The countess was much scandalised at the scene from which she had escaped, and favoured her niece with decided opinions on the subject, as six horses dragged the carriage through the night along the road to Drogheda.
'This will give you a notion, my dear,' she said, 'of the results of letting low people have too much of their own way. I confess that Lord Clare's conduct surprises me. If your friends the United Irishmen were to obtain the upper hand for a few days, they would disgrace themselves and disgust the world. You can't expect wisdom from a Helot-class.'
'It was not my friends who misbehaved themselves to-night,' Doreen retorted, 'but yours; the vulgar squireens and half-mounted gentry, who belong to the dominant party.'
'They certainly should have learnt manners from their betters,' acquiesced my lady, lowering her standard. She had seen but little of the world of late, had been content to view events through coloured glasses, and the hasty glimpse of garish daylight which had just flashed out saddened and shocked her. She began unconsciously to wonder whether Lord Clare had always spoken the truth. It would be hard, she felt, to lose faith in her old friend. Then the tangle of long-rooted prejudice, parted for an instant, closed round her again. 'Well, well! the squireens might possibly be more brutish than was desirable; but they were at least Protestants, and as such, superior to the Helots over whom they tyrannized!'
This reflection was a comfort to my lady; for she was not a bad woman, but one whose sympathies had been narrowed by the hardness of the world, and who had grown as uncharitable as many excellent people are who, professing to be more enlightened than their neighbours, are certain that they only are right, and all those who differ from them wrong.
Doreen lay back on the cushions, too sore in mind and body to carry on the argument. All that she could distinctly realise was that hope had flown away; that Theobald had been near at hand and was gone; that perhaps he had been captured and executed. What must he have suffered to have been within touch of motherland, only to be swept back again to sea! Hope, forsooth! What is hope? too often but long-drawn disappointment in disguise!
The party jerked and jolted over the interminable road. The hostelries at Drogheda and Dundalk were full. It was well that my lord had ridden forward, for so many families were beginning to steal out of Dublin that, as an ostler put it, there was a 'furious penury of beds.'
At Derry they were compelled to leave the great family coach, for there was only a rough track along each wild bank of Lough Swilly, at whose mouth--its feet laved by the Atlantic--stood the island home of the pirate earls of Ennishowen. Their yacht lay ready in Rathmelton harbour; but Shane said he preferred riding across the bog to Malin Head, whence a boat would transport him in no time to Glas-aitch-é; and Doreen offered to ride too, even in his company--so anxious was she in her numbed condition to divert her thoughts by exercise. My lady--her projects being what they were--was little likely to object to a prolongedtête-à-têtewhich might assist in the realisation of cherished wishes; but her own riding-days were over, she said. She would take the yacht, and would not be sorry of a few hours' solitude. Poor mother! She was sacrificing more to her elder-born than he would probably ever know, in revisiting the ill-omened place--where that which darkened her life had been accomplished--where everything would prattle of that past time which it had been a never-ending struggle to forget. She desired to look again on the weather-worn parapets and slender watch-tower of Glas-aitch-é Castle alone, lest her face should betray her feelings, and hint at the secret which had blanched her hair before its time.
The triangular peninsula which lies 'twixt Lough Swilly and Lough Foyle has been known, time out of mind, as Ennishowen; has belonged to the pirate earls for centuries, who, by reason of their craft, built themselves a fortress years ago on the sea as more convenient than a dwelling on mainland. It was a territory well suited to such masters, for, by guarding its narrow neck, it could be converted into an impenetrable fastness which was protected by sheer cliffs to seaward, whilst its internal features rendered it a foolhardy proceeding to attempt to invade it from the land side. Hence its population was a peculiar one, differing in many respects from the other dwellers in Donegal. When James I. planted Ulster with staunch Protestants, the ousted Catholics fled, some to Connaught, some to the extreme points of the north-western county where nothing flourished but wild birds. A large number took refuge in Ennishowen, where they embraced the trade of fishing, eking out a precarious existence by rearing flocks of geese upon the barren moors, whilst their wives wove frieze for clothing. An independent, warm-hearted, frugal, superstitious colony, extremely poor but decent, accustomed from the cradle to endure all hardships with a cheerful mien, too far removed from the world to know aught of Orangeism. Imbued with the clannish feeling which elsewhere had nearly vanished, they looked to Glas-aitch-é with reverence as to a holy shrine, and fully believed that the bodyguard of Sir Amorey were sleeping by their horses in the sea-caves ready to defend the fortress if peril dared to threaten it. It was evident that if the disease, which Lord Clare was so fond of discussing, should take a serious turn in the north, it would be well for the chiefs to be among their followers, at least those who were friendly with the Government; for a timely word might prevent much trouble--a timely order be of incalculable service. My Lord Glandore, then, carried with him the blessings of the executive, with sundry vague promises of good things in store for him if he showed prudence, and directions as to how his time would be best spent; namely, in cajoling the peasants to put their shoulders to the wheel for the speedy erection of beacons along the seaboard. The recent Gallic escapade (for Hoche's expedition was really nothing more) taught the executive a lesson. Happily the fleet, or a portion of it, had been driven upon the coast of Bantry, whose inhabitants, being disinclined to rebellion, looked on the tricolour with the eye of unconcern. But for the blessed wind, the expedition might have landed on some more friendly spot, and be half-way to Dublin before the Viceroy heard anything about it. The enemy must not have such a chance again. Martello towers must be built within short distances all round the coast. On the apparition of the tricolour a fire must be kindled, which should be the signal for a second on the summit of the next tower, and so on; so that in case of danger a girdle of fires would encircle the island, warning the soldiery in all directions--speeding intelligence to the capital in the twinkling of an eye.
