the island. In my hurry at the moment I paid no attention to the circ.u.mstance; and it was only on our arrival at the foot of the cliff on which the old castle stood, that I found the object which he had dropped lying in the bottom of the boat. Hoping soon to be able to restore it to its owner, I took it with me, and ever since it has remained in my possession; for I need scarcely say, after all you have heard, that an opportunity of restoring it never since presented itself. I still retain it, with the father guardian's permission, in hopes of one day discovering its lawful claimant."

Here Brother Francis drew from the folds of his garment a small ebony crucifix, inlaid with pearl, and richly set in gold, and, reverently kissing it, handed it to his companion. The latter, after carefully examining it, read the following inscription, beautifully engraved in text characters round the rim--

"J. B. RINUC. LEG. AP. R.R.D.D.

EDM DO. O'DWYER EP O.

LUIM I. M.DCXLVI."

Still the history and after fate of the owner of the crucifix remained a mystery to them. Perhaps some reader of the foregoing pages may be able to throw some light on the subject, if not for their benefit, at least for ours.

Little more remains to be told of Brother Francis. In his ninetieth year he died peacefully in the midst of the brotherhood with whom so many years of his life had been happily spent--and his eyes were closed in death by the hands of Eily O'Brien's grandchild, young Gerald Herbert, who had likewise joined the order, and given up the camp and its turmoil, and the world and its deceit, to don the cowl of St. Francis, and spend the rest of his days with the humble, hospitable Capuchins of Bruges.

{252}