The Landleaguers Part 40

Mr. Persse and Sir Jasper Lynch had been threatened with a wide system of boycotting, unless they would give up Tom Daly's animals.

A decree had gone forth in the county, that nothing belonging to the hunt should be allowed to live within its precincts. All the bitterness and the cruelty and the horror arising from this order are beyond the limit of this story. But it may be well to explain that at the present moment Frank Jones was away from Castle Morony, working hard on his father's behalf.

And so were the girls working hard--making the b.u.t.ter, and cooking the meat, and attending to the bedrooms. And Peter was busy with them as their lieutenant. It might be thought that the present was no time for love-making, and that Captain Clayton could not have been in the mood. But it may be observed that at any period of special toil in a family, when infinitely more has to be done than at any other time, then love-making will go on with more than ordinary energy. Edith was generally to be found with her hair tucked tight off her face and enveloped in a coa.r.s.e dairymaid's ap.r.o.n, and Ada, when she ran downstairs, would do so with a housemaid's dusting-brush at her girdle, and they were neither of them, when so attired, in the least afraid of encountering Captain Clayton as he would come out from their father's room. All the world knew that they were being boycotted, and very happy the girls were during the process. "Poor papa" did not like it so well. Poor papa thought of his banker's account, or rather of that bank at which there was, so to say, no longer any account. But the girls were light of heart, and in the pride of their youth. But, alas! they had both of them blundered frightfully. It was Edith, Edith the prudent, Edith the wise, Edith, who was supposed to know everything, who had first gone astray in her blundering, and had taken Ada with her; but the story with its details must be told.

"My pet," she said to her elder sister, as they were standing together at the kitchen dresser, "I know he means to speak to you to-day."

"What nonsense, Edith!"

"It has to be done some day, you know. And he is just the man to come upon one in the time of one's dire distress. Of course we haven't got a halfpenny now belonging to us. I was thinking only the other day how comfortable it is that we never go out of the house because we haven't the means to buy boots. Now Captain Clayton is just the man to be doubly attracted by such penury."

"I don't know why a man is to make an offer to a girl just because he finds her working like a housemaid."

"I do. I can see it all. He is just the man to take you in his arms because he found you peeling potatoes."

"I beg he will do nothing of the kind," said Ada. "He has never said a word to me, or I to him, to justify such a proceeding. I should at once hit him over the head with my brush."

"Here he comes, and now we will see how far I understand such matters."

"Don't go, Edith," said Ada. "Pray don't go. If you go I shall go with you. These things ought always to come naturally,--that is if they come at all."

It did not "come" at that moment, for Edith was so far mistaken that Captain Clayton, after saying a few words to the girls, pa.s.sed on out of the back-door, intent on special business. "What a wretched individual he is," said Edith. "Fancy pinning one's character on the doings of such a man as that. However, he will be back again to dinner, and you will not be so hard upon him then with your dusting-brush."

Before dinner the Captain did return, and found himself alone with Edith in the kitchen. It was her turn on this occasion to send up whatever meal in the shape of dinner Castle Morony could afford.

"There you have it, sir," she said, pointing to a boiled neck of mutton, which had been cut from the remains of a sheep sent in to supply the family wants.

"I see," said he. "It will make a very good dinner,--or a very bad one, according to circ.u.mstances, as they may fall out before the dinner leaves the kitchen."

"Then they will have to fall out very quickly," said Edith. But the colour had flown to her face, and in that moment she had learned to suspect the truth. And her mind flew back rapidly over all her doings and sayings for the last three months. If it was so, she could never forgive herself. If it was so, Ada would never forgive her. If it was so, they two and Captain Yorke Clayton must be separated for ever.

"Well; what is it?" she said, roughly. The joint of meat had fallen from her hands, and she looked up at Captain Clayton with all the anger she could bring into her face.

"Edith," he said, "you surely know that I love you."

"I know nothing of the kind. There can be no reason why I should know it,--why I should guess it. It cannot be so without grievous wrong on your part."

"What wrong?"

"Base wrong done to my sister," she answered. Then she remembered that she had betrayed her sister, and she remembered too how much of the supposed love-making had been done by her own words, and not by any spoken by Captain Clayton. And there came upon her at that moment a remembrance also of that other moment in which she had acknowledged to herself that she had loved this man, and had told herself that the love was vain, and had sworn to herself that she would never stand in Ada's way, and had promised to herself that all things should be happy to her as this man's sister-in-law. Acting then on this idea merely because Ada had been beautiful she had gone to work,--and this had come of it! In that minute that was allowed to her as the boiled mutton was cooling on the dresser beneath her hand, all this pa.s.sed through her mind.

"Wrong done by me to Ada!" said the Captain.

"I have said it; but if you are a gentleman you will forget it. I know that you are a gentleman,--a gallant man, such as few I think exist anywhere. Captain Clayton, there are but two of us. Take the best; take the fairest; take the sweetest. Let all this be as though it had never been spoken. I will be such a sister to you as no man ever won for himself. And Ada will be as loving a wife as ever graced a man's home. Let it be so, and I will bless every day of your life."