My Lord Glandore was to busy himself with this matter so far as Donegal was concerned, and his sense of self-importance was so far tickled and amused that for awhile he endured, without too much swearing, the temporary separation from his Norah.
So my lady sailed up Lough Swilly, marking the new forts of Rathmullen and Knockalla, of Duneen and Inch, which gave to it a resemblance to a shark's mouth with teeth set raggedly in either jaw; whilst her son and niece started in the twilight before sunrise with a wild ride before them of forty miles and more. First they passed rows of mud-huts in straggling knots beside the way, which became more sparse as they advanced; crazy hovels whose rotten roofs were kept together by hay-ropes--thatch dyed to richness by decay, adorned with dry tufts of oats and barley, wafted in the summertime from some less forbidding spot. Their ears could catch the clicking of a homely loom within as they passed, ere the housewife, low-browed and heavy-jowled, came to her door to gape at the unusual sight of strangers, an amusement in which she was speedily joined by a pack of naked children, then by her goodman, who rose as if out of a dung-heap--a dudheen between his coarse lips, a long coat of faded homespun on his back.
Presently the road became a mere track upon the heather, which, leaving the lough to the left, struck out across the hills inland--a wheel-track over a vast expanse of purple prairie, now deep-indented in the bog, now barely discernible on a plateau of rock--impression of the rude carts of the turf-cutters across the mountains. No human dwelling might be seen for miles; no human figure, save perhaps an elfish child plying knitting-needles on a stone as she watched her herd of geese for fear of foxes--an uncanny, shock-pated pixie who seemed half-sister to the herons that were scrutinising their portraits in the pools.
Mountain succeeded mountain with a great heaving like that of the ocean hard-by, sometimes in an unbroken wave of black and russet; sometimes rent into a gorge where it had been torn by a strong convulsion, with overhanging crags of grey and twisted trees bent awry by the sea-blasts. Sometimes in the hazy distance might be detected a string of circular stains of a blacker colour than the rest--tarns in the moorland, home of the silver trout. Bushy and reedy some--some tawny with the paled glories of dead water-lilies. Then would the scene change to a bleak spread of stones--flat stones of monster size, with rifts like rivulets between, choked thick with feathery herbage. It was as though the rubbish left from the creation of the world had been carted and shot out there--a secluded medley of unconsidered trifles, of no value or consequence to the human race. Then again would the stones give place to water--morasses of peat sodden with salt ooze which quaked under the weight of the traveller, the hoof-marks of his horse bubbling with slimy wash as he splashed on his uncertain way; troops of scurrying fowl starting up before him, protesting loudly as they fled at the irruption into their cherished solitude.
Shane and Doreen arrived by-and-by at the summit of a hill-crest, from which the northern half of the promontory lay spread like a map before them. Just below was a white speck--the village of Carndonagh--beyond, a row of lakes, tiny mirrors set in the hill-flank--on either side the jagged lines of Loughs Foyle and Swilly, varied with many a peaked headland and jutting point and shelving bay scooped out of the living rock. In front, a flat stretch on which cloud-shadows were playing hide-and-seek--a bopeep dance of subtly-chequered tones; and away still farther, looming through the mist, the bluffs of Malin Head, the extreme limit, to the north, of Ireland. As they looked, the mists melted in eddying swirls of gold, unveiling an expanse of immense and lonely sea, dotted with fairy islets strewn in a ravelled fringe--the long span of the blue-green Atlantic, marked with a line of white where it seethed and moaned and lashed without ceasing against the foot of the beetling cliff.
'What a lovely spot!' Doreen exclaimed, as she sniffed the brisk breeze; 'how wild--how desolate--how weirdly fair! Not the vestige of a dwelling as far as eye can reach--except that speck below us.'
Unpoetic Shane had been busy counting the wildfowl, watching the hawks, marking the sublime slow wheeling of a pair of eagles far away in ether heavenward. At the call of his cousin he brought his thoughts down to earth, and cried out:
'By the Hokey! a nice coast for the French to land upon. I wish them joy of it if they try. If they do we shall be in the thick of it, for look! You can just discern Glas-aitch-é---that dot in the sea, no bigger than a pin's point--between Dunaff and Malin. A fleet would have to pass close by us that was making either for Lough Swilly or Lough Foyle. But come--a canter down the hill, and we will see what we can get to eat. This sharp air gives one a plaguy appetite!'
