CHAPTER V.
AWAY TO DONEGAL.
The countess was much scandalised at the scene from which she hadescaped, and favoured her niece with decided opinions on the subject,as six horses dragged the carriage through the night along the road toDrogheda.
'This will give you a notion, my dear,' she said, 'of the results ofletting low people have too much of their own way. I confess that LordClare's conduct surprises me. If your friends the United Irishmen wereto obtain the upper hand for a few days, they would disgracethemselves and disgust the world. You can't expect wisdom from aHelot-class.'
'It was not my friends who misbehaved themselves to-night,' Doreenretorted, 'but yours; the vulgar squireens and half-mounted gentry,who belong to the dominant party.'
'They certainly should have learnt manners from their betters,'acquiesced my lady, lowering her standard. She had seen but little ofthe world of late, had been content to view events through colouredglasses, and the hasty glimpse of garish daylight which had justflashed out saddened and shocked her. She began unconsciously towonder whether Lord Clare had always spoken the truth. It would behard, she felt, to lose faith in her old friend. Then the tangle oflong-rooted prejudice, parted for an instant, closed round her again.'Well, well! the squireens might possibly be more brutish than wasdesirable; but they were at least Protestants, and as such, superiorto the Helots over whom they tyrannized!'
This reflection was a comfort to my lady; for she was not a bad woman,but one whose sympathies had been narrowed by the hardness of theworld, and who had grown as uncharitable as many excellent people arewho, professing to be more enlightened than their neighbours, arecertain that they only are right, and all those who differ from themwrong.
Doreen lay back on the cushions, too sore in mind and body to carry onthe argument. All that she could distinctly realise was that hope hadflown away; that Theobald had been near at hand and was gone; thatperhaps he had been captured and executed. What must he have sufferedto have been within touch of motherland, only to be swept back againto sea! Hope, forsooth! What is hope? too often but long-drawndisappointment in disguise!
The party jerked and jolted over the interminable road. The hostelriesat Drogheda and Dundalk were full. It was well that my lord had riddenforward, for so many families were beginning to steal out of Dublinthat, as an ostler put it, there was a 'furious penury of beds.'
At Derry they were compelled to leave the great family coach, forthere was only a rough track along each wild bank of Lough Swilly, atwhose mouth--its feet laved by the Atlantic--stood the island home ofthe pirate earls of Ennishowen. Their yacht lay ready in Rathmeltonharbour; but Shane said he preferred riding across the bog to MalinHead, whence a boat would transport him in no time to Glas-aitch-e;and Doreen offered to ride too, even in his company--so anxious wasshe in her numbed condition to divert her thoughts by exercise. Mylady--her projects being what they were--was little likely to objectto a prolonged _tete-a-tete_ which might assist in the realisation ofcherished wishes; but her own riding-days were over, she said. Shewould take the yacht, and would not be sorry of a few hours' solitude.Poor mother! She was sacrificing more to her elder-born than he wouldprobably ever know, in revisiting the ill-omened place--where thatwhich darkened her life had been accomplished--where everything wouldprattle of that past time which it had been a never-ending struggle toforget. She desired to look again on the weather-worn parapets andslender watch-tower of Glas-aitch-e Castle alone, lest her face shouldbetray her feelings, and hint at the secret which had blanched herhair before its time.
The triangular peninsula which lies 'twixt Lough Swilly and LoughFoyle has been known, time out of mind, as Ennishowen; has belonged tothe pirate earls for centuries, who, by reason of their craft, builtthemselves a fortress years ago on the sea as more convenient than adwelling on mainland. It was a territory well suited to such masters,for, by guarding its narrow neck, it could be converted into animpenetrable fastness which was protected by sheer cliffs to seaward,whilst its internal features rendered it a foolhardy proceeding toattempt to invade it from the land side. Hence its population was apeculiar one, differing in many respects from the other dwellers inDonegal. When James I. planted Ulster with staunch Protestants, theousted Catholics fled, some to Connaught, some to the extreme pointsof the north-western county where nothing flourished but wild birds. Alarge number took refuge in Ennishowen, where they embraced the tradeof fishing, eking out a precarious existence by rearing flocks ofgeese upon the barren moors, whilst their wives wove frieze forclothing. An independent, warm-hearted, frugal, superstitious colony,extremely poor but decent, accustomed from the cradle to endure allhardships with a cheerful mien, too far removed from the world to knowaught of Orangeism. Imbued with the clannish feeling which elsewherehad nearly vanished, they looked to Glas-aitch-e with reverence as toa holy shrine, and fully believed that the bodyguard of Sir Amoreywere sleeping by their horses in the sea-caves ready to defend thefortress if peril dared to threaten it. It was evident that if thedisease, which Lord Clare was so fond of discussing, should take aserious turn in the north, it would be well for the chiefs to be amongtheir followers, at least those who were friendly with the Government;for a timely word might prevent much trouble--a timely order be ofincalculable service. My Lord Glandore, then, carried with him theblessings of the executive, with sundry vague promises of good thingsin store for him if he showed prudence, and directions as to how histime would be best spent; namely, in cajoling the peasants to puttheir shoulders to the wheel for the speedy erection of beacons alongthe seaboard. The recent Gallic escapade (for Hoche's expedition wasreally nothing more) taught the executive a lesson. Happily the fleet,or a portion of it, had been driven upon the coast of Bantry, whoseinhabitants, being disinclined to rebellion, looked on the tricolourwith the eye of unconcern. But for the blessed wind, the expeditionmight have landed on some more friendly spot, and be half-way toDublin before the Viceroy heard anything about it. The enemy must nothave such a chance again. Martello towers must be built within shortdistances all round the coast. On the apparition of the tricolour afire must be kindled, which should be the signal for a second on thesummit of the next tower, and so on; so that in case of danger agirdle of fires would encircle the island, warning the soldiery in alldirections--speeding intelligence to the capital in the twinkling ofan eye.
