"That is the very thing," cried Hamish eagerly. "God love you, madam! Do you not see that the only real comfort you could give them would be the allowing them to try at least and comfort you?"
"Bid them pray, then, for the safe journey of my loved ones," she answered hoarsely—"that is the only real comfort they can give me."
"And why, then, couldn't we pray all together?" cried Hamish, struck suddenly by a bright idea. "Why wouldn't you let them come up here, madam? I warrant you they would pray as the best of them never prayed before, if they only seen your ladyship's honor kneeling and praying in the midst of them."
"I—I cannot pray—I cannot even think," she answered, laying her head once more on her folded arms, like a weary or a chidden child. "Go you, good Hamish, and pray yourself with them down-stairs."
"In the kitchen, is it?" said Hamish, with a considerable portion of irony in his voice. "Faix, my lady, and it's queer thoughts we'd have, and queer prayers we would be saying there, with the pot forenent us, boiling on the fire, and Cromwell's black rogues of troopers coming and going, and flinging curses and scraps of Scriptures (according to their usual custom) in equal measure at our heads. No! no! my lady," he continued vehemently, "if you would have us pray at all, it must be here—here where the cross will mind us of a Mother who once stood at its foot, and who was even more desolate than you are; a Mother silent and heart-broken—not because her Child had gone before her into exile, from whence He might any day return, but because she saw Him dying—dying in the midst of tortures—and forsaken so entirely that it might well have seemed to her (only she knewthatnever could be) as if God as well as man had utterly abandoned Him."
"You are right, Hamish; you are right," cried Mrs. Netterville suddenly, touched to the quick by his voice and eloquence. "Go you down at once, good Hamish, and bid them come here directly. I shall be ready by the time they are assembled."
As Mrs. Netterville spoke thus, she rose from the floor, and then, all at once perceiving the strange disorder of her attire, she began hastily to gather up her tresses, previous to placing her widow's coif upon them.
Hamish waited to hear no more, but instantly left the room to do her bidding. As he walked rapidly toward the lower part of the mansion, he drew a long sigh of relief, like one who has just got rid of a heavy burden, as in truth he had; for he felt that he had gained his point, and that whatever his mistress might have yet to suffer, she was safe, at all events, from the effects of that first great shock of sorrow which had threatened to overturn her intellect.
When he returned to announce that the household was assembled and waiting for her further orders he found her kneeling at theprie-dieu, in all the grave composure of her usual manner. She did not trust herself, however, to look round, but merely signed to him that they should come in; and the instant the noise and bustle of their first entrance had subsided, she commenced reading from her open missal.
But the very sound of her own voice in supplicatory accents seemed to break the spell which had hitherto been laid upon her faculties. She fairly broke down and burst into a flood of tears. This was more than enough for the excitable hearts around her, and the room was filled in a moment with the wailing of her people.Hamish was in despair; and yet, perhaps, no other mode of proceeding could have done so much toward calming her as did this sudden outburst; for Mrs. Netterville had a true Englishwoman's aversion to "scenes," however real and natural to the circumstances of the case they might be. She instantly checked her tears, and waiting quietly until the storm of grief had in some degree died out, she collected all her energies, and read in a low, steady voice the prayer or collect for those travelling by land or sea, as she found it in her missal. A few other short but earnest prayers succeeded, and then she paused once more. Her audience took the hint and quietly retired. Hamish was about to follow, but she rose from theprie-dieu, and signed to him to remain.
"Hamish," she said, gently but decidedly, "I have done your bidding, and now I expect that you will do mine. I wish to be alone for the rest of the day—do you understand? alone with God and my great sorrow! To-morrow I will begin the work for which I have been left here, but to-day must be my own. Come not here yourself, and look to it that no one else disturbs me. Keep a heedful watch upon the soldiers, and see that no mischance occurs between them and any of our people, I trust to you for this and all things. Now leave me. If I have need of anything, I will let you know."
There was that in Mrs. Netterville's tone and manner which made Hamish feel he had gone quite far enough already; so, without another word of remonstrance or expostulation, he made his reverence and retired.
Mrs. Netterville waited until the echo of his retreating footsteps had died away in the corridor, and then fastening the door so as to secure herself from any further interruption from the outside, she once more fell on her knees before the crucifix, and buried her face in both her hands. How long she remained thus she never knew exactly; but the shades of a short January evening were already gathering in the room, when, with a start and a look as if her conscience smote her, she rose suddenly from her knees. "Christ pardon me!" she muttered half aloud, "that, in my own selfish sorrows, I have forgotten others! Poor wretch! By this time he must be well-nigh famished, if, indeed, (though I trust it will not,) the delay has not worked him deeper mischief."
As these thoughts passed rapidly through her mind, she opened a cupboard close at hand, and drew from thence a bottle of wine, with some other articles of delicate food, packed carefully in a wicker-basket, and evidently left there for some especial purpose. She then sought through the gloom for a cloak, which she threw upon her shoulders, and, drawing the hood down over her face, and taking the basket on her arm, she hastily left the room. Not, however, by the door through which Hamish and the servants had retreated, but by another at the opposite end, and which was almost invisible, in consequence of its forming one of the panels in the black oak wainscoting of the chamber. It led her directly by a short stone passage to another door or low wicket, on opening which she found herself in the private grounds of the castle. Before her at no great distance, stood an old ivy-covered church, half hidden in a group of tall Irish trees, which sheltered its little cemetery.This was not the parish church, but a private chapel, built by the Netterville family for their own particular use; and here their infants had been baptized, their daughters married, and their old men and women laid reverently to their last slumbers, ever since they had established their existence in the land.
