When first O'More unfolded the cloak in which he had brought Nellie safely through the flames, she lay so white and still that, for one brief, terrible moment, he almost fancied she was dead. The fresh air, however, soon revived her, and, opening her eyes, filled with a look of terror which afterward haunted them for months, she fixed them upon Roger, and whispered nervously:
"Where are the rest—the priest and all? Where are they?"
"They are with their God, I trust," he answered solemnly. At that awful moment he felt that he could say nothing but the truth, terrible as he knew that truth must sound in the ears of the pale girl beside him. His words, in fact, seemed to cut through her like a knife, and she fell upon her knees, exclaiming: "I only saved—I only saved! O my God, my God! have mercy on their souls!" Then suddenly remembering that, if she were safe, she owed it entirely to Roger, she added earnestly, "You have risked your life for mine. How shall I thank you?"
"By helping me once more to save it," he answered curtly. "Nellie," he went on rapidly, for he knew too well that every moment they lingered there was fraught with peril—"Nellie, you are saved, and yet not safe yet! Your life, however, is in your own hands now, and with courage and good trust in Providence, I doubt not we shall pull safely through."
Nellie seemed to gather up her mind for a great effort, and said calmly:
"Only say what I must do, and I will do it."
"The case is this," said Roger shortly: "Yonder tower," and he pointed to the burning pile overhead—"yonder tower must fall soon, and, if we linger here, will crush us in its ruins. On the other hand, even if we could creep round to the opposite side of the church, a thing in itself almost impossible, the fanatical demons who guard the gates will probably shoot us down like dogs. The cliff, therefore, is our best—almost our only chance. Nevertheless I leave the choice in your own hands. Only remember you must decide at once."
"The cliff, then, be it!" said Nellie, with white lips but flashing eyes. "God is more merciful than man. He will save us, perhaps; if not, his will be done—not mine. I will trust entirely to him—entirely to him and you."
Almost ere she had finished speaking, Roger had undone the rope which he carried round his waist, and was looking eagerly about him for some means of securing it in such a way as to make it useful to Nellie in her descent. Fortunately for his purpose, a thorny tree had planted itself, some hundreds of years before, in a fissure of the rocks so close to the walls of the tower that, old, and gray, and stunted, as it now was, its roots had in all probability penetrated beneath their broad foundation, and were quite as firmly settled in the ground. Upon this Roger pounced at once, and having tried it sufficiently to make tolerably sure of its powers of endurance, he passed one end of his rope round the thickest and lowest portions of the stem, and made it fast with a sailor's knot.The other end he threw over the cliff, and then watched its fall with a terrible, silent fear at his heart lest it should prove shorter than his need required. Down it went and down, and he stooped over to mark its progress until Nellie felt sick with fear, and turned away to avoid the giddiness which she knew would be fatal to them both.
At last she heard him say, "Thank God, it has reached the platform!" Then he turned round and anxiously scanned her features.
"Nellie," he said, "this thing is difficult, but not impossible. I have seen you bound like a deer down cliffs almost as steep, if not so high. The great, the only real peril, is in the eyesight. Lot's wife perished by a look. You must promise me neither to glance up nor down, but to keep your eyes fixed on the rocks before you. Hold well by the rope; take it hand over hand like a sailor, (I remember that you know the trick;) and leave the rest to me. There is really a path, though you can hardly see it from this spot; and there are chinks and crevices besides, in which you will easily find footing. You must feel for them as you descend; and when you are at a loss, I shall be below to help you. Neither will you be quite alone, for I am going to fasten you by this cord, so that, if you should happen to let go, I may perhaps be able to support you."
"My God!" said Nellie, white with terror, as he passed a strong, light cord, first round her waist and then his own, in such a way that there was length sufficient to enable them to act independently of each other, while, at the same time, neither could have fallen without almost to a certainty insuring the destruction of both. "My God, I cannot consent to this. Go by yourself; my fall would kill you."
"But you will not fall—you shall not fall," he pleaded anxiously, "if only you will abide by my directions."
"Go alone, I do beseech you!" she answered, with a shiver. "You cannot save me, and I shall but insure your destruction with my own."
"Nay, then, I give it up," he answered, almost sullenly. "We will stay here and die together, for never shall it be said of an O'More that, in seeking safety for himself, he left a woman thus to perish."
"Then, in God's name, let us try!" said Nellie; "only tell me what to do, and I will do it—if I can."
"Hold fast the rope, that is all. Never let one hand go until the other has grasped it firmly, and leave the rest to me. I will help to place your feet in safe resting-places as we go down. Only trust me, and all will yet be well."
"I will trust to you and to God, and our Lady," said Nellie, unconsciously repeating the password of the morning. Her color was rising fast, and her eyes had begun to sparkle with excitement. O'More seized the propitious moment, and, almost before Nellie knew it, she had begun her perilous descent.
"Are you steady now—quite steady?" he asked, in as low a voice as if he feared to startle the air with motion by speaking louder. Yes! with the natural instinct of a mountain climber Nellie had already found a rough indented spot in which her foot was firmly planted, and he descended a step lower. Thus inch by inch they went, Nellie ever clinging to the rope, and O'More guiding her descent with a success he had hardly looked for, and which he felt to be almost miraculous.His heart at last beat high with hope; for he saw by the distance which they had descended that they must be nearing a sort of shelf or platform formed by a sudden bulging out of the lower strata of the cliffs, and he knew that they were safe if they could only reach that spot, the rest of the path being so well marked that, even without his aid, Nellie could easily have found her way from thence to the sands beneath.
