443
“There, there, this is all childishness, Molly. You will displease me if you go on so. Was that thunder I heard?”
As she asked, a knock came to the door, and the captain of the boat’s crew, Tim Hennesy, put in his head. “If you are bent on goin’, Miss, the tide is on the turn, and there’s no time to lose.”
“You’re a hard man to ask her, Tim Hennesy,” said the woman, rising, and speaking with a fiery vehemence: “You’re a hard man, after losing your own brother at sea, to take her out in weather like this.”
Kate gave a hurried look over the room, and then, as if not trusting her control over her feelings, she went quietly out, and hastened down to the shore.
There was, indeed, no lime to be lost, and all the efforts of the sailors were barely enough to save the small boat that lay next the pier from being crushed against the rocks with each breaking wave.
“Get on board, Miss; now’s the moment!” cried one of the men. And, just as he spoke, she made a bold spring and lighted safely in the stern.
The strong arms strained to the oars, and in a few seconds they were on board the yawl. The last few turns of the capstan were needed to raise the anchor, and now the jib was set to “pay her head round,” and amidst a perfect shower of spray as the craft swung “about,” the mainsail was hoisted, and they were away.
“What’s the signal flying from the tower for?” said one of the sailors. And he pointed to a strip of dark-coloured bunting that now floated from the flagstaff.
“That’s his honour’s way of bidding us good-by,” said Hennesy. “I’ve never seen it these twelve years.”
“How can we answer it, Tim?” said Kate, eagerly.
“We’ll show him his own colours, Miss,” said the man. And, knotting the Luttrell flag on the halyard, he hoisted it in a moment. “Ay, he sees it now! Down comes his own ensign now to tell us that we’re answered!”
“Was it to say good-by, or was it to recal her?—was it a last greeting of love and affection, or was it a word of scorn?” Such were Kate’s musings as the craft heaved and worked in the strong sea, while the waves broke on the bow, and scattered great sheets of water over them.
“I wish there was a dry spot to shelter you, Miss,” said Tim, as he saw the poor girl shivering and dripping from head to foot. “But it’s worse now than farther out; the squalls are stronger here under the land.”
“Ay; but we’ll have a heavier sea outside,” said another, who would willingly have seen her change her mind even now, and return to the island.
“It’s a fine wind for America, if that was where we were going,” said a third, laughingly.
Kate smiled; she had almost said, “It matters little to me where;” but she caught herself, and was silent. Hour after hour went over, and they seemed—to her, at least—to have made no way whatever, for there rose the great mountain-peaks; the well-known cliffs of Arran frowned down dark and sullen, just as when they had left the harbour. She could count one by one the lights along the bay, and knew each cabin they belonged to; and there, high tap, shone out a lonely star from the tower of St. Finbar, bringing back of her mind the solitary watcher who sat to sorrow over her desertion! The night at last fell, but the wind increased, and so rough was the sea that she was forced to take shelter in the bottom of the boat, where they made shift to cover her with & coarse canopy of tarpaulin.
Like some dreadful dream drawn out to the length of years, the hours of that night went over. The howling storm, the thundering crash of the sea, and at times a quivering motion in the craft, as though her timbers were about to part, and more even than these, the wild voices of the men, obliged to shout that they might be heard amongst the din, made up a mass of horrors that appalled her. Sometimes the danger seemed imminent, for to the loud words and cries of the men a sudden silence would succeed, while floods of water would pour over the sides, and threaten them with instant drowning. The agony she pictured to herself of a last struggle for life was more terrible far than her fear of death; and yet, through all these, came the thought: “Might it not be better thus? Should I not have left to the few who knew me dearer, fonder memories, than my life, if I am yet to live, will bequeath?” Worn out by these anxieties, and exhausted too, she fell into a deep sleep—so deep, that all the warring noises of the storm never awoke her; nor was she conscious that a new morning had dawned, and a bright noon followed it, as the launch entered the bay of Westport, and beat up for the harbour.
When Hennesy awoke her, to say that they were close in to shore, she neither could collect herself nor answer him; benumbed with cold, and wet, she could barely muster strength to arise, and sit down in the stern-sheets.
“That’s the spire of the town, Miss, under the hill there.”
“It was a wild night, Tim?” said she, inquiringly.
“I have seen as rough a sea, but I never was out in a stronger gale.”
“Mind that you tell my uncle so when you get back; and be sure to say that I bore it well.”
“Why wouldn’t I? The sorrow a word ever crossed your lips. No man ever was braver!” “That’s true,” muttered the others.
“Get me a piece of bread out of that basket, Tim; and don’t forget to tell my uncle how I ate, and ate heartily.”
At the time of which our story treats, the old gaols of Ireland were very unlike those edifices which modern humanity has erected to be the safeguards of prisoners. They were small, confined, generally ruinous in condition, and always ill ventilated and dirty. So limited was the space, that all classification of crime was impossible, and, worse still, the untried prisoners were confined indiscriminately along with those whom the law had already sentenced, and who only awaited the hour of execution.