Mrs. Netterville could not resist a sigh as she glanced toward its venerable walls. It seemed as if it were only yesterday that she had gone there to lay down her husband in his lowly grave, hoping and praying, out of the depths of her own great grief, that she might soon be permitted to sleep quietly beside him. And now, even this sad hope was to be hers no longer; this poor possession of six feet of earth was to be wrested from her; strangers would lay her in a distant grave, and even in death she would be separated from her husband. The thought was too painful to bear much lingering upon it, and turning her back upon the church, Mrs. Netterville followed a path which lay close under the castle walls, and led to a court-yard at a considerable distance. Round this court-yard were grouped stables and other offices, which, having been built at different periods and without any consecutive idea as a whole, presented rather the appearance of a collection of stunted farm-houses, than of the regular out-buildings of an important mansion.
Each of these houses had a private entrance of its own; and opening the door of one of them, Mrs. Netterville looked in quietly and entered. The interior was a room, poorly but yet decently furnished, and on a low settle-bed at the farther end lay a young man, who, with his sunken eyes and hollow cheeks, had all the look of a person just rescued from the jaws of death. A knapsack on the floor, a pike and musket in one corner of the room, and a steel cap and buff coat in another, seemed to announce him as one of the band of successful soldiers who were even then in possession of the castle.
Poor fellow! he lay, with closed eyes, wan and weary, on his bed, looking, at that moment, like anything rather than like a successful soldier; but he lifted his head as he caught the noise of the door creaking on its hinges, and his face brightened into an expression of joy and gratitude pleasant to behold when he discovered Mrs. Netterville standing on the threshold.
"Can you ever forgive me?" she said, going up to him at once. "I cannot easily forgive myself for having left you so long alone. In the grief and anguish in which I have been plunged all day, I had well-nigh forgotten your existence, and you must be faint, I fear me, for want of nourishment."
"Nay, madam," he answered, gently, indeed, but yet with a good deal of that comfortable self-assurance in spiritual matters which seems to have been an especial inheritance of "Cromwell's saints." "Ifyouhave forgotten, the Lord at least hath been mindful of his servant, and hath cast so deep a slumber on my senses, that I have been altogether unconscious of the lapse of time, or of the absence of those carnal comforts which, however the spirit may rebel against them, are nevertheless not altogether to be despised, as being the means by which we receive strength to do the bidding of our Master."
Mrs. Netterville could not help thinking that the posset-cup and soothing draught, which she had administered the night before, might have had as much as any especial interposition of Providence to say to his seasonable slumbers; but the times were too much out of joint to permit of her making, however reverently, such an observation, so she merely touched his brow and hand, and said:
"I am right glad, at all events, that you seem in nowise to have suffered from my neglect. Eat now and drink, I pray you; for I perceive by this refreshing moisture on your skin that all danger has passed away, and that you need at present no worse physic than good food and wine to restore you to your former strength."
"Nay, madam," said the soldier, with great and hardly repressed feeling in his voice and manner. "Eat or drink I cannot, or in any way refresh myself, until I have poured forth my song of gratitude, first to the Lord of hosts, who hath delivered me from this great danger, and then to you, who have tended me (even as the widow of Sarepta might have waited on Elias) through the perils of a sickness from which my very comrades and fellow-laborers in the vineyard fled, trembling and afraid."
"You must pardon them, good Jackson," said Mrs. Netterville, "and all the more readily, because this disease, from which you have so marvellously recovered, is, men say, in its rapid progress and almost sure mortality, akin, if not indeed wholly similar, to that terrible malady the plague, which is the scourge of the Eastern nations, and leaves crowded cities, once it has entered in, as silent and deserted as the sepulchres of the dead. You cannot therefore wonder, and you need not feel aggrieved, if men who would have risked their lives for you on the battle-field, yet shrunk from its unseen, and therefore, to poor human nature, its more awful dangers."
"Nay, madam, I blame them not; perhaps even in their place I should have done the same. Nevertheless—and though I have no ill feeling toward them—I cannot forget that you, a Popish woman and an enemy, have done that for me which the very children of my own household have shrunk from doing, and I would fain show my gratitude if I could."
"You can show it, and that right easily, if you will," she answered kindly, "by eating and drinking heartily of the provisions I have brought, and so regaining strength to wait all the sooner on yourself. For I shall soon, as you doubtless know already, have work in hand which will compel me to make my visits fewer; and yet I shall not like to risk other lives by sending any of the household to wait on you in my stead."
"Alas! madam, I fear I have been but a troublesome and unprofitable, though not altogether, I do assure you, a thankless guest," the man answered, in a somewhat sad and deprecatory manner.
"Nay; but now you mistake me altogether," she answered earnestly. "You have been a most patient sufferer, and that trouble—which is altogether unavoidable in any sickness—has been, you may believe me, a pleasure rather than an uneasiness to me. I only meant to say that, though I shall still continue to visit you morning and evening, I shall not be able to come so often in the daytime as I have been used to do; for all matters in this sad affair of the transplantation having fallen into my hands, you may well imagine it is as much or more than one poor woman can well accomplish by her own unaided efforts."
"Would that I could aid you," he answered fervently—"would that I could comfort you! But, alas! in this matter of the transplantation, I can do naught, seeing that it is the Lord himself who hath girded on our swords, bidding us to smite and spare not.Nevertheless, lady, I am not ungrateful, and in the long, sleepless nights of my weary malady I have wrestled for you in prayer, striving exceedingly and being much exercised on your account; nor gave I over until I had received the comfortable assurance that, as the Lord sent angels to Lot to deliver him out of Sodom, so he would some day make of me a shield and a defence, whereby you might be snatched from the woes that he is about to rain down on this land, because 'the cry of its idolatry is waxen great before his face,' and he hath sworn to destroy it."
"Well, well!" she answered a little impatiently, "I thank you for your good-will, at all events; but for the present we will discourse no further on this matter. God will one day judge between us, and by his fiat I am content to stand or fall, in all those matters of religion on which, unhappily, we differ. See, I have trimmed the lamp so that it will burn brightly until morning, and there is food and wine on this little table. I will put it close to the bed, so that when you need nourishment, you will have but to put forth your hand to take it. And now I must say good-night—to-morrow I will be with you by the early dawn."
