Years went by. The volcano burned blithely, and the upper orders danced on it. No court was more like that of a stage potentate than the court of the Irish Viceroy. No ridottos were so gorgeous as those of Dublin; no equipages so sumptuous; no nobles so magnificently reckless. Mr. Handel averred in broken German that he adored the Hibernian capital, and gave birth to his sublime creations for the edification of Dublin belles. The absentees returned home in troops, finding that in their mother's mansion were many fatted calves; and vied with one another, in the matter of Italian stuccoists and Parisian painters, for the display of a genteel taste. But, as the poet hath it, 'things are not always as they seem.' The crust of the volcano grew daily thinner. What a gnashing of teeth would result from its collapse!
The Grand Convention fell a victim to its leaders, and from a mighty engine of the national will shrivelled into an antic posturing. Mr. Grattan (the man of eighty-twopar excellence) perceived that he was overreached; that perfidious Albion shuffled one by one out of her engagements, that the independence, over which he had crowed like a revolutionary cock, was no more than an illusory phantom. The Renunciation Act was repealable at pleasure, he found, and no renunciation save in name. The horrid Poyning, the objectionable 6th of George III., tossed into limbo with such pomp, might become law again by a mere pen-scratch. Ireland was decked in the frippery of freedom, which, torn off piecemeal, would leave her naked and ashamed. The Volunteers, perceiving that their blaring and strutting had produced nothing real, looked sheepishly at one another and returned to their plain clothes. After all, they were asses in lions' skins; their association a theatrical pageant of national chivalry, which dazzled Europe for an instant till men smelt the sawdust and the orange-peel and recognised in the helmet a dishcover. During all this vapouring and trumpeting, England had held her own, by means of the subservient Lords and the heavily mortgaged Commons. The parliament, too base for shame, smiled unabashed; the Volunteers, conscience-smitten and in despair, broke up and fell to pieces. The Catholics were as much serfs as ever. Derry, whose conscience was troubled with compunctious visitings, went so far as to propose that the Catholics (burning source of trouble in all altercations) should emigrateen masseto Rome as a bodyguard for his Holiness; but the latter, dreading an incursion of three million savages, which would have been like an invasion of the Huns, declined with thanks the present, and the laudable scheme was given up.
Far-sighted folks became aware that the pretty tricks of the puppets were due to an English punchinello. The fantoccini did credit to their machinist, who was skilful at pulling of wires. Who was he? Why, Mr. Pitt the younger, who would have his dolls jump as he listed, though they should come to be shattered in the jumping. Mr. Pitt, the British premier, set his wits to work to keep all grades and classes squabbling. At one time, to exasperate the Papists, he gave an extra twist to the penal screw; at another, he untwisted it suddenly to anger the Orangemen. Coercion and relief were two reins in his skilled hands wherewith he sawed the mouth of poor rawboned Rosinante, till the harried animal came down upon its haunches. He established a forty-shilling franchise which gave votes to the poorest, most ignorant, and most dependent peasantry in Europe. This he declared was the divine gift of liberty. Nothing of the sort. It merely placed a fresh tool in the hands of large proprietors who were dying to be bribed and charmed to have something new to sell.
Though the Volunteers ceased to be a cause of uneasiness, it was plain to Mr. Pitt that a repetition of their military fandango must be made impossible. How was this to be accomplished? As it was, they had left behind them, when they vanished, the nucleus of a disease--a small but sturdy band of patriots, who were not to be bought or cajoled. Unless treated in time, this spot might inflame and grow contagious. How was it to be treated? That was the grave question whereon hung the peace of Erin. The honest handful saw the rock on which the Convention had split, and were humble enough to try and remedy the error. Theobald--romantic youngprotégéof Arthur Wolfe--was the first to show them the true case, to demonstrate that Ireland's harmony was England's disappointment; that the only hope for motherland lay, not in a commingling of a few red uniforms, or a picturesque mixing of social grades, but in a compact welding together for the common weal of the different religious creeds which had distracted the land with its dissensions since the Reformation. 'Till this is done,' he said, 'the Sassanagh will toss us as a battledore a shuttlecock. Establish the grand principle of liberty of conscience, bridge the abyss of mutual intolerance, stay the carnage of the first emotions of the heart! If the rights of men be duties to God, then are we of the same religion. Our creed of civil faith is the same. Let us agree then to exclude from our thoughts all things in which we differ, and be brethren in heart and mind for our mother's sake.' The words of the romantic young apostle touched his hearers on their tenderest chord, and they swore to learn wisdom by the past, and live in amity for ever. The quick revulsion from bigotry to tolerance was not so amazing as it seems, for Theobald Wolfe Tone was but the visible expression of the spirit of his age--the abuse-abhorring spirit which distinguished the eighteenth century, and culminated in the French upheaving of '89.