The extent of favour shown to those who were waiting for trial consisted in the privilege of seeing their legal advisers, or their friends, in a small cell used for such colloquies, and to which they succeeded by rotation, and for half an hour at a time. They whose means were unequal to the cost of a legal defence, or whose friends took little trouble in their behalf, were occasionally not unwilling to sell this privilege to their luckier companions, and a gill of whisky, or a few ounces of tobacco, were gladly accepted in lieu of a right that would have been profitless to claim.
As the day for trial grew nearer, the price of this privilege rose considerably. There were so many things the prisoner wanted to hear, or to tell, secrets he had kept for weeks long locked close in his breast, would now find vent; details that he had determined should go with him to the grave, he could no longer abstain from communicating. The agonies of feverish expectation, the sleepless nights—or worse, far worse, those dreamful ones—would have begun to tell upon the strongest and boldest; and spirits that a few weeks back would have seemed to defy every terror, now became fidgety and fretful, eager to hear what men said without, and how the newspapers talked of them.
While the assizes were distant, the prisoners gave themselves up, so far as their position permitted, to the habits and ways of their ordinary lives. Some brooded, some bullied, some looked steeped in a sort of stupid indifference, not caring for anything, or minding anything; others gave way to a jollity which, whether real or feigned, affected those around, and disposed them to scenes of riot and uproar. When, however, the time for trial drew nigh, all these signs merged into one pervading sentiment of intense anxiety, and nothing was said, nothing heard, but questions as to who were to be the judges—a point to which immense importance was attached—some supposed tendency to mercy or severity being ascribed to each in turn, and the characters of the Crown lawyers were discussed with a shrewdness that indicated how far less the debaters thought of the law itself than of the traits and tempers of those who were to administer it.
From the day that old Malone entered the gaol, his ascendancy was at once acknowledged. It was not merely that in the old man’s character there were those features of steadfast determination and unswerving courage which the Irish of every class place at the top of all virtues, but he was, so to say, a sort of patriarchal law-breaker; he had twice stood in the dock under charge for the greatest of crimes, and five times had he braved the risk of transportation. If ever there seemed a charmed life, it was his. And though the Crown prosecutors were wont to regard him as one whose successive escapes were a sort of reflection on their skill, the juries who tried him could not divest themselves of a sympathy for the hardy old fellow, who, never daunted by danger, no sooner issued from one scrape than he was ready to involve himself in another.
Dan Malone was not only the hero of the gaol, he was the law adviser. Around him they gathered to tell their several cases, and consult him as to their likely issue. It was not merely that he was quick in detecting where a flaw or break-down of evidence might be looked for, but he knew—and it was wonderful how well—the sort of testimony that would tell well with a jury, and the class of witness which it would be advisable to produce, or to withhold, according to the character of the judge that presided. It would have doubtless been very damaging to this ascendancy of his if it got abroad that he himself, while distributing his counsels to this man, and his warnings to that, should be unprotected and undefended, and so the brave old fellow, locking up his sorrows in his own heart, never betrayed his friendlessness. On the contrary, he scrupulously maintained his privilege to “the Parlour,” as it was called, and would, when his turn came, stalk away to the little cell, to sit down in his solitude, and think, with a swelling heart, over his comfortless fortune.
The turnkey alone knew his secret, and kept it loyally. Malone had been in his hands many times, and always conducted himself well, so that whenever the time came round for old Dan’s visit to the Parlour, Mr. Meekins would call out from the door in an audible and imposing voice, “Here’s Counsellor Fitzgibbon,” or “Serjeant Taate,” or some other equally well-known leader at the bar, “wants to speak to Dan Malone,” and poor old Dan would get up from his seat, and smoothe his hair, and adjust his neckcloth, and walk proudly away to hide his misery in the half-darkened cell, and rock himself to and fro in all the sorrow of his friendless and deserted fortune.
Terrible as the mockery was, it sustained him, for though the straw will not support the drowning man, it will feed his hope even in death, and smoothe the last agony of the heart, whose sharpest pang is desertion!
When, therefore, Mr. Meekins, instead of the usual pompons announcement, simply called out, “Dan Malone, to the Parlour,” without any intimation of a learned visitor awaiting him, the old man heard the words in amazement, and not without fear. Had his friend betrayed him? Had he divulged the little fraud, and exposed him to his fellows? Or had he—and this most probable—had he, as the real day of reckoning drew nigh, revolted at a deception which a few hours must unveil, and which, even to the heart that encouraged it, bore its own cruel punishment. “He knows that I’m only giving myself false hopes,” muttered the old fellow, as with sunken head and downcast eyes he moved slowly away.