But the surge of the sea boomed louder and louder as she approached it, and at last, fairly forgetting Roger's caution, she turned her head a little, and glanced downward. Then, for the first time, she became fully conscious of the terrible position she occupied, suspended as it seemed by a very thread between earth and sky, and with the great, deep, awful ocean rolling hundreds of feet below her. Her head swam, her eyesight failed her, she had just enough presence of mind left to grasp the rope firmly by both hands, when, feeling as if her senses were utterly deserting her, she cried out:
"O my God, I am going! Save me, Roger, I am going!"
"No, no!" he cried, in agony, for he knew only too well the danger of the thought. "Hold fast—hold on; for Christ's dear sake, hold on! One step—two steps more, and you are safe. There!" he cried, in a voice hoarse with emotion, as he felt his own foot touch the platform; and seizing Nellie by the waist, he drew her, hardly conscious of what he was doing, by main strength to his side. "There, oh! thank God—thank God, you are safe at last!"
He was just in time. Nellie had that very moment let go the rope, and if he had not caught her, would inevitably have been dashed to pieces on the rocks below. As it was, he landed her safely and gently on the ledge where he himself was standing, and without venturing to loose her entirely from his grasp, laid her down, that she might recover from her nervous panic.
"You are safe," he kept repeating, as if it required the assurance of his own voice to make certain of the fact. "You are safe!" and then with an instinctive yet entirely unacknowledged consciousness on his part, thathisown safety might perhaps be at least a portion of her care, he added—"we are safe now. You can stay here until you are quite yourself again; only do not look up or down—at least not just yet, not until the giddiness is gone. You forgot Lot's wife, or this never would have happened."
Nellie was not insensible, though she looked so. She only felt as if she were in a dream. She understood perfectly all that Roger said; the shadow even of a smile seemed to pass over her white lips as he alluded to Lot's wife; but his voice fell with a muffled sound, as if it came from a great distance, on her ear; and earth, and sky, and cliff, and ocean, all seemed blending and floating in a wild fantasy through her brain. By degrees, however, a sort of awakening seemed to creep over her, but she did not use it at first either to look up or speak. Possibly she felt that words would be powerless to express her thoughts, and was glad of any excuse for silence. Roger did not like to hurry her, and he therefore employed the next few minutes in scanning the sea in search of Henrietta. She was there, exactly in the place in which he had bidden her to wait for him; but she was watching the burning tower overhead, and had evidently very little notion that any of its victims had escaped. From the spot where he was standing, he could easily have made her hear him; but fearing that his voice might rouse up some hidden foe, he turned to Nellie for assistance.
"Have you a handkerchief," he asked, "or anything of that kind which you could give me for a signal?"
Without answering, without even looking up, (so obedient had she grown, poor Nellie!) she untied the scarlet kerchief, which, in her harmless vanity, she had that morning thrown over her head and knotted beneath her chin, as the last thing wanting to her costume of a native girl, and gave it into Roger's hand. He waved it for some time without success; but at last Henrietta saw it, and began to row vigorously into shore.
"Now you may look," cried Roger joyfully, helping Nellie to stand up; "now you may look; for you will see nothing but what it is good for you to see. Henrietta Hewitson is waiting for us in the boat below, and the sooner we leave this resting-place the better."
"Henrietta Hewitson!" cried Nellie, roused effectually to life again by the mention of her name. "His daughter! How kind, how noble! Shall we not go to her at once?"
"If you are able," he answered. "The rest of the way is easy—easier far than the cliffs of Clare Island, which you climbed with me yesterday."
"Easy! oh! yes, surely it is easy," cried Nellie wildly. "O my mother—my mother!" she sobbed, with a little gasp; "I shall see her once again—and my grandfather! the poor old man will not be left desolate, after all."
Roger saw that she was growing every moment more and more excited, and he cut the matter short by carrying her down to the beach and laying her in the boat, as if she had been a baby. Henrietta received her with a look of remorse, as if she felt that she herself must seem, somehow or other, responsible in Nellie's eyes for the pain and misery she had been enduring for the last few hours; and while she wrapt her tenderly and affectionately in a cloak taken from her own shoulders, Roger sent the boat, by a few vigorous strokes of the oar, to a safe distance from the rocks near which they had embarked. This manoeuvre placed them in full view of the burning tower, and he dropped his oar and gazed upon it as if irresistibly attracted by the spectacle. The body of the church was by this time a smouldering heap of ruins, but the tower, wrapt in its terrible robes of fire, still stood bravely up as if in defiance of its coming doom. For a single second it remained thus, unyielding and apparently uninjured, than it began visibly to totter. Another moment, and it was swaying backward and forward like a leaf in an autumn storm; and yet another, and, as if in a last wild effort to escape from the flames that swathed it, it plunged right over the cliffs, the fragments of its ruined walls crashing and crumbling from rock to rock till they fell with a roar like thunder into the waters underneath. Both girls, at the first symptom of the catastrophe impending, had instinctively shut their eyes; but Roger, on the contrary, looked on as steadily as if he were keeping a count of every falling stone in order to set it down in his debt of vengeance against those who had done the deed. Not a syllable, however, did he utter, until the last stone had fallen, and the last fiery gleam disappeared from the cliff; but then, as if unable any longer to endure in silence, he threw up his arms toward heaven, and exclaimed:
"Men, women, and children all sent before their time to judgment! O God! what punishment hast Thou reserved in this world or the next that shall be heavy enough for such a deed as this!"
"Curse me not—curse not!" cried Henrietta, with anguish in her voice, "The doom, God knows, is heavy enough already."