That sanguinary outburst, which blew into the elements a long-rooted despotism, and which clenched the new-fangled faith enunciated in the War of Independence, had an enormous effect on Ireland--an effect of which Mr. Pitt availed himself for his own purposes with his usual tact. The principle of '89 made its way to England, where the genius of the Constitution prevailed against its allurements; then passed across the Channel, where it was eagerly received by men who were being hounded on to recklessness. The adverse religious sects which had just vowed eternal amity, seeing what passed in Paris, looked on one another with alarm. The Catholic clergy grew suspicious of the reformers who extolled the conduct of France, because the newrégimehad produced Free Thought, or rather had endowed the bantling with strength which the great Voltaire had nourished. People were startled by bold views which were new to them. The timid looked down a chasm to which they could perceive no bottom, and shrank back. A fanatical few were for going all lengths at once, and demanding the help of France to produce an Irish upheaval. At this juncture a friendly English policy--a judicious combination of discipline and conciliation--would have allayed the brewing storm. But it was not the intention of British ministers that the country should be tranquillised just yet. Quite the contrary. They resolved to stir up such a tempest as should frighten Erin out of her poor wits, and drive her to distrust her own strength and her own wisdom for the rest of her natural existence.
Theobald Wolfe Tone--ardent, patriotic, fired by the golden thoughts of youth, and bursting with Utopian schemes--was just such a catspaw as was wanted. His bright earnest face beamed with the rays of truth; his pure life compelled respect; his rapt eloquence lured many to his side, despite the warnings of their judgment. Though a Protestant, he was scandalised by the Penal Code. He wandered like a discontented young Moses among his enslaved countrymen. From pamphleteering he took to declamation, and, like many another, became convinced by his own discourse. He started a society among the Presbyterians of Ulster for the encouragement of universal love, and dubbed it the Society of United Irishmen. It grew and flourished at Belfast, for all Irish projects which were bold and enterprising came into being in the north. In spite of Mr. Wolfe, of Curran, of Lady Glandore (who took up her brother'sprotégé), young Tone abandoned the Bar, and deliberately developed into an incendiary. He travelled over the country haranguing crowds, addressing meetings, demonstrating home truths, exhorting all to join the cause which should promote concord amongst Irishmen of all persuasions. A bloodless revolution was to be organised like that of '82, but on a surer basis. Instead of five hundred thousand, five millions of men were to stand up as one to demand a clear ratification of their rights, and, really united at last, would be certain of the crown of victory. Vainly his friends warned him off the precipice, declaring that the world was not ripe for a millennium, that the heart of man is desperately wicked, that five millions of men never were yet of one mind, that even a dozen Irishmen never yet agreed upon any given subject whatsoever. Tone was infatuated with his Utopian scheme, prepared like the pure-souled enthusiast that he was to give up his all to bring about its furtherance. What better catspaw could be selected by Mr. Pitt than this artless apostle in whom was no taint of guile?
If Tone's society had been left alone, it would have dwindled as over-virtuous for this world. It must be persecuted (so Mr. Pitt determined) till it flourished like a bay-tree. Then Tone and the United Irishmen must be stamped beneath the heel, and it would be odd indeed if they did not drag their tottering country in their downfall. So Mr. Pitt sat down to play a game of chess with unconscious Theobald, permitting him to frisk his pieces about the board till he chose to take them one by one. The game was heartless, for the players were deplorably ill-matched. What could a knot of earnest youths do against the forces of established government--a government which was not squeamish as to the weapons it employed? Master Tone was agitating for the Catholics, was he? Out with a relief bill, which, by bestowing illusory concessions, should exasperate the ultra-Protestants. Then with lightning-speed, in dazzling sequence, a host of contradictory enactments, such as should keep the ball a-rolling. Towns were garrisoned with English troops, armed assemblies suppressed, public discussions forbidden, the sale of ammunition prohibited, conventions of delegates rendered penal. A deft touch of personal persecution besides, and the United Irishmen would become martyrs.
Before they could fully understand this complex phalanx of decrees, Tone and his lieutenants--driven by events as by a remorseless broom--found themselves transformed from a harmless debating club into a secret society, proscribed and outlawed. They discovered, too, that an illegal Star Chamber--a threatening Wehmgericht--had been created somehow to spy out their ways; that a secret council was established in the Castle, which was garnished with bristling bayonets, and supplied with paid informers.
They buffeted like beasts in a net. The more they struggled, the more entangled they became. Then, hot-headed to begin with, they grew frantic. Must it be war? they howled. War be it then, though you have arms and we have none. With the sacred cause we will win or perish. Tear your colours from the staff, O people; muffle your drums and beat your funeral march if ye are not prepared to stand in the breach with us, to fall or conquer, for God and motherland!
