"We go so far, and with so much trouble, to obtain the blessings of certain holy persons, and of the holy father the pope; yet here is the Lord of saints, and the God of whom Pius IX. is only the vicegerent, and we cannot intermit our socialities or forego our ease to receive his blessing!"
E. A. S.
The Invitation.The balmy May is breathing on the air,The rich, red sun sinks slowly down the west.Come forth, dear soul, and be an honored guest:One doth invite thee to his house all fair;One great and good, this eve, doth wait thee there.Nay, nay, not that dear friend whose hand hath prestSo oft thy own; not any ruler blest.Of happiest clime: a nobler friendship share.Ah! no; no poet doth such kindness move;No wise, nor good, nor grand, nor holy, whomThe race reveres: a better friend would proveHis love; a greater asks thee to his home.Within the tabernacle of his love,The Lord of heaven awaits thee: wilt thou come?
The Invitation.The balmy May is breathing on the air,The rich, red sun sinks slowly down the west.Come forth, dear soul, and be an honored guest:One doth invite thee to his house all fair;One great and good, this eve, doth wait thee there.Nay, nay, not that dear friend whose hand hath prestSo oft thy own; not any ruler blest.Of happiest clime: a nobler friendship share.Ah! no; no poet doth such kindness move;No wise, nor good, nor grand, nor holy, whomThe race reveres: a better friend would proveHis love; a greater asks thee to his home.Within the tabernacle of his love,The Lord of heaven awaits thee: wilt thou come?
To this proposition Nellie joyfully assented, and he led the way accordingly up a rocky path winding westward toward the cliffs. Once or twice he turned as if to give her aid, but Nellie skipped like a young kid from rock to rock, exulting in her independence; and, finding that she declined assistance, he went on in silence until they reached a point among the cliffs, high enough to give them a full sea view toward the west.
The Atlantic lay beneath them, rolling in its mighty volume of deep waters, and dashing them against the cliffs below with the strength and calmness of a sleepy giant. Nellie had often seen thesea, that narrow strip of water, namely, which separated her own birth-home from the birth-place of her kindred; but of the mighty ocean, with its thousand voices coming up from the deep caves below, its murmurings and whisperings, its infinite variety of tints and aspects, its lights and shadows, its clear green depths and crystal purity, such as no smaller sheet of water can ever boast of, she had never even dreamed before; and as her eye roamed over the smooth expanse until it reached that uttermost point where sea and sky seem to blend together, a sense of vastness and power fell upon her soul which almost oppressed her. For a few minutes Roger watched her as she stood there in hushed and breathless admiration, but just as the silence was beginning to be oppressive he broke in by saying, softly, "Yes, yes! it is all bright, and smooth, and shining now; but I have stood here on an autumn evening, and watched it when it was black and swollen, brimful beneath the coming storm—when the wind seemed almost a living power—a thing to be seen as well as felt—as it swept over that mighty mass of waters, mingling its hoarse voice with theirs, and forcing on their waves, as a general forces on his troops, until it dashed them in a very frenzy of fruitless valor against the beetling cliffs beneath us. And, in truth, I almost prefer it in those moods," he added, like one thinking his own thoughts aloud; "for then it looks simply like what it is, a huge monster ever greedy for its prey, whereas, now, in this lazy sunshine, it seems to me nothing more or less than a great smiling treachery, wooing its victims toward it, only that it may afterward the more thoroughly engulf them."
"It is a great, beautiful terror, even as it is to-day," said Nellie breathlessly. "What a height we are above it! It makes me giddy only to look down?"
"Do not look, then," said Roger anxiously, "but rather turn inward toward yonder isle, which is only separated from the mainland by a narrow strip of water. There are cliffs upon that island which look westward over the ocean and rise eighteen hundred feet above it, and the inhabitants will tell you that, when the weather is calm enough, you can see from thence, at the setting of the sun, the 'Hy Brysail'—the enchanted isle, the 'Tir-na-n'oge,' or land of eternal youth and beauty, to which death and sorrow never come, and where (so the old legend tells us) a hundred years of this mortal life pass swiftly as a single day.Few, as you may well suppose, are the favored mortals who have ever reached it, and fewer still, if any, who have ever come back to tell the tale of their adventures."
"It is a pretty legend," said Nellie, straining her eyes over the ocean as earnestly as though she seriously expected to discover the fairy island of which he spoke floating on its bosom. "Have you ever really seen anything like land in that direction?"
"If you choose, we can go some of these days on a voyage of discovery," said Roger, smiling at her seriousness; "only, if we do find 'Hy-Brysail,' I warn you that we shall have to stay there. Such is the law by which adventurers to its shores are bound. It does not seem a hard law either, does it? Would you object to it. Mistress Netterville?' to be young and beautiful for ever! Sorrow forgotten as if it had never been, beneath the spells of that magic land!"
Nellie drew a long breath, and her blue eyes grew well-nigh black with suppressed feeling as she looked westward toward the ocean. But she did not answer.
"Well," he said, finding she would not speak, "will you try the adventure with me, or do you still prefer earth and its passing showers to this land of eternal sunshine?"
Nellie sighed—it almost seemed as if she were making a real choice; and when he playfully repeated, "Have you decided? which shall it be—this old kingdom of Grana Uaille or Tir-na-n'oge?" she quite seriously replied:
"Not Tir-na-n'oge, certainly; though a year ago, perhaps, I might have chosen otherwise. But youth and its sunshine is not real happiness, after all, although sometimes it looks very like it; and even if it were, there is something to me in a life of happiness, simple and unalloyed, less noble, and less like the choice of a soul predestined to eternity, than in one of sorrow bravely borne."
"Sorrow has done its work well for you, at all events," said Roger, moved to a higher feeling of reverence than, two minutes before, he would have thought it possible to have entertained for a creature so young and still so childish."
"Woe to the soul upon which it does it not, once that soul has been delivered to its guidance," Nellie answered softly, and almost as it were beneath her breath.