"Curseyou!" said the astonished Roger, "you, to whom I owe more than my own life a thousand times. Nay, Mistress Henrietta, what madness has made you fear it?"
"I fear! I fear! Why should I not?" sobbed Henrietta. "The sin of the parents shall be visited on the children, and he is my father, after all!"
"Your father!yourfather!" Roger muttered, trying to keep down the storm of passion that was choking him. "Well, well, he is, as you say,yourfather, and so I must perforce be silent."
"Alas! alas!" Henrietta pleaded, "if you did but know the completeness of his religious mania, you would also comprehend how easily a man, merciful in all things else, can in this one thing be merciless."
"Nay," said Roger bitterly; "it needs, I think, no great stretch of intellect to understand it thoroughly. A man, fresh from the siege of Tredagh, where children were dashed from the battlements, lest, 'like nits, they should become troublesome if suffered to increase,' will, doubtless, merely consider the holocaust of human life which lies buried beneath yonder ruins as a whole burnt-offering, smelling sweet in the nostrils of the Lord, which he, as his high-priest, has been deputed to offer up."
He broke off suddenly, for a hand was laid upon his arm, and a white face lifted pleadingly to his. "Speak not thus of her father," whispered Nellie. "Speak not thus; see how she is weeping!"
"Her tears are his best plea for mercy, then," said he in a gentler tone, and seizing the oars, he began to row as vigorously as if he hoped to quiet his boiling spirit by the mere fact of bodily exhaustion. Nellie made no answer, and silence fell upon them all.
The deed just done was not of a nature lightly to be forgotten, and they went quietly on their way, as people will, upon whom the shadow of a great terror still hangs heavily. Just, however, as they entered the harbor of Clare Island, Nellie caught sight of a well-known figure, and uttered a cry of joy. It was Hamish, and, in her impatience, she scarcely waited until the boat was fastened ere she was at his side. But there was no gladness in his eye as he turned to greet her. He was deadly pale, and his left arm hung powerless at his side. Nellie saw nothing of this at first, however, she was thinking so entirely of her mother.
"Is she come, dear Hamish?" she cried. "Where is she?"
"In Dublin," he answered curtly.
"In Dublin—and you here?" cried Nellie in dismay.
"Because she sent me," he replied.
"What is it, Hamish? What is it?" faltered Nellie, struggling with a sense of some new and terrible misfortune impending over her.
"She is sore sick—sick even unto death," Hamish reluctantly replied. He could not bring himself to utter the terrible truth as yet.
Nellie stood for a moment mute with terror. She read upon her foster-brother's face that worse news than even this was about to follow; but when she would have asked what it was, courage and voice completely failed her. She knew it, however, soon enough. From his seat by the door of the tower, Lord Netterville had caught a glimpse of Hamish, and came down at once to greet him. Excitement seemed for one brief moment to have restored all his faculties, and he cried out eagerly:
"You here, good Hamish! I am heartily glad to see you! And what news bring you from Netterville? How goes my lady daughter? Ill, do you say—sore stricken? Nay, man, remember that she is still but young. It cannot surely be an illness unto death?"
"Yea, but it is, my lord," said Hamish, speaking almost roughly in his agony. "Death, and nothing short of death, as surely as that I am here to say it."
"Art thou a prophet?" asked Roger, bending his dark brows upon him, and half tempted to suspect a snare. "Art thou a prophet, that thou darest to speak thus confidently of the future?"
"Sir," said Hamish, driven at last beyond his patience, and hardly knowing how to break his news more gently, "it needs not to be a prophet to foresee that the widow of a royalist and a Catholic to boot, shut up in prison and condemned on a false charge of murder, is in danger—nay, said I danger?—and is as certain of her doom as if she were already in her coffin."
Nellie uttered a wild cry, the first and last that escaped her lips that day, and Lord Netterville repeated faintly, "Murder!"
"Ay, murder; and in another week she dies," Hamish answered, now desperate as to the consequences of his revelation.
Nellie turned short round toward Roger:
"I must go!" she said. "I must go at once."
"Of course you must," he answered, in that helpful tone which had so often that morning already reassured her.
"She has sent me hither to conduct you," Hamish—with some latent jealousy of the interference of a stranger—was beginning, when, unable any longer to conceal the bodily anguish he was enduring, he uttered a moan of pain, and leaned back against the low wall of the pier.
Then for the first time Nellie looked into his face, and saw that he was as white as ashes.
"My God! my God!" she cried in her perplexity. "What is to become of us? He is dying too."
"No, no," Hamish mustered his failing strength to answer, "It is nothing. They shot at me as I took boat from the beach, and hit me in the arm; but it is not broken, and if only I could stop the bleeding, I should be well enough to start at once."
But he grew paler and paler as he spoke, and the blood gushed in torrents from his arm, as he tried to lift it for their inspection. Roger shouted to Norah to bring down a cordial from the tower, and he then helped Nellie and Henrietta in their nervous and not very efficient endeavors to check the bleeding with their kerchiefs. Hamish was by this time well-nigh insensible, but a cup of wine revived him, and having ascertained that he was merely suffering from a flesh-wound, Roger sent back Norah to rummage out some bandages which he remembered were among his soldier stores. With these he stanched the blood, and carefully bound up the wounded arm, assuring Nellie at the same time that her faithful follower was merely suffering from loss of blood, and that in a few days he would be as well again as ever. Nellie must be forgiven if at that moment she had no thought excepting for her mother.
"A few days," she cried despairingly; "then I must go back alone; for my mother will be dead by that time."