As the door of the little cell clanked behind him, the turnkey with scrupulous tenacity bolting the small portal on the outside as rigorously as though it were the last protection of the criminal, Dan sat down on a small stool, and buried his face between his hands. Never before had his fate seemed sodark and gloomy. The little fiction he loved to main-tarn withdrawn, all the intensity of his loneliness stood before him at once. “I may as well say it at once,” muttered he, “when I go back, that Dan Malone has no friend in the wide world, not a man to speak a word for him, but must stand up in the dock and say, ‘No counsel, my lord.’” As if the bitter moment of the humiliation had arrived, the old fellow rocked to and fro in his agony, and groaned bitterly.
What was that which broke the stillness? Was it a sigh, and then a sob? Was his mind wandering? Was the misery too much for his reason? He rubbed his eyes and looked up.
“Merciful Mother! Blessed Virgin! is it yourself is come to comfort me?” cried he, as he dropped on his knees, while the tears streamed down his hard and wrinkled cheeks. “Oh, Holy Mother! Tower of Ivory! do I see you there, or is my ould eyes deceivin’ me?”
The heart-wrung prayer was addressed to a figure on which the solitary pane of a small window high up in the wall threw a ray of sunlight, so that the braided hair glowed like burnished gold, and the pale cheeks caught a slightly warm tint, less like life than like a beautiful picture.
“Don’t you know me, grandfather? Don’t you know your own dear Katey?” said she, moving slowly forward; and then, kneeling down in front of him, clasped him in her arms.
It was more than he could bear, and he heaved a heavy sigh, and rolled back against the wall.
It was long before he rallied; old age stands so near the last threshold, there is but little space to recover breath in; and when he did rally, he could not be sure that his mind was not astray, or that his sight was not deceiving him.
“Tell me something of long ago, darlin’; tell me something, that I’ll know you are my own.”
“Shall I tell you of the day I found the penny in the well, and you told me it was for good luck, and never to lose it? Do you remember, grandfather, how you bored a hole in it, and I used to wear it around my neck with a string?”
“I do, I do,” cried he, as the tears came fast and faster; “and you lost it after all; didn’t you lose it?”
“Yes; but, grandfather, I shall find others, and golden ones too.”
“Tell me more about them times, or I won’t believe you,” cried he, half peevishly.
“I’ll talk to you all the evening about them; I remember them all, dear old grandady.”
“That’s the word I wanted; that’s it, my darlin’! the light of my ould eyes!” And he fell on her neck and sobbed aloud.
In his ecstasy and delight to weave the long past into the present, he forgot to ask her how she came there, and by what fortune she had remembered him. It was the old life in the mountains that filled his whole being. The wild cliffs and solitary lakes, dear to him by the thought of her who never left him, trotting beside him as he went, or cowering at his knee as he sat over the turf fire. So immersed was he in these memories, that though she talked on he heard nothing; he would look at her, and smile, and say, “God bless her,” and then go back again to his own dreamy thoughts.
“I’m thinking we’ll have to cut the oats, green as it is, Kitty,” said he, after a long pause. “It’s late in the year now, and there’ll be no fine days.”
She could not speak, but her lips trembled, and her heart felt as if it would burst.
“There’s a lamb astray these two days,” muttered he. “I hope the eagles hasn’t got it; but I heard one screeching last night. Light the fire, anyway, darlin’, for it’s cowld here.”
With what art and patience and gentle forbearance did she labour to bring those erring faculties back, and fix them on the great reality that portended! It was long, indeed, before she succeeded. The old man loved to revel in the bygone life, wherein, with all its hardships, his fierce nature enjoyed such independence; and every now and then, after she had, as she hoped, centred his thoughts upon the approaching trial, he would break out into some wild triumph over an act of lawless daring, some insolent defiance he had hurled at the minions who were afraid to come and look for him in his mountain home.
At last she did manage to get him to speak of his present condition, and to give a narrative—it was none of the clearest—of his encounter with the sheriff’s people. He made no attempt to screen himself, nor did he even pretend that he had not been the aggressor, but he insisted, and he believed too, that he was perfectly justified in all he had done. His notion was, that he was simply defending what was his own. The scrupulous regard the Law observes towards him who is in possession, is not unfrequently translated by the impetuous intelligence of the Irish peasant into abona fideand undeniable right. Malone reasoned in this way, and with this addition: “It’s just as good for me to die in a fair fight as be starved and ruined.”
How hard was Kate’s task, to eke out means for a defence from such materials as this! Indeed, no indictment that ever was drawn could be more condemnatory than the man’s own admissions. Still, she persisted in sifting the whole story over and over, till she had at least such a knowledge of the details as would enable her to confer with a lawyer and obtain his opinion.
“And who is to defind me, darlin’?” asked he, in the cheerful tone of a heart perfectly at ease.
“We have not fixed upon that yet. We are not quite sure,” murmured she, as her racked brain beat and throbbed with intense thinking.
“I’d like to have Mr. O’Connell, Kate,” said he, proudly. “It would warm my ould heart to hear how he’d give it to them, the scoundrels! that would turn a poor man out of his own, and send him to sleep under a ditch. There’s not his like in all Ireland to lash a landlord. It’s there he’s at home!”
“I must be going now, grandady.”