Roger gazed upon her silently. It seemed as if she were changing beneath his very eyes from a bright, impulsive child into a woman of deep and earnest feeling—a woman in every fibre of her fine, strong nature—and yet still in the untried freshness of her sixteen years as innocent and confiding as a child. "Then you prefer a happiness which would bring with it the zest of contrast?" he added, as if to prove her further.
"I would prefer, at all events, a happiness founded upon duty," she answered gravely; and then, as if half-ashamed of her own earnestness, she asked him lightly:
"Is it not strange to find these floating traditions of a paradise of peace and plenty among a people so completely bereft of both as these poor creatures, by their very condition as a conquered race, must necessarily be?"
"For that very reason!" he answered quickly; "for that very reason! Men despised as savages and treated as wild beasts, will either brood over schemes of real vengeance or soothe themselves with dreams of unreal bliss.Is it wonderful, therefore, that these poor people, with their dreamy and imaginative natures, should sometimes look wistfully over the broad ocean, and fancy they see a land where (if once only it could be reached) flowers, and joy, and eternal sunshine, would console them for the misery endured among these barren rocks, in which they have been forced by their enemies to seek—I was going to say, a home—it would have been far more correct to have said—a prison?"
"Nay, but now it is you that are unjust," said Nellie, smiling—"unjust to this fair land you live in. The kingdom of Grana Uaille can in no sense of the word be called a prison; and even were it ten times less beautiful than it is, to me it would still remain the one bright memory left me to look back to in this great year of sorrow."
Roger turned quickly round, but Nellie met his eye with such a look of frank candor and unconsciousness as to the possibility of any hidden meaning being attachable to her words, that he felt tacitly rebuked beneath it, and merely said:
"Ay; but, Mistress Netterville, I was talking of a home."
"Home!" said Nellie softly—"home, after all, is but the place where the heart garners up its treasures. These were almost the last words my dear mother said to me, and now I feel their truth; for if she were but once more at my side, the barrenest island in Clew Bay would become to me, I think, at once as home-like almost and dear as Netterville itself."
Again Roger seemed on the point of sayingsomething, but again he checked himself and was silent.
Nellie saw the flush upon his brow, and interpreted it her own way.
"You are not angry. Colonel O'More," she said, with the simplicity of a child; "surely you do not fancy, because I spoke of Netterville, that I am ungrateful for the kindness which has made this island like a second home to me."
"No, indeed," he answered, with a smile so bright that it must have reassured her even if he had not said a word in answer. "No, indeed. I was, or at all events Iam, only thinking how I can best persuade you and Lord Netterville to consider this island as your home, even in the absence of its lawful owner."
"Absence," said Nellie; "are you going then, and wherefore?"
"Wherefore?" said O'More quickly. "I marvel that you cannot guess. Because, Mistress Netterville, though I live upon this island, and though its inhabitants acknowledge me as their chieftain, it is yet a sorry fact that I am poor, poorer in proportion than the poorest of the number; an outlaw besides, with every man's hand and sword against me, and nothing but the traditions of past greatness to soothe, or, which much oftener is the case, to add bitterness to the meanness of my present station."
"Why call it meanness?" said Nellie, flashing up. "You have fought and lost for your king and country, as we all have fought and lost; and your enemies may take your lands indeed, but they cannot rob you of the glory of the cause for which you have contended, nor can they make you other than you are, a descendant of brave old Grana Uaille and the inheritor of her kingdom."
"Kingdom!" said Roger, with a little bitter laugh. "Turn your eyes inland, Mistress Netterville, and look from the northern point of Clew Bay southward toward the spot where Croagh Patrick casts its shade upon the bright waters.That was the old kingdom of Grana Uaille, and my inheritance upon the day that I was born. My earliest recollections therefore are connected with this wild land, and every rock and cave in its fair winding coast-line was as familiar to me in my childish days as the toys in their nursery are to more tenderly nurtured children. But they sent me at last to Spain for that education which would have been denied me here, and I only came back (while still a mere raw boy) to fight under the banner of my kinsman, I will not trouble you with a history of that war; you know it, alas, too well already! But when Preston took refuge in Galway, and the other chiefs of the confederation dispersed in different directions, I made the best of my way hither, hoping, amid the wilds and fastnesses of my own country, to be permitted to remain at peace. Rumors reached me on the way of the great scheme of the transplantation, and of the numbers flocking from the eastern counties to usurp, against their will, the possessions of their poorer brethren in the west. Soon after that, came tidings that the enemy had reserved the coast-line for themselves, then that they had swarmed over into some of the Clew Bay islands, and then, at last, that they had taken possession of and fortified Carrig-a-hooly, the old castle of Grana and the spot where I was born. Still I pressed unhesitatingly forward; for I remembered the 'Rath,' and knowing that it was, or used to be, almost a ruin, I hoped it would have escaped them, and that I might find there a refuge and concealment for the moment. Mistress Netterville, you can guess at the result. I went as you went, and found as you found, that it was occupied already. Major Hewitson—"
"What of Major Hewitson?" a voice asked impatiently at his elbow. Roger turned, and found himself face to face with Henrietta, who had glided so quietly up the mountain path that neither he nor Nellie had an idea of her presence until she announced it by this question.
Remembering her kindness of the day before, Nellie's first impulse had been to greet her eagerly; her next was to retreat a step behind O'More, with an uncomfortable though only half acknowledged consciousness that she herself would be considered by Henrietta as one too many in the coming conversation. There was, in truth, a flush on the young lady's brow and a sparkle in her eye, by no means inviting to familiarity, and without seeming conscious even of Nellie's presence, she repeated the question angrily to O'More:
"What of Major Hewitson? What of the owner of yonder castle?"
Roger looked at her steadily, then removing his cap, and speaking in his most courtly tones, he answered quietly:
"Nothing, Mistress Hewitson, nothing at least, unfit to be said in the presence of his daughter."
"That won't do!" cried Henrietta passionately, "that won't do. I heard his name as I came up, and I will know what you were saying of him."