Doreen spoke truly, for Ennishowen is weirdly fair. The atmosphere of winter gave the desolation she had passed through a special charm. The ponderous banks of rolling steel-grey clouds, which had only just been conquered by a battling sun, gave a ghastly beauty to its wildness. Dun and steel-grey, sage-green and russet-brown, with here and there a bit of genuine colour--a vivid tuft of the Osmunda fern. Such chromatic attributes were well in harmony with the intense stillness, broken only by the rustle now and then of whirring wings, or the sharp boom of the frightened bittern. But beyond Carndonagh the face of nature changed--or would have, if it had been summer--for bleak elevated moorland and iron gorge vary but little with the season, whilst lower-lying districts are more privileged. During the warm months the track between Carndonagh and Malin is like a garden--an oasis of rich, damp, dewy verdure from the ever-dripping vapours of the Atlantic--an expanse of emerald mead saturated with the moisture of the ocean. Every bush and bank breaks forth in myriad flowers. Each tarn is edged with blossom, each path is tricked with glory. It is as if Persephone had here passed through the granite-bound gates of hell, and had dropped her garland at its portals. White starry water-lilies clothe the lakelets. The bells of the fuschia-hedges glow red from beneath a burthen of honeysuckle and dog-roses; orange-lilies and sheets of yellow iris cast ruddy reflections into the streams, while purple heather and patches of wild heartsease vie with each other in a friendly struggle to mask the wealth of green.
Strabagy Bay cuts deep into the peninsula. A rider must skirt its edge with patience, rewarded now and again by some vision of surprise, as he finds himself at a turn in the pathway on the summit of a precipice 1200 feet above the water, or in a sheltered cove where waves ofcéladonand malachite plash upon a tawny bed. At one point, if the tide happens to be in, he must sit and await its ebb; for the only passage is by a ford across the sand, which is dangerous to the stranger at high-water. Not so to the dwellers in this latitude, for they speed like monkeys along the overhanging crags, or like the waddling penguins and sea-parrots that are padding yonder crannies with the softest down from off their breasts for the behoof of a yet unborn brood.
Towards Malin Head the ground rises gradually from a shingly beach till it breaks off abruptly to seaward in a sheer wall of quartz and granite--a vast frowning face, vexed by centuries of tempest, battered by perennial storms, comforted by the clinging embrace of vegetation, red and russet heath of every shade, delicate ferns drooping from cracks and fissures, hoary lichens, velvet mosses, warm-tinted cranesbill; from out of which peeps here and there the glitter of a point of spar, a stain of metal or of clay, a sparkling vein of ore. The white-crested swell which never sleeps laps round its foot in curdled foam; for the bosom of the Atlantic is ever breathing--heaving in arterial throbs below, however calm it may seem upon the surface. Away down through the crystal water you can detect the blackened base resting on a bank of weed--dense, slippery citrine hair, swinging in twilit masses slowly to and fro, as if humming to itself, under the surface, of the march of Time, whose hurry affects it not; for what have human cares, human soul-travail, human agony, to do with this enchanted spot, which is, as it were, just without the threshold of the world? The winter waves, which dash high above the bluffs in spray, have fretted, by a perseverance of many decades, a series of caverns half-submerged; viscous arcades, where strange winged creatures lurk that hate the light; beasts that, hanging like some villanous fruit in clusters, blink with purblind eyes at the fishes which dart in and out, fragments of the sunshine they abhor; at the invading shoals of seals, which gambol and turn in clumsy sport, with a glint of white bellies as they roll, and a shower of prismatic gems.
In June the salmon arrive in schools, led each by a solemn pioneer, who knows his own special river; and then the fisher-folk are busy. So are the seals, whose appetite is dainty. Yet the hardy storm-children of Ennishowen love the seals although they eat their fish--for their coats are warm and soft to wear; their oil gives light through the long winter evenings for weaving of stuff and net-mending. There is a superstition which accounts for their views as to the seals; for they believe them to be animated by the souls of deceased maiden-aunts. It is only fair, in the inevitable equalisation of earthly matter, that our maiden-aunts should taste of our good things, and that we in our turn should live on theirs.
A mile from the shore--at Swilly's mouth--stands Glas-aitch-é Island, a mere rock, a hundred feet above sea-level, crowned by an antique fortress, which was modernised and rendered habitable by a caprice of the late lord. At the period which now occupies us, it consisted of a dwelling rising sheer from the rock on three sides; its rough walls pierced by small windows, and topped by a watch-tower, on which was an iron beacon-basket. The fourth side looked upon a little garden, where, protected by low scrub and chronically asthmatic trees, a few flowers grew unkempt--planted there by my lady when she first visited the place as mistress. On this side, too, was a little creek which served as harbour for the boats--a great many boats of every sort and size; for the only amusement at Glas-aitch-é was boating, with a cast for a salmon or a codling now and again, and an occasional shot at a seal or cormorant.