Having thus done all that either charity or hospitality could ask at her hands, Mrs. Netterville retired from the room, sooner, probably, than she would have done if the soldier's last words had not grated on her ear, and roused more angry passions than she wished to yield to in her breast.
"He has a good heart, poor wretch," she thought, as she took her way back to the castle; "but strange and fearful is it to see how pride, in him, as in all his comrades, usurps the place of true humility and religion."
The sudden sound of a pistol going off disturbed her in the midst of her cogitations; and with a pang of indescribable fear and presentiment of evil at her heart, she stood still. It seemed to come from the grove of yew-trees round the church, and was not repeated. Having ascertained this fact, she walked rapidly forward in the direction of the sound, her mind in a perfect whirl of fear, and only able to shape itself into the one thought, pregnant of future evil, that, either by some of her own people, or by one of the English soldiers, a murder had been committed. Just as she entered the grove of yew-trees, she perceived something like the loose garb of a woman fluttering down the path before her, and then suddenly disappearing behind the tower of the little church. She did not dare to call out; but feeling certain that this person must either have fired the shot herself, or have seen it fired by some one else, she quickened her pace in order to overtake her. Twilight was already deepening among the yew-trees; the path, moreover, was overgrown with weeds and brambles, and as she ran with her eyes fixed on the spot where the figure had disappeared, she felt herself suddenly tripped up by some object lying right before her, and fell heavily against it. At the first touch of that unseen something, a sense of terror, such as animals are said to be conscious of in the presence of their own dead, seized upon her senses, and all the blood was curdling in her veins as slowly and with difficulty she removed herself from its contact. Gradually, as she recovered from the stunning effects of her fall, and her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom around her, the "thing" on the ground shaped itself into the form of a human being—but of a human being so still and motionless, that it seemed probable it was a corpse already.Very reluctantly she put forth her hand to try if life were really extinct; but suddenly discovering that she was dabbling it in a pool of yet warm blood, she withdrew it with a shudder.
"My God! my God!" she moaned, "what enemy hath done this? Surely it is one of the soldiers from the castle, and they will accuse our people of the murder! Grant Heaven, indeed, that they are innocent! Would that Hamish were here to help me. Yet no! they would certainly in that case try to fix the guilt on him. I will go hence and let them discover it as they can. Yet what if I should meet them? I am all dabbled in his gore!"
With a new and sharp terror in her heart, as this thought took possession of it, she began hastily to rub her hands in the moss and dry leaves around her, in order to free them from the blood which clung to them; and she was still engaged in this rather equivocal occupation when a sudden stream of light was cast on her from behind, and, rising suddenly, she found herself face to face with the officer who had been left in command of the garrison of the castle.
Half-a-dozen of his men were at his back, and by the light of the lantern, which he carried, she read in their faces their conviction of her guilt. At a sign from their chief they surrounded her in awful silence, and he himself laid his hand heavily on her shoulder:
"Murderess!" he said, "thou art taken in thy sin!"
"I did it not," cried Mrs. Netterville, so utterly confounded by this terrible accusation that she hardly knew what she said. "So help me Heaven! I am innocent of this deed!"
"Innocent! sayest thou?" the officer answered firmly. "Innocent! thou with his blood red upon thy hands! Yea, and thy very garments clotted in his gore! If then thou art innocent, as thou wouldst have us to believe, say what wert thou doing in this lonely spot at an hour when none but the murderer or the wanton would care to be abroad?"
"I was returning from a visit to the soldier Jackson—a visit which, as thou knowest, Master Rippel, I pay him every evening at the hour of dusk; and I had well-nigh reached the castle, when hearing a shot in this direction, and fearing mischief either for my own people or for thine, I came hither if possible to prevent it."
"A likely story, truly!" replied the officer, who, unluckily for her, was one of the fiercest, if not the saintliest, of the band of warriors then domiciled at the castle. "Nay, woman, and for thine own sake hold thy peace, or out of thine own mouth thou shalt stand presently condemned. For tell me, my masters," he added, addressing the other men, "where will you find a woman, who, hearing a shot, and dreading mischief, would not have fled from the danger, instead of incontinently rushing, as she would have us to believe she did, into its very jaws?"
"Yet have I rushed into the jaws of danger more than once already within this fortnight, and that not for the sake of my own people but of thine; as none ought to know better than thou, Master Rippel, and thy comrades," Mrs. Netterville, now fairly put upon her mettle, retorted bravely.
"Nay, and that is naught but the very truth, though the father of lies (which is Beelzebub) himself had said it," one of the men here ventured to remark. "For surely, Captain Rippel, you cannot have forgotten that we should have had a soldier the less in the camp of Israel, if she had not nursed the good youth Jackson through this black business of the plague, when we, even we, men anointed and girded to the fight, did hesitate to go near him."
"Ha! Dost thou also venture to defend her?" cried the officer angrily. "Nay, then, let that woman which is called Deborah be brought forward and confronted with the prisoner. Her testimony must decide between us."
One or two of the soldiers who had been lingering at a little distance in the dusky twilight now advanced, half pushing before them, half leading, the very woman who had addressed Nellie so impudently in the morning. She came forward with a strange mixture of eagerness and reluctance in her manner; willing enough, it might be, to bear false testimony against her neighbor, but very unwilling to be confronted with its object.
They placed her face to face with Mrs. Netterville, and the captain turned his lantern so that the light fell full on the features of the latter. They were cold and calm, and almost disdainful in their expression, now that she knew who was her accuser; and Deborah, spite of all her efforts to brazen out the interview, cowered beneath her glance of scorn.
"Nay, but look well upon her, Deborah," said the captain, seeing that her eyes fell beneath those of the woman she had accused. "Look well upon her, and say if this be not that Moabitish woman whom thou sawest, as thou wert lingering (for no good purpose, I do fear me greatly) in the shadow of the trees—whom thou sawest, say I, steal hither between light and darkness, and treacherously do to death our brother Tomkins, who, being—as methinks you revealed to me just now—wearied overmuch with prayer and holding forth, (he was, as I myself can testify, a man of most precious doctrine, and greatly favored in the gift of preaching,) had come hither to repose himself."