Roger laughed a bright, merry laugh, which Nellie thought no ill-humor could have resisted, and he answered frankly:
"Nay, for that matter. Mistress Hewitson, if you insist upon it, you are quite welcome to hear not only all that I did say, but all likewise that I was about to say on the subject of your father. I had just observed to Mistress Netterville (whose person you seem somehow to have forgotten since yesterday) that I found Major Hewitson in possession of my last refuge on the mainland, and I was going to add that, as he had thus madehisfortune at my expense, I trusted he would not endeavor to prevent me seeking mine, where in these days Irishmen most often find them, under the golden flag of Spain."
Spain! Nellie's heart leaped up suddenly, and then grew very still. This, then, was the meaning of that word "absence" which had already startled and, even against her will, disturbed her. This was his meaning. He was about to leave Ireland for ever, and make a home for himself in his mother's land. Nellie's heart leaped up, and then grew very still!
When she returned to a consciousness of the outward world around her, Henrietta was saying eagerly:
"Do not wait to know what he may think upon the subject; but go at once. Remember you are an outlaw, and that an outlaw is one whom the law permits to be hunted like a wild beast, and slain whenever or however he may be taken."
"And this, then, is the fate which your worthy father is preparing for me?" Roger asked in a tone of bantering politeness, which, considering the circumstances and Henrietta's evident excitement, Nellie could not help thinking almost unkind. "It is thus, like a wild beast, as you rightly term it, that he is about to set upon me and slay me unawares."
"I do not say it! I do not know it!" said Henrietta, almost sobbing. "I only say—only know that there are fresh troops of soldiers coming in to-day; that there have been for at least a week past prayer-meetings and preachings and waitings on the Lord, things which all portend a coming danger, and one that probably will point toward you. Colonel O'More, be merciful; take my warning for what it may be worth, and ask no further questions. Remember, that if I think not with my father in these matters, I am still, at all events, his daughter. And now I must begone, for with all my skill at the oar, and little Paudeen's to boot, I shall have hard work to get back in time for the mid-day meal, and the long and weary homily by which it is seasoned and made pleasant to unbelievers like myself."
Henrietta turned as if to depart, but yet she did not. She seemed to be struggling hard with some hidden feeling, and at last, with an effort so violent that it was visible, at least to Roger's eyes, she flung her arms round Nellie's neck.
"I know nothing of you but your name, young mistress," she said in a smothered voice; "but I know, at least, that I and mine have wrought you a great injustice. That injustice unhappily I have no power to repair; but yet, if ever you have need of any help that I can give, and will come and ask me for it, believe me, instead of heaping coals of fire on my head, you will be giving me the only real happiness I can feel, so long as I know that, by my residence in these lands, I am usurping the rights of others."
Henrietta almost flung Nellie from, her as she finished speaking, and then, without another word, either to her or Roger, she took the down path of the cliff, and was out of sight in a moment.
The two whom she left behind her continued silent, until they saw the "corragh," or small boat, in which she had come, and which had been waiting for her beneath the cliffs, gliding once more out into the open bay; then they also turned their steps homeward, and Roger, with no small dash of enthusiasm in his manner, exclaimed:
"Brave girl! would you believe it, this is the second time she has given me notice of a snare? only the first time," he added, with perhaps some intuitive guess at the sort of questioning that might be going on in Nellie's mind, "only the first time it was by Paudeen, who sails her boat, and who, she well knows, may be trusted in all that regards the safety of his chieftain. But what is the old white-haired gospeller up to now, I wonder? I own I am fairly puzzled!"
"We are not, I trust, the cause of this fresh trouble to you?" said Nellie timidly.
"Oh! no. I think not; for your sake I trust not," he answered thoughtfully. "It seemed to me to be altogether personal to myself; for if it had been about the priest, I think she would have said so."
"The priest! where is he?" Nellie asked. "I did not even know that there was one upon the island."
"Not upon this island, but on another, as you shall see to-morrow if you choose to make one of his Sunday congregation. But yonder is your grandfather watching for you: had we not better go and join him?"
Nellie assented, and quickening her pace almost to a run, she was in her grandfather's arms ere Roger, who came on more leisurely, had time to join them.
Lord Netterville gazed lovingly into Nellie's face, and smiled as he saw the bright color which exercise had called into her pale cheeks. Then he turned courteously toward his host. Perhaps he had some vague idea in his old head that the fate of his grandchild was to be henceforth, in some way or other, connected with that of Roger; perhaps he was not himself aware of the significance of his action; but this at all events is certain, that, instead of relinquishing Nellie's hand, he kept it tightly in his own, and when the young chieftain approached to greet him, laid it silently in that of Roger.
There was enough in the action itself, and still more in the way in which it was done, to send the blood scarlet to Nellie's brow, and she struggled to release her hand. For one moment, however, Roger held it, gently but firmly, he even made a movement as if he were about to raise it to his lips; instead of doing so, however, he dropped it quietly, and said in a low voice:
"Not now, not yet; but when you are once more at your mother's side, will you permit me to remind you of this moment, and to ask for the treasure which I now relinquish, at the hands of her who is your only lawful guardian?"