Hamish did not hear her. He was leaning back in that half-dreamy state which often follows upon loss of blood; but Roger answered instantly:
"You shall go at once; but certainly not alone." He turned round to look for Lord Netterville; the poor old man had sunk upon the ground, and in his helplessness and perplexity was weeping like a child.
"Lord Netterville!" said Roger suddenly.
Lord Netterville dashed the tears from his eyes, and looked up anxiously in the young man's face.
"Lord Netterville," Roger repeated, giving him his hand and helping him to stand up, "you see how the case stands; your granddaughter must go to her mother, and go at once. Any delay were fatal. This poor fellow is totally unable to accompany her. Will you trust her to my care? I swear to you that she shall be as dear and precious to me as a sister, and that I will watch over her and wait upon her as if I were in very deed her brother."
With a look of relief and confidence that was touching to behold, the old man wrung the hand which Roger gave him, and then silently turned toward Nellie. Roger did did not ask her if she would accept him as an escort; he felt that after the events of the morning she would need no protestations of loyalty at his hand, and merely said:
"In two hours we can start; but I shall have to go first to the mainland to look for horses."
"Nay, that shall be my business," said Henrietta suddenly. "In two hours hence, at the foot of the round tower, you will find them waiting; and I will bring you at the same time a letter to a friend, who may, I think, prove useful to you in Dublin. Follow me not now," she added in a tone that admitted of no reply, as Roger made a movement as if he would have gone with her to the boat, "follow me not now; I can best arrange matters if I go alone; but in two hours hence I shall expect you."
Henrietta was as good as her word, and, thanks to her energy and kindness, Nellie, with Roger for an escort, was enabled to commence her journey that very afternoon, both she and her companion being mounted upon good swift steeds, which the young English girl had made no scruple of abstracting for the purpose from her father's stable. She had done even more than this; for she had conquered her pride and petulance sufficiently to write a letter to Major Ormiston, in which she entreated him, by the love he once professed to bear her, to do all he could for Nellie, and to procure her every facility for access to her mother. This she had given to Roger, hinting to him at the same time that her correspondent was high in favor of the Lord Deputy, and might possibly be able to induce the latter to commute the sentence of death hanging over Mrs. Netterville into one of fine or imprisonment, even if he could not or would not grant her a full pardon. Of this hope, however, Roger said not a syllable to Nellie, fearful, if it should come to naught, of adding the bitterness of disappointment to the terrible measure of misery which in that case would be her portion.
The journey to Dublin was a difficult and a long one, and if Nellie had been allowed to act according to her own wishes, she would probably have used up both herself and her horse long before she had reached its end.Fortunately, however, for the accomplishment of her real object, Roger took a more exact measure of the strength of both than, under the circumstances, she was capable of doing for herself, and he insisted every night upon her seeking a few hours' repose in any habitation, however poor, which presented itself for the purpose.
With this precaution, and supported also in some measure by the very excitement of her misery, Nellie bore up bravely against the inevitable fatigues and discomforts of the journey. The horses, however, proved less untiring. In spite of Roger's best care and grooming, both at last began to show symptoms of distress, and they were a long day's journey yet from Dublin when it became evident to him that his own in particular was failing rapidly. Henrietta had chosen it chiefly for its quality of speed; but it was too light for a tall and powerfully-built man like Roger; and more than once that day he had been compelled to dismount, and proceed at a walking pace, in order to allow it to recover itself. Night was rapidly closing in, and Nellie, who, preoccupied by her own anxieties, had not as yet remarked the state of the poor animal, ventured to remonstrate with Roger upon the slowness of their proceedings. Then for the first time he pointed out to her the exhaustion of their steeds, acknowledging his conviction that his own in particular was in a dying state, and that two hours more, if he survived so long, would be the utmost measure of the work that he could expect him to accomplish. Nellie was for a moment in despair, and then a bold thought struck her—why not ride straight for Netterville? They had been for some hours in the country of the Pale, and they could not be very far from her old home now. Every feature in the landscape was becoming more and more familiar to her eyes, and she was certain that, in less than the two hours which Roger had assigned as the utmost limit of his steed's endurance, they would have reached her native valley. Once there, they would not only be in the direct road to Dublin, but they would also have a better chance of finding horses than they could have in a place where they were entirely unknown. Netterville, it was true, was now wholly and entirely, with its fields and stock, in the hands of the Parliamentarians; but she was certain of the fidelity of the poor people there, and as certain as she was of her own existence, not only that they would not betray her, but that they would also do all they could to help and speed her on her way. The plan seemed feasible; at all events, no other presented itself at the moment to Roger's mind, and accordingly, after having done all he could to relieve his horse, and prepare him for a fresh spurt, they struck right across the country eastward toward the sea. Nellie proved right in her conjectures. In even less than two hours from the moment in which they started, they reached the valley of Netterville—reached it, in fact, just in time; for Roger had barely leaped from his horse's back ere the poor animal was rolling on the turf in the agonies of death. Nellie then proposed that they should walk to the cottage of old Grannie, and dismounted in her turn. Her horse was not so exhausted as that of Roger, nevertheless it was even then unfit for work, and would in all probability be still more so on the morrow. Roger therefore thought it better to leave it to its fate than to run the risk of attracting notice by bringing it with them to Grannie's habitation.He hoped, as Nellie did, that they would have a good chance of finding fresh steeds at Netterville next morning; and after carefully hiding the two saddles in a clump of gorse, they set out on their way on foot. The old woman received Nellie with a cry of joy. No sooner, however, did the latter mention the business which had brought her there, than the faithful creature stifled all her gladness at this unexpected meeting with her foster-child, and turned to weep in good and sorrowful earnest over the woe and shame impending upon the house of Netterville, in the person of its unhappy mistress. While Nellie ate, or tried to eat, the simple fare set before her by her hostess, Roger told the latter of the fate which had befallen their horses, and inquired as to the possibility of replacing them by fresh ones. Grannie shook her head despondingly. Royalists and Parliamentarians alternately, she said, had seized upon every available horse they could find in the country, until, as far as she knew, there was not a "garran" fit for a two hours' journey within ten miles of Netterville. As to Netterville itself, if therewereany horses left in its stables, (which she doubted,) they must of necessity belong to the English soldier to whose lot, in the drawing of the debentures, the castle and its grounds had fallen; much, the old woman added with a chuckle, to the disgust of the officer who commanded them at the time of the recent murder, and who, having coveted the place exceedingly for himself, was supposed to have pressed the matter heavily against Mrs. Netterville for the facilitating of his own selfish wish.