My Lord Glandore was to busy himself with this matter so far asDonegal was concerned, and his sense of self-importance was so fartickled and amused that for awhile he endured, without too muchswearing, the temporary separation from his Norah.
So my lady sailed up Lough Swilly, marking the new forts of Rathmullenand Knockalla, of Duneen and Inch, which gave to it a resemblance to ashark's mouth with teeth set raggedly in either jaw; whilst her sonand niece started in the twilight before sunrise with a wild ridebefore them of forty miles and more. First they passed rows ofmud-huts in straggling knots beside the way, which became more sparseas they advanced; crazy hovels whose rotten roofs were kept togetherby hay-ropes--thatch dyed to richness by decay, adorned with dry tuftsof oats and barley, wafted in the summertime from some less forbiddingspot. Their ears could catch the clicking of a homely loom within asthey passed, ere the housewife, low-browed and heavy-jowled, came toher door to gape at the unusual sight of strangers, an amusement inwhich she was speedily joined by a pack of naked children, then by hergoodman, who rose as if out of a dung-heap--a dudheen between hiscoarse lips, a long coat of faded homespun on his back.
Presently the road became a mere track upon the heather, which,leaving the lough to the left, struck out across the hills inland--awheel-track over a vast expanse of purple prairie, now deep-indentedin the bog, now barely discernible on a plateau of rock--impression ofthe rude carts of the turf-cutters across the mountains. No humandwelling might be seen for miles; no human figure, save perhaps anelfish child plying knitting-needles on a stone as she watched herherd of geese for fear of foxes--an
uncanny, shock-pated pixie whoseemed half-sister to the herons that were scrutinising theirportraits in the pools.
Mountain succeeded mountain with a great heaving like that of theocean hard-by, sometimes in an unbroken wave of black and russet;sometimes rent into a gorge where it had been torn by a strongconvulsion, with overhanging crags of grey and twisted trees bent awryby the sea-blasts. Sometimes in the hazy distance might be detected astring of circular stains of a blacker colour than the rest--tarns inthe moorland, home of the silver trout. Bushy and reedy some--sometawny with the paled glories of dead water-lilies. Then would thescene change to a bleak spread of stones--flat stones of monster size,with rifts like rivulets between, choked thick with feathery herbage.It was as though the rubbish left from the creation of the world hadbeen carted and shot out there--a secluded medley of unconsideredtrifles, of no value or consequence to the human race. Then againwould the stones give place to water--morasses of peat sodden withsalt ooze which quaked under the weight of the traveller, thehoof-marks of his horse bubbling with slimy wash as he splashed on hisuncertain way; troops of scurrying fowl starting up before him,protesting loudly as they fled at the irruption into their cherishedsolitude.
Shane and Doreen arrived by-and-by at the summit of a hill-crest, fromwhich the northern half of the promontory lay spread like a map beforethem. Just below was a white speck--the village of Carndonagh--beyond,a row of lakes, tiny mirrors set in the hill-flank--on either side thejagged lines of Loughs Foyle and Swilly, varied with many a peakedheadland and jutting point and shelving bay scooped out of the livingrock. In front, a flat stretch on which cloud-shadows were playinghide-and-seek--a bopeep dance of subtly-chequered tones; and awaystill farther, looming through the mist, the bluffs of Malin Head, theextreme limit, to the north, of Ireland. As they looked, the mistsmelted in eddying swirls of gold, unveiling an expanse of immense andlonely sea, dotted with fairy islets strewn in a ravelled fringe--thelong span of the blue-green Atlantic, marked with a line of whitewhere it seethed and moaned and lashed without ceasing against thefoot of the beetling cliff.
'What a lovely spot!' Doreen exclaimed, as she sniffed the briskbreeze; 'how wild--how desolate