Early the next morning, Nellie found herself gliding over the waters of Clew Bay in one of the native corraghs of the country, under the protection of her host. He was captain and crew all in one, and she was his only passenger; for it had been decided on the previous evening that Lord Netterville was not in a fit state to endure the fatigue of such a voyage, and with old Nora to look after his creature comforts, and Maida to guard him in his lonely fortress, Roger assured his granddaughter that she need have no scruple in leaving him during the two or three hours required for their enterprise. And Nellie had readily obeyed; for, if the truth must be told, she had begun to rely implicitly upon his judgment, and to submit to it as unquestioningly as if she had been a child.The little shyness produced by Lord Netterville's thoughtless action of the day before had entirely worn off, partly because she herself had strivenwomanfullyagainst the feeling, but chiefly because Roger, thoroughly comprehending how needful it was to her comfort that, during her residence in his lonely kingdom, she should be entirely at her ease in his society, had adopted, as if by instinct, precisely the affectionate, brotherly sort of manner which was of all others the best calculated to produce this result. Nellie therefore gave herself up without a thought to the pleasant novelty of a brotherly sort of petting and protection which seemed to call for nothing more than quiet acceptance on her part, and she listened to Roger with the keen and unsated interest of a child as he told her the names, one after another, of many of the clustered islands and rugged rocklets, glittering like jewels in the deep bosom of the bay, almost always contriving to add some little legend or stray scrap of history, which gave each for the moment an especial, and (if the expression may be allowed toward inanimate objects) an almost personal interest in her eyes. At last he turned her attention toward the mainland, pointing out the graceful windings of Clew's varied shore, its wave-worn caverns and rocky arches, its cliffs with their mantles of many-colored lichens which made them look at that distance as if nature had stained them into an imitation of most curiously-colored marble; and beyond these again, its broad tracts of uncultivated bog-land, purple with heath in autumn, but now yellow with gorse or dark with waving fern, its hills rising one above another in lonely, savage grandeur, with Croagh Patrick, the monarch of them all, standing up on the south side of the bay, and looking down in haughty, cold indifference upon its waters as they flowed beneath him. Nellie followed his eye and finger eagerly as he pointed out each individual feature in the scene before her; but observing that he lingered for a moment on Croagh Patrick, she turned toward him for explanation.
"It is Croagh Patrick," he said; then perceiving that she was not much the wiser for the information, he added in some surprise, "Do you not know the legend, that it was from the cone of yonder hill St. Patrick pronounced the curse which banished all venomous hurtful things from Ireland? Had the saint lived in these days," Roger added, in that undertone which Nellie had by this time discovered to be natural to him in moments of deep feeling, "it is not, I think, against toads and snakes that he would have directed his miracle-working powers, but against the men who, coming to a land which is not their own, make war in God's name against God's creatures, hunting them down with horn and hound, and snaring and slaying them with as little compunction as they would have snared or slain a wolf."
"Would he then have expelled me also?" asked Nellie, with a wicked smile. "You know that I, too, (and more's the pity!) have blood of the hated Saxon in my veins."
"Certainly not," said Roger promptly, "with your blue-black eyes and blue-black hair, he would without a doubt (saint and prophet though he was) have been deluded into believing you a Celt."
"And so I am almost," said Nellie, with childish eagerness; "only consider, Colonel O'More, we have been in the country almost three hundred years, and in all that time, until my dear father's marriage with my mother, (who is unfortunately an Englishwoman,) it has been the boast and tradition of our race that its sons and daughters have never wedded save with the sons and daughters of their adopted land."
"Remember, then, that it will be for you to renew the tradition," said Roger suddenly, and without reflection. He repented himself bitterly a moment afterward, as he caught a glimpse of the flush upon Nellie's half-averted face, and in order to undo the evil which he had done he added hastily, "Yonder is our destination, that bare, black rock jutting out from the mainland far into the deep waters."
"It is not then an island?" said Nellie a little disappointed. "I fancied you said yesterday that it was one."
"Perhaps I did, for it juts out so far and so boldly into deep water that, from many parts of the bay, it looks almost like an island. You cannot see the hermitage from this, but yonder is the church, perched right upon the cliffs above."
"Perched!" repeated Nellie, with a sort of shudder. "I should hardly say even that itwas perched, for to me it looks as if it were actually toppling over."
"And so it is," said Roger; "the tower is out of the perpendicular already, and I never hear a winter storm without picturing it to myself as going (as go most certainly it will some day) crash over the cliff. It is safe enough, however, in this calm weather," he added, for he saw that Nellie was beginning to look nervous, "or I never should have thought of it as a refuge for its present occupant, though, for that matter, it was but a choice of evils, his life being in jeopardy whichever way he turned."
"Is he then especially obnoxious?" Nellie asked; "or is it only that, like all our other priests, he is forced to do his mission secretly?"
"Especially obnoxious? I should think, indeed he was," said Roger; "for he was chaplain to the brave old bishop whom they hanged at the siege of Clonmel, and was present at his death. How he managed to escape himself, has always been a marvel to me; but escape he did, and came hither for a refuge. I stowed him away in the ruined hermitage overhead, with a few other poor fellows who are outlawed like myself, and in greater danger, and his presence has never been even suspected by the enemy; so that he might, if he had been so minded, have escaped long ago by sea. But when he found us here, without sacraments or sacrifice, (for our priests have been long since driven into banishment,) he elected to remain, and now, at the peril of his life, he does duty as a parish priest among us."
"Brave priest! brave priest!" cried Nellie, clapping her hands. "He must feel very near to heaven, I think, engaged in such a mission, and living like a real hermit up there on that barren rock."
"And so in fact he is; or at least he lives in a real hermit's cell," said Roger. "It was built in the time of Grana Uaille by a holy man, in whose memory the rock is sometimes called 'the hermit,' though more generally known as 'the chieftain's rock.'"
"But why the change of names?" asked Nellie.