Roger listened to all this in silence, privately resolving to risk his own detention, if discovered, as an outlaw, and to visit the stable of Netterville next morning, in hopes of procuring a fresh mount. As nothing, however, could be done till then, he entreated Nellie to lie down and rest, after which he left the hut, there not being a second chamber in it, and throwing himself on a bank of heather on the outside, was soon fast asleep. It was long before Nellie could follow his example, but at last she fell into that state of dreamless stupor which often, in cases of extreme exhaustion, takes the place of healthy slumber. Such as it was, at all events, it was rest—rest of body and rest of mind—a truce to the aching of weary limbs, and to the yet more intolerable weariness of a mind, wincing and shivering beneath a coming woe. The first gleam of daylight roused her from it. There was never any pleasant twilight now, between sleeping and waking, in Nellie's mind! With the first gleam of consciousness came ever the pale image of her mother, and there was neither rest nor sleep for her after that. In the present instance, anxiety as to the chance of being able to prosecute her journey at all, was added to her other troubles; and, unable to endure suspense upon such a vital point even for a moment, she opened the door quietly, so as not to disturb old Granny, and looked out for Roger. He was nowhere to be seen, and she guessed at once that he had gone up to the castle. Then a longing seized her to look once more upon the old place where she had been so happy formerly; and, without giving herself time to waver, she walked hurriedly up the valley. She did not, however, venture to the front of the house, but resolved instead to take a path which, skirting round it, would lead her to the offices behind.It was, by one of those strange accidents which we call chance, but for which the angels perhaps have quite another name, the very path which her mother had always taken when visiting the sick soldier. The door of the room which he had occupied was slightly ajar as Nellie passed it; and, moved by an impulse for which she could never afterward thoroughly account, she pushed it open without noise, and entered. The room was not uninhabited, as she had at first supposed. A woman, evidently in the last stage of some mortal malady, lay stretched upon the bed, and a soldier of the Cromwellian type was seated with an open Bible in his hand beside her. He had probably been employed either in reading or exhorting, but at the moment when Nellie entered, it was the woman who was speaking.
"I tell you, soldier!" Nellie heard her querulously murmur—"I tell you, soldier, it is mere waste of breath, your preaching. So long as that woman's death lies heavy on my soul, so long I can look for nothing better in the next world than hell."
At that very moment Nellie noiselessly advanced, and stood in silence at the foot of the bed.
The woman recognized her at once, and with a wild shriek flung herself out of the bed at her feet. The girl recoiled in horror and dismay. She had learned the whole story of her mother's condemnation from Hamish ere she left Clare Island.
"Murderess of my mother!" she cried, in a voice hoarse with anguish. "Dare not to lay hands upon her daughter."
"Mercy! mercy!" cried the woman, grovelling on the ground, and seeking with her white shrunken fingers to lay hold of the hem of Nellie's garment. "Mercy! mercy!"
"Where shall I find mercy for my mother?" Nellie asked, as white as ashes, and shaking from head to foot in the agony of her struggle between conscience and resentment—the one urging her to forgive her foe, the other to leave her to her fate. "Where shall I find mercy for my mother?"
"You see, soldier—you see," moaned the poor wretch upon the floor, "the daughter cannot pardon me; why then should God?"
"What would you have?" cried Nellie, almost maddened by the mental conflict. "What would you have? I cannot cure you. What can I do?"
"You can forgive," the woman answered feebly; "then perhaps God will pardon also."
"O my God! my God! give me strength and grace sufficient!" cried Nellie; and then, by an effort of almost superhuman charity, she stooped, put her arms round the dying creature's neck, and kissed her.
The woman uttered a cry of joy, and fell back heavily out of Nellie's arms. A long silence followed.
Nellie looked at the dead, white face, lying quietly on the floor beside her, and felt as if she were dying also, so utterly did her senses seem to fail her, and so dead and numbed were all her faculties in the heavy strain that had been put upon them. A hand was laid at last upon her shoulder. Nellie started violently. She had totally forgotten even the existence of the soldier.
"Nay, fear not, maiden, nor yet grieve inordinately," he said, in a voice of mingled pity and admiration. "Thou hast acted in all this business (I am bound to bear testimony to the truth) in a way worthy of thy mother's daughter."
"Thank God, at least, that I forgave her," Nellie murmured beneath her breath, scarce conscious of what he was saying.
