The Landleaguers Part 53

he used to say to Edith.

"But I don't choose."

"What there are left of us should, I think, remain together. I suppose they cannot turn me out of this house. The Prime Minister will hardly bring in a Bill that the estates bought this last hundred years shall belong to the owners of the next century. He can do so, of course, as things go now. There are no longer any lords to stop him, and the House of Commons, who want their seats, will do anything he bids them. It's the First Lieutenant who looks after Ireland, who has ideas of justice with which the angels of light have certainly not filled his mind. That we should get nothing from our purchased property this century, and give it up in the course of the next, is in strict accordance with his thinking. We can depend upon nothing.

My brother-in-law can, of course, sell me out any day, and would not stop for a moment. Everybody has to get his own, except an Irish landlord. But I think we should fare ill all together. Your brother is behaving n.o.bly, and I don't think we ought to desert him. Of course you can do as you please."

Then the squire pottered on, wretched in heart; or, rather, down in the mouth, as we say, and gave his advice to his younger daughter, not, in truth, knowing how her heart stood. But a man, when he undertakes to advise another, should not be down in the mouth himself. _Equam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem, non secus ac bonis_. If not, your thoughts will be too strongly coloured by your own misfortunes to allow of your advising others.

All this Edith knew,--except the Latin. The meaning of it had been brought home to her by her own light. "Poor papa is so hipped," she said to herself, "that he thinks that n.o.body will ever be happy again." But still she resolved that she would not marry Yorke Clayton. There had been a mistake, and she had made it,--a miserable blunder for which she was responsible. She did not quite a.n.a.lyse the matter in her own mind, or look into the thoughts of Ada, or of Yorke himself,--the hero of her pillow; but she continued to tell herself that the proper order of things would not admit it. Ada, she knew, wished it. Yorke longed for her, more strongly even than for Lax, the murderer. For herself, when she would allow her thoughts to stray for a moment in that direction, all the bright azure tints of heaven were open to her. But she had made a mistake, and she did not deserve it.

She had been a blind fool, and blind fools deserved no azure tints of heaven.

If she could have had her own way she would still have married Ada to Yorke Clayton. When Ada told her that she had got over her foolish love, it was the mere babble of unselfishness. Feel a pa.s.sion for such a man as Yorke Clayton, look into the depth of his blue eyes, and fancy for herself a partnership with the spirit hidden away within, and then get over it! Edith was guilty here of the folly of judging of her sister as herself. And as for Yorke himself;--a man, she said, always satisfies himself with that which is lovely and beautiful. And with Ada he would have such other gifts as so strong a man as Yorke always desires in his wife. In temper she was perfect; in unselfishness she was excellent. In all those ways of giving aid, which some women possess and some not at all,--but which, when possessed, go so far to make the comfort of a house,--she was supreme.

If a bedroom were untidy, her eye saw it at once. If a thing had to be done at the stroke of noon, she would remember that other things could not be done at the same time. If a man liked his egg half-boiled, she would bear it in her mind for ever. She would know the proper day for making this marmalade and that preserve; and she would never lose her good looks for a moment when she was doing these things. With her little dusting-brush at her girdle, no eyes that knew anything would ever take her for aught but a lady. She was just the wife for Yorke Clayton.

So Edith argued it in her own bosom, adding other wondrous mistakes to that first mistake she had made. In thinking of it all she counted herself for nothing, and made believe that she was ugly in all eyes.

She would not allow the man to see as his fancy led him; and could not bring herself to think that if now the man should change his mind and offer his hand to Ada, it would be impossible that Ada should accept it. Nor did she perceive that Ada had not suffered as she had suffered.

"I wanted to catch you just for one moment," said Yorke Clayton, running out so as to catch his prey. She had half wished to fly from him, and had half told herself that any such flight was foolish.

"What is it, Yorke?" she said.

"I think,--I do think that I have at last got Lax upon the hip."

"You are so b.l.o.o.d.y-minded about Lax."

"What! Are you going to turn round and be merciful?" He was her hero, and she certainly felt no mercy towards the murderer of her brother; no mercy towards him who she now thought had planned all the injury done to her father; no mercy towards him who had thrice fired at her beloved. This wretched man had struggled to get the blood of him who was all the world to her; and had been urged on to his black deeds by no thought, by no feeling, that was not in itself as vile as h.e.l.l!

Lax was to her a viper so noxious as to be beyond the pale of all mercy. To crush him beneath the heel of her boot, so as to make an end of him, as of any other poisonous animal, was the best mercy to all other human beings. But she had said the word at the spur of the moment, because she had been instigated by her feelings to gainsay her hero, and to contradict him, so that he might think that he was no hero of hers. She looked at him for the moment, and said nothing, though he held her by the arm. "If you say I am to spare him, I will spare him."