“Going, acushla! And will you leave me?”
“I most, there’s no help for it; they wouldn’t let me stay here.”
“Begorra!” cried he, wildly,—“I forgot I was in gaol! May I never! if I didn’t think I was at home again, and that we were only waiting for the boys to have our supper!”
“My poor old grandady,” said she, stooping and kissing his forehead, “I’ll come back to-morrow, and stay a long time with you. I have a great deal to say to you that I can’t think of to-day. Here’s a little basket, with something to eat, and some tobacco, too; the gaoler gave me leave to bring it in. And you’ll drink my health to-night, grandady, won’t you?”
“My darlin’—my own darlin’, that I will! And where did you come from now—was it from England?”
“No, grandady. It was a long way off, but not from England.”
“And who are you living with? Is it with that ould man in Wales?”
“No, not with him. I’ll tell you all to-morrow.”
“They tell me he’s mighty rich.”
She evidently had not heard his words, for she stood pressing her temples with both hands, and as if endeavouring to repress some severe pain.
“It’s your head’s aching you, darlin’!” said he, compassionately.
“Head and heart!” muttered she, drearily. “Good-by, my dear old grandady—good-by!” And, not able to control her emotion, she turned her face away.
“You’ll have to call out through that gratin’ before they’ll open the door,” said he, half sulkily. “You’d think we was all sentenced and condimned, the way they lock us up here! But I hear him coming now. You’ll let her in to see me to-morrow, Mr. Meekins, won’t you?” said he, in an imploring tone. “She’s my daughter’s child, and nearly the last of us now.”
“By my conscience, she’s a fine creature!” said the turnkey, as she moved past. “It’s mighty seldom the likes of her is seen in such a place as this!”
When Kate gained the street, the rain was falling heavily, and as she stood uncertain which way to turn, for the town was strange to her, O’Rorke came up.
“Haven’t you as much as an umbrella, Miss Kate,” said he, “or a cloak, in this dreadful weather?”
“I was not thinking of either. Which way do we go towards the inn?”
“I’d advise you to take shelter in a shop here, Miss; the shower is too heavy to last long.”
“I have no time for this; I want to catch the post, and I believe it leaves at six o’clock.”.
“You’ll be drowned with this rain,” muttered he. “But come along. I’ll show you the way.”
As they went, neither spoke; indeed, the noise of the plashing rain, and the sharp gusts of the sweeping wind, would have made it almost impossible to converse, and they plodded onward through the dreary and deserted streets, for even the poorest had now sought shelter. The inn was at the very end of a long straggling street, and, when they reached it, they were completely soaked through with rain.
“You have ordered a room for me here, you said?” asked Elate, as they entered.
“Yes, it’s all ready, and your dinner too, whenever you like to eat it.—This is the young lady, ma’am,” continued he, addressing the landlady, “that’s coming to stop here; she’s wet through, and I hope you’ll take care of her, that she doesn’t catch cold.”
“Will you show me my room?” asked Kate, quietly. But the landlady never moved, but stood scrutinising her with an eye the very reverse of kindly.
“She’s asking you where’s her room,” broke in O’Rorke.
“I hear her, and I think this isn’t the house for her.”
“How do you mean?—what are you saying?” cried he, angrily.
“She’ll be better and more at home at Tom M’Cafferty’s, that’s what I mean,” said she, sturdily.
“But I took a room here.”
“And you’ll not get it,” rejoined she, setting her arms akimbo; “and if you want to know why, maybe you’d hear it, and hear more than you like.”
“Come away—come away; let us find out this other place, wherever it be,” said Kate, hurriedly.
“The other place is down there, where you see the red sign,” said the landlady, half pushing her, as she spoke, into the street.
Shivering with cold, and wet through, Kate reached the little “shebeen,” or carriers’ inn, where, however, they received her with kindness and civility, the woman giving up to her her own room, and doing her very best to wait on her and assist her. As her trunk had been forgotten at the inn, however, Kate had to wait till O’Rorke fetched it, and as Mr. O’Rorke took the opportunity of the visit to enter on a very strong discussion with the landlady for her insolent refusal to admit them, it was nigh an hour before he got back again.
By this time, what with the effects of cold and wet, and what with the intense anxieties of the morning, Kate’s head began to ache violently, and frequent shiverings gave warning of the approach of fever. Her impatience, too, to be in time for the post became extreme. She wanted to write to her uncle; she was confident that, by a frank, open statement of what she had done, and said, and seen, she could deprecate his anger. The few words in which she could describe her old grandfather’s condition, would, she felt certain, move her uncle to thoughts of forgiveness. “Is he coming?—can you see him with my trunk?—why does he delay?” cried she at every instant. “No, no, don’t talk to me of change of clothes; there is something else to be thought of first. What can it be that keeps him so long? Surely it is only a few steps away. At last!—at last!” exclaimed she, as she heard O’Rorke’s voice in the passage. “There—there, do not delay me any longer. Give me that desk; I don’t want the other, it is my desk, my writing-desk, I want. Leave me now, my good woman—leave me now to myself.”