Fate gave Mr. Pitt a cruel game to play, but he was not one to blench at phantoms. It was a game beset with difficulties--tortuous, dirty, dark. So he turned up his cuffs and played it like the bold man he was, without flinching; in an age, too, when the end was acknowledged to justify the means. The crime which he had to commit was of his master's ordering, and must lie at his door--at the door of good King George, that well-meaning stupid boor. On his shoulders and no others must be laid the horrors of '98--of that hideous carnival which, though it took place but eighty years ago, stands without rival in the annals of human wickedness. Some, maybe, will hope that this chronicle is overdrawn. Unhappily it is not so. There is no historical fact recorded in these pages in connection with that bitter time for which there exists not ample evidence. The cruelty of devils lies dormant in each one of us. From 1796 to 1800, it had full play in Ireland. There is no doubt that if Mr. Pitt had been allowed his way, he would have dealt fairly by the sister island; that he intended a broad emancipation of the serfs, an honourable course which would have landed him on his father's pinnacle. But his hands were tied in two ways. First by the bigotry of George, who loathed with a lunatic abhorrence all opinions which differed from his own; secondly, by the upheaval of '89, which, by overturning established dogmas, opened out awful vistas of new danger to the body politic. The position being what it was, he cut his coat according to his cloth, accepted what he could not help, and arranged that a religious feud must be fomented to boiling-point, in order to make its suppression an excuse for political slavery.
To carry out this project he needed a trusty coadjutor; one who was crafty, ambitious, selfish, clever, unprincipled, and, above all, Irish; and thisrara avishe found in the Irish chancellor, Lord Clare (whose acquaintance we made in 1783, when he was Fitzgibbon, attorney-general). This man he reckoned up at once at his true worth, and set him accordingly to fight the battle with the patriots. A better tool it was not possible to find, for he despised his countrymen for their unpractical romance, looking on them as stepping-stones for his own personal aggrandisement. His domineering airs had in the intervening time coerced to his own way of thinking a host of weathercock viceroys, had raised him to the woolsack, rendered him supreme in the law courts. Mr. Pitt begged this glorious creature to make a trip to London, and proceeded to open his mind to him, or rather that murky cupboard which he exposed as such to the admiration of his dolls, when he chose to cajole them into the belief that they were colleagues.
'We have an ensanguined path to tread, my dear Lord Clare,' he said, with raised eyebrows; 'but it is the shortest and the safest. We must coax on these boys to displays of rashness till they shall drive the most respectable to take refuge in our bosom. A prison shall cool the ardour of the fanatics. Gold shall be the portion of those who waver. Bloody, say you? Is not Ireland already traceable in the statute-book as a wounded man in a crowd is tracked by his wounds? A few transitory troubles--mere spasms, nothing more--and our patient will be calm. Let the jade be tied hand and foot, and we'll mop up the blood and she will come to hug her chains. As for you, my dear lord,' he went on with a familiar smirk, which warmed Lord Clare with pleasure, 'you will be a gainer in several ways. Your talents are wasted in that poky little house on College Green. We want men of your kidney at St. Stephen's, 'fore Gad we do!' and Lord Clare took the bait, and the English premier rubbed his hands behind his back. It was but a new phase of a time-honoured policy. Chancellor and patriots should be made to plunge their paws into the fire; then Mr. Pitt in his ambush would quietly eat the nut.
So the new society of United Irishmen pursued its desperate way, upheld in fainting moments by the ardour of its young apostle; and the chancellor returned home to set traps to catch his feet; and in order to facilitate his movements a new viceroy was sent over--a gabbling weak man, who would do as he was bid; whose private life was irreproachable; who in public was an idiot; who would obey the chancellor in all things; whose name was my Lord Camden.
As might have been expected, Theobald fell into the snare. His lieutenants were locked up. Undismayed, he prated, with increased vehemence, of a bondage worse than that of Egypt, called on the men of Ulster to break down the Penal Code; pointed out that the oppressor was as vicious as an Eastern despot, that the oppressed was disfigured into the semblance of a beast. The awakened Presbyterians answered to his call; and, when they had sufficiently committed themselves, the watchful chancellor put down his claw on them. Tone's career was short. Very soon he too was cast into gaol, while small fry were allowed to flap their wings till their mission, too, should be accomplished. But Mr. Pitt, if a strong, was not an ungenerous foe. He respected the young man, who was made of the stuff which makes heroes. By his command Theobald was incarcerated in Newgate for a brief space, to chew the cud of his vain imaginings, and then was given back his liberty on condition of departing from the country which he loved. Sadly he accepted the boon which was tossed to him--for choice lay 'twixt exile and the Kilmainham minuet; despatched his faithful wife before him to America; and (Mr. Pitt and the chancellor permitting) called his closest friends around him once again ere he shook their hands for the last time. He stands in the gloaming now, bareheaded, to pour out a last burning exhortation to his disciples as we take up the clue of this our chronicle, whose thread shall no more be broken.
It is the lovely evening of the 12th of July, 1795. The scene a triangular field known as 'The Garden' on the shore of Dublin Bay, from whence may be duskily distinguished on the one side the cupolas and spires of the city; on the other, at the end of a promontory jutting out into the sea, the ivy-clad walls of Strogue Abbey, bowered in umbrageous woods. Joy-chimes are wafted on the breeze, and now and again a puff of smoke shows as a white spot across the bay, and a second later the boom of a royal salute shakes the hollyhocks and causes the little group to shiver. It is the anniversary of William, who saved us from wooden shoes. Mr. Curran--apart from the rest--beats his cane testily upon the ground, and murmurs: 'Lord Clare is justified in despising them. The pack of fools! Jigging round Juggernaut at this minute with orange lilies and foolish banners! Even so Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Will my countrymen learn wisdom? Of course not. Never.'