"Because," he answered, with the least possible shade of bitterness in his manner, "because, as often happens in this wicked world, persons who have been made heroes in the eyes of men are made more account of than those who are heroes only in the sight of God. This hermit had lived here for many years in peace and quiet, when the chief of a tribe of Creaghts, at enmity with Grana Uaille, having been beaten by her in a battle, took refuge with him among these rocks.'The hermit hid him in the church, which, being an acknowledged sanctuary, even Grana Uaille, stout and unscrupulous as she was in most things, did not dare invade in order to drag him from its shelter. But she swore—our good old Grana could swear upon occasion as lustily as her rival sovereign your own Queen Bess—Grana swore that neither the sanctity of his hermit friend or of his place of refuge should avail him aught, and that, sooner or later, she would starve him into submission. She landed accordingly with her men, and surrounded church and hermitage upon the land side, that toward the sea being left unguarded and unwatched because, owing to the height and steepness of the cliff itself, and the position of the church tower, built almost immediately upon its edge, there seemed no human possibility of evasion that way. The chief, however, and his hermit proved too many for her after all; for by dint of working day and night, they succeeded, before their store of provisions was entirely exhausted, in cutting through the floor and outer wall of the church, and so making a passage which gave them instant access to the cliffs outside. This was by no means so difficult a task as at first sight it seems; for the floor of the building is only hardened earth, and its walls a mere mixture of mud and rubble, the very tower itself being only partially built of stone. I have often, when a boy, crept through the aperture, but it is nearly filled up with rubbish now, and almost, or I think quite forgotten among the people, who have been using the church for the last twenty years as a storehouse for peat and driftwood for their winter firing. Useful enough, however, the poor chieftain found it; for one fine moonlight night he walked quietly through it into the open air, swung himself down the cliffs as unconcernedly as if he had been merely searching for puffins' nests, and finally escaped in a boat left there by his friends for that very purpose. Next day, the hermit threw the church gates open, and sent word to Queen Grana that her intended victim had escaped her. You may imagine what a rage the virago chieftainess was in at finding herself thus outwitted; but I have not time to tell you now, for here we are close into shore, and it is time to think of landing."
Roger had lowered the sail while speaking, and he now began sculling the boat round a low sandy point which hid the harbor from their view. While he was occupied in this manner, Nellie, chancing to turn her head in the direction of Clare Island, perceived another corragh fast following in their track, and rowed by a boy, who was evidently working might and main in order to overtake them. She mentioned the matter to Roger, who instantly ceased his toil, and turned round to reconnoitre.
"It is Paudeen," he said at once. What, in Heaven's name, has sent him to us here?"
The boy saw that he was observed, and without stopping a moment in his onward course, made signs to them to await his coming.
Roger did as he was desired; and in a few minutes more the two corraghs were lying together side by side, and so close that their respective occupants could have conversed easily in a whisper.
"What is it, Paudeen?" asked O'More; "have you any message for me, or is there anything the matter that you have followed us so far?"
"It's Mistress Hewitson who is wanting to see you," said the boy. "She was prevented leaving as soon as she intended, and she sent me on before to ask you not to quit the island until she had spoken to you. You were gone, however, before I could get there; so, guessing well enough where you would most likely be upon Sunday morning, I followed you down here."
"But if you came straight from the mainland, how is it that I did not meet you in the way?" asked O'More suddenly, a strange suspicion of even Paudeen's simple faith passing rapidly through his mind.
"Because I didn't come from it at all, at all," the boy answered curtly. "It is yonder they're staying now," he added, pointing to Achill Island; "and they do say in the house that Clare Isle will be the next to follow."
"And is it to tell me this that Mistress Hewitson is about to honor me with a visit?" Roger answered bitterly. "The formality, methinks, was hardly needed, considering all that her father has robbed me of already."
"Sorrow know, I know what she will be wanting; but this at all events I know for certain, that it is for nothing but what is good and kind," said Paudeen; adding immediately afterward in a musing tone, "though howshecan be what sheis, considering the black blood that is running in her veins, it needs greater wits than I can boast of to be able to discover."
"Well, well," said Roger, "I believe you are about right there, Paudeen. So now go back at once, and say to Mistress Hewitson that she shall be obeyed, and that I will return to Clare Island in time to receive her at the landing-place."
"Let me go back also," said Nellie, in a smothered voice. "If I and my grandfather have brought this danger to your door, it is only just that we should share it with you."
"Share it. Mistress Netterville? Nay, but you would double it!" cried O'More vehemently. "In the face of anything like real, present danger, I should infallibly lose my life in anxiety for yours. In point of fact, however, he added, seeing that she still looked distressed and anxious; in point of fact, the danger (whatever it is) cannot be immediate, since it is evident that Mistress Hewitson expects by her intended visit to give me such information as may enable me to evade it. Possibly she has heard further details concerning those plans of the old man, her father, at which yesterday she obscurely hinted. It may even be, as Paudeen seems to think, that they intend to put an English garrison on the island, and she may hope to soften matters for us by giving me this previous notice. Any way, I entreat you not to be over anxious; for though I acknowledge that we live in perilous times and places, yet still, and if only for that very reason, it behoves us to keep our common sense intact, and not to allow it to be scared by every passing cloud that seems to threaten us with storm."
After such words as these, Nellie felt there was nothing for it but to land the moment the boat reached shore, and Roger helped her out with a sort of graceful tenderness, which seemed tacitly to ask forgiveness for the constraint he had been compelled to put upon her inclinations.
Then he pointed to a scarcely discernible path among the brushwood, and said hastily:
"That path will take you straight to the church. If any one ask you any questions, the watchword is, 'God, our Lady, and Roger O'More.' Farewell! Get as near the altar as you can; tell them not to wait for me, but I will be back in time to fetch you."
He waited one moment, to make sure that she understood him, then pushed the boat out into deep water, and without even venturing to look back, pursued his way diligently homeward.
The breeze had died away, so that he would, he knew, be infinitely longer in returning to Clare Island than he had been in coming from it. As he passed Paudeen, he had half a mind to hail him, but reflecting that he would probably lose more time by the stoppage than he could gain by the boy's assistance, he changed his mind and went on his way alone. It was hot and weary work, but he put all his strength and will to it, and did it in a shorter time than he had expected. Not, however, before his presence was apparently sorely needed; for just as he neared the harbor, the deep, angry bay of the wolf-dog Maida reached his ear. This was followed by a woman's voice, endeavoring probably to soothe the dog, and this again by a long, shrill whistle which came like a cry for aid across the waters. Thus urged, O'More pulled with redoubled energy, and next moment was in the harbor. A corragh, ownerless and empty, was lying loose beside the pier, and a few yards from the landing-place he saw a girl standing motionless as a statue, one hand raised in an attitude of defence, confronting Maida, who, with head erect and bristling hair, seemed to bid her advance further at her peril. Had she attempted to retreat, had she shown even a shadow of timidity or of yielding, the dog would undoubtedly have torn her into pieces; but, with wonderful nerve and courage, she had so far stood her ground, and, rebuked by her stillness and unyielding attitude, Maida, up to that moment, had fortunately contented her sense of duty by keeping a close watch upon her proceedings. Horrified at the sight, and dreading lest Maida might mistake even the sound of his voice for a signal of attack, Roger hastily leaped on shore. Henrietta heard him, and without even daring to turn her head in his direction, whispered softly:
"Call off your dog—for God's dear sake, call her off at once!"