My lady arrived there in the yacht, and spent her afternoon alone as she wished, for it was late at night before Shane and Doreen were rowed across--the latter wearied by the long ride, but calmed in spirit by communing with nature.
It was with a gloomy face and set lips that the Countess of Glandore wandered from room to room, all damp and chill from long neglect, each chair and table telling its own tale, each faded carpet and curtain whispering of the hated past, with its desperate anguish of humiliation. For this was the heart-chord which twanged most painfully in my lady's breast upon revisiting the place again. 'Set right the wrong while yet there is time'--how often had that wailing cry echoed in her ears! Yet while there still was time that wrong was never righted; for my lady had been so humbled, so abased, so utterly wrenched and mangled, during the year she had dwelt upon that island with my lord, that she revolted, with indignant protest, at a possibility of having to traverse the dark Valley of the Shadow yet again.
As she looked at the chairs and tables, the whole bitterness of that degradation flooded back on her. She recalled how, sobbing on that sofa, she had prayed for death with scorching tears; how, standing by that casement, the sublime panorama of Donegal had been shut out by boiling drops of agony.
She sat down on an old chair, and looked back upon her life since last she touched its worm-eaten woodwork. A life lulled sometimes to a half forgetfulness, which was nearer to positive happiness than she ever expected to attain. The reflection returned again and again to her, that what had been done was my lord's fault, not hers--that she had acquiesced as the weaker vessel, and had washed her hands of the consequences. But then, several times, her peace had been rudely broken by vague terror of troubles renewed.
Would she be able to avert them? Would her puny woman's arm be strong enough to grapple with Fate? Events certainly looked threatening. Terence had involved himself in a forlorn hope. What if he should fall? My lady rose hastily, and flinging wide the window, panted there for breath. She realised, with a tingling horror of abasement, that if he fell, her own burthen would be lightened--that far away, muffled in her inmost soul, there was a voice babbling a hint that it would be a mercy if he fell. Her own son! It was a mother's inner voice that spoke! She pressed her face helplessly upon the tattered curtain, as she had used to do when imploring a release, and groaned aloud--it was well that the others had not yet arrived.
Then, her mental vision sharpened by this pang, she wandered on, oblivious of the stories murmured by the tables and the chairs--for she was peering with all her might into the future now. Things were going crooked. There could be no denying that. She had schemed for the best. What would come of her scheming? Shane was deplorably difficult to manage--looked so like his father sometimes when angered, that she recoiled as she remembered the expression of his visage when she moaned over her fate to him upon this very spot all those years ago. He grew daily more difficult to manage, did Shane; because he was a Cherokee, a Hellfire; and it stands to reason that an important attribute for a Hellfire to cultivate must be a scorn of maternal lecturing and fiddlefaddle.
Lady Glandore (taught by a rough apprenticeship) quite admitted this; but looked forward now with satisfaction to the taming his spirit would undergo through a judiciously prolonged residence on a barren rock, with no one to uphold him in resistance to her will. Here he had no bully-Blasters to oppose a check to her influence. He would have nobody to talk to but the fisherfolk, save when he sailed down the lough to Letterkenny to be entertained by the squireens in garrison.
She did not fear their influence--poor country oafs! She gauged the inherent weakness of Shane's nature, which cloaked itself under a mask of fierceness; she knew his overbearing, swashbuckling ways would sink into a minor key of mewing if they had no encouraging sympathy from without. She knew better than really to believe that 'absence makes the heart grow fonder.' Nonsense! The heart is too selfish a thing to feed long upon itself or shadows. If she could only manage to keep Shane here long enough, he would become as meek as a lamb, and would cease to bleat of Norah in his dreams.
On one side things were going crooked, no doubt, but on the other they were preternaturally straight. Could they be expected to remain so?
Arthur Wolfe, whose self-interest told him to stay on in Dublin and watch events, was only too thankful to throw a responsibility on his sister (in whom he trusted), who, oddly enough, was gracious as to the burthen. He might have been compelled to leave Ireland for Doreen's sake--to take her away out of a false position, and so sacrifice the opportunity of rapid advancement, which is the marked characteristic of a turbulent time.
But this difficulty was got rid off by packing the girl off to Donegal. He could drift where expediency drove, unshackled, to add to his darling's fortune. Nothing could be more satisfactory to her father's peace of mind; nothing could jump better with my lady's long-established plan of joining these two incongruous cousins in holy matrimony. Shut up in idleness in Glas-aitch-é (for the building of Martello towers could not really engross his attention), what else could he do but fall a victim to the charms of his handsome cousin?
One little ghost of doubt yet lingered in my lady's mind, which she did her best to exorcise. Doreen was dreadfully pigheaded. What if moping were to render her more obstinate? She was not a Blaster or a Cherokee, but a stern-browed damsel, with much romance, tempered by a little common-sense, and an awkward tendency to rely upon her own judgment. Being a woman, too, she would probably detect at once another woman's web, such as might hope to escape the scrutiny of male observation. Was it possible that she might choose to upset all her aunt's elaborate scaffolding, after all?