The evening light shines full on the face of the young enthusiast, marking in relief the deep cuts chiselled by premature sorrow on his cheek. He is effeminate-looking but genteel, with long lank hair simply caught back behind. His thin figure appears more slight than usual, his pale face more wan, in the anxious eyes of his companions; his hands more thin and feverish as one by one he clasps with a lingering pressure those that are held out to him.
'Thanks, friends!' he says, with a weary smile. 'It was idle in me to bid you take the oath once more; for having once sworn I know you will be faithful. Yet will it be as music to mine ears, as I roam in a foreign land, to recall the solemn cadence of your beloved voices. Nay--weep not! Be of good cheer. See these flowers around, and take courage with the omen. Mark how they droop and sink--grieving together for the dying-day. A few hours of sleep and they will wake refreshed again, and lift up their loving heads unto the sun, with dew-tears of gladness glistening upon their eyelids.'
'Oh, Theobald, what will become of us when you are gone?' cries out Robert Emmett, a boy of seventeen. 'You carry hope with you in the folds of your mantle. Once gone, we shall be left in darkness, groping.'
Tone shuddered, and fought with himself against presentiment.
'I have watched over the cradle of Liberty,' he whispered, dreamily. 'God forbid that I should ever see its hearse.' Then passing his palm across his eyes as if to shut out a nightmare, he said, laying a hand on the broad shoulder of a young man beside him, 'Courage, boy Robert! True, I go from you. But here is the Elisha who shall take up the mantle which I leave a legacy with Hope wrapped in it. Look up to your brother Thomas, Robert--the wise and prudent, the sage man in counsel. Follow him as you have followed me; faithfully, truly, till I return. For I shall return, if God so wills it, I promise you. This night I sail for America, but am under no promise to stay there. I shall make my way to France, and lay our grievances at the feet of the Directory. There is nothing for it but to amputate the right hand of England. Oh, how I hate the name of the thrice accursed! France is the surgeon who shall do the job. I would fain give a toast before I go, if Doreen will lend the flask she hugs so carefully.'
'It is for your journey, Theobald,' was Doreen's soft answer.
'Never mind me,' he returned, with assumed gaiety. 'Let us pour a last libation to our common mother.'
A man who had been spreading his great length upon the grass, now jumped up with an oath. A giant he was; evidently, from his dress, belonging to the half-mounted class. His big kindly flat face was shaded by a Beresford bobwig, under which twinkled a pair of roguish eyes set in a sallow skin. His buckskin breeches were worn and greasy; his half-jack-boots were adorned with huge silver spurs; while a faded scarlet vest (fur-trimmed, though it was summer) closed over his broad chest; and a square-cut snuff-coloured coat, with all the cloth in it, hung from his brawny shoulders.
'Theobald!' he shouted, in a voice which sent the owls whirling seaward, 'you shall not go from us. Why not lie hidden somewhere, and direct us still? Can we not be trusted to keep the secret? You look at things too blackly. We need no French help, but can win our way as the Volunteers did--by moral force; or if we must fight, can quite look after ourselves. Don't tell me. These English are not ogres.'
'Oh, stay with us, dear Theobald!' cried eagerly Robert Emmett, the boy of seventeen. 'Cassidy is right. We will have no help from France--for that would imply bloodshed--the blood of our own brethren--and the curse of God is upon fratricide.'
Tone shook his head, and answered bluntly:
'No! That was all very well twelve years since; but the day for a peaceful revolution's past. On the heads of those who forced us to seek foreign aid shall the blood-curse be. Our omelette can't be made without a breaking of eggs. For three years we've dribbled in and out of Newgate and Kilmainham, and know all their holes and corners, and dread neither prison any more. We must strike, and that sharply, but are not strong enough alone.'
'Theobald!' observed Mr. Curran, from his grass-knoll, 'it's a Upas-tree you've planted. Take heed lest it blight the land.'
'We must not be led away by a morbid anxiety about a little life,' rejoined the apostle. 'I go a solitary wanderer, but shall return with an army at my back--and then!' He paused, as though delving into futurity, and the prospect which he saw upon its mirror was reassuring; for with new courage he turned to his band and said: 'Keep together, Protestant and Catholic, forL'Union fait la Force, and Britain will try to divide you. Come what may, hold on by one another. Thomas Emmet, old friend! as a literary man and editor of the "Press," it is your duty to keep this before the public. Study the tactics of the foe, that one by one they may be exposed in time. And you, Cassidy,' he continued, laying a hand tenderly on the giant's arm, 'keep watch over your too ingenuous nature, lest you find yourself betrayed. In your way you are a clever fellow, but, like most people of your bulk, unduly innocent. I speak with loving authority to you, for is not your sister my dear wife, who, next to Erin, holds all my heart? You are too servile to Lord Clare, Cassidy, who, himself an Irishman, is the bitterest enemy that Ireland ever had. Beware lest he twist you to his purpose, for the undoing of us all. You are also on too intimate terms with Sirr--the town-major--that shameful jackal of my Lord Clare's.'