Roger made no reply, (for, in fact, he did not dare to speak,) but he made one bound forward and placed himself between her and her foe. Maida instantly abandoned her threatening look to greet her master, and for one half-moment he employed himself in caressing and calming down her fury. Then he turned eagerly to Henrietta:
"How is this. Mistress Hewitson? For God's sake, speak! The dog has not injured you, I trust?"
Henrietta did not at first reply. She was as white as ashes, and her eyes glittered with a strange mingling of courage and of desperate fear. "Send away the dog," she cried at last; "send away the dog. I cannot bear to see her," and then burst into tears.
Roger said one word, and Maida instantly flew toward the castle. He was about to follow in the same direction in order to procure some water, but the girl caught him by the arm, and held him so that he could not move.
"Calm yourself, I entreat you," he said, fancying she was still under the influence of terror. "No wonder that even your high courage has given way. Let me call Nora. She will help you to compose yourself."
"Call no one," Henrietta gasped.
"Call no one; but tell me, is there not a priest and some other outlaws in hiding on the chieftain's rock?"
"What then?" he asked, the blood suddenly rushing to his heart as he thought of Nellie.
"What then?" she repeated fiercely; "because, (oh! that I had known it but an hour ago,) because death is there, and treachery and woe! But whither are you going?" she cried, following him as he broke suddenly from her grasp, and began to retrace his way toward the pier.
"Whither? whither?" he answered, like one speaking in his sleep. "There, of course. Where else? My God, that I should have left Nellie there!"
"The girl!" cried Henrietta; "and you have been there already, and have had time to row all this way back? My God, then it will be too late to save her. The church must be in flames ere now."
O'More made no reply, but leaped at once into the boat. "What do you want?" he asked, almost savagely, as Henrietta followed him. "What do you want here—you, the child of her assassin?"
"I want to save her, and, still more, to save my father, if I can, from this most fearful guilt," she answered promptly. Roger made no further opposition. Once fairly out of harbor, he rowed with all the energy of despair, and Henrietta helped him nobly. They were obliged to trust entirely to their oars, and the delay was maddening. Roger never cast a single glance toward the spot where all his soul was centred, but Henrietta could not resist a look once or twice in that direction.
Suddenly she cried out.
"What is it?" he asked nervously; "what is it?"
"They have fired the church," she said, in smothered tones. "There is a cloud of smoke; and now—my God!—a jet of flame going through it to the sky!"
He made no reply, but he bent to the oar until the bead-drops of mingled agony and toil stood thick upon his brow.
"God help them! They must be trying to escape," she muttered yet again, as something like a shot or two of musketry reached her ear.
Faster he rowed, and faster. The boat leaped like a living thing along the waters. They were close to the cliff at last. Overhead, the sky was hidden by a canopy of heavy smoke, with here and there a streak of fire flashing like forked lightning athwart it. Underneath, the water lay black as ink, in the reflection of the clouded heavens, as the boat rushed through it. One more effort, and they were in the cove—another, and they were flung high and dry upon the beach. Roger jumped out without a word. Was he in time? or was he not? His whole soul was engrossed in that fearful question.
"What are you going to do?" asked Henrietta, uncertain as to what her own share in the enterprise was to be. He had been searching in the bottom of the boat for something; but he looked up then with a kindling eye, and said:
"Will you be true to the end?"
"So help me God, I will!" she answered in that quiet tone which tells all the more of steady courage that it has no touch of bluster in it. He had found what he wanted now—a cutlass and a coil of rope—and answered rapidly:
"Take the boat out of this, then, and wait beneath the cliffs. Wait till I come, or until yonder tower falls, as fall it must, and soon. After that, you may go home in peace. Yes, peace! For happen what may, your soul, at any rate, will be guiltless of this day's murder."
He shoved the boat back into deep water as he finished speaking, and then, without even looking back to see if Henrietta followed his directions, strode rapidly up the cliffs.