"Nay, and in very deed," he answered, "thy presence here has been a crowning and a saving mercy for the poor wretch whom we have seen expire. Ever since I found her here last night, dying alone and in despair, I have been striving for her with the Lord, and praying and exhorting, but, as it seemed to me, all in vain, until thy kiss of peace fell like a balm more precious even than that of Gilead on her soul, and restored it, I cannot doubt, (for I saw a light as of exceeding gladness settle upon her dying features,) restored it to long banished peace."
"Thank God that he gave me grace to do it!" Nellie once more whispered. It seemed as if she were powerless to think of aught besides.
"They who do mercy shall in due time find it!" rejoined the soldier, putting a small scrap of written paper into her hand. "In this very room thy mother tended me, when my own comrades had deserted me, fearing the infection; in this very room yonder woman, having been expelled the other portions of the mansion, since order has been taken for the separation of God's elect from the sinful daughters of the land, took up her abode some three days since; and in this very room I last night found her, dying of the malady of which, but for thy mother's care, I must have also perished, and so moved by the prospect of eternal retribution which lay before her, that she of her own accord did dictate, and did suffer me to write down on the spot, a full confession of her own guilt in the matter of the murdered Tomkins, She told me then—and many times afterward in the course of the long night she did continue to aver it—that she herself it was who did the deed for which Mrs. Netterville stands condemned to die; she having, in a drunken squabble. seized the man's pistol and shot him dead upon the spot. And she furthermore avowed, with unspeakable groanings and many tears, that, terrified at the consequences of her own act, and moved besides by a fiendish desire of vengeance against thy mother, who had in some way unwittingly, in times past, offended her, she not only accused her of the murder, but maintained that accusation afterward upon oath when examined before the High Court of Commissioners in Dublin. Now then, maiden, rise up and speed. Thy mother's life is in thy hands; for with that paper, writ and witnessed by one who, however humble, is not altogether unknown as a zealous soldier in the camp of Israel—with that paper, I say, to attest her innocence, they must of a certainty acknowledge it, and let her go."
"How shall I thank thee, O my God!" cried Nellie, scarcely able to believe her ears that she had heard the soldier rightly.
"It is good to praise God always," he replied sententiously, "but at this moment briefly. Thy present care must be to get to Dublin with what speed thou mayest."
"Alas!" said Nellie, "how shall I get there? I have ridden day and night ever since I heard this unhappy news, and only yesterday evening our horses were so knocked up, that I and my companion had to find our way hither as best we could on foot."
"There are but two horses in these stables, and neither of them are mine to offer," said the soldier, evidently distressed and anxious at the dilemma in which hisprotégéewas placed. "Nevertheless, and the Lord aiding me in my endeavors, I will do what I can. Come with me to the courtyard—I doubt not but thou knowest the way well enough already."
Yes, indeed! poor Nellie knew it well enough, and at any other time she might have wept at revisiting on so sad an errand a spot hitherto pleasantly associated in her mind with many a childish frolic, and many a petted animal, the favorites of the days gone by. Just now, however, she had no inclination to dwell on the memories of the past. Joy at the proved innocence of her mother, and a wild fear lest she herself should arrive too late in Dublin to allow of her profiting by the disclosure, filled her whole soul, and left no room there for sentimental sorrows. She found Roger already in the yard, engaged in hot discussion with an officer of the English army, a coal-black charger, which the latter was holding carelessly by the bridle, being the apparent object of the dispute.
"Ay," muttered her conductor, as he glanced toward the group; "it is, I see, even as I suspected, and I shall have to pay dearly for Black Cromwell." Then leaving Nellie a little in the background, he went up to the English officer and said:
"Here is an unhappy maiden, Captain Rippel, bound upon an errand of life and death, and sorely in need of a good steed to bear her. The fate of a grave, God-fearing woman, even of Mistress Netterville herself, the late owner of this mansion, is dependent on her speed, and, had I twenty horses in the stable, as I have not one, I declare unto thee as God liveth and seeth, that she should have her choice among them all."
"Yea, and undoubtedly," the other answered with a sneer. "Nevertheless, since it is even as thou sayest, and that thou hast them not, I fear me, good master sergeant, that this young daughter of Moab, who has been lucky enough to find favor in your eyes, will be none the better for your good intentions."
"Sir, if you be a man—a gentleman—you cannot, you will not refuse!" cried the indignant Roger. "Consider, this young lady is here a suppliant where once she dwelt the honored mistress of the mansion, and you cannot of a surety say nay! Remember it is no gift we crave, for this purse contains double the value of your steed, strong and of admirable breeding as undoubtedly he is."
He held up a purse as he spoke, the parting gift of Henrietta, from whom, however, he had accepted it merely as a loan, to be afterward repaid in some of the most valuable of the articles yet left him in his tower. It was well filled and heavy; but with a little smile of scorn the officer waved it quietly on one side.
"And how am I to be certified, I pray you, that this young maiden—who seems to have cast witchcraft on you both—is in reality Mistress Netterville, or any other indeed than a base impostor?" he asked with a most offensive leer. "Scarce five days have as yet elapsed since I came hither, sent by the Lord High Deputy himself, to put order in this garrison, and to separate the elect of God from the sinful daughters of the land, and—"
"Sir, do you dare!" cried Roger, suddenly cutting short his speech; and, raising his hand, he would have struck him to the ground if the soldier had not placed himself hastily between them, saying in a monitory tone to Roger:
"If thou wouldst not destroy the young maiden's hopes altogether, sir, leave this affair to me. Another look or word of thine, and it will utterly miscarry."