'You would not suspect me, Theobald!' cried the giant, ruefully. 'I'm not more wise than others, but I mean well.'
'No, indeed!' returned his brother-in-law. 'Would to God that we had more such hearts as yours amongst us! But keep watch and ward, lest you be overreached, for you are simple.'
'My Lord Clare is partial to me, and tells me many things,' apologised the giant, with a twinkle in his eye. 'Maybe I'm not so stupid as I look, and can unravel a fact from a careless hint. As for Sirr, I don't care two pins for him; yet who knows how useful he may prove to us? He has apartments in the Castle--is hand and glove with Secretary Cooke; through him we may be able to tamper with the soldiery, turning the arms of Government against itself, for the town-major is no man of straw.'
But Tone shook his head.
'It is ill dealing with traitors' weapons,' he retorted. 'In a passage of wits, you will certainly be worsted, for you are too open, too blundering.'
Cassidy looked demurely at the rest, with his whimsical half-smile, as though to ask whether this verdict on his character were a compliment or not; and handsome Doreen smiled back on him in her grave way as she handed the flask and cup to Tone, and twined her arm round Sara Curran's waist.
A pretty picture were these two girls--who loitered a little amongst the darkling flowers, while Tone was speaking his farewell. Doreen had fulfilled the promise of her childhood, and was now a statuesque woman of two-and-twenty, with rich warm blood mantling under an olive skin--soft eyes of the brown colour of a mountain stream, shaded by long silken lashes--and an aquiline nose whose nostrils were as finely cut and sensitive as were her aunt's. People wondered where she got her scornful look, for Mr. Arthur Wolfe (attorney-general now) was the most peaceable and quiet of men, while all the world knew that her retiring mother had faded from excess of meekness. Her aunt, Lady Glandore, had watched her growth approvingly, for the tall supple form was what her own had been--as was the swan-like neck and head-toss. She approved and seemed quite to like her niece till she remembered that she was a Papist and a blot on the escutcheon; then she despised her, yet never dared to touch forbidden ground save in a covert way; for Doreen had a temper, when roused, as self-asserting as her own, and her aunt was grown old before her time; too old to rise without an effort at the sound of the war-trumpet.
Doreen was dutiful to her aunt in most things; but on the subject of her oppressed religion was a very tigress. If Lady Glandore permitted herself too broad a sally, those eyes with the strongly-marked black pupils would shoot forth a cairngorm flame--that mass of dark brown hair which hung in natural curls after the Irish fashion down her back, would shake like a lion's crest, and my lady would retire from the field discomfited. Yet this occurred but seldom, and folks could only guess how the Penal Code burned into her flesh by a certain unnatural quietude and an artificial repose of manner beyond her years.
Of course she adored Tone, the champion who had wrecked his life on behalf of three million serfs who were her brethren, and under his guidance became quite a little conspirator, niece though she was of an ultra-Protestant grandee, daughter of the attorney-general, who, as such, was crown prosecutor of her allies. It may be asked, how came her aunt to permit the girl to form such dangerous ties? The damsel was wayward, and the aunt a victim of some secret canker, over which she brooded more and more as her hair blanched. A hard tussle or two, and practically she lowered her standard. The girl went whither she listed, and chose as bosom friend Sara Curran, daughter of the member of parliament, to whom her father was deeply attached; and who had on the occasion of her uncle's tragic end struck up a queer friendship with her aunt, which flourished by reason of its incongruity.
Doreen, from the time she could first toddle, had been accustomed to scour the country on ponyback in company with her cousins, and these rides--more frequently than not--had for object the Priory--a comfortable nest which Curran had taken to himself near Rathfarnham--where they were regaled on tea and cakes by little Sara, the lawyer's baby child. Sara and Doreen became fast friends as they grew up--the faster probably because Doreen, who was the elder by several years, was strong as the sapling oak, while Sara was clinging like the honeysuckle.
Of course Curran, whose business kept him for many hours daily in the courts of law and House of Commons, could desire no better companion for his pet than the niece of the Countess of Glandore--the daughter of his friend and superior, Arthur Wolfe; and so as her cousins grew into men and left her more and more alone, she frequented more and more the Priory, where no one mocked her faith, and where she frequently met Theobald.
Wolfe-Tone and the Emmetts met frequently at Curran's, and their large-minded talk and broad generous views seemed to her like the wind which has passed over seaweed, compared with her aunt's narrow drone, the vain self-vaunting of my Lord Clare, the drunken ribaldry and coarse jests of her cousin Lord Glandore. So she, in her goldlaced riding-habit, had come too to the tryst that she might look on her hero once again; and for propriety's sake had brought as escort Papa Curran and gentle Sara, who, though only sixteen, was already casting timid sheep's-eyes at the younger of the two Emmetts--a gownsman at this time in the University.