Happily unconscious of the peril by which her own life was so speedily to be placed in jeopardy, Nellie stood for a few minutes after Roger left her, watching his progress through the water, and speculating anxiously enough upon the nature of the summons which had been delivered to him by Paudeen. In spite of his apparent coolness, there had been something in the way in which he had almost forced her to leave him—something in the haste with which he had given her his last directions—something (if it must be confessed) in the very fact of his having rushed off without even a parting word or look, which made her suspect the danger to be more real and immediate than he wished her to suppose it. And now, as she watched him bending to the oar as if his very life depended on his speed, suspicion seemed all at once to grow up into certainty, and she bitterly regretted the shyness which had prevented her insisting on returning with him to the island. Regrets, however, were now in vain, and remembering that, if she delayed much longer, she would in all probability be too late for Mass, and so lose the only object for which she had remained behind, she turned her face resolutely toward the path pointed out by Roger. It was less a path indeed than a mere narrow space left by the natural receding of the rocks and loose boulders, which lay scattered about in all directions. Such as it was, it led Nellie in a zigzag fashion upward toward the cliffs, turning and twisting so suddenly and so often, that she could hardly ever see more than a yard or two before her, while the boulders on either side, being generally higher than her head, and the intervals between them filled up with tall heather and scrubby brushwood, she might as well, for all that she could have seen beyond, have been walking between a couple of stone walls. The congregation had in all probability already reached the church, or else they were coming to it by another path; for not the sound of a voice or of a footstep either before or behind her could she hear, though she paused occasionally to listen. Once indeed, but only once, at a sudden opening among the boulders, she fancied she saw something like the glistening of a spear in the brushwood underneath, and a minute or two afterward the air seemed tremulous with a low sighing sound, as if some one were whispering within a few yards of her ear. Nevertheless, when she paused again in some trepidation to reconnoitre, everything seemed so lonely and so still around her, that she was obliged to confess that her imagination must have been playing her sad tricks. The light which she had seen was, in all probability, a mere effect of sunshine on some of the more polished rocks, while the sough and sigh of the waters, as they lapped quietly on the beach below, might easily have assumed, in that distance and in the calm summer air, the semblance of a human whisper. Once she had satisfied herself upon this point, she resolved not to be frightened from her purpose by any nervous fancies; and stimulating her courage by the reflection that, if an enemy really were lurking near, her best chance of safety would be the church, in which her countrymen and women were already gathered, she toiled steadily upward until she reached the platform upon which it was erected.A sudden turn in the path brought her face to face with it almost before she fancied that she was near, and she only comprehended how heartily she had been frightened on the way, by the sense of relief which this discovery imparted. It was a low, mean-looking edifice enough, with the hermit's cell built aslant against the wall, and forming in fact a kind of porch, through which alone it could be entered. From the moment it first came in sight, the path had narrowed gradually until there was barely room at last for the passing of a single person, and while it appeared to Nellie to descend, the rocks on either side rose higher, slanting even somewhat over, so as partially to impede the light. From this circumstance she was led to fancy that both cell and church had been built originally below what was now the present surface of the land, a fact which, joined to its desolate, ruinous condition, might easily have pointed it out to Roger as a fitting place for the concealment of his friends. The low door of the porch was closed and fastened upon the inside, so that she was obliged, very reluctantly, to knock on it for admittance. A moment afterward she heard the sound of footsteps, the door was drawn back an inch or two, and some one from behind it whispered in Irish, "Who are you, and for whom?"
"For God, our Lady, and Roger O'More," Nellie promptly answered.
"Enter, then, in the name of God," the voice replied; and a strong hand being put forth, she was drawn within the building as easily and unresistingly as if she had been a child, and the door was again closed behind her. The cell into which she had been thus unceremoniously introduced was very dark, and she could only just perceive that the person who had played the part of porter was a tall, soldierly-looking fellow, and therefore, she concluded, one of the outlaws, of whose residence in the building Roger had informed her.
"You have been long a-coming," said the man. "Why is not the chieftain with you?"
"How do you know that he brought me hither?" asked Nellie, startled by the knowledge he seemed to have of her proceedings.
"We keep a good look-out seaward upon Sunday mornings," he answered significantly. "Why did he go back?"
"A message—summons from the island," said Nellie; not well knowing how much or how little it would be prudent to communicate. "It was nothing of any consequence, I believe; and he said you were not to wait. He will probably be here before all is over."
"Good," said the man; "then follow me." He went on as he spoke, Nellie stumbling as well as she could after him in the dark, until they reached the thick matting of dried grass which separated the church from the porch outside. Here the descent became so sudden that she would inevitably have been precipitated face foremost into the midst of the congregation, if her conductor had not caught her by the arm in time to prevent this catastrophe, and landed her safely on the other side. The interior of the building, as Nellie saw it in that dim light, had a much nearer resemblance to a ruinous barn than to a place of Christian worship. As Roger had already told her, it had been so long dismantled and forgotten as a church that the people had come to look upon it simply as a storehouse for their winter firing, a fact amply attested by the piles of drift and brushwood which rose in all directions, blocking up the narrow windows, and forming a gigantic stack against the wall behind the altar.This latter was of stone, facing the door by which she had just entered, and so placed that there was a considerable distance between it and the wall beyond.
In this desolate-looking building about twenty or thirty people were assembled, most of them women and young girls, with a sprinkling of old men and half-a-dozen younger ones, in whom Nellie fancied she recognized the outlawed soldiers of the royal army. Two or three of these last stole a curious glance upon her, as she moved onward toward the altar; but the greater part of the congregation were so absorbed in earnest and loudly-uttered prayer, that they seemed absolutely unconscious of the entrance of a stranger. Passing quietly, so as not to disturb them in their devotions, Nellie made her way to a spot from whence she had a full view of the priest as he sat, a little on one side, engaged in hearing the confessions of those who presented themselves for that purpose. He was in truth a hero in Nellie's eyes—the best of all heroes—a Christian hero. He had stood by that brave old bishop who had gone to death for an act of patriotism which, in the old heroic days of Rome, would have set him as a demigod upon pagan altars. Quiet and self-possessed, he had knelt, amid the thunders of the battle-field, to hear the confessions of the wounded soldiers. He had plunged into the fell atmospheres of plague and fever, braving death in its worst and most loathsome forms in the exercise of his ministerial functions. He had buried the dead—he had consoled the widow and orphan, made such by the reckless cruelty of man; and now, when he had exhausted all the more heroic forms of service to his Lord, he had come hither, like that Lord himself—like the good Shepherd of the Gospel—to gather up the young lambs into his arms, and to comfort a conquered and stricken people; to pour the consolations of religion upon hearts wrung and disconsolate in human sorrow; to preach of heaven to men forsaken of the earth, and to teach them, houseless and hapless as they were, to lift up those eyes and hands, which had been lifted in vain to their brother man for mercy, higher and higher still, even to that Almighty Father to whose paternal heart the life of the very least of his little ones was of such unspeakable and unthought-of value that not a hair might fall from one of their heads without his express permission. Thoughts like these passed rapidly through Nellie's mind as she watched the old man bending reverently and compassionately to receive, in the exercise of his ministerial functions, each new tale of sin or sorrow which, one after another, the poor people round him came to pour into his sympathizing ear.
