My Lords of Strogue. Volume 2 of 3. Wingfield Lewis
crumpled at her feet. My lady saw it and smiled grimly. Indeed, the poor maiden had received a terrible blow-one heavy enough to stagger even her firmly-knit nature. The beauteous Château en Irlande, which she had been so busy building, had come crashing down. Its gargoyles and turrets were admirable to behold-but, alas! its foundations were of sand. It had toppled bodily upon her head, and she was stunned by the completeness of the ruin. Her fond parent had indited her a note bidding her pack up her clothes; for, that she might be removed from danger, she was to go to Glas-aitch-é with her aunt.
She was caught in her own trap. Those dainty visions of returning to her father, of weaning him from the flesh-pots, of bolstering him up in the buckram of her love against his weak sensual self, were vanished. 'She was to be taken away out of danger,' her cruel father wrote, as though she did not pant for danger as doth the war-horse! The misfortunes which might result from this unlooked-for arrangement rose up before her one by one, each armed with its separate shiver. The struggle would come. She, whose heart was wrapped in it-who had made up her mind in which direction duty lay-would be a prisoner far away in a desert island, to which news would trickle slowly: that was bad enough. But of late she had become morbidly anxious, on account of the disorganisation which delay was causing among the United Irishmen. It was only by her own personal influence that Russell and Bond had bowed to Tom Emmett's dictum, and consented to await Terence's return. Were the French coming, or were they not? If not, would the society fling down the gauntlet alone? If it should do so, what would be the result? Would Emmett continue to carry his point as to delay? If he failed in his endeavours, what could be expected to take place? Even if he should be able to control the unruly, how fraught with danger was the prospect. Help from France was the willow that bound the sticks; that band removed, with what ease might each separately be broken!
At sound of my lady's footstep, Doreen started from her crouching attitude. Her aunt's were the last eyes on earth which she would wish to pry into her despair. She was vaguely suspicious too that her aunt's wild projects of matrimony had something to do with this last arrangement. It was, beside the others, a mild phase of annoyance no doubt, but it certainly was annoying to consider that in Donegal she would find herself shut up well-nigh alone with Shane, who, urged by his mother, might tease her dreadfully. Taken altogether, her future looked black as Styx. She promised herself to make one effort more to remain behind in Dublin. Then it flashed upon her that perchance some one had warned her father of the prominence which she had assumed of late. Yet who would tell him? Her precautions were always well taken. In public she acted with extreme reserve towards Tom Emmett and the rest. Private interviews had always been held at obscure cottages, whose owners she knew would be hanged ere they betrayed her. There was no doubt though, she reflected with sore foreboding, that there were traitors somewhere. If only they could be unmasked. Well, well! time unravels many tangles.
'I see your father has written to you,' my lady said, stepping down into the garden. 'He must even defend you against yourself. Upon my word, the Irish are all insane. I shall have the honour to be your keeper for awhile-in a most impregnable asylum.'
Then it was her aunt who had suggested this step. At this instant how bitterly she hated her!
'I have yet to learn,' she said with hauteur, 'what business you have to interfere with me. I am of age, and not your daughter.'
'You will not presume to disobey your father, I suppose?' the countess inquired coldly. 'Though I ought rather to be surprised if for once you are dutiful.'
'My duty is to my mother's people!' Doreen murmured absently.
'I told you once before,' her aunt went on, unheeding, 'that you would disgrace the family and break your father's heart. For both reasons it is my distinct business to interfere with you. The friends whom you have chosen to make, are rushing like sheep to the slaughter. You shall not be one of the flock if I can help it. I have spoken gravely to your father about you; and so has some one else-Lord Clare.'
'Lord Clare!' echoed Doreen, astonished. 'What does he know about me?'
'Too much,' retorted her aunt, dryly. 'He showed me, just now, a delectable sight in the armoury, a discovery which cost him five hundred guineas. For shame! It is kindness to deem you mad.'
'How did he know of the pikes?' startled Doreen inquired.
'Through Terence,' replied my lady, shortly-for she knew not how much or how little her niece and son were mixed up in this affair, and always instinctively avoided talking of the latter to the former. There was a long pause, during which the dowager continued to eye her niece.
'Aunt, I will go with you to Donegal!' Miss Wolfe said slowly, her large eyes peering with vague terror into space. 'I think now I will take a walk, for I am rather upset;' and quietly taking her garden-hat from the bench hard-by, she knotted its ribbons under her chin, and disappeared between the beech hedges of the rosary.
There are moments in most lives when so sharp a pang shoots through our hearts, that we feel there is nothing left but to seek a remote covert and wait for death. Such strokes age us suddenly and surely. To few is it given to become old by slow and imperceptible steps. We remain in the solitude of our covert without speech; almost without feeling. Presently we perceive that we were mistaken about death (for the White Pilgrim comes not for the bidding); and emerge into the world again, apparently the same as before-young outwardly, and smooth-browed, but really altogether different. Poets have sung much of broken hearts, at which cynics have scoffed, time out of mind. Hearts have broken under a sudden mental shock, but seldom. They are more usually turned inside out and changed.
Doreen had just received such a shock as calls imperatively for solitude. Then the snake in the grass-the Judas-was Terence-her own cousin! Rapidly she walked through the rosary, and out by the wooden gate into the open-away-inland across the fields, for miles.
She was surprised to find that she felt more grieved than was at all necessary, in that the snake was Terence. Only a few minutes ago she had been praying heaven to unmask the villain, with the laudable intention of pointing him out to the reprobation and contempt of the society. But Terence! The open-visaged, careless youth who exasperated her, as a woman, chiefly because he was prodigal of promise which was not likely to be fulfilled. He had been so importunate in blundering puppy fashion (really almost as ridiculous as Cassidy), heaving absurd sighs, carrying on his intermittent wooing in so ludicrously naïve a manner, as to provoke scorn in so high-spirited a mistress. Looking within herself, she discovered that behind her light estimate of his amatory ravings there was a genuine liking for the lad. Could she have been entirely mistaken in him? Could her judgment have been utterly at fault when she decided, that if feebly endowed by nature, he was at least honest and true? For the more she considered the subject as she trudged across country, the more she felt that it would be indeed grievous if that fine open face, which had looked so noble in its indignation on account of the martyr Orr, should turn out to be only a grinning mask.
Terence the Judas-the betrayer of the innocent-the snarer of the unwary! Terence, her cousin, whose jocund visage she admitted to be rather dear to her. If he proved so base a scoundrel, in whom then might an earnest soul place trust? Was his perfidy a fall, or original sin? She remembered how she had read wise thoughts in books, wherein sages had explained that our nature is unstable, liable to trip-that none can resist temptation if clothed in the fittest garb. Is not the prayer which should be oftenest on our lips, 'Lead us not, O God, into temptation?' Women are perverse, choosing always the left one, when they ought to take the right turning; and with the perversity of women Doreen chose at once to accept the most distasteful phase of the situation. She took it for granted that Terence was in the wrong, instead of more prudently suspending her judgment till his return from France.
The feet of her cousin were cloven. He wore a tail and smelt of brimstone. She stood still beside a paling as she thought of him, and shook it in a rage with both her hands, while a vague feeling of uneasiness came over her in that she should care so much that Terence should prove the Judas. Yet was she not quite justified in her dismay? Was it not natural that her faith in truth and goodness should be thrown out of gear by such low calculating turpitude? Clutching the gnarled paling, the unhappy lady bowed her face on it and burst into sobs which shook her to the centre.
Five hundred guineas! That was the sharpest of the many thongs which smote her. She had declined to look at