Bashful Sara had relapsed into tears several times during Tone's discourse--a pale, fair, pretty creature she was, with a dazzling skin and light-blue eyes--and showed symptoms of hysteria when the patriot proposed a final libation. Not that she had any reason for emotion (such as Doreen might with more reason have displayed), being the eye-apple of a prosperous barrister who professed the dominant faith; but she knew that young Robert, whose shoes she would have knelt and kissed, was deeply bitten with the prevailing mania, and maybe she had besides a dim presentiment of the trouble which was to pour later upon her head and his. Be that as it may, she sank upon the ground now and sobbed, while Tone held forth the cup which Doreen had filled with a steady hand.
'A toast, dear friends--the last we may drink together!' he said; and gazed on the plashing waters, which glowed with the last gleam of the sun that was no more. 'I give you Mother Erin! May she soon be decked in green ribbons by a French milliner!'
Again and again did Doreen, a calm Hebe, fill the goblet, which was drained by each man present with a murmured 'Amen!'
The sun had died behind the Wicklow hills; still the Protestant chimes brayed fitfully across the sea, though the cannon at dusk were silent. Far off from the direction of Strogue Abbey came a noise of galloping hoofs, which grew gradually louder and louder, while every man looked at his neighbour as though expecting some new misfortune. No wonder they were uneasy, for their proceedings were watched, and a new disaster happened daily. Presently Mr. Curran, established as vidette, descried a well-known horseman, who pulled up sharply in the road, and dismounting, vaulted lightly over the wall.
'Terence!' he exclaimed with mixed feelings, as he beheld a finely-grown young man, whose round face was remarkable for mobile eyebrows, a fearless eye, and puckers of fun about a sensitive mouth, 'what are you doing here? Be off!'
'Yes, Terence,' returned a cheery voice, 'or Councillor Crosbie, if you please, since I have the honour now to act as your worship's junior. Where's Tone? Not gone. Thank goodness! I must clasp the dear lad's hand before he goes.'
Mr. Curran shook his mane back like a retriever that has bathed, which was a trick he had when worried.
'Donkey! what do you here?' he grumbled. 'Are we not fools enough without you? You belong to another race, which has nought in common with our troubles. Take my advice, and just trot home again. If you want to be silly, join the Cherokees as your brother has, or the Blasters, or the Hellfires. Leave plotting to the children of the soil.'
The young man, who was good-looking, with the comeliness which a fresh complexion gives, showed his white teeth, and broke into a merry laugh.
'In an evil temper,' he remarked. 'Gone without dinner, eh? If I am not a drunkard and a gambler, whose fault is it, sir, but yours? Who taught me that as a younger son I have my way to carve through life? Who made me choose the Bar? Who superintended my studies, and gave a helping hand?You--you cross Curran! and, believe me, I'm not ungrateful, though a bit more idle than you like.'
'Then get you gone, and leave us to our folly,' was the testy rejoinder. 'I won't have your mother saying some day that I brought her boy to danger, and instilled ideas into his vacant mind which put his neck in danger.'
'Fiddlededee!' laughed the good-humoured scapegrace. 'You are no more a conspirator than I. Why are you here, and why have you brought my cousin if awful rites are going forward?'
'Because I'm an ass!' growled the other. 'Conspirator--why not, pray? My heart is sick when I look round me. Why should I not be maddened as others are? Do I love Erin less? Doreen belongs through her religion to the people, and it is fitting she should sorrow with them. Yes, it is maddening?' he pursued, kindling suddenly, and breaking through the crust in which for prudence' sake he cased himself, as the thoughts over which he had been brooding took form. 'What is to become of us? It would have been merciful if Spencer's desire had been gratified, and the land turned into a seapool. Our travail is long, and endeth not. Our master gives us a hangman and a taxgatherer; what more should such as we require? His laws are like shoes sent forth for exportation. 'Twere idle to take our measures, for if they pinch us, what matters it? We stand between a social Scylla and Charybdis. Poets and visionaries, like this poor fool here, work on the hare-brained people, whose craving for freedom is whetted to voracity; and, led by the blind, they tumble into traps, at which a less ardent nation would be moved to laughter. Temerity, despair, annihilation--that is themot d'ordre. See if I am not a true prophet. And the luxurious nobles--do they help with their counsel? Not they! Their twin-gods are their belly and their lust. They have nothing in common with the people.'
'The French shall drive them into the sea,' remarked Tone, placidly.
'The French, the French!' retorted Curran. 'Much good may they do us! A revolution achieved by such means would merely mean a change of masters. You live in a fool's paradise, Theobald. I can see farther into futurity than you, for I'm older, worse luck. I see a time coming--nay, it's close at hand--when a spectre will be set up and nicknamed Justice; which, if God wills, it shall be my mission to tear down. Yet what may I do with my little weight? A mean weak man with feeble health. May I be the log to stop the wheels of the triumphal car? Verily, the ways of Heaven are inscrutable!'
It was rarely that the little advocate spoke out so plainly. His friends knew that he ever regarded his country with the idolatry of a lover, that to her he gave freely all he had to give; through the stages of her pride, her hope, her struggles and despondency, his heart was hers for better and for worse; and therefore many marvelled that, actively, he should have held aloof from the patriot band. Nobody could charge him with cowardice. Terence himself had never solved this mystery, although as his junior he saw more than most of the workings of Curran's mind. He had wondered at his chief's coldness in a careless way, till now, when it became patent to him, as to the rest, that Curran's second sight beheld the possibility of state trials in the future, where one would be needed to stand up for the accused whose heart was steadfast, whose courage was indomitable. Terence felt sure his chief was wrong--the beardless are always wisest in their own esteem--for to the honest boy it seemed impossible that Albion could be so base.