“But your shoes, Miss; let me just take off your shoes. It will kill you to sit that way, dripping and wet through.”
“I tell you I will not be dictated to!” cried she, wildly, for her face was now crimson with excitement, and her brain burning. “By what right do you come here into my room, and order me to do this or that? Do you know to whom you speak? I am a Luttrell of Arran. Ask him—that man below—if I am not speaking the truth. Is it not honour enough for your poor house that a Luttrell should stop here, but that you must command me, as if I were your servant? There—there, don’t cry; I did not mean to be unkind! Oh! if you but knew how my poor head is aching, and what a heavy, heavy load I am carrying here!” And she pressed her hand to her heart. And, with this, she fell upon her bed, and sobbed long and bitterly. At last she arose, and, assuring the hostess that after she had written a few lines she would do all that she asked her, she persuaded the kind-hearted woman to leave her, and sat down to the table to write. What she wrote, how she wrote, she knew not, but the words followed fast, and page after page lay before her as the clock struck six. “What!” cried she, opening her door, “is it too late for the post? I hear it striking six!”
“I’ll take it over myself to the office,” said O’Rorke, “and by paying a trifle more they’ll take it in.”
“Oh do! Lose no time, and I’ll bless you for it!” said she, as she gave him the letter.
“Come up here and sit with me,” said Kate to the woman of the house; and the honest creature gladly complied. “What a nice little place you have here,” said Kate, speaking with intense rapidity. “It is all so clean and so neat, and you seem so happy in it. Ain’t you very happy?”
“Indeed, Miss, I have no reason to be anything else.” “Yes; I knew it—I knew it!” broke in Kate, rapidly. “It is the striving to be something above their reach makes people unhappy. You never asked nor wished for better than this?”
“Never, Miss. Indeed, it’s better than ever I thought to be. I was the daughter of a poor labourin’ man up at Belmullet, when my husband took me.”
“What a dreary place Belmullet is! I saw it once,” said Kate, half speaking to herself.
“Ah! you don’t know how poor it is, Miss! The like ofyoucould never know what lives the people lead in them poor places, with only the fishin’ to look to, God help them! And when it’s too rough to go to sea, as it often is for weeks long, there they are with nothing but one meal a day of wet potatoes, and nothing but water to drink.”
“Andyouthink I know nothing about all that!” cried Kate, wildly—“nothing of the rain pouring down through the wet thatch—nothing of the turf too wet to burn, and only smouldering and smoking, till it is better to creep under the boat that lies keel uppermost on the beach, than stay in the wretched hovel—nothing of the poor mother, with fever in one corner, and the child with small-pox in the other—nothing of the two or three strong men huddled together under the lee of the house, debating whether it wouldn’t be better to go out to sea at any risk, and meet the worst that could happen, than sit down there to die of starvation?”
“In the name of the blessed Virgin, Miss, who towld you all about that?”
“Oh, that I never knew worse! Oh, that I had never left it!” burst out Kate, as, kneeling down, she buried her head in the bed, and sobbed as if her heart were breaking.
The poor woman did her very best to console and comfort her, but Kate was unconscious of all her kindness, and only continued to mutter unceasingly to herself, till at last, worn out and exhausted, she leaned her head on the other’s shoulder and fell off into a sort of disturbed sleep, broken by incessant starts.
When O’Rorke left Kate, it was not the direction of the post-office that he took; he went straight to the head inn of the town, on the doorsteps of which he stationed himself, anxiously watching for the arrival of another traveller. Nor had he long to wait, for as the town clock struck the half-hour, a chaise and pair galloped up to the door, and young Ladarelle cried out from the window, “The last seven miles in forty-six minutes! What do you say to that! Is dinner ready?” asked he, as he descended.
“Everything’s ready, Sir,” said O’Rorke, obsequiously, as, pushing the landlord aside, he assumed the office of showing the way up-stairs himself.
“Tell Morse to unpack some of that sherry,” said Ladarelle; and then laughingly added, “Order your own tap, Master O’Rorke, for I’m not going to throw away Dalradern wine uponyou.”
O’Rorke laughed too—perhaps not as genially, but he could afford to relish such a small joke even against himself—not to say that it conveyed an assurance he was well pleased with, that Ladarelle meant him to dine along with himself.
As the dinner was served, Ladarelle talked away about everything. It was his first visit to Ireland, and, though it amused him, he said he hoped his last also. Everything was absurd, laughable, and poverty-stricken to his eyes; that is to say, Pauperism was so apparent on all sides, the whole business of life seemed to be carried on by make-shifts.
The patriot O’Rorke had need of much forbearance as he listened to the unfeeling comments and ignorant inferences of the “Saxon.” He heard him, however, without one word of disclaimer, and with a little grin on his face, that if Ladarelle had been an Irishman, and had one drop of Irish blood in his body, he would not have accepted as any evidence of pleasure or satisfaction.
