Volume Ii Part 10 (1/2)
Robert opened his mouth indignantly to defend the councillor; but he only sighed, for, from whatever side the treachery came, it was soul-wearing. His forebodings of a few minutes since crowded up again like visions in a nightmare. A pitfall had been cunningly prepared for the patriots to their undoing. A few were yet abroad who might take a responsible part, but this was a withering blow. Treachery? Of course there was. It was altogether a bewildering occupation to pa.s.s trusted characters and names in mental review with an eye to the detection of the traitor. That there was a traitor there could now be no doubt, but Robert swore to himself with st.u.r.dy faith, that, be he whom he might, his name was not Terence Crosbie!
The knocking became louder--more peremptory. There was no escape.
There was nothing for it but submission. With dry l.u.s.trous eyes Tom Emmett bade his brother go and open the door.
There would be a trial--a court-martial. Vain mockery! Would the result be execution--or lifelong servitude--or banishment? The chief of the Irish Directory felt the humbling conviction that he was not fit for his post. Like Phaeton he had leapt into the sun-chariot.
He had been fooled and toyed with. The precious deposit whose care he had presumptuously accepted was shattered through his fault--yes--certainly through his fault. He should have been more cautious in accepting Crosbie's overtures. Precious lives would now be sacrificed--the cause gravely compromised, if not altogether ruined.
Execution--lifelong servitude? How wildly did Tom Emmett long at this moment for the former--how gladly would he have hugged the rope--how joyfully would he even have walked to the riding-school where Beresford and his fellow-devils carried on their fiendish work! Any personal pain--the more poignant the more welcome! Anything which might rouse the hapless patriot from the grinding weight which crushed him now, as p.r.o.ne on his face he lay sobbing on a form.
Many an encouraging hand was laid upon his shoulder.
'Cheer up, man! we're in the same boat,' the delegates murmured. 'It's the chance of war--of an ign.o.ble war waged in the dark against honest men by an ign.o.ble adversary. Fortune is cruel to us; but we'll snap our fingers in her face. If we are to die, let us die as men--not in tears like women. Rouse up, Tom! rouse up, boy! Put on a good front.
Open the door, Robert. If they have learned to probe thus deeply in our secrets, they will know more--enough to hang us every one. There's no good in battling with them.'
Major Sirr entered, and saluted his victims with one of the elaborate military evolutions which had become the vogue. Tom Emmett started from the form, and held himself erect. A paper caught his eyes. He clutched and tore it into fragments.
'Gentlemen, you are my prisoners!' Major Sirr said, with a portentous sword-wave. 'It's no good resisting. I'm glad to see you know better than to resist. Here is my warrant--made out in all your names. We will go, if you please, in the first instance to Castle-yard; then to Kilmainham, where you'll meet your friends.' He smiled at Tom Emmett with a sinister smile, and stirred the fluttering fragments of paper with his swordpoint. 'What's this?' he said, the tuft of eyebrows wrinkling down his nose. 'I know what it is--a list of your precious society, I dare say. Ye're mighty fond of waging war on paper, gentlemen! Look here now! All we want to know of ye we do know--or could speedily learn. I might have those bits picked up and glued together. But I won't, for 'tisn't worth my while. There! Come, gentlemen, march! Dease--where's Dease? I saw him but now. We mustn't lose him, for he's a docthor, and Kilmainham's terrible full of sick!
Dease, where are yez? I have him on the list.'
But the delegate who answered to the name of Dease had no intention of visiting Kilmainham. Upon the first entrance of Sirr, he had withdrawn in the confusion to an upper room, and making use of his surgical knowledge, had severed the femoral artery. When the soldiers found him he was dying; which aggravated Sirr no little, who was proud of his masterly treatment of the hornet's nest.
'Come, put out a nimble leg!' he cried crossly. 'We've parleyed too long. To business! to business!'
Between a double file of soldiers the delegates were marched off, down several streets, to Castle-yard, while the populace looked on, dull-browed. They attempted no rescue. It is probable that few realised what band it was which was being thus openly conducted to its fate (many such bands pa.s.sed along Dublin streets)--that few were aware that in this little knot were centred the hopes of deliverance for which all were praying.
They were gone. Only Robert Emmett and Major Sirr were left behind.
'Am I to go with you? I will go,' Robert said.
The major looked at him, and gave way to a sepulchral cachinnation.
Then by his action he belied the language he had used just now. With the greatest care and deliberation he stooped and picked up the torn sc.r.a.ps of paper. When they were bestowed to his satisfaction in a wallet, he looked at Robert and laughed again, wrinkling his sinister eyebrow tuft:
'Adieu, my lad! and good luck!' he grunted. 'No, no! We don't want you yet, my little c.o.c.katrice! All in good time--when ye're fledged!
Good-bye! or rather _au revoir!_'
CHAPTER VIII.
MR. CURRAN LEAVES PARLIAMENT.
Major Sirr's ill-timed mirth rankled in Robert's bosom. He was not worth taking, then! Yet Lord Clare had deemed him dangerous enough to justify expulsion from Alma Mater. Lord Clare. What did he intend doing with this last haul of the net? That doc.u.ment which Sirr had picked up so carefully would provide him with such a list of country members as would satisfy for awhile even his rapacious gullet.
Would he hang them all, or be content, for the present, to cage them as he did before? No. Times were changed since then. He was deliberately scourging the land with scorpions. No mercy might be expected at his hands. Was Tom Emmett to be hanged? Was he to suffer an ignominious death before he had had time to strike a blow for motherland? That would be too hard. It must be prevented somehow. It was providential that the younger brother should not have been kidnapped too. It was a miraculous intervention, for duty shone clear before him. He must obtain the release of the patriots, even if to do so he should have to kneel at King George's feet. Intercession must be made. At the thought the lad's courage rose. He would go and consult Curran on the subject.
As he hurried on down Dame Street, he strove to comb his tangled thoughts into some symmetry. Who could the Judas be who wore his mask so deftly? Sirr's Battalion of Testimony was spreading to huge proportions; the Staghouse by Kilmainham, where the wolves dwelt, could scarcely hold them now. Doubtless there was a secret service as well as this public one so insolently flaunted.
'Of whom does it consist?' Robert kept asking himself. 'Of whom? The friends of our hearts--the wives of our bosoms. It is awful to think how, when a country is well stirred up, the mud will rise to the surface!' Then, ruminating as he went, he thought of Terence, and murmured mournfully, 'Could it be he? I pray not, for I love him as a brother!'
A shadow lay stretched before him. With a shudder he turned aside to avoid the effigy of a good man, who by a singular caprice of history has been elected high-priest of a mean purblindness, which he above all others would himself have most abhorred. William III.'s effigy, in its incongruous cla.s.sical costume, is no whit more contemptible than some of his admirers have tried to make his character. But such is the way of the world. We set up a pole, and drape it with our own sentiments, then kneel down to wors.h.i.+p, crying, 'How perfect is our idol!' Of course it is; for the drapery is woven, as a spider's web is, from out of our own bowels; what can be so perfect as that we have ourselves created, however loosely it may hang on the support we have selected to bear it?