"No," she answered, "because of your duty."

"Have I followed this man simply as a duty? Have I lain awake thinking of it till I have given to the pursuit such an amount of energy as no duty can require? Thrice he has endeavoured to kill me, firing at me in the dark, getting at me from behind hedges, as no one who has anything of the spirit of man in his bosom will do when he strives to destroy his enemy. All that has been nothing. I am a policeman in search of him, and am the natural enemy of a murderer.

Of course in the ordinary way I would not have spared him; but the ordinary way would have sufficed. Had he escaped me I could have laughed at all that. But he took that poor lad's life!" Here he looked sadly into her face, and she could see that there was a tear within his eye. "That was much, but that was not all. That lad was your brother, him whom you so dearly loved. He shot down the poor child before his father's face, simply because he had said that he would tell the truth. When you wept, when you tore your hair, when you flung yourself in sorrow upon the body, I told myself that either he or I must die. And now you bid me be merciful." Then the big tears dropped down his cheeks, and he began to wail himself,--hardly like a man.

And what did Edith do? She stood and looked at him for a few moments; then extricated herself from the hold he still had of her, and flung herself into his arms. He put down his face and kissed her forehead and her cheeks; but she put up her mouth and kissed his lips. Not once or twice was that kiss given; but there they stood closely pressed to each other in a long embrace. "My hero," she said; "my hero." It had all come at last,--the double triumph; and there was, he felt, no happier man in all Ireland than he. He thought, at least, that the double battle had been now won. But even yet it was not so.

"Captain Clayton," she began.

"Why Captain? Why Clayton?"

"My brother Yorke," and she pressed both his hands in hers. "You can understand that I have been carried away by my feelings, to thank you as a sister may thank a brother."

"I will not have it," he exclaimed fiercely. "You are no sister, nor can I ever be your brother. You are my very own now, and for ever."

And he rushed at her again as though to envelop her in his arms, and to crush her against his bosom.

"No!" she exclaimed, avoiding him with the activity of a young fawn; "not again. I had to beg your pardon, and it was so I did it."

"Twenty times you have offended me, and twenty times you must repeat your forgiveness."

"No, no, it must not be so. I was wrong to say that you were b.l.o.o.d.y-minded. I cannot tell why I said so. I would not for worlds have you altered in anything;--except," she said, "in your love for me."

"But have you told me nothing?"

"I have called you my hero,--and so you are."

"Nay, Edith, it is more than that. It is not for me to remind you, but it is more than that."

She stood there blushing before him, over her cheeks and up to her forehead; but yet did not turn away her face.

"How am I to tell you why it is more than that? You cannot tell me,"

she replied.

"But, Edith--"

"You cannot tell me. There are moments for some of us the feelings of which can never be whispered. You shall be my hero and my brother if you will; or my hero and my friend; or, if not that, my hero and my enemy."

"Never!"

"No, my enemy you cannot be; for him who is about to revenge my brother's death no name less sweet than dearest friend will suffice.

My hero and my dearest friend!"

Then she took him by the hand, and turned away from the walk, and, escaping by a narrow path, was seen no more till she met him at dinner with her father and her brother and her sister.

"By G.o.d! she shall be mine!" said Clayton. "She must be mine!"

And then he went within, and, finding Hunter, read the details of the evidence for the trial of Mr. Lax in Dublin, as prepared by the proper officers in Galway city.

CHAPTER XLI.

THE STATE OF IRELAND.

It will be well that they who are interested only in the sensational incidents of our story to skip this chapter and go on to other parts of our tale which may be more in accordance with their taste. It is necessary that this one chapter shall be written in which the accidents that occurred in the lives of our three heroines shall be made subordinate to the political circ.u.mstances of the day. This chapter should have been introductory and initiative; but the facts as stated will suit better to the telling of my story if they be told here. There can be no doubt that Ireland has been and still is in a most precarious condition, that life has been altogether unsafe there, and that property has been jeopardised in a degree unknown for many years in the British Islands. It is, I think, the general opinion that these evils have been occasioned by the influx into Ireland of a feeling which I will not call American, but which has been engendered in America by Irish jealousy, and warmed into hatred by distance from English rule. As far as politics are regarded, Ireland has been the va.s.sal of England as Poland has been of those masters under which she has been made to serve. She was subjected to much ill-usage, and though she has readily accepted the language, the civilisation, and the customs of England, and has in fact grown rich by adopting them, the memories of former hardships have clung to her, and have made her ready to receive willingly the teachings of those whose only object it has been to undermine the prestige of the British Empire. In no respect has she more readily taken to her bosom English practices than in that of the letting and the hiring of land.