“Order whatever you mean to have,” said Ladarelle, as the meal was concluded, “and don’t let us have that fellow coming into the room every moment.”
O’Rorke made his provision accordingly, and having secured a kettle, in case it should be his caprice to make punch, he bolted the door and resumed his place.
“There’s your letter!” said Ladarelle, throwing a coarse-looking scrawl, sealed with green wax, on the table; “and I’ll be shot if I understand one line of it!”
“And why not?” asked the other, angrily. “Is it the writing’s so bad?”
“No; the writing can be made out. I don’t complain of that. It’s your blessed style that floors me! Now, for instance, what does this mean? ‘Impelled by the exuberant indignation that in the Celtic heart rises to the height of the grandest sacrifices, whether on the altars———‘”
O’Rorke snatched the letter from his hand, crushed it into a ball, and threw it into the fire. “You’ll not have it to laugh at another time,” cried he, sternly, and with a stare so full of defiance that Ladarelle looked at him for some seconds in amazement, without speaking.
“My good friend,” said he, at last, with a calm, measured voice, “it is something new to me to meet conduct like this.”
“Not a bit newer or stranger than for me to be laughed at. Bigger and stronger fellows than you never tried that game with me.”
“I certainly never suspected you would take it so ill. I thought if any one knew what a joke meant, it was an Irishman.”
“And so he does; none better. The mistake was, you thought an Englishman knew how to make one.”
“Let there be an end of this,” said Ladarelle, haughtily. “If I had kept you in your proper place, you would never have forgotten yourself!” And as he spoke, he flung his cigar into the fire, and arose and walked up and down the room.
O’Rorke hung his head for a moment, and then, in a tone of almost abject contrition, said, “I ask your pardon, Sir. It was just as you say; my head was turned by good treatment.”
If Ladarelle had been a physiognomist, he would not have liked the expression of the other’s face, the hue of utter sickness in the cheek, while the eyes flashed with a fiery energy; but he noted none of these, and merely said, as he resumed his place:
“Don’t let it happen again, that’s all. Tell me now what occurred when you got back to Westport, for the only thing I know is that you met her there the morning you arrived.”
“I’ll tell it in three words: She was on the quay, just come after a severe night at sea, when I was trying to make a bargain with a fisherman to take me over to the island. I didn’t see her till her hand was on my arm and her lips close to my ear, as she whispered:
“‘What news have you for me?”
“‘Bad news,’ says I; ‘the sorrow worse.’
“She staggered back, and sat down on the stock of an anchor that was there, and drew the tail of her cloak oyer her face, and that’s the way she remained for about a quarter of an hour.
“‘Tell it to me now, Mr. O’Rorke,’ said she; ‘and as you hope to see Glory, tell me the truth, and nothing more.’
“‘It’s little I have to tell,’ says I, sitting down beside her. ‘The ould man was out on a terrace when I gave him your letter. He took it this way, turning it all round, and then looking up at me, he says: “I know this handwriting,” says he, “and I think I know what’s inside of it, but you may tell her it’s too late.” He then muttered something about a sea-bathing place abroad that I couldn’t catch, and he went on: “She didn’t know when she was well———-”’
“‘No, no, that he never said!’ says she, bursting in—‘that he never said!’
“‘Not in them words,’ says I, ‘certainly not, but it came to the same, for he said she used to be as happy here as the days was long!’
“‘True; it was all true,’ said she to herself. ‘Go on.’
“‘” Go back,” says he, “and say, that sorry as I was at first, I’m getting over it now, and it wouldn’t be better for either of us to hold any more correspondence.” And with that he gave me the letter back, sealed as it was.’”
“What made you say that?” cried Ladarelle.
“Because I knew she’d never ask for it; or if she did, I’d say, ‘I had it in my trunk at home.’ The first thing was to get her to believe me, at any cost.”
“Isthather way?” asked the other, thoughtfully.
“That’s her way. She’s not given to have suspicions, you can see that. If you talk to her straight ahead, and never break down in what you say, she’ll look at you openly, and believe it all; but if ever she sees you stop, or look confused, or if she catches you taking a sly look at her under the eyes, you’re done—done entirely! The devil a lawyer from this to Dublin would put you through such a cross-examination; and I defy the cleverest fellow that ever sat in the witness-box to baffle her. And she begins quite regular—quiet, soft, and smooth as a cat.”
“What do I care for all this? She may be as shrewd as she pleases this day fortnight, Master O’Rorke. Let us only have the balls our own, and we’ll win the game before she gets a hazard.”
This illustration from the billiard-table was not fully intelligible to O’Rorke, but he saw its drift, and he assented.
“Where was I? Oh, I remember. ‘He gave me the letter back,’ says I, ‘and told the servants to see I had my supper, and everything I wanted.
“‘He did this with his hand, as much as to say, “You may go away;” but I made as if I didn’t understand him, and I waited till the servant left the place, and then I drew near him, and said:
“‘I think,’ says I, ‘it would be better your honour read the letter, anyhow. Maybe there’s something in it that you don’t suspect.’