"Nay," said the woman, speaking in very tolerable English, an accomplishment she had picked up when in service in Dublin; "of that great weariness caused by too much prayer and preaching. Master Rippel, I said naught—my own impression being," she added, unable even before such an audience to repress the gibe, "that the slumberous inclinations of worthy Master Tomkins had been caused by a somewhat too ardent devotion lately tendered to the wine-cask."
"Peace, scoffer! peace!" cried the captain. "And if thou wouldst have thy blasphemy against the Lord and against his saints forgiven, in this world or the next, look once more on the face of the prisoner, and be not shamefaced or afraid, but say out boldly whether you can swear to her in a court of justice as being the person whom you espied just now in the act—yea, the very act of murder."
"I can," said the woman shortly, and avoiding the eye of Mrs. Netterville as she spoke.
"Thou canst?" the latter said in a tone of indignant astonishment. "And pray, if thou wert watching me so narrowly, why didst thou not endeavor to prevent me?—why not strike up my weapon?—why not cry out, at least, so as to rouse up the sleeping soldier?"
"I did what I could," the woman sullenly responded. "I sought out his comrades. It was their look-out, not mine, and to them accordingly I left it."
"She speaks the truth, as we who so lately heard her tale can testify," the captain answered quickly. "You see, my men," he added, addressing the other soldiers, "Beelzebub is divided against himself, and the very children of his kingdom bear witness against each other. Surely the woman Netterville is guilty. Take her, therefore, some of you, a prisoner to the castle, while the rest prepare a decent burial for our murdered brother. I myself must speak apart with the witness Deborah, in order to put her testimony into a fitting shape to be laid before the court of my lords, the high commissioners of justice."
The sun had climbed well-nigh midway in the heavens, lighting up Clew Bay and its hundred isles until they glinted like emeralds in the blue setting of the sea, as an old, white-haired man and a young girl—the latter carrying a small bundle in one hand, while with the other she supported the failing strength of her companion, made their way, slowly and painfully, along the valley through which runs the bright "Eriff" river on its way to the ocean. Following the up course of the stream, they had passed, almost without knowing it, through some of the finest of the mountain scenery of the west, up hill and down hill, by pretty cascades, in which the river seemed to be playing with the obstacles which opposed it; round huge bare shoulders of rifted and out-jutting rock; through dark, deep purple gorges, which looked as if the mountains had been wrenched violently asunder in order to produce them; and now, at last, they found themselves in a quiet, dreary-looking glen, where cushions of soft moss and yielding heather seemed to woo them to repose. Nevertheless, footsore and worn out as they evidently were, they continued to press bravely forward until they had nearly arrived at the farther end of the valley; but by that time the old man's head had begun to droop wearily on his breast, and his steps had become so languid and uncertain that it was evident it would be perilous to proceed farther without giving him the rest he so absolutely required. Choosing, therefore, a little nook, where the turf grew soft and dry, and where clusters of tall fern and heather, rising nearly six feet from the root, seemed to promise at least partial shelter from the midday sun, the girl quietly disposed of her bundle as a pillow for his head, and invited him with a smile to a siesta. He obeyed as readily as if he had been a child, and she then sat down beside him, crooning an old nursery lullaby to hush him into slumber. But she sought no such salutary oblivion for herself; and no sooner had his eyes begun to close in sleep than she rose, and, as if anxiety had rendered her incapable of remaining quiet, wandered restlessly on until she reached the top of a hill which shut in the valley from the land beyond. There she paused, fear and foreboding, weariness and sorrow, all forgotten or swallowed up in the breathless admiration which took instant possession of her soul. Around her, crumbled and tumbled in all directions, were hills bare indeed of trees, but green to the very summit, and strangely picturesque in the fantastic variety of their forms. There were quiet glens and solemn, rock-strewn passes, with streamlets swelled into cataracts by the rains of spring, yet looking in the distance like mere threads of liquid silver spirting from their rugged sides. There were long brown tracts of peat land, brightened and relieved by patches of golden, flowering gorse, or of that thin herbage which, in its perfectly emerald green, is only to be seen in such like boggy places; and over and above all this, there were the shadowy outlines of more than one far-off range of mountains melting into the delicate blue background of the sky, and changing color, as rapidly as the young cheek of beauty, beneath the ever-shifting lights and shadows of that "cloud scenery" which is nowhere more beautiful or varied than in Ireland.To the left, and looking, in the clear atmosphere, so close that she almost felt she could have touched it with her outstretched hand, rose "Croagh Patrick," sacred to the memory of Ireland's great apostle; and Clew Bay lay, or seemed to lie, bright and shining at her feet—Clew Bay, with its gracefully winding shore, and its archipelago of islets; some bold, beetling rocks, ready and able to do battle with the storm, others mere baskets of verdure floating on the tide; while the largest and most picturesque of them all, the sea, girt kingdom of Grana-Uaile, Clare Island, stood bravely up, cliff over cliff, at the very mouth of the harbor, guarding it against the winter encroachments of the Atlantic, which, green as liquid jasper, and calm, in that summer weather, as a giant sleeping in the sunshine, unrolled itself beyond. Long and wistfully Nellie fixed her gaze upon that fair prospect; and it was with a strange reluctance and foreboding of future sorrow, that she at last withdrew in order to examine attentively that portion of the country which lay more immediately around her, and with which she believed herself about to be more intimately connected. As she did so, a building, perched half-way up a hill, rather more inland than that upon which she herself was standing, attracted her eye, and she gasped, with a sudden mingling of hope and fear, like a person choking; for she felt a sudden conviction that in the wild, uncultivated lands beneath her she beheld the portion assigned to her grandfather by the commissioners at Loughrea, and in that edifice, which seemed to have been built for the express purpose of commanding and overawing the entire district, the house in which they had told her she was to establish her new home.House, indeed, it could scarcely be called in anything like the modern acceptation of the term, though it was probably perfectly well suited to the wants and wishes of the wild chieftains by whom it had been erected. The original building had consisted of a single tower, of which the rough, rude walls, formed of huge stones, put unhammered and uncemented together, betrayed its origin in times so far remote as to have no history even in the oldest annals of the land. Added on to this gray relic of the past, however, a new building was now evidently in process of erection. It was far from finished yet, as Nellie knew by the poles and scaffoldings around it; but even in its embryo state it bore a terribly suspicious resemblance to that square, simple fortalice type of building which seems to have been the one architectural idea of Cromwell's Irish drafted soldiers, and which still remains in many places, the silent but uncontrovertible witness—the seal which they themselves have set upon their forcible and unjust possession of the land. The very look of that half-finished building seemed an answer to Nellie's late foreboding, and with a sinking heart she turned her back upon it and retraced her steps to the place where she had left Lord Netterville. The old man had already shaken off his fitful slumbers, and was toiling feebly up the hill.