"No," he said slowly, "I cannot let it be like that. I have learned to love you and you only, and I thought that you had known it."

"Never!"

"I had thought so. It cannot be as you propose. I shall never speak of your sister to a living man. I shall never whisper a word of her regard even here in her own family. But I cannot change my heart as you propose. Your sister is beautiful, and sweet, and good; but she is not the girl who has crept into my heart, and made a lasting home for herself there,--if the girl who has done so would but accept it. Ada is not the girl whose brightness, whose bravery, whose wit and ready spirit have won me. These things go, I think, without any effort. I have known that there has been no attempt on your part; but the thing has been done and I had hoped that you were aware of it. It cannot now be undone. I cannot be pa.s.sed on to another. Here, here, here is what I want," and he put his two hands upon her shoulders.

"There is no other girl in all Ireland that can supply her place if she be lost to me."

He had spoken very solemnly, and she had stood there in solemn mood listening to him. By degrees the conviction had come upon her that he was in earnest, and was not to be changed in his purpose by anything that she could say to him. She had blundered, had blundered awfully.

She had thought that with a man beauty would be everything; but with this man beauty had been nothing; nor had good temper and a sense of duty availed anything. She rushed into the dining-room carrying the boiled mutton with her, and he followed. What should she do now? Ada would yield--would give him up--would retire into the background, and would declare that Edith should be made happy, but would never lift up her head again. And she--she herself--could also give him up, and would lift up her head again. She knew that she had a power of bearing sorrow, and going on with the work of the world, in spite of all troubles, which Ada did not possess. It might, therefore, have all been settled, but that the man was stubborn, and would not be changed. "Of course, he is a man," said Edith to herself, as she put the mutton down. "Of course he must have it all to please himself. Of course he will be selfish."

"I thought you were never coming with our morsel of dinner," said Mr.

Jones.

"Here is the morsel of dinner; but I could have dished it in half the time if Captain Clayton had not been there."

"Of course I am the offender," said he, as he sat down. "And now I have forgotten to bring the potatoes." So he started off, and met Florian at the door coming in with them. Mr. Jones carved the mutton, and Captain Clayton was helped first. In a boycotted house you will always find that the gentlemen are helped before the ladies. It is a part of the principle of boycotting that women shall subject themselves.

Captain Clayton, after his first little stir about the potatoes, ate his dinner in perfect silence. That which had taken place upset him more completely than the rifles of two or three Landleaguers. Mr.

Jones was also silent. He was a man at the present moment nearly overwhelmed by his cares. And Ada, too, was silent. As Edith looked at her furtively she began to fear that her pet suspected something.

There was a look of suffering in her face which Edith could read, though it was not plain enough written there to be legible to others.

Her father and Florian had no key by which to read it, and Captain Clayton never allowed his eyes to turn towards Ada's face. But it was imperative on both that they should not all fall into some feeling of special sorrow through their silence. "It is just one week more," she said, "before you men must be at Galway."

"Only one week," said Florian.

"It will be much better to have it over," said the father. "I do not think you need come back at all, but start at once from Galway. Your sisters can bring what things you want, and say good-bye at Athenry."

"My poor Florian," said Edith.

"I shan't mind it so much when I get to England," said the boy. "I suppose I shall come home for the Christmas holidays."

"I don't know about that," said the father. "It will depend upon the state of the country."

"You will come and meet him, Ada?" asked Edith.

"I suppose so," said Ada. And her sister knew from the tone of her voice that some evil was already suspected.

There was nothing more said that night till Edith and Ada were together. Mr. Jones lingered with his daughters, and the Captain took Florian out about the orchard, thinking it well to make him used to whatever danger might come to him from being out of the house.

"They will never come where they will be sure to be known," said the Captain; "and known by various witnesses. And they won't come for the chance of a pop shot. I am getting to know their ways as well as though I had lived there all my life. They count on the acquittal of Pat Carroll as a certainty. Whatever I may be, you are tolerably safe as long as that is the case."

"They may shoot me in mistake for you," said the boy.

"Well, yes; that is so. Let us go back to the house. But I don't think there would be any danger to-night anyway." Then they returned, and found Mr. Jones alone in the dining-room. He was very melancholy in these days, as a man must be whom ruin stares in the face.

Edith had followed Ada upstairs to the bedrooms, and had crept after her into that which had been prepared for Captain Clayton. She could see now by the lingering light of an August evening that a tear had fallen from each eye, and had slowly run down her sister's cheeks.

"Oh, Ada, dear Ada, what is troubling you?"

"Nothing,--much."

"My girl, my beauty, my darling! Much or little, what is it? Cannot you tell me?"

"He cares nothing for me," said Ada, laying her hand upon the pillow, thus indicating the "he" whom she intended. Edith answered not a word, but pressed her arm tight round her sister's waist. "It is so,"

said Ada, turning round upon her sister as though to rebuke her. "You know that it is so."

"My beauty, my own one," said Edith, kissing her.

"You know it is so. He has told you. It is not me that he loves; it is you. You are his chosen one. I am nothing to him,--nothing, nothing." Then she flung herself down upon the bed which her own hands had prepared for him.