“‘"Who are you,” says he, “that’s teachingmemanners?”’
“I didn’t say them was his words, but something that meant the same.
“‘"I know every line that’s in it. I know far better than you—ay, or than she suspects—the game she would play.”’
“She gave a little cry, as if something stung her. Andeed, I asked her, What was it hurt her? But she never answered me, but stood up straight, and, with a hand up this way, she said something to herself, as if she was making a vow or taking an oath. After that, it wasn’t much she minded one word I said, and lucky for me it was, for I was coming to the hard part of my story—about your honour; how you heard from the servants that I was in the house, and sent for me to your own room, and asked me hundreds of questions about her. Where she was, and who with, and what she wrote about, and then how angry you grew with your uncle—I called him your uncle, I don’t know why—and how you said he was an unfeeling old savage, that it was the same way he treated yourself, pampering you one day, turning you out of doors the next. ‘And at last,’ says I—‘I couldn’t keep it in any longer—I up and told him what I came about, and that your letter was asking a trifle of money to defend your grandfather for his life.’
“Sorrow matter what I said, she never listened to me. I told her you swore that her grandfather should have the first lawyer in the land, and that you’d come over yourself to the Assizes. I told her how you put twenty pounds into my hand, and said, ‘Tim’—no, not Tim—‘Mr. O’Rorke, there’s a few pounds to begin. Go back and tell Miss Kate she has a better and truer friend than the one she lost; one that never forgot the first evening he seen her, and would give his heart’s blood to save her.’
“She gave a little smile—it was almost a laugh once—and I thought she was pleased at what I was telling her. Not a bit of it. It was something about the ould man was in her mind, and something that didn’t mean any good to him either, for she said, ‘He shall rue it yet.’ And after that, though I talked for an hour, she never minded me no more than them fireirons! At last she clutched my arm in her fingers, and said, “‘Do you know that my uncle declares I am never to go back again? I came away against his will, and he swore that if I crossed the threshold to come here, I should never re-cross it again. Do you know,’ says she, ‘I have no home nor friend now in the whole world, and I don’t know what’s to become of me.’
“I tried to comfort her, and say that your honour would never see her in any distress; but she wasn’t minding me, and only went on saying something about being back again; but whether it meant at the Castle, or over in Arran, or, as I once thought, back as a child, when she used to play in the caves along the sea-shore, I couldn’t say, but she cried bitterly, and for the whole day never tasted bit or sup. We stopped at a small house outside the town, and I told them it was a young creature that lost her mother; and the next day she looked so ill and wasted, I was getting afraid she was going to have a fever; but she said she was strong enough, and asked me to bring her on here to the gaol, for she wanted to see her grandfather.
“It was only this morning, however, I got the order from the sub-sheriff; and indeed he wouldn’t have given it but that he seen her out of the window, for in all her distress, and with her clothes wet and draggled, she’s as beautiful a creature as ever walked.”
“Why not marry her yourself, O’Rorke? By Jove! you’re head and ears in love already. I’ll make you a handsome settlement, on my oath I will.”
“There’s two small objections, Sir. First, there’s another Mrs. O’Rorke, though I’m not quite sure where at the present setting; and even if there wasn’t, she wouldn’t have me.”
“I don’t see that; and if it be only the bigamy you’re afraid of, go off to Australia or America, and your first wife will never trace you.”
O’Rorke shook his head, and, to strengthen his determination perhaps, he mixed himself a strong tumbler of punch.
“And where are we now?” asked Ladarelle.
O’Rorke, perhaps, did not fully understand the question, for he looked at him inquiringly.
“I ask you, where are we now? Don’t you understand me?”
“We’re pretty much where we were yesterday; that is, we’re waiting to know what’s to be done for the ould man in the gaol, and what your honour intends to do about”—he hesitated and stammered, and at last said—“about the other business.”
“Well, it’s the other business, as you neatly call it, Mr. O’Rorke, that interests me at present. Sir Within has written twice to Mr. Luttrell since you left the Castle. One of his letters I stopped before it reached the office, the other I suppose has come to hand.”
“No fanlt of mine if it has, Sir,” broke in O’Rorke, hastily, for he saw the displeasure in the other’s look. “I was twice at the office at Westport, and there wasn’t a line there for Mr. Luttrell. Did you read the other letter, Sir?” added he, eagerly, after a moment’s silence. “I know what’s in it,” muttered Ladarelle, in confusion, for he was not quite inured to the baseness he had sunk to. “And what is it, Sir?”