Nellie ran back to fetch her bundle, which he had been unable to bring with him; but overtaking him in an instant, she gave him her arm, led him to the spot from whence she had just been taking her bird's-eye view of the country, and, pointing to the fortalice in process of erection, watched anxiously to discover what sort of impression it would make on his mind. But either he did not observe it, or did not take in the peculiar significance of its presence in those wilds; and finding that he remained silent and apparently unmoved, she collected all her remaining energy to say cheerfully:
"Look at that old gray tower to the right. If the man whom we met this morning among the hills spoke truth, we have reached the end of our weary journey, and yonder is our future home. It is not like our own dear Netterville, indeed, and yet it seems a goodly enough mansion. So goodly," she added, stealing a glance beneath her long lashes to see how he took the insinuation, "that I almost wonder they should have dealt thus kindly by us; for I know that many of the first of the 'transplanted' have had their lots assigned them in places where there was not even the hut of a peasant to shelter them from the weather."
"Tush, child! talk not to me of houses," the old man answered querulously, too much occupied with the actual disadvantages of his position to catch the hidden drift of Nellie's observation. "What boots a goodly mansion, if starvation be at its portal? And what, I pray you, but starvation are they condemned to, who have been sent to make themselves a home among these barren mountains?"
Nellie suffered her eyes to roam once more over the bright waters of the bay, and then, with a quick sense of beauty kindling up in her soul, she turned them hopefully upon Lord Netterville.
"Nay, dear grandfather, it is, after all, a country fair and pleasant to the eye, and once my dear mother rejoins us with the cows and 'garrans,' there can be no lack of plenty, even in these wilds."
"Cows and garrans! And where are we to feed them, girl? Do you expect to find the pleasant grazing-lands of Meath on the tops of these barren hills? or are we to fatten our flocks on the sea-drift, which, I have heard say, the natives of these wilds are in the habit of gathering on the shore and boiling down into food, not for their cattle, (they have none, poor wretches!) but themselves?"
"Some of these hills certainly look black and bare enough, but still I doubt not that among their glens and hollow places we shall find many a good acre of green grass for the grazing of our cattle," the girl answered patiently, and with an evident determination to look, for the present at least, only on the bright side of the question. "And now, dear sir," she added gently, "had we not best move onward? for if yonder tower is really to be our home, the sooner we are there the better."
She glanced toward the castle as she spoke, and the old man saw that she started violently as she did so. She said not another word, however; but he fancied that her cheek grew a shade paler—if that were possible—than it had been before, as she continued to gaze silently in that direction.
"What is it, Nellie?" he cried at last, frightened by her strange looks and silence. "What do you see, child, that you look so white and scared?"
"See!" she answered slowly and reluctantly, "there seems to be a party of many people gathering in the court-yard; the house, therefore, must be inhabited already!"
"People in the court-yard!" cried the old man, now fairly aroused to that same fear which had been haunting Nellie for the last half-hour. "What people, Nellie? Tell me, child, if you can distinguish whether they seem to be natives or strangers to the place. Our fate, alas! may be dependent on that fact."
The girl walked forward, and shading her eyes with her hand from the blinding sunshine, looked again, and yet again, in the direction of the tower.
"Yes," she said at last; "I was not mistaken. There is a party in the court-yard, and some of them are even standing in the gate-way, as if they had but this instant stept forth from the mansion. Surely, grandfather, we cannot have misunderstood or mistaken our instructions? There is no other building to be seen—even in the distance—and this one answers in all respects to the description. The man, too, from whom we inquired our way this morning, assured us that it was called 'The Rath'—the very name set down in our certificate. We cannot have been mistaken, and yet—and yet—if there be persons already in possession, their claim must needs be superior to our own."
She spoke hesitatingly, and in broken sentences, as if she were following out a train of thought in her own mind, rather than addressing her companion. He listened anxiously, and a cloud gathered on his brow as he gradually took in her meaning.
"It may be only some of the natives," he said at last, in a low voice. "The original owners, perhaps, of the tower, who have waited our arrival before giving up possession."
"Owners!" said Nellie quickly. "They told us at Loughrea that the owner had perished in the war, and that therefore we should find it empty."
"They may have been mistaken, Nellie. They know little enough, I think, those high and mighty commissioners at Loughrea, of the land of which they are so liberally disposing; and still less, I doubt me, of its original possessors."
"And if they are mistaken, we shall take the place of the rightful owners, and so deal out to others the very measure which our enemies have dealt to us. Grandfather, if we are guilty of this thing, we shall have a twofold sin upon our souls—their iniquity and our own."
"What would you have, child?" he answered pettishly; for, truth to say, he had yet quite enough of the Englishman about him, not to be over-particular as to the rights of the native Irish. "What would you have? Did you not know already that, in the acceptation of these lands, we were taking that which it was neither in the Cromwellians' right to give or in ours to receive? And what if an old tumble-down tower be thrown into the bargain? Trust me, Nellie, the business is so black already that, like the face of his Satanic majesty, who is the author of it, a little more or less of smutch will hardly make it blacker or uglier than it is."