In various countries, such as Italy, Russia, France, and the United States, systems have grown up different from that which has prevailed in England. Whether the English system or any other may be the best is not now the question. But in answering that question it is material to know that Ireland has accepted and, at any rate for two centuries, has followed that system. The landlord has been to his tenants a beneficent or, occasionally, a hard master, and the tenants have acknowledged themselves as dependent, generally with much affection, though not unfrequently with loud complaint. It has been the same in England. Questions of tenant-right, of leases, and of the cruelty of evictions have from time to time cropped up in Ireland.

But rents were readily paid up to 1878 and 1879; though abatements were asked for,--as was the case also in England; and there were men ready to tell the Irish from time to time, since the days of O'Connell downwards, that they were ill-treated in being kept out of their "ould" properties by the rightful owners.

Then the American revolt, growing out of Smith O'Brien's logic and physical force, gave birth to Fenianism. The true Fenian I take to be one desirous of opposing British power, by using a fulcrum placed on American soil. Smith O'Brien's logic consisted in his a.s.sertion that if his country wished to hammer the British Crown, they could only do it by using hammers. Smith O'Brien achieved little beyond his own exile;--but his words, acting upon his followers, produced Fenianism.

That died away, but the spirit remained in America; and when English tenants began to clamour for temporary abatements in their rent, the clamours were heard on the other side of the water, and a.s.sisted the views of those American-Irish who had revivified Ribandism and had given birth to the cry of Home Rule.

During the time that this was going on, a long unflagging series of beneficial Acts of Parliament, and of consequently ameliorated circ.u.mstances, had befallen the country. I was told the other day by an Irish Judge, whose name stands conspicuous among those who are known for their wisdom and their patriotism, by a Roman Catholic Judge too, that in studying the latter laws of the two countries, the laws affecting England and Ireland in reference to each other, he knew no law by which England was specially favoured, though he knew various laws redounding to the benefit of Ireland. When the cry for some relief to suffering Ireland came up, at the time of the d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough's Fund, it was alleged in proof of Ireland's poor condition that there was not work by which the labourers could earn wages. I have known Ireland for more than forty years,--say from 1842 to 1882. In 1842 we paid five shillings a week for the entire work of a man. As far as I can learn, we now pay, on an average, nine shillings for the same. The question is not whether five shillings was sufficient, or whether nine be insufficient, but that the normal increase through the country has been and can be proved to be such as is here declared.

I will refer to the banks, which can now be found established in any little town, almost in any village, through the country. Fifty years ago they were very much rarer. Banks do not spring up without money to support them. The increase of wages,--and the banks also in an indirect manner,--have come from that decrease in the population which followed the potato famine of 1846. The famine and its results were terrible while they lasted; but they left behind them an amended state of things. When man has failed to rule the world rightly, G.o.d will step in, and will cause famines, and plagues, and pestilence--even poverty itself--with His own Right Arm. But the cure was effected, and the country was on its road to a fair amount of prosperity, when the tocsin was sounded in America, and Home Rule became the cry.

Ireland has lain as it were between two rich countries. England, her near neighbour, abounds in coal and iron, and has by means of these possessions become rich among the nations. America, very much the more distant, has by her unexampled agricultural resources put herself in the way to equal England. It is necessary,--necessary at any rate for England's safety,--that Ireland should belong to her.

This is here stated as a fact, and I add my own opinion that it is equally necessary for Ireland's welfare. But on this subject there has arisen a feud which is now being fought out by all the weapons of rebellion on one side, and on the other by the force of a dominating Government, restrained, as it is found to be, by the self-imposed bonds of a democratic legislature. But there is the feud, and the battle, and the roaring of the cannons is heard afar off.

I now purpose to describe in a very few words the nature of the warfare. It may be said that the existence of Ireland as a province of England depends on the tenure of the land. If the land were to be taken altogether from the present owners, and divided in perpetuity among any possible number of tenants, so as to be the property of each tenant, without payment of any rent, all England's sense of justice would be outraged, the English power of governing would be destroyed, and all that could then be done by England would be to give a refuge to the present owners till the time should come for righting themselves, and they should be enabled to make some further attempt for the recovery of their possessions. This would probably arrive, if not sooner, from the annihilation of the new proprietors under the hands of their fellow-countrymen to whom none of the spoil had been awarded. But English statesmen,--a small portion, that is, of English statesmen,--have wished in their philanthropy to devise some measure which might satisfy the present tenants of the land, giving them a portion of the spoil; and might leave the landlords contented,--not indeed with their lot, which they would feel to be one of cruel deprivation, but with the feeling that something had at any rate been left to them. A compromise would be thus effected between the two cla.s.ses whose interests have always been opposed to each other since the world began,--between the owners of property and those who have owned none.