She had her own reasons for determining to tie Shane, wealthy Lord Glandore though he might be, to somebody with money. What a pity that he declined polite society, where complaisant heiresses were to be met with who would joyfully take his coronet, and afterwards obey his mother. Circumstances had so ordained it that there was absolutely no available or possible heiress for him but this stiff-necked Catholic.
It is exasperating, is it not, to mark how people persist in opposing that which others think is best for them? The prejudiced, warped Countess of Glandore must have had urgent motives indeed for the prosecution of her project to account for the way in which she was stooping from her pedestal. Doreen was sharp enough to recognise this fact, and was never weary of marvelling at the enigma which seemed ever and anon to languish, then to spring to new life again. But Lady Glandore, when her mind was made up, could be obstinate too, though she had suffered much buffeting in life's conflict. That these two cousins were to be drawn together somehow, she was resolved. Opposition would come probably from Doreen's side, not Shane's. When her friends of the forlorn hope were slain and gone, she would surely succumb from mere despair.
My lady was glad, then, when she meditated on Lord Clare's hints as to the certain fate of the United Irishmen. It was distressful, though, that her own son should be amongst them. Was it distressful, or a relief? Would his mother be sorry if word came that he was dead?
My lady buried her face in the curtain yet again, and rocked her bowed form and wrung her hands. There is a phase of self-hatred and upbraiding which is more poignant than any physical pain, from which we emerge more wrecked and broken after each fresh access, and pray more desperately to be set free from torment.
The nautico-arcadian life of Glas-aitch-é restored Doreen's mental equilibrium by degrees, which had been sorely shaken by recent proceedings in Dublin. There she had come to ask herself whether there could be indeed a God with eyes to see and ears to hear, or whether the new-fangled creed was the correct one, which spoke of a mysterious principle--a species of magnet--in accordance with whose influence, as a dumb machine, the affairs of the world marched in established sequence. But in the front of this superb nature it was impossible to hold any such cold-blooded theory. When on waking she opened her casement to drink the brine-laden air, her youthful vigour got the better of her sorrows. She marked, stretching on the one hand as fare as ken could reach, the wondroussilhouetteof mountains, rising tier behind tier in its series of morning changes from jetty black to purple and then orange; or, not so far away, the chameleon cliffs whose varieties of effect were endless. She watched the seals tumbling in flocks; the guillemots and gannets at play, and shrieking petrels, Cassandras of the deep; and the eagles that had their eyrie in the dizzy crags of Malin-Head, disdaining low companionship. Then peering down from her window-sill, straight as a plummet-line, into that wondrously pellucid ripple, she mused of the legends of the place concerning the McSweenys--kings of those parts; known as the McSwynes of the unconquered axe, till Sir Amorey set his foot upon their necks; of how the rude chieftains had built themselves this fortalice, defended by three rows of concentric battlements, and had held it in the teeth of Corsair-fleets till the awful day of retribution for long thieving, when Sir Amorey Crosbie came--himself the greatest thief; of how, by stratagem, he lured the defendants out upon the narrow strip of sand which the waves leave bare at ebb, then scaled the rocks upon the other side with all his merry men, and watched with laughter while the garrison perished in the rising waters; of how their bracelets and ornaments and collars of gold were washed up from time to time to attest the truth of the story; of how the elfin-guard were sleeping even now within circumjacent caves, to clatter forth in force when wanted. If that were true, sure they would have come out long since, seeing what their motherland had suffered. Yet, after all, not so: for this wild region had naught to do with the throes which had racked Erin's frame for seven centuries. It was cut off, severed as by a spell from the world's troubles and its tragedies.
Doreen felt this strongly when she went among the people on the mainland. Not one of them could speak anything but Gaelic--their mental ken saw nothing beyond the arrival of the salmon, or the number of distressful rents in a new fishing-net. They talked with awe of the sleeping bodyguard; had pricks of conscience when they slew their maiden-aunts; looked with compassion on Miss Wolfe when she entered upon mundane arguments. Vainly she strove to persuade them that the treasures which the waves threw up were relics of the Spanish Armada--a portion of which was shattered in these ironbound creeks and gullies. They preferred to believe in the McSwynes, and did; yet for all that they came to adore Doreen, who was of their own faith; who never shot her coracle upon the beach but she was sure to be surrounded forthwith by a bevy of dancing, screaming imps that sprawled upon the sand, that sidled up to have their heads patted like little tame nut-brown birds; then fluttered off to herald out the fact that the good lady had arrived ashore. The people loved her, and she loved the people. The Irish heart is so warm, that a very little kindness will win it--for that very reason, perhaps, their English foes have chosen to repulse the gift, as one of too easy attainment to be worth the winning!