"I never thought of this before," said Nellie sadly; "I thought only—fool that I was, so selfishly intent on my own misfortunes—I thought only of tracts of land left barren for want of inhabitants to till them, and of houses emptied by the fate of war. I never dreamed of men and women and little children turned out of their pleasant homes to make room for us—us who have as little right to their possessions as the English soldiers have to ours!"
"Nevertheless it has been done in almost every other case of transplantation which I have heard of," the old man answered restlessly. "And the iniquity—for itisan iniquity—is theirs who have driven us to such spoliation, not ours who have been compelled in our own despite to do it."
But Nellie was far too noble, and too clear-sighted in her nobleness, to shelter her actions behind such a subterfuge, and she answered vehemently:
"But it must not be in ours, sir—it must not be in ours! We will go down at once, and if the persons whom we see yonder be the rightful owners of that tower, we will merely crave rest and hospitality at their hands, until such a time as we have found a place, however humble, in which, without injury to honor or conscience, we can make ourselves a home."
"As you will, Nellie—as you will," he answered, too weary, perhaps, to be able longer to dispute the point. "But after all, we may be mistaken as to the ownership of these people. Look again, and tell me, if you can, whether they are clad like Englishmen, or in the native weeds?"
"Not in the native weeds, I think, my father. Rather I should say, if it were not impossible, that the men whom I see down yonder belonged to the army of the oppressor. Ha! Now a lady is coming forth, and now they are mounting her, and a tall, stately personage in—yes—certainly in military attire, is mounting also, and takes his place at her side. Now half a dozen servants, I suppose, or friends, are on their horses likewise, and now they are moving forward. Father, they must come this way, there is none other that I can see by which horses can pass with safety. Let us wait for them behind the bank, and then, when they are near enough, we will accost them, and if they be of the conquering army, show them our certificate. They will, of course, bow to its authority, and help us to take possession of that house which the document assigns us. I am glad a woman is among them; it will make it easier, I think, to speak."
As Nellie ran on thus, she drew her grandfather with her behind a bank which dipt down suddenly upon the path, narrowing it until it was all but impassable to riders. There, with pale face and tightened breath, she nervously awaited the advent of the party upon whose favorable or unfavorable disposition toward them she felt her own fate and Lord Netterville's to be so painfully dependent.
To Be Continued.
[Footnote 46: We give place to the above article in our columns, though from a non-Catholic pen, thinking that it will be read with interest by our readers, while it indicates, at the same time, the religious tendencies which are becoming more and more prevalent among not a small class of minds in our country.—Editor C. W.]
A man of many years, without vast temporal resources, despoiled of a part of his possessions, having many and vigorous enemies about him, and regarded by many even of those who profess the Christian faith as about to fall from his high place in Christendom, such a man invites his brethren of the apostolical ministry throughout the world to honor by their personal presence at Rome the anniversary of the martyrdom, eighteen hundred years ago, of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and to join with him in the exaltation of martyrs who, like them, though in far distant lands, were "faithful unto death." They respond with eager joy and haste to the call, and those who cannot go send on the wings of the wind their words of loving veneration.
To say not a word of the spiritual claims of the man who sent forth the invitation, so eagerly and widely accepted, there is in the fact just stated a glowing evidence that, even in these days of triumphant and insolent materialism, moral power has not entirely lost ascendency. Though millions of knees are bent in honor of the Dagon of materialism, in some one or other of its myriad forms of degrading idolatry, yet millions of hearts also recognize the gift of God as present evermore in his holy church. Never before has the Catholic Church beheld so great a multitude, from so distant places, assembled at her call at the central city of the faith.
The enemies of catholicity have again and again referred to the great inventions of modern times as sure destroyers of the claims of the Catholic Church and of her hold upon her millions of members; but lo! these very inventions are brought into the service of the church. The printing-press, which was going to annihilate the Catholic Church, has proved one of her most effectual bulwarks; millions of printed pages inspire the devotion of her children, and make known her claims to reading men, until many who were even her enemies and revilers, from ignorance and prejudice, acknowledge their error, and make haste to go to "their father's house." Steam, in the view of many, was about so to change the structure of society that the old and decrepid Church of Rome, the great obstacle on the railroad of materialism, was about to be run over and cast to the roadside, a weak and useless wreck; but lo! the power of steam enables hundreds and thousands more to go up to the sacred city, as the tribes of Israel were wont to visit Jerusalem, than could otherwise attend the festivals of the faith in St. Peter's Church. Of the manifold uses of steam, a large proportion is in the service of catholic truth. And then the telegraph; that, surely, was to show an advanced state of civilization which could not tolerate the slow and ancient ways of catholicity; but lo! here, again, the event has contradicted the prophecy; for, by means of the telegraph, the assemblage of the vast host at Rome was known throughout the world on the very day of its occurrence; and almost literally, in all parts of Christendom, thousands of devout worshippers could turn their faces reverently toward the altar of God in Rome at the very instant when those in its immediate presence were bending before it, and could join in the same prayers and anthems, as though the world itself were one vast St. Peter's Church, and the strains of penitence and hymns of joy could reverberate across oceans and mountains, among distant nations and islands of the sea, as among the corridors and arches of one great temple sacred to the triune God.
As in these instances, so in many others, the church has extended her sway and deepened her power by the very forces which many supposed would work her ruin. The history of the church has shown in the domain of natural science, so often applied in the service of infidelity and disorder, as in the field of human passion, that God will make the wrath of man to praise him, and turn weapons designed to attack his holy Church into her consecrated armor of defence. The grace of God so overrules the inventions of man and the powers of nature, that even the terrible lightning becomes the vivid messenger to convey to the ends of the earth the benediction of the Vicar of Christ.