Roger felt the man was right. It was not by violence or angry words that he could best serve Nellie. He checked himself at once, therefore, and fell back, while the soldier said quietly to his superior officer:
"Thou hast not, peradventure, captain, forgotten the offer which thou didst make to me some three days since, when first the way in which the Lord had disposed of our lots was made known to us at Netterville?"
"Forgotten—no, in sooth—not I!" the other answered roughly. "Nor have I forgotten either with what manifest folly and ingratitude thou didst reject it; better though it was by a hundred pieces of good gold, than that which one of thy comrades didst thankfully accept from Major Pepper."
"Throw Black Cromwell and the white mare Daylight into the bargain, and I accept," the soldier answered quietly.
"What, part with Black Cromwell? Black Cromwell, who hath carried me unhurt through more battles than David himself ever fought against the Philistines?" the officer demanded with well-affected astonishment. "Verily and indeed, master sergeant, thou art, as I do perceive, notwithstanding thy good odor for most punctilious sanctity—thou art, I say, but an extortioner after all. Had it been the mare alone, now, though she also is a very marvel for strength and speed—I had never said thee nay; but to talk to me of parting with Black Cromwell is to prick me, so to speak, upon the very apple of the eye."
"Nevertheless I have a fancy for him, and if I cannot get him, I will still hold fast to Netterville, the inheritance which the Lord himself hath of late assigned me in this new land of promise," the other steadily replied.
"There is the good horse. Battle of Worcester, he is stronger than Black Cromwell, and would altogether suit the maiden better," his superior rejoined in a coaxing tone.
"Yea, but he hath an ugly trick of going lame ere the first mile is over," Sergeant Jackson responded with a knowing smile, and then he added in a tone which was evidently intended to bring the discussion to an end, "It will be all in vain to dispute this matter any further. Captain Rippel. If you have in truth, as you seem to say, made up your mind to keep Black Cromwell for your own riding, I, on the other hand, am equally resolved not to part with this house of Netterville, which will serve me well enough, I doubt not, as a residence, once I have brought my old mother hither to help me in its keeping."
"Nay, then, usurer, take the horse and thy money with it!" cried the officer, in a tone far less expressive of vexation than of triumph at the result of the discussion. "Take thy money and hand me over that debenture which, with the loss of such a charger as Black Cromwell, is, I fear me, but too dearly purchased."
Without deigning to utter a single syllable in return, Sergeant Jackson took the purse which the other in his affected indignation almost flung at his head, with one hand, while with the other he drew forth from the breast-pocket of his coat a paper, being the identical debenture in question, and presented it to his officer. Captain Rippel snatched it hastily from him, ran his eye over it to make sure that it was the right one, and then, turning on his heel, sauntered out of the courtyard, without even condescending to glance toward the spot where Nellie stood anxiously awaiting the result.
Sergeant Jackson instantly dived into one of the stables, and seizing a side-saddle, (Nellie's own saddle of the olden times,) he led forth a strong, handsome mare, as white as milk, and began to saddle it in hot haste; while Roger, taking the hint, did the same for Cromwell.
"I am afraid I have cost you very dear," Nellie said in a low, grateful tone, as she stood beside the sergeant. "Believe me, for nothing less than a mother's life would I have suffered you to make such a sacrifice."
"Nay, maiden, call it not a sacrifice," he answered without looking round, and giving a pull to the girths to make sure that they were tight. "Or if thou needs must think it one, remember that, had not thy good mother saved my life, I should not have been here to make it."
Nellie's heart was too full to speak, and she suffered him to lift her in silence to her saddle. He settled her in it as carefully and tenderly as if, instead of a simple soldier, he had been one of the old courtly race of cavaliers, from which she was herself descended, and then, with one last whispered word of gratitude for himself, and one last loving message for old Grannie, which he promised to deliver to her in person, Nellie rode forth from Netterville, and, without even giving it a farewell glance, turned her horse's head toward Dublin.
The city of Dublin, as it stood within its walls in the days of the Protectorate, barely covered ground to the extent of an Irish mile, and was built entirely on the south side of the Liffey. That side, therefore, only of the river was embanked by quays, and not eventhatin its entirety; the space now occupied by the new custom-house and other buildings, to the extent of several thousand feet, being then mere ooze and swamp, kept thus by the continued overflowing of the tides.
To the north of the Liffey, however, there was a suburb, built, as time went on and the exigencies of an ever-increasing population required, outside the walls of the fortified city. It was called "Ostmantown," now "Oxmantown," and occupied a very insignificant space between Mary's Abbey and Church street; Stoney Batter, Grange Gorman, and Glassmanogue, being merely villages scattered here and there in the open country to a considerable distance northward. A bridge of very ancient date, the bridge of "Dubhgh-all," also at a later period styled the "Old Bridge," formed the sole means of communication (except by boat) between the city and its northern suburb. Built upon four arches, and closed in on the Dublin side by a strong gate-house with turrets and portcullis, the Old Bridge, like all others of similar antiquity, was broad enough and strong enough to form a sort of street within itself; shops being erected upon either side, and traffic as busy and as eager there, as in the more legitimate thoroughfares of the city.
From Old Bridge men passed at once into Bridge street, (Vicus Pontisformerly,) a long, narrow thoroughfare, hemmed in on one side by the city walls, and on the other by a tolerably handsome row of houses. These houses were almost all built in the cage-work fashion of the days of Queen Elizabeth, and roofed in with tiles and shingles. Many of them also possessed inscriptions which, cut deep into the wood above the doorway, stated the name and calling of the owner, with the addition frequently of some pious sentiment or appropriate phrase from Scripture.This custom seems to have been a favorite one in Dublin, and in the more antique portions of the city there existed houses, even to a very recent period of its history, upon which might still be read the names and occupations of the men who, more than two hundred years before, had resided within their walls.