“Just what I expected; that besotted old fool wants to marry her. He tells Mr. Luttrell, and tells it fairly enough, how the estate is settled, and he offers the largest settlement the entail will permit of; but he forgets to add that the same day he takes out his license to marry, we’ll move for a commission of lunacy. I have been eight weeks there lately, and not idle, I promise you. I have got plenty of evidence against him. How he goes into the room she occupied at the Castle, and has all her rings and bracelets laid out on the toilet-table, and candles lighted, as if she was coming to dress for dinner, and makes her maid wait there, telling her Madame is out on horseback, or she is in the garden, she’ll be in presently. One day, too, he made us wait dinner for her till eight o’clock; and when at last the real state of the case broke on him, he had to get up and go to his room, and Holmes, his man, told me that he sobbed the whole night through, like a child.”
“And do you think that all them will prove him mad?” asked O’Rorke, with a jeering laugh.
“Why not? If a man cannot understand that a person who has not been under his roof for six or eight months, and is some hundred miles away, may want candles in her dressing-room, and may come down any minute to dinner in that very house——”
“Oddity—eccentricity—want of memory—nothing more! There’s never a jury in England would call a man mad for all that.”
“You are a great lawyer, Mr. O’Rorke, but it is right to say you differ here from the Attorney-General.”
“No great harm in that same—when he’s in the wrong!”
“I might possibly be rash enough to question your knowledge of law, but certainly I’ll never dispute your modesty.”
“My modesty is like any other part of me, and I didn’t make myself; but I’ll stick to this—that ould man is not mad, and nobody could make him out mad.”
“Mr. Grenfell will not agree with you in that. He was over at the Castle the night I came away, and he saw the gardener carrying up three immense nosegays of flowers, for it was her birthday it seemed, however any one knew it, and Sir Within had ordered the band from Wrexham to play under her window at nightfall; and as Mr. Grenfell said, ‘That old gent’s brain seems about as soft as his heart!’ Not bad, was it?—his brain as soft as his heart!”
“He’s no more mad than I am, and I don’t care who says the contrary.”
“Perhaps you speculate on being called as a witness to his sanity?” said Ladarelle, with a sneer.
“I do not, Sir; but if I was, I’d be a mighty troublesome one to the other side.”
“What the deuce led us into this foolish discussion! As if it signified one rush to me whether he was to be thought the wisest sage or the greatest fool in Christendom. WhatIwant, and what I am determined on, is that we are not to be dragged into Chancery, and made town talk of, because a cunning minx has turned an old rake’s head. I’d be hunted by a set of hungry rascals of creditors to-morrow if the old man were to marry. There’s not one of them wouldn’t believe that my chance of the estate was all ‘up.’”
“There’s sense inthat; there is reason in what you say now,” said O’Rorke.
“And that’s not the worst of it, either,” continued Ladarelle, who, like all weak men, accepted any flattery, even at the expense of the object he sought; “but my governor would soon know how deep I am, and he’d cast me adrift. Not a pleasant prospect, Master O’Rorke, to a fellow who ought to succeed to about twelve thousand a year.”
“Could he do it by law?”
“Some say one thing, some another; but this I know, that if my creditors get a hold of me now, as the fox said, there would be very little running left in me when they’d done with me. But here’s the short and the long of it. We must not let Sir Within marry, that’s the first thing; and the second is, there would be no objection to any plan that will give him such a shock—he’s just ready for a shock—that he wouldn’t recover from. Do you see it now?”
“I see it all, only I don’t see how it’s to be done.”
“I wonder what you are here for, then?” asked the other, angrily. “I took you into my pay thinking I had a fellow with expedients at his fingers’ ends; and, except to see you make objections, and discover obstacles, I’ll be hanged if I know what you’re good for.”
“Go on, Sir, go on,” said O’Rorke, with a malicious grin.
“In one word, what do you propose?” said Ladarelle, sternly.
“Here’s what I propose, then,” said O’Rorke, pushing the glasses and decanters from him, and planting his arms on the table in a sturdy fashion—“I propose, first of all, that you’ll see Mr. Crowe, the attorney, and give him instructions to defend Malone, and get him the best bar on the circuit. She’ll insist upon that, that’s the first thing. The second is, that you come down to where she is, and tell her that when you heard of her trouble that you started off to help her and stand by her. I don’t mean to say it will be an easy thing to get her to believe it, or even after she believes it to take advantage of it, for she’s prouder than you think. Well, toss your head if you like, but you don’t know her, nor them she comes from; but if you know how to make her think that by what she’ll do she’ll spite the ould man that insulted her, if you could just persuade her that there wasn’t another way in life so sure to break his heart, I think she’d comply, and agree to marry you.”
“Upon my soul, the condescension overcomes me! You think—you actually think—she’d consent to be the wife of a man in such a position as mine!”
“Well, as I said a while ago, it wouldn’t be easy.”
“You don’t seem to know, my good friend, that you are immensely impertinent!”
“I do not,” was the reply, and he gave it calmly and slowly. At the same instant a knock came to the door, and the waiter motioned to O’Rorke that a woman wanted to speak to him outside. “I’m wanted for a few minutes, Sir, down at the place she’s stopping. The woman says she’s very ill, and wandering in her mind. I’ll be back presently.”
“Well, don’t delay too long. I’m between two minds already whether I’ll not go back and give up the whole business.”