Once or twice she was persuaded by her cunning aunt to accompany Shane along the northern coast in the yacht. He was making a prodigious fuss about the Martello towers, and it would amuse her to explore the bays and inlets. Once--only once--she sailed down Lough Swilly, when her cousin went thither to examine the forts of Knockalla and Inch; and was royally entertained at the barracks of Letterkenny, by the amateur soldiers quartered there. It was like returning into Hades after a glimpse of the stars. The sheepish looks and bungling compliments of the squireens could not hide from her that this was the fabric from which the yeomanry were cut who hanged the people and burnt their cottages.
At Letterkenny the world began again--the wicked, cruel world. Inwardly she prayed that at least the harmless folks of Ennishowen might be spared, though all the isle beside should have to pass under the yoke. But the sight of these ruffians in uniform made her quail for them. Since Fate debarred her from the right of joining her people in their suffering, she would close her ears to their cries if she could, and return into the world no more.
The gentry about Derry and Antrim were divided upon all subjects except ruffianism. On this point they were in surprising concord. They were for the most part Presbyterians. The republican nature of their tenets disposed them to join the United Irishmen, and many entered heartily into the conspiracy, until Government agents demonstrated that the triumph of the popular party would bring with it Catholic emancipation.
Now the Ulster men of the middle and upper class were Orange as well as Presbyterian. They looked upon a Catholic as a toad--an unclean thing which had no business to be created--which must be hurried out of life without delay, as a lesson to their Maker to make such mistakes no more.
Therefore, upon this fact being made quite plain to them, their patriotic ardour cooled amazingly, and they bade fair to rival the excesses of their brethren down south.
At this very dinner a tipsy young 'half-mounted' told as a fine joke a tale of what had happened at Armagh when he went there 't'other day to buy a horse. A certain rapscallion,' he said, 'was suspected of having some gunpowder concealed, contrary to the mandate of his Majesty. Shots had been heard in the neighbourhood of his cabin--that was enough. He denied the charge, and so must be made to confess. How was it done? Mighty ingeniously, i' faith! He was hung up by the heels with a rope full of twist, by which means he whirled round most laughably, like a bird before the fire; while the soldiers lashed him with their belts to make him speak. But his stupid old father spoiled the joke; for upon his son calling on him for help he up with a turf-spade and broke a soldier's pate open; upon which, of course, the old fool had to be disembowelled.' The other sparks laughed with great he-haws at; this funny anecdote, till one of them, looking at Miss Wolfe, thought 'maybe the leedy didn't loike it.' And Shane, surprised that his stiff cousin should be such a milksop, changed the subject to the building of his towers. The stone being handy, they would take but little time, he said. So soon as his task was complete he would send down the yacht for these agreeable young sons of Mars, and entertain them at his quaint old castle.
'It was indeed moighty koind in his lordship, to be sure; anything they could do to obleege,' etc., etc. So there was a great shaking of hands and display of newly-acquired military salutes, and everybody was charmed with everybody, except Doreen, who voted them bears and brutes, whilst they thought her stuck-up.
After this episode, nothing could induce her to revisit Letterkenny. She spent her time in daydreams, drifting about in her coracle for hours, to return dripping wet, but, in a hazy way, more than half content. There is never much snow in Ennishowen, because brine is inimical to snow; but in winter there is much rain and mist and dense sea-fog, which penetrates to the bones and chills them. When the revolving cycle brought fine weather, she liked to establish herself by her window, to watch the strange glory of the dawn, sitting, as she smilingly observed, in her 'Grianan,' or sun-chamber. And what a spectacle it was to lull a vexed spirit into peace! First, as light crept near, she was aware of nothing but a vast sheet of pearl--above, below, around--without line to mark where earth or sea joined heaven. Her enchanted prison seemed the centre of an orient jewel, through which the light of heaven filtered dimly. She occupied a magician's castle, suspended by mystic agency in a translucent ether of opal hue. The illusion was complete, for presently tiny cloudlets of rose and grey flecked the space above, to be repeated in dappled reflections on the still mirror below, which as yet knew no rim. Cloudlets overhead; cloudlets far down, under the hanging castle. Then, by imperceptible degrees, the opal flushed to brass with spots of tarnish (where seaweed banks shone through). Then a ridge of palest pink loomed into shape from nothingness, warming slowly to blood-red, and darkening to Tyrian purple--and the misty film was rent and crumbled, and lo! there was the rim to the still mirror--the glorious rim of that noble mountain-chain, now turned to a sharply-defined deep-blue--in unison with sky and water.
Doreen was comforted for the day when nature chose thus to open the casket for her; and rowed, or fished over the garden parapet, and was, by reason of her new peacefulness, more soft than heretofore with her aunt; and even strove sometimes to make herself agreeable to Shane. My lady marked the improvement as a good omen of success, but was not quite satisfied; for there was mixed with the damsel's good behaviour a cool indifference which suggested a carelessness of what should next befall.