We have called him "old," for his hair was white and his face was ploughed into many wrinkles; yet Nellie could not help suspecting that the look of wearied, patient age upon his features was less the effect of years, than of the toil and suffering by which those years had been utilized and made fruitful in the service of his Master. Altogether she felt drawn toward him by a feeling of reverent admiration, which would probably have found vent in words, if he had not been so completely occupied in his ministerial duties as to make it simply impossible to interrupt him. For in a congregation deprived, as this had been, of a pastor for many months, there was of course much to be done ere the commencement of the Sunday service.There were confessions to be heard, and infants to be baptized, and more than one young couple—who had patiently awaited the coming of a lawful minister for the reception of that sacrament—to be united in holy wedlock. At last, however, all this was over, and Nellie had just made up her mind to go and speak to him in her turn, when, to her infinite annoyance, he rose from his place and commenced robing himself at the altar. Kneeling down again, therefore, she endeavored to withdraw her thoughts from all outward things, in order to fix them entirely upon the coming service. In spite, however, of her most earnest efforts, she felt nervous and unhappy at the prolonged absence of O'More, and she could not help envying the people round her, as with all the natural fervor of the Celtic temperament, they abandoned themselves to prayer; prostrating, groaning, beating their breasts, and praying up aloud with as much naive indifference to the vicinity of their neighbor, as if each individual in presence there imagined that he and his God were the sole occupants of the church. Poor Nellie could obtain no such blest absorption from her cares. Her eyes would glance toward the door for the coming of Roger, and her ears would listen for his footsteps; once or twice, indeed, she felt quite certain that she heard him moving quietly behind the screen of matting, which shut in the church from the porch outside, and became, in consequence, nervously anxious to see him lift it and take his promised place beside her. He never came, however, yet the sounds continued, accompanied at times by a slight waving of the screen, as if a hand had accidentally touched it; and this occurred so often that Nellie began at last to be seriously alarmed. She thought of Paudeen's mysterious message to his chieftain, and her own half extinguished fancy of having seen a spear among the brushwood recurred vividly to her mind. What if she had seen rightly, after all? What if an enemy were really lurking in the neighborhood; or, worse still, crouching behind that terrible screen, ready to massacre the congregation as they passed through it to the open air after service? The thought was too terrible for solitary endurance, and she was just about to lessen the burden by imparting it to her nearest neighbor, when she found herself forestalled by a heavy, stifling cloud of smoke, which rolled suddenly through the church and roused every creature present to a sense of coming danger. There was a rustle and a stir, and then they all stood up, men and women and little children, gazing with wild eyes and whitened faces on each other, uncertain of the "how or from whence" of the threatened peril.
The priest alone seemed to pay no attention to the circumstance; nevertheless he felt and comprehended far better than they did the nature of the fate awaiting them, and hurried on to the conclusion of the Mass, which was by this time, fortunately, well-nigh over.
He had hardly finished the communion prayer before the heat and suffocation had become unbearable. In an agony of terror, the people made a rush to the gates, and tore down the screen of matting which separated the church from the porch beyond.
Then arose a wild cry of despair, filling the church from floor to ceiling—the cry of human beings caught in a snare from whence, except by a cruel death, there was no escaping. The porch was already a blazing furnace, filled almost to the roof, with fagots burning in all the fury that pitch and tar, and other combustibles flung liberally among them, were calculated to produce.These, then, were the sounds which had disturbed Nellie during Mass. The enemy had profited by the rapt devotion of these poor people to build up, unheard and unsuspected, their death-pile in the porch, after which doughty deed they had retired, closing the gates behind them, and trusting the rest to the terrible nature of the ally they had so recklessly invoked.
To attempt a passage through that sea of fire in its first wild fury would have been instant death; and amid the cries of women and children, many of whom were well-nigh trampled to death beneath the feet of their fellow-victims, the crowd swayed backward.
Then came another horror. An unhappy girl, one of the foremost of the throng, in her eagerness to escape, had rushed so far into the porch that her garments caught fire, and, mad with pain and fear, she flung herself face downward upon a heap of driftwood near her. It was all that was needed to complete the work of destruction. The wood, dry and combustible as tinder, ignited instantly, and in two minutes more was a mass of flame. In vain some of the men, with the priest at their head, leaped on it in a wild effort to trample it out before it could spread further. As fast as it was stifled in one place it broke out in another, the subtle element gliding along the walls and seizing upon stack after stack of wood with an ease and speed that mocked at all their efforts to extinguish it. No words can paint the horrors of the scene that followed! Heavy volumes of black smoke, ever and anon rolling upward from some new spot upon which the fire had fastened, at times shut out the light of day, and made the darkness almost palpable to the senses. Fire, bright and angry, flashing at first here and there at intervals, like forked lightning, through the gloom; then coming thicker and quicker, as it grew with what it fed on, hurrying and leaping in its exultant fury, licking up and devouring with hungry tongues all that opposed its progress—now spreading itself in sheets of molten flame, now contracting into red, hissing streams, bearing a terrible resemblance to fiery serpents, but never for a moment slackening in its work of woe, winding hither and thither, and in and out, and fastening with all the malice and tenacity of a conscious creature upon everything combustible within its reach, until the very rafters overhead were wreathed in flame—and underneath that awful canopy the panting, shrieking crowd, struggling in that sulphurous atmosphere of smoke and fire, rushing backward and forward, they knew not whither, in search of a safety they knew too well they could never find; for even while obeying the animal instinct to fly from danger, there was not a creature there who did not feel to the very inmost marrow of his being, that unless a miracle were interposed to save him, he was doomed then and there to die.
Nellie was the only person in the church, perhaps, with the sole exception of the pastor, who made no vain effort at escaping. Driven by the swaying of the others, after their first rush to the door, backward toward the altar, she had remained there quietly ever since, praying, or trying to pray, and shutting eyes and ears as much as might be to the terrible sights and sounds around her. Accident had, in fact, brought her to the only spot in the building where safety was for the moment feasible.