On the day on which we are about to introduce Dublin to our readers, there had been a considerable amount of stir and bustle going on among its inhabitants, and more especially among those of Bridge street. Rumors had, in fact, been rife since early dawn of an expected rising of the rebels (as the king's partisans were then styled by their opponents) in the north; and men speculated in hope and fear, as their secret wishes moved them, on the probability of the report. It received something like confirmation in the afternoon, one or two regiments of recently arrived English soldiers, armed from head to heel, and evidently ready to go into action at a moment's notice, having been marched out of the city and sent northward. Later on in the day, moreover, it became known that the Lord-Deputy himself, Henry Cromwell, the best of Ireland's recent rulers, accompanied by a strong escort, was proceeding in the same direction, and might be looked for at any moment at the "Ormond Gate," which shut out Bridge street on the city side, just as the "Gate-house" closed it on that of the Old Bridge.
But if people stood at their doors and windows to do honor to the coming of their king-deputy, there yet seemed to be another and still stronger attraction for them at the end of the street opposite that by which he was expected to appear. Eyes were cast quite as often, though more furtively, in the direction of the Old Bridge as in that of the Ormond Gate; for, in the midst of other rumors, there had come a whisper, no one knew how or by whom it had been first set agoing, that a person suspected of belonging to the rebel party had just been arrested on the river, having attempted, by means of a boat, to elude the passage of the Old Bridge, and so penetrate unchallenged into the heart of the city.
There followed, as a matter of course, much secret and some anxious speculation as to the rank and real object of the arrested person, but no one ventured to make open inquiry into the matter. Cromwell's brief reign of blood had stricken men dumb with fear. To have shown the smallest interest in persons suspected of belonging to the rebel party, would have been but to have drawn down suspicion on themselves; and suspicion, in those hard times, was too nearly akin to condemnation to be heedlessly incurred. Instead, therefore, of going at once to the Gate-house and ascertaining the real facts of the case from its guardians, people were content, while awaiting the appearance of the military cavalcade from the castle, to question and conjecture among themselves as to the rank and real business of the arrested man. A flourish of trumpets before Ormond Gate put a stop at last to their gossipings. Heads and eyes, if not hearts and good wishes, were instantly turned in that direction; the gate was flung open, and Henry Cromwell, surrounded by a goodly company of officers and private gentlemen, rode at a brisk pace through it. A moment afterward, and he had swept past all the gazers, and pulled up opposite the Old Bridge. The guard at the Gate-house instantly turned out to receive him, the portcullis was drawn up, and he was actually spurring his horse forward to the bridge, when a girl, in the habit of a western peasant, darted through the soldiers and flung herself on her knees before him.The movement was so rapid and unexpected that, if the Lord-Deputy had not reined up his steed until he nearly threw it on its haunches, he must inevitably have ridden over her. A moment of silent astonishment ensued. The girl herself uttered no cry, and said not a syllable as to the nature of her petition; but as she lifted up her head toward the Lord Henry, her hood, falling back upon her shoulders, revealed a face of ashy whiteness, and there was a pleading, agonized expression in the dark eyes she raised to his, which told more than many words, of the inarticulate anguish of the soul within.
Henry Cromwell was not of a nature to be harsh to any one, much less to a woman; but there had been information enough sent in to him that morning to make him suspect a snare, and he turned sternly for explanation to the chief officer of the guard.
"What means this unseemly interruption, corporal?" he asked, as the latter was vainly endeavoring to induce Nellie to rise from her knees. "Is this maiden a prisoner? or if not a prisoner, is she distraught, that she thus ventures, bare-headed and dressed in such ungodly play-acting fashion, to rush into our very presence?"
"A prisoner of only half-an-hour's standing is she, may it please your excellency," the soldier answered promptly, "she and her companion! They were seen attempting to cross the river in a boat borrowed from some of the natives on the other side, and as it seemed to me that their purpose must needs be seditious to demand such secrecy, I caused both to be apprehended, and have kept them here to wait your honor's further directions in the matter."
"Ormiston," said the Lord-Deputy, turning to one of the younger of the group of officers behind him, "remain you here, and examine, with Corporal Holdfast, into this business. If there be aught which seems important hid beneath this masquerading folly, follow me at once to Glassmanogue, where I shall have business to detain me for a couple of hours; but if it be only, as I do suspect, the silly freak of a love-sick maiden, in that case I shall not look for you before to-morrow morning, when you will bring me, as I have explained already, the last despatches which may have come from England."
Having thus somewhat summarily despatched poor Nellie's business, but little dreaming of the great service he had done her in appointing young Ormiston her guardian, Henry Cromwell dashed over the bridge, and, followed instantly by his escort, galloped northward. The moment Nellie saw that her efforts to hold speech with the Lord-Deputy himself would prove in vain, she had risen of her own accord, and, the hood once more drawn modestly over her head and face, had stood aside to let him pass, with a calm, sad dignity in her look and bearing which had its due effect upon the rough soldier who had made her captive. He did not again attempt to touch, or even to address her, but standing near her silently and respectfully, seemed to wait until of her own accord she should return with him to the Gate-house. Thus unmolested, Nellie forgot his existence altogether, and equally heedless of the crowd, which, having gathered in the wake of the Lord-Deputy, was now gazing curiously and compassionately upon her, she stood considering what her next move should be, when, in obedience to his orders, Harry Ormiston approached her.