When Shane was cross (alas! he grew crosser as he grew bored), Doreen's face never lost its calm. If it had, her aunt would have felt more easy, for it would have shown that the young lady noticed her cousin's moods. But no; she was kindly and polite--was not even shocked, as his mother was, when my lord made a boon-companion of the skipper of his yacht, hobbing and nobbing till both master and man were magnificently drunk. My lady was really displeased at this, for it wounded her pride that the head of the house should condescend to such companionship. Squireens from Letterkenny would have been better; but then they might have made love to the young lady, and my lady had settled in her mind that nobody must do that but Shane.
Poor mother! How earnestly she schemed, and how little came of her scheming! With what angelic self-denial she endured the ghostly whisperings of the chairs and tables, which would keep babbling of that past, however much she stopped her ears. Shane made no effort to woo his cousin. On the contrary, her superior manners and serene airs provoked him, by causing him to feel how inferior he himself was to her. Norah never made him feel this, for she did dreadfully vulgar things sometimes, for which he liked her as he chid her--things which would have made his mother's white hair stand straight up on end--tricks which the colleen had learnt from her good-natured plebeian mamma. Now he never would have dared to chide Miss Wolfe; for even in her wildest escapades--when conversing with mysterious young men at night, or galloping helter-skelter over the country--she carried matters with so high a hand that even my lady herself was routed. Indeed Shane, though far enough off, was nearer to love than she was, for he felt something akin to a good wholesome hatred of his cousin, whilst she was only indifferent to him.
The fact was, that Shane, not being fond of booklore, became sullen and fiercely sulky, as week followed week and he found himself a prisoner with no prospect of release. He had a suspicion that he had been trapped. Yet, while he revolted at the thought of it, his nature was too weak to permit of his shaking himself free without, at least, somebody's friendly countenance.
Now and then he ventured to suggest that there really was no reason why they should not return to Strogue. The French fiasco had put an end to danger from the Continent, as well as to the pretensions of the United Irishmen. What was his mother's opinion? Surely she must be tired of being cooped up, much as she seemed to love the place--(love it! poor lady!)--for she never went on shore among the benighted Catholics, being content, as a change, to make a solemn progress on the lough on calm days, rowed by ten sturdy rowers. Should her son order the yacht to take in bag and baggage? Should he send a messenger on horseback, to announce their proximate arrival in Dublin?
To all of these insidious proposals my lady merely opposed a quiet negative, producing budgets from her pocket--voluminous letters from Lord Clare--upon the events which were passing in the capital.
According to him, affairs grew worse and worse, instead of better. The perverseness of his countrymen was appalling to an enlightened mind. There was no knowing what might happen. His dear old friend's second son was behaving ill. Happily, the loyal behaviour of the elder one would be counted as righteousness to the family, by a forgiving and benignant Government.
'It was evident from this,' she declared, with a decision there was no gainsaying, 'that Shane must do as he was doing. Terence might choose to disgrace himself; so Shane's conduct must be all the more immaculate.' (My lady's voice did not falter as she discussed this delicate matter. Doreen merely frowned and turned away.) 'It was the duty of Shane, for the sake of the honour of the Glandores, to keep staunch to the side of Government--the side of law and order--and the best way of doing that was by stopping where he was.'
Shane groaned in spirit, but submitted, and cursed the patriots by all his gods--empty-headed, crack-brained fools--who thus stood betwixt him and pleasure. He pined for Norah, for Cherokee suppers, Blaster orgies. Why, he was almost forgetting what a duel was like! His rapier was rusting on the wall. He became crabbed in his enforced idleness; pinched viciously the satin skins of his pet dogs, instead of stroking them; took more and more to claret; was constantly making trips to Letterkenny.
With the exception of Lord Clare's occasional budgets, the party received little news, save garbled accounts from Letterkenny barracks. My lady insisted upon reading her own letters aloud, for the benefit of her niece; but that young person heeded not the chancellor's prosing, being serenely occupied in following the gyrations of a seamew, or the eccentric movements of a fishing cormorant, so that oft-reiterated abuse of her friends troubled her temper in nowise; and her aunt marvelled how it could be that the froward girl should have become proper and submissive, like well-behaved young ladies.
Is it not singular how to some people we unaccountably and invariably are impelled to show only the ugly or seamy side, which forms part of all our characters, and how to others we, without special effort, always turn the best? My lady and Doreen, though they dwelt together, never really knew each other. At times Doreen considered my lady mad; always harsh and disagreeable; while it was never given to my lady to detect the unselfish devotion and the strong worship of all that is beautiful and free, and the overpowering horror of all that is unjust and base, which was the better phase of her niece's character.
