Volume Iii Part 11 (1/2)
'I have as much pity for my child as you for yours!' Madam Gillin retorted, with meaning. 'When his neck was in danger, you never stirred a finger-nail.'
My lady stopped at the door to make one more effort.
'You have deliberately brought those two together, though I have strained every nerve to keep them apart. Dare you stand by and see them married?'
'If the childer like each other, faix, it's not me as'll spoil the fun!' returned her tormentor.
My lady groaned and made as if she would speak again, but Mrs.
Gillin's fat back was turned; she was improving the position of the cameos, by means of a mirror on the wall.
Lady Glandore adjusted her hood on her white hair, and moved swiftly, with bowed head, away from the Little House; while Madam Gillin, detaching her gorgeous turban, turned quickly round with a grin, so soon as she was fairly gone, and watched her from behind a shutter.
The good lady was troubled in her mind, and stood staring down the walk, as the grin faded, long after the m.u.f.fled figure had departed.
At length she clapped the errant comb into its place upon her head, and murmured:
'I'm a devil, not a woman, am I? Sure that cap fits best on your own pate. Rather than speak out, you'd let that lad be whipped off to Fort George, would you? Just as you would have let him be hanged--mother without a heart! It's Lucifer's pride ye have, every ha'porth of it.
Well, my lips have been closed long enough.' Then, nodding to the picture over the chimney-piece, she added aloud: 'Have I kept my word with ye? Ye wished it all set right, bad man, when Satan pinched ye.
Who was it that was always bidding ye to see to it yourself, and ye wouldn't? And her pride is as great as yours. Never fear; it shall be set right by me; for I like the boy for himself as well as for my oath. Before the sun's set I'll go to Ely Place and tell my Lord Clare something that'll astonish him.'
'Tell him what, mamma?' asked Norah, who was dying to learn what had taken place.
'Never mind, child!' grunted madam, as she squeezed the impudent young lady's peachen cheek. 'What d'ye think that stiff old bag-o'-bones said just now? That I didn't love my girl; and that I'd do her wanton harm.'
'She lied!' retorted prompt Norah.
'Faith, ye're right!' agreed her mother, with a smacking kiss. 'Order round the shay, and come and help me to take off my toggery.'
My lady sped rapidly away. The ordeal--short and sharp--more bitter even than she dreamed--was over; the draught was swallowed--in vain.
Gillin's taunts had shrivelled her soul like branding-irons. It behoved her to arrange her features before returning to the Abbey, lest some one should detect the troubled aspect of the chatelaine and make guesses at its cause, which might possibly come near the truth.
As courage failed and resolution waned, her secret struggled the harder to come forth. With the self-consciousness of guilt she seemed to feel it emblazoned on her forehead, where all who ran might read.
Instead of returning by the grand drive which was but at the distance of a stone's-throw, she followed the main road, skirted the wall that bounded her rival's grounds, and re-entered Strogue from the back, by the wooden postern which gave access to the rosary.
The thrusts of the full-blown champion in red satin were few; but they went home, and smarted still. My lady's ears tingled yet as she walked between the tall beech hedges. We are conscious often of doing wrong, but decline to look upon our fault, and coax ourselves to disbelieve in its existence by persistently turning our attention to more pleasing objects. But when another individual, whose human voice we can't shut out, brays forth the story of the sin with trumpet clearness, we seem to wake up as to a new appreciation of its enormity, which comes like a fresh revelation of turpitude. Thus was it with my lady in this instance. She was well aware that her treatment of Terence, from the beginning, was below the level of just solicitude; that latterly, though his position as a traitor awaiting punishment had weighed her down, yet she had acquiesced, with a weakness which was itself a fault, in the prejudged sentence, and had been prepared to hear that the scrag-boy's work was done without attempting personally to move in the matter. Conscience whispered once or twice that by virtue of her rank she ought to force admittance to the Castle. Nay! that she ought to have hurried long ago to London, and have wrested her boy's life from the King's clemency; have dogged his Majesty to Weymouth; have stormed him in retirement; and have even tossed the sprats that he was frying into the flames if he took refuge in his wonted obstinacy. In a hazy way she knew all this full well.
She knew, indistinctly, that the scrag-boy had become to her warped soul a harbinger of peace; and afraid of seeing too much on the gla.s.s which conscience held, had shut her eyes and breathed on it till the Present should become Past, and thereby irretrievable. But Gillin's words could not be shut out after so simple a fas.h.i.+on. She had hinted a few moments since, with scathing irony, that even if she sacrificed her own child in cold blood on the altar of Nemesis, her conduct would be no worse than my lady's had been to her second son. And my lady's conscience echoed the speech with loud applause. She looked now straight into her own heart, and was appalled at what she saw there; she hearkened to the upbraidings of the monitor, and admitted that his reproaches were deserved--that even the travail of an embittered life was not an atonement sufficient for its crime.
It is an awful moment when a nature built on pride begins to crumble. The crash follows swiftly on the warning. Extremes tumble together; the loftier the edifice the more complete its collapse.
The upbraidings of the monitor--harsh, unrelenting, awfully distinct--dinned in my lady's ears as she paced with m.u.f.fled head between the hedges of the rosary. Presently she heard a murmur. No!
That was not conscience. Those were human voices--the voices of her sons--arguing in a high key. Great heavens! they were quarrelling.
With a stealthy step, holding her mantle in close folds lest its rustle should betray the presence of an eavesdropper, she stole along under the lofty hedge.
Shane was in his hunting-suit. He was surrounded by his hounds. They sniffed about and rolled on the damp gra.s.s, making their toilet in dog fas.h.i.+on, to clean their muddy backs. Eblana and Aileach sat on their hams gazing at their master with wistful heads poised on one side.
Shane stood facing his mother, who marked that the muscles of his face were twitching, while his limbs shook with pa.s.sion. Terence had his back to her--a tall, quiet figure, distinct against a faded sky which was faint with the glare of a departed sun. His broad, square shoulders stood out distinctly from a light background of misty hedge, of blotted, translucent pink, and pale yellow, and blue-green, across which streamed a troop of darkling phantoms--crows cawing off to roost.
Shane's hunting-whip sawed the air, as he pa.s.sed it from one nervous hand to the other. He was always so ready with his whip. It seemed as much as he could do to withhold its sinuous thong from off his brother. Terence was speaking. My lady held her breath to listen.
'I speak to you as from the grave,' he said. 'My life is done. A week or two at most, and my place will be vacant--my shadow will darken the threshold of my ancestors no more. Take care, my brother! When you look on my empty seat let the sad memory of me be precious on your hearth, untarnished by regret. You are the head of the house. Do not forget the responsibilities to which you are born. Look at the tapestry in the drawing-room, and follow the example of your fathers.
Do your duty by them; be without fear and without reproach. Do not earn for yourself among the family pictures an empty frame from which posterity shall have wrenched the portrait.'