What is the chief lesson of the recent gathering at Rome? It is this, that the church of God, so often, in the view of her enemies, destroyed, will not stay destroyed; that after every "destruction" she renews her invincible youth, and rises to pursue her career of conquest over sin, prejudice, and wrong; that, though she may bend awhile to the storm that beats upon her sacred head, she has never been wholly overcome; that, notwithstanding all that mortal enmity, defection, outrage, have done or can do, she yet lifts her forehead to the sky to be anew baptized with light from the sun of truth above; and, strong in the faith and promise of the Eternal God, she falters not in her endeavors, patient and persistent, to subdue the world to Christ.
The history of the Catholic Church abounds with instances like the Roman gathering in June, which prove that her hours of affliction are those very ones when her faithful children gather to her side, to assure her of their prayers and support, and to discern upon her saintly face those "smiles through tears," which, in times of trial, are the warmest and most touching acknowledgments of filial veneration.
The commemorative assemblage at the capital of Christendom, signifies that the church of God is indestructible by any forces that earth or hell, singly or united, can bring against her. She may be at times like the bird in the snare of the fowler; but she is sure of being released at length, and then she plumes her wings afresh, and soars heavenward, filling the air with the divine, exultant music of her voice. The powerful of the earth have sometimes loaded the church with fetters; but by the strength of Christ that dwells evermore in her, she has broken the bonds asunder, or, by his transforming grace, they have become the wreaths and garlands of new victory, even as the cross of humiliation has become, by the sacrifice of our Lord, the emblem of unfading glory.
The church of Christ, bearing on her brow his holy seal, and in her hands his gifts of power, knelt in sorrow at his grave; but she hailed his resurrection with joy, and was endowed anew with treasures of immortal life.Afterward, the might of heathendom arose against her, and she descended from the wrath of man into the catacombs; but she reascended, to wear upon her brow the diadem of a spiritual empire that shall never fall until the elements shall melt with fervent heat; and even then, true to all her history in deriving new glory from every apparent defeat, she will rise again from the great grave of nature to enjoy for ever the vision of God. Kings of the earth have denied her right to invest the pastors of her children with their due prerogatives, and have even dared her to mortal combat; but though distressed and thwarted, she has never relinquished her inherent rights, and she never will. As many times as the head of the church on earth has been driven from Rome by armed, ungrateful violence, so many times exactly has he been welcomed back with tears of penitence and shouts of rapture.
Despoiled of treasures committed to her care by faithful stewards of God's bounty, she has labored with her own hands to feed her needy children. At one time, persecuted in the wilderness, she has found a refuge and a welcome in the courts of princes; at another, driven from the courts of princes, because she would not deny her Lord or her divine commission, she has found a humble sanctuary in the wilderness, and knelt upon the bare earth to adore the Lord of life and light, once the child in the manger, and to invoke all the saints in glory to plead her cause in the ear of infinite justice and goodness.
She has spurned the anointed king from the temple of God, until he repented of his crime; and on the head of the lowly monk who was spending his days in labor and prayer, she has placed the triple crown. With one hand she has bathed with "baptismal dew" the brow of the day-laborer's child, while the other she has raised in defiance of imperial might, which dared to assail her holy altar.
One of the most violent objections to the Catholic Church has been urged for the very reason that she has so faithfully held the balance between the contending forces of society. She has been accused of favoring the claims of absolutism or popular demands, as the triumph of either at the time would favor her own ends, irrespective of right. The charge is unjust, is urged by many who know better, yet it springs from an honest misapprehension in many minds. It would have been utterly impossible for an institution, designed to enlighten and guide mankind in its higher relations, not to touch human interests of every kind, and human institutions generally in many ways; yet the challenge may safely be given to any thoughtful student of history, to acknowledge with candor, whatever may be his ecclesiastical position, that the Catholic Church, having often been chosen to be, and having an inherent right to be, the umpire between the rights of authority and the rights of individuals, has faithfully labored to sustain lawful authority when assailed by the wild fury of misguided multitudes, and that she has interposed her powerful shield, often with the most triumphant success, to protect men whose rights as men were assailed by authority changed by ambition into arrogant and exacting tyranny. What inconsistency and insincerity have been charged against the Catholic Church for this remarkable and noble fact in her history! In this respect the Catholic Church has followed strictly in the steps of her Divine Author, who, when on earth, invariably upheld the rights of authority, while vehemently denouncing those who unjustly exercised it; and while going about doing good, the friend of the friendless and the helper of the helpless, pleading with divine eloquence, and laboring with divine power for the outcast and the poor, never and nowhere sanctioned the spirit of insurrection, but enjoined obedience as one of the main duties of life.Hence, it has come about, by one of those sublime mysteries, which prove the divine origin of Christianity, that the greatest revolution which has ever taken place in religious belief and in civil society in all their bearings, has been effected by the teachings, by the life and death of one who by no word or deed ever assailed authority itself or incited resistance to it.
Beauty and order being the same thing, and religious truth being the beauty of holiness, Christ, who was truth in person, must have made his church the friend and upholder of all beauty and order; and so it has proved for eighteen hundred years. The church has been the celestial crucible in which whatever of human art or invention had within it the essential attributes of higher and spiritual goodness has been purified and adapted to the service of religion. Has poetry sought to please the imaginations of men? the church of Christ unfolded before her the annals of Christianity, with her grand central sacrifice of infinite love, and all her demonstrations of heroic suffering and courageous faith; and poetry drew holier inspiration from the view, and incited men by higher motives to a higher life. Have painting and sculpture sought to represent objects of refining grace and sublimity? the church of Christ persuaded them to look into the records of the Christian past, and there they found treasures of beauty and splendor, devotion and martyrdom, whose wealth of illustration as examples; incentives, and memorials, art has not exhausted for centuries, and will never exhaust. Christian history is the inexhaustible quarry of whatever is most noble and heroic in man, purified by the grace of God. Has architecture sought to invest stone with the attributes of spiritual and intellectual grace? the church of God has so portrayed before her the sublimities of the Christian faith, that she knelt at her feet in veneration, and thenceforth consecrated herself to build enduring structures, which, the more they show of human power and skill, the more they persuade men to the worship of God. Has eloquence sought to nerve men for the grand conflicts of life? the church of Christ has touched the lips of eloquence with living fire from her altar, until have sprung forth words that flamed with love to man and love to God. Has music sought to weave her entrancing spells around the ear and heart and soul? the church of Christ has breathed into music her own divine being, until the music of the church seems like beatific worship, and worship on earth like beatific music.