As for the newspapers, nothing could be gleaned from them. So soon as a paper became popular, it was acquired by money or threats (with the exception of Tom Emmett's, which ran its rigs unchecked), and patriotism gave way to padding. There was little Irish intelligence. The Dublin prints might as well have been edited at Sierra Leone; and Doreen turned with impatience from their dulness. She received few letters herself, for there was no one to write to her except the proscribed, and, of course, it would not do for treasonable correspondence to pass through the hands of Lord Glandore, who amused himself by sailing to Rathmelton for the bag. There was no convenient shebeen here, where notes might cunningly be dropped; no useful Biddy or Jug Coyle--not even a handy cabin; for, whilst the peasantry round Dublin were one and all ready to do anything for the cause, those of Ennishowen cared not about it. And she was not sorry for this. With the French fiasco her hopes had melted--she knew too well the discordant elements which composed the Irish Directory. All that had kept its members together had been the expectation of French assistance--now that that was over they would fall asunder, and Cinderella would sit down again amongst the ashes. And was it not indeed better so? The wrath of God was kindled, for some reason which she knew not, against unhappy motherland. Was it not better, then, that her sons should accept their bondage with meekness rather than waste their blood uselessly? Doreen's contentment sprang in the first instance from the nipping of despair. A moment comes to us in our sore trouble, when we fold our arms and murmur, 'By God's mercy there is a limit to the sense of feeling. We have reached that limit, and will feel no more;' and, strange as it may seem, with that resolve comes an impression of calm, which, in its way, is a sort of negative happiness. We have lost something, we are bereft of something which above all things we valued, yet we seem vaguely better for the loss. It is like the expression of peace which all blind faces wear, though their most precious treasure has been stolen--the sense of sight.
Doreen shrank from probing her own feelings with regard to Terence. Certainly his conduct distressed her more than seemed warranted by circumstances. She did not love him. No, not so bad as that, happily. She liked him as a fond sister might like a brother many years her junior, with a good-humoured satisfaction when he did well--for instance, when he made a splendid leap out hunting, or a particularly felicitous shot with his gun; and a feeling of pained displeasure when he did ill. And she told herself that he had behaved very ill, so ill that the fact of his existence must be erased from the tablets of her memory. That he should prove to be so double-dyed a traitor, so despicable and dastardly a schemer, filled her soul with horror.
Being a hero-worshipper, she had always despised him in a kindly superior way, for he was sleek and contented and commonplace, blessed with a good digestion; had looked on his grovelling contentment with pity, and is not pity contempt clothed in tenderness? To have been so interesting Manfred must have had a terrible digestion; while as for the Corsair, I know that in private he suffered from dyspepsia. Whilst taking it for granted that Terence was too easy-going ever to become truly heroic, his cousin had warmed to him on the night at the theatre, when his indignation induced him to take the oath. That all that fervour should have been craftily assumed for the purpose of deceit was too repulsive a subject for reflection, and she put it from her. Maybe if she had calmly brought her mind to bear on it, she might have perceived that she was hasty, and have remembered that it is not right to condemn criminals unheard. But she had caught a glimpse of two ugly facts, and withdrew her gaze from them at once without further inquiry.
Somebody was a traitor. The delegates had been betrayed more than once under the cloak of friendship. My lady had told her distinctly (or in her haste she thought so) that Terence had done the evil deed, for the paltry wage of five hundred pounds. She had deemed that her cousin at least was honest, and before thrusting his image from her sight, had felt, with a soreness for which she could not account, that she would have been very, very glad if she could have pronounced him innocent. Doreen, though she diverted her attention from the painful subject, was wondrously interested--down in her inmost heart--in the guilt or innocence of Terence, and felt a feeble flutter there, whose cause, if she had understood it, would have disgusted her. As it was, the flutter in time died a natural death, and, disillusioned, she sank into the apathetic condition of one who drifts and is content to drift--a rudderless resignation which is beyond despondency--an utter hopelessness with which his behaviour, though she wist it not, may have had something to do.
Not long after her arrival at Glas-aitch-é she received a letter from her father, in which was enclosed another, with whose seal the upright gentleman had refrained from tampering. It was brought to him by an aged crone, who extracted a solemn promise that he would not open it.
'If ye promise,' she said, 'I'll believe ye, Arthur Wolfe, for ye're a good man, or ye would not be given so good a child.'
The eccentricity of the speech pleased the attorney-general, who sent on the letter. It was from his godson Theobald, and Doreen recognised with gratitude the delicate tact which induced her father to pretend that he did not know from whom it came. It removed from her mind the portion of its load which was endured on his behalf; for the young hero was safe. His vessel escaped as by a miracle through the centre of the English fleet. Hoche too was safe. Both were to join the army of the Sambre and Meuse at once. He spoke no more of help from France; was evidently as disappointed as Miss Wolfe was. The dream was over. His sword belonged to the French Republic now, his uniform was that of a French general. He must carve a name for himself among the ranks of the foes of France. Doreen thanked God that his pure young life had not been idly thrown away. Might it be reserved for glorious deeds on behalf of Erin in the future? It was not likely. Better far that he too should have abandoned hope; for Ireland was prostrate, never to rise either in his lifetime or in hers. All they could do was to bear as humbly as they might, shading their eyes from cruel sights--waiting as serenely as was possible for the call to a less hateful world.
So Doreen considered the seabirds and the transparent deeps, and patted little savages on the pate, and smiled her quiet smile, and made believe to be tranquilly resigned; though all the while she was entranced--numbed as by a spell.