Yet the notion was grand that, despising dignities, the little lawyer should be keeping himself in reserve for a Herculean labour, that he should be deliberately laying himself out to stand by those whom others would desert; and so, to the knot of bystanders in the gloaming, the ugly pigmy of a man appeared sublime, as he sat in an attitude of profound dejection, with the sweat of strong emotion in beads upon his forehead and on the black elflocks of his untidy hair.
The jolly giant Cassidy rapped out a huge oath, and vowed with a string of expletives that he should be 'shillooed' forthwith. The Emmett brothers fairly wept; tears stood in the eyes of the statuesque Doreen; Theobald knelt down before him on the dewy grass, and entreated a farewell blessing ere he went.
'The Lord bless and keep you, my poor friend!' Curran whispered in a broken voice. 'Whether He wills that you should die an exile, or that you should return to us with glory, God be with you! May it never be my lot to stand up in court for you! or if it must be so, may inspired words be given me to save you from your danger! Now we must be separating, or we'll have the Castle spies on us.'
Followed by many a God-speed Tone vanished in the darkness. All listened to his retreating steps, wondering when and how they might ever meet again. Curran heaved a sigh, and was the cynical man of the world once more, with the dancing eye and whimsical half-melancholy smile, who threw all the judges on circuit into convulsions with his wit, and stirred the jury to unseemly laughter.
'Terence,' he said, linking his arm in that of his junior, while the young ladies, helped by the Emmetts, mounted their horses, 'you were wrong to come here. My lady will be angry if you mix with the common riffraff. What would you say if she pulled her purse-strings tight, you extravagant young dog? The idea of one of your birth worrying himself about the people's wrongs is of course preposterous; therefore, to please your mother, you had best give them a wide berth. My Lord Clare shall get you a snug post with nothing to do, and vast emoluments such as becomes a lord's brother, and then you'll be rich and independent in no time, while I am still prosing over briefs.'
Terence, in whose face the wicked Glandore expression was tempered by good-nature, was not pleased with the banter of his chief, for his cousin was at his elbow, who always persisted in looking on him as a boy, though he was a great fellow of four-and-twenty who was constantly arraying himself in gorgeous clothes to please her. A tantalising cousin was Miss Doreen to him; suggesting broidered capes and becoming ruffles when amiably disposed, which, when with pain and grief he got them made, received no notice from her whatsoever. He chose to imagine that he was desperately in love with the beautiful Miss Wolfe, and was proud of his passion, though she laughed at him. Vainly he sighed; yet no worm fed upon his damask cheek. Albeit he pretended to be very wretched, he was not; for his life was before him and he enjoyed it thoroughly, and was the victim of an amazing appetite, and would probably have forgotten all about Miss Wolfe in a week (though he would have smitten you with a big stick if you dared to hint as much) if her lithe figure had been removed from his sight for that brief period. Sometimes he took it into his head that she fancied Shane, and then he was pierced through and through with jealousy, for the brothers never could get on, and the younger one knew my lord to be not only thick of skull, but drunken and dissolute too, even beyond the average of his compeers; a fire-eater, whose hand was never off his sword, who cared more for dogs than women, more for himself than either, and who as a husband would be certain to bring misery upon the girl. Then again he would be consoled for an instant by the reflection that it does not answer at all for first cousins to marry; and then his longings would get the better of him, as he marked the wealth of the brown hair which had a golden ripple through it, the finely developed bust, the eyes like peatwater. She was interesting, and his heart was soft. He watched her furtively sometimes in her fits of sadness; when she sat behind a tambour at the Strogue hall-window, gazing, with eyes that saw nothing, at the fishing-boats upon the bay, as they splashed along with yellow sails and clumsy oars upon their mirrored doubles, till tears fell one by one upon her work, like thunderdrops upon a window-pane; and he could tell that she was dreaming of her people. Then his heart yearned towards Doreen. He longed to seize her in his lusty arms, crying:
'My beloved! I am poor, and you are rich' (for Mr. Wolfe had put by a cosy nest-egg). 'Our tastes are simple. I will try to live upon love and my allowance. You shall keep all your fortune to yourself--only be mine, my very own!' But somehow he never said the words, for something told him that she would only smile, and on second thoughts he was glad he had not spoken.
It would have been wrong in her to scoff, for the proposal would have been as unusual as disinterested; but girls will laugh at improper moments. Miss Wolfe was an heiress as times went, and likely to be richer; impecunious squires and squireens were legion; and the abduction clubs not yet quite stamped out. This, indeed, was one reason why she spent most of her time at Strogue instead of with her father in Dublin; for he, easygoing in most things, was painfully alive to the possibility of finding his daughter stolen one day when he was in court, to be bucketed about the country without a change of linen till his reluctant consent was wrung to a match with some ne'er-do-well.
At Strogue such a thing could hardly happen, for the prestige of the Glandores was hedged about with terror, and every ne'er-do-well knew that to play Paris to the Helen of the fair Doreen--to carry her off from the sanctuary of Strogue Abbey--would be to call down dolorous reprisals from her two stalwart cousins.
So, having her constantly before his vision, Terence adored the damsel wildly by fits and starts, hating her when she snubbed him, taking a loyal interest, for her sake, in the Penal Code and the United Irishmen; and was not aware that he stood on the verge of the political maelstrom, in whoso eddies so many good Irishmen had come to drowning.
Terence professed in nowise to be a patriot. He said openly that the United Irishmen deceived themselves, that they were fond of inventing imaginary terrors, that Lord Clare, though personally he disliked him, was an estimable statesman, the right man in the right place. Doreen was angry with him at times for this. Then he had an excuse for kissing her to make it up, for the flash from her grave eyes was only summer lightning. But to be accused of mercenary motives, even in banter, was quite another thing, because all the world knew that the Irish aristocracy, as a body, did not shine in the way of unselfishness, and Terence's nature was too open and honest, his carelessness as to money too deep-seated, for him to feel aught but disgust at being coupled with the pensioners. It was not true that he was mercenary, but it might easily have been so. Who knows what might have been if my lady had not proved liberal--a kind mother? Many are virtuous so long as they are not tempted. Yes. You will doubtless be surprised to hear that my lady had worked no evil to her second son. Madam Gillin's singular office had for the space of twelve years been a sinecure. The Countess never refused him money when he asked for it, and was apparently a model mother to the youth, though she certainly showed a strong partiality for Shane, which may be accounted for by the fact that mothers invariably doat upon their prodigals, and milord resembled his father not a little.
Now Curran, being quite at home at the Abbey, knew all these ins and outs and petty details. Terence's indignation, therefore, amused him. He burst into a peal of merriment when the young man asked, tartly, what he meant by his insinuations.
'I know Lord Clare offered me a place,' he said, with a side-glance of apology at his cousin; 'but I refused it with disdain. Though he's a worthy man I don't like him, because he orders us about, and I would not be under any obligation to him for the world. My mother's too fond of the chancellor----'
'What if you were assured that he's a traitor?' Curran asked, with mock gravity.
'I'd become a United Irishman to upset him!' returned the prompt scapegrace.
'Nonsense!' replied his friend, growing serious. 'No, no. It's an ill subject for jesting. Treason is a dangerous pastime, which it behoves you to keep clear of for the sake of your noble name. Don't forget that, being half an Englishman, half of your allegiance is due to the British Crown--at least so the Lords think. With us it's different. To try the bird, the spur must touch his blood. Come, let's be off. Good-night, boys!'
And so the conference terminated.
The elder Emmett rode moodily to Dublin, concocting inflammatory articles for the benefit of the newspaper which he edited, reflecting too, not without misgivings, upon the mantle which had fallen, unbidden, on his shoulders. Robert, his excitable brother, walked home to Trinity College with elastic step, his brain still whirling with the outlaw's parting words. The rest were bound for Strogue, where my lady sat wondering, no doubt, what could keep them out so late. Cassidy, who was a good singer, and amusing in other ways, had been invited to the Abbey by Terence. As for Curran and his daughter, they often sojourned there, and were certain of a hearty welcome, for their own sake now, as well as Arthur Wolfe's.
None of the party spoke as they cantered briskly by the shore. Curran was upbraiding himself for want of caution in betraying his true sentiments even to close friends. Few saw as far as he, and the very air of Innisfail breathed treachery. His daughter, gentle Sara, whose fair locks clustered like silk cocoons about her baby-face, was in an ecstatic trance as she bumped up and down on her rough pony.
What signified bumps, when the subject of her thoughts was Robert, the dear, delightful undergraduate? She would have bumped all the world over for him, though she was modesty itself, and he oblivious that she existed. It was pleasant to think that he, at least, was bound by no rash oath. It would be a sweet task, if possible, to keep him from the toils.
Doreen rode ahead, plunged in one of her sad moods, as she thought of the future of the wanderer, who had given up all he possessed in the world to bring about the freeing of her people. Might any woman's platonic worship make good that loss to him? Would she ever see him again, and under what circumstances?
Terence read her thoughts, and was cross at her devotion to this outlaw, a condition of mind which even he perceived was not proper in a well-brought-up young lady. Of course everybody respected Tone, and liked him, too, for his excellent qualities. She could not marry him, that was one comfort, for he was already married to the sister of this great hulking giant, Cassidy, who chirruped out scraps of song as though Erin was the most prosperous of motherlands. But it certainly seemed wrong, to the sage youth, that a handsome young woman should be on confidential terms with so many strange young men. Her aunt, he knew, objected to it strongly, but unaccountably held her peace. Then he laughed, in spite of his displeasure, at the conceit of any one interfering with Doreen--the demure damsel who pursued her calm way, enslaving all and taking note of none, as though she had taken vows of perpetual maidenhood--had cut herself adrift for the role of a Jeanne d'Arc.