As in these respects, so in others, the church has made a holy conquest of whatever is noblest among the endowments of men. In speaking of Catholic history, even from the secular point of view, it may be justly said, that nowhere else has there been such wonderful discernment of the various capacities of the human mind, and of their various adaptations. Tenacious of the truth and of all its prerogatives, the Catholic Church has, nevertheless, allowed a wide liberty of thought. That the Catholic Church has narrowed the understandings of men, is a singular charge to make in the face of the schools of Catholic philosophy, in which men of varying mental structure, training, or habits of thought, have had full, free play of their faculties.And where else have there been so many free and varying activities as in the Catholic Church? The false charge that the church fetters the minds and movements of men, may be traced to the fact that all Catholic diversities of thought have converged, like different rays of light, in the elucidation of truth, and that varying modes of Catholic action have had one object—the advancement of truth.
Here is the intended force of all these illustrations, for they have had a logical purpose. The world will never outgrow the church. All the boasted improvements in science, in art, in civilization, so far from impeding the church of Christ, and making her existence no longer needed, will, at the same time, advance her power, and make her more needed than ever. If in the middle ages, when society was in the process of transition from the old to the new, the church was pre-eminently needed to keep what was just and right and true in the older forms of civilization, and gradually to adapt to them what was just and right and true in the newer developments of society, most truly is the church needed now, when there exists a perfect chaos of opinions, and when a part of the civilized world is in another transition, from the aimless, rudderless vagaries of Protestantism to the solid rock of Catholicity. If ever the voice of authority was needed, like the voice of the angel of God, heard amid and above the howlings of the storm, it is needed now.
Much false reasoning has been uttered about the "unchangeable church," as though, because "unchangeable," it was not adapted to a changing and striving world, when, in truth, for the very reason that the church of Christ is unchangeably true, she is required and adapted for all the changes and emergencies of time. Who ever heard a sailor complain of the mariner's compass, because, on account of its unchangeable obstinacy, it would not conform to his private judgments and caprices about the right course? No one. It is for the very reason that the mariner's compass is unchangeably true to the eternal law of magnetic attraction, under all circumstances and in all places, that it is the unerring guide among the whirlwinds and heavings of the great deep. Catholicity is the mariner's compass upon a greater deep—even that of the wild and rolling, beating ocean of humanity, pointing, amid sunny calms, or gentle winds, or raging gales, unerringly to the cross of Jesus Christ, as the needle of the mariner's compass points to the north—guiding, age after age, the precious freights of immortal souls to the harbor of infinite and unending joy.
The force of this illustration is all the stronger that the mariner's compass is a human adaptation of an immutable law of nature to navigation, while the church of the living God is divine alike in origin and application, and has existed from the beginning, unchangeable, like God himself, yet adapting herself to the wants of every age. The church of God is like his own infinite providence, in which unchangeable truth meets in the harmony of mercy the innumerable changes of human need.
Much has been written and more said about "the church of the future," as though it were to be some millennial manifestation altogether different from the historic church; but the church of the future, which is not also the church of the past and of the present, can be no church; for a true church must reach to the ages back as well as to those before.If the continuity is broken, truth is broken, and cannot be restored. As for eighteen centuries there have been no forms of civil society, no calms or tempests in the moral, political, social, or religious world, in which the Catholic Church has not been true to the organic principles of her divine life, even the enemy of catholicity should admit—that fact being granted—that the presumption is on her side that she will be equally true to those principles during the centuries that are to come. He may deny that the church has been true, and, consequently, that she will be true, but he will not admit one proposition and deny the other; he will admit both or deny both. In other words, he will admit, equally with the friend of catholicity, the identity of the church, past, present, and to come. Now, it will be impossible for a friend or enemy of the Catholic Church, from her beginning to this very day, to point to an hour when she was not a living church; it is, then, probable, that she will continue to be a living church. But where, since the promulgation of Christianity to this time, has existed a body of Christian believers, which, for the quality of continual existence, has so good a right to be called the church of Christ as the Catholic Church? Considering her numbers, extent, and duration, that church has been preeminently the church of the past; considering numbers, extent, and duration, that church is pre-eminently the church of the present; considering all analogies and probabilities, then the Catholic Church will be preeminently the church of the future. In truth, the vindictive anger of the enemies of the Catholic Church, in whatever form of opposition it may be shown, proceeds from the fact, not that she is the dead church of the past, as she is sometimes called, for there would be no reason to war with the dead, but because she is, as she has been and will be, the living church. The Catholic Church is hated not for being too dead, but for being too living. She has seen the birth and death of countless "improvements" of her principles, and she has received with gladness into her fold many an eager and conscientious inquirer for the "new church," who has at length reached an end of his wanderings and a solution of his doubts in finding, with tears of rapturous submission, that the new church, for which he was seeking, is the same church which has stood for ages, ever old, yet ever new, because representing Him who is alike the Living God and the Ancient of Days.
The Catholic Church, so frequently and unjustly denounced as ever behind the age, or even as facing the past, has been foremost in all parts of the world. She has sent her faithful soldiers of the cross where the spirit of commerce dared not go; she was the first in the east and the first in the West; it was her lamp of divine light which dispelled the gloomy terrors of the barbarous north of Europe; it was her sceptre of celestial beauty, which, under the guidance of Heaven, transformed the political and social wreck of southern Europe into order. In what part of the world which man could reach has she not planted the cross? Where on the face of the earth is the mountain whose craggy sides have not, at one time or another, sent back into the sounding air the echoes of Catholic worship?