The Knight Of Gwynne Volume I Part 38

"I was thinking so," said Sandy, sententiously.

"You'd know him again?"

"I 'd ken his twa eyes amang a thousand."

"Very well, then, set off after breakfast and search for him; you used to know where devils of this kind were to be found."

"Maybe I havna quite forgot it yet," replied he, dryly; "but it winna do to gae there before nightfall."

"Lose no more time than you can help about it," said Daly; "bring him here if you can find him."

We have not the necessity, and more certainly it is far from our inclination, to dwell upon the acc.u.mulated calamities of the Knight, nor recount more particularly the sad disclosures which the few succeeding days made regarding his fortunes. His own words were correct; he was utterly ruined. Every species of iniquity which perfidy could practise upon unbounded confidence had been effected. His property subdivided and leased at nominal rents, debts long supposed to have been paid yet outstanding; mortgages alleged to have been redeemed still impending; while of the large sums raised to meet these enc.u.mbrances not one shilling had been paid by Gleeson, save perhaps the bond for seventy thousand; but even of this there was no evidence, except the vague a.s.sertion of one whose testimony the law would reject.

Such, in brief, were the sad results of that investigation to which the Knight's affairs were submitted, nor could all the practised subtlety of the lawyer suggest one reasonable chance of extrication from the difficulty.

"Your friend is a ruined man, sir," said he to Daly, as they both arose after a seven hours' examination of the various doc.u.ments; "there is a strong presumption that many of these signatures are forged, and that the Knight of Gwynne never even saw the papers; but he appears to have written his name so carelessly, and in so many ways, as to have no clear recollection of what he did sign, and what he did not. It would be very difficult to submit a good case for a jury."

That the payment of the seventy thousand had been made he regarded as more than doubtful, coupling the fact of Gleeson's immediate flight with the temptation of so large a sum, while nothing could be less accurate than the robber's testimony. "We must watch the enemy closely on this point," said he; "we must exhibit not the slightest apparent doubt upon it. They must not be led to suspect that we have not the bond in our possession. This question will admit of a long contest, and does not press like the others. As to young Darcy's concurrence in the sale--"

"Ay, that is the great matter in my friend's eyes."

"He must be written to at once,--let him come over here without loss of time, and if it can be shown that this signature is a forgery, we might make it the ground of a compromise with the O'Reillys, who, to obtain a good t.i.tle, would be glad to admit us to liberal terms."

"Darcy will never listen to that, depend upon it," said Daly; "his greatest affliction is for his son's ruin."

"We 'll see, we 'll see--the game shall open its own combinations as we go on; for the present, all the task of your friend the Knight is to carry a bold face to the world, let no rumor get abroad that matters are in their real condition. Our chance of extrication lies in the front we can show to the enemy."

"You are making a heavier demand than you are aware of,--Darcy detests anything like concealment. I don't believe he would practise the slightest mystery that would involve insincerity for twelve hours to free the whole estate."

"Very honorable indeed; but at this moment we must waive a punctilio."

"Don't give it that name to him,--that's all," said Daly, sternly. "I am as little for subterfuge as any man, and yet I did my best to prevent him resigning his seat in the House; this morning he would send a request to Lord Castlereagh, begging he might be permitted to accept an escheatorship; I need not say how willingly the proposal was accepted, and his name will appear in the 'Gazette' to-morrow morning."

"This conduct, if persisted in, will ruin our case," said the lawyer, despondingly. "I cannot comprehend his reasons for it."

"They are simple enough: his own words were, 'I can never continue to be a member of the legislature when the only privilege it would confer is freedom from arrest.'"

"A very valuable one at this crisis, if he knew but all," muttered the other. "You will write to young Darcy at once."

"That he has done already, and to Lady Eleanor also; and as he expects me at seven, I 'll take my leave of you till to-morrow."

"Well, Daly," said the Knight, as his friend entered the drawing-room before dinner, "how do you like the lawyer?"

"He's a shrewd fellow, and I suppose, for his calling, an honest one; but the habit of making the wrong seem right leads to a very great inclination to reverse the theorem, and make the right seem wrong."

"He thinks badly of our case, is n't that so?"

"He 'd think much better of it, and of us too, I believe, if both were worse."

"I am just as well pleased that it is not so," said Darcy, smiling; "a bad case is far more endurable than a bad conscience. But here comes dinner, and I have got my appet.i.te back again."

CHAPTER XXIV. A GLANCE AT "THE FULL MOON."

To rescue our friend Bagenal Daly from any imputation the circ.u.mstance might suggest, it is as well to observe here, that when he issued the order to his servant to seek out the boy who brought the intelligence of Gleeson's flight, he was merely relying on that knowledge of the obscure recesses of Old Dublin which Sandy possessed, and not by any means upon a distinct acquaintance with gentlemen of the same rank and station as Jemmy.

When Daly first took up his residence in the capital, many, many years before, he was an object of mob worship. He had every quality necessary for such. He was immensely rich, profusely spendthrift, and eccentric to an extent that some characterized as insanity. His dress, his equipage, his liveries, his whole retinue and style of living were strange and unlike other men's, while his habits of life bid utter defiance to every ordinance of society.

In the course of several years' foreign travel he had made acquaintances the most extraordinary and dissimilar, and many of these were led to visit him in his own country. Dublin being less resorted to by strangers than most cities, the surprise of its inhabitants was proportionably great as they beheld, not only Hungarians and Russian n.o.bles, with gorgeous equipages and splendid retinues, driving through the streets, but Turks, Armenians, and Greeks, in full costume; and, on one occasion, Daly's companion on a public promenade was no less remarkable a person than a North American chief, in all the barbaric magnificence of his native dress. To obviate the inconvenience of that mob accompaniment such spectacles would naturally attract, Daly entered into a compact with the leaders of the varions sets or parties of low Dublin, by which, on payment of a certain sum, he was guaranteed in the enjoyment of appearing in public without a following of several hundred ragged wretches in full cry after him. Nothing could be more honorable and fair than the conduct of both parties in this singular treaty; the subsidy was regularly paid through the hands of Sandy M'Grane, while the subsidized literally observed every article of the contract, and not only avoided any molestation on their own parts, but were a formidable protective force in the event of any annoyance from others of a superior rank in society.

The hawkers of the various newspapers were the deputies with whom Sandy negotiated this treaty, they being recognized as the legitimate interpreters of mob opinion through the capital; men who combined an insight into local grievances with a corresponding knowledge of general politics; and certain it is, their sway must have been both respected and well protected, for a single transgression of the compact with Daly never occurred.

Bagenal Daly troubled his head very little in the matter, it is true; for his own sake he would never have thought of such a bargain, but he detested the thought of foreigners carrying away with them from Ireland any unpleasant memories of mob outrage or insult; and desired that the only remembrance they should preserve of his native country should be of its cordial and hospitable reception. A great many years had now elapsed since these pleasant times, and Daly's name was scarcely more than a tradition among those who now lounged in rags and idleness through the capital,--a fact of which he could have had little doubt himself, if he had reflected on that crowd which followed his own steps but a few days before. Of this circ.u.mstance, however, he took little or no notice, and gave his orders to Sandy with the same conscious power he had wielded nearly fifty years back.

A small public-house, called the Moon, in Duck Alley, a narrow lane off the Cross Poddle, was the resort of this Rump Parliament, and thither Sandy betook himself on a Sat.u.r.day evening, the usual night of meeting, as, there being no issue of newspapers the next morning, nothing interfered with a prolonged conviviality. Often and often had he taken the same journey at the same hour; but now, such is the effect of a long interval of years, the way seemed narrower and more crooked than ever, while as he went not one familiar face welcomed him as he pa.s.sed; nor could he recognize, as of yore, his acquaintances amid the various disguises of black eyes and smashed noses, which were frequent on every side. It was the hour when crime and guilt, drunken rage and grief, mingled together their fearful agencies; and every street and alley was crowded by half-naked wretches quarrelling and singing: some screaming in accents of heartbroken anguish; others shouting their blasphemies with voices hoa.r.s.e from pa.s.sion; age and infancy, manhood in its prime, the mother and the young girl, were all there, reeling from drunkenness, or faint from famine; some struggling in deadly conflict, others bathing the lips and temples of ebbing life.

Through this human h.e.l.l Sandy wended his way, occasionally followed by the taunting ribaldry of such as remarked him: such testimonies were very unlike his former welcomes in these regions; but for this honest Sandy cared little; his real regret was to see so much more evidence of depravity and misery than before. Drunkenness and its attendant vices were no new evils, it is true; but he thought all these were fearfully aggravated by what he now witnessed: loud and violent denunciations against every rank above their own, imprecations on the Parliament and the gentry that "sowld Ireland:" as if any political perfidy could be the origin of their own degraded and revolting condition! Such is, however, the very essence of that spirit that germinates amid dest.i.tution and crime, and it is a dangerous social crisis when the ma.s.ses begin to attribute their own demoralization to the vices of their betters. It well behooves those in high places to make their actions and opinions conform to their great destinies.

Sandy's Northern blood revolted at these brutal excesses, and the savage menaces he heard on every side; but perhaps his susceptibilities were more outraged by one trail of popular injustice than all the rest, and that was to hear Hickman O'Reilly extolled by the mob for his patriotic rejection of bribery, while the Knight of Gwynne was held up to execration by every epithet of infamy; ribald jests and low ballads conveying the theme of attack upon his spotless character.

The street lyrics of the day were divided in interest between the late rebellion and the act of Union; the former being, however, the favorite theme, from a species of irony peculiar to this cla.s.s of poetry, in which certain living characters were held up to derision or execration.

The chief chorist appeared to be a fiend-like old woman, with one eye, and a voice like a cracked ba.s.soon: she was dressed in a cast-off soldier's coat and a man's hat, and neither from face nor costume had few feminine traits. This fair personage, known by the name of Rhoudlum, was, on her appearing, closely followed by a mob of admiring amateurs, who seemed to form both her body-guard and her chorus. When Sandy found himself fast wedged up in this procession, the enthusiasm was at its height, in honor of an elegant new ballad called "The Two Majors."

The air, should our reader be musically given, was the well-known one, "There was a Miller had Three Sons:"--

"Says Major Sirr to Major Swan, You have two rebels, give me one; They pay the same for one as two, I 'll get five pounds, and I 'll share with you.

Toi! loi! loi! lay."

"That's the way the blackguards sowld yer blood, boys!" said the hag, in recitative; "pitch caps, the ridin' house, and the gallows was iligant tratement for wearin' the green."

"Go on, Rhoudlum, go on wid the song," chimed in her followers, who cared more for the original text than prose vulgate.

"Arn't I goin' on wid it?" said the hag, as fire flashed in her eye; "is it the likes of you is to tache me how to modulate a strain?" And she resumed:--

"Says Major Swan to Major Sirr, One man's a woman! ye may take her.

'T is little we gets for them at all-- Oh! the curse of Cromwell be an ye all!

Toi! loi! loll lay."

The grand Demosthenic abruptness of the last line was the signal for an applauding burst of voices, whose sincerity it would be unfair to question.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 288]

"Where are you pushin' to! bad scran to ye! ye ugly varmint!" said the lady, as Sandy endeavored to force his pa.s.sage through the crowd.

"Hurroo! by the mortial, it's Daly's man!" screamed she, in transport, as the accidental light of a window showed Sandy's features.

Few, if any, of those around had ever seen him; but his name and his master's were among the favored traditions of the place, and however unwilling to acknowledge the acquaintance, Sandy had no help for it but to exchange greetings and ask the way to "the Moon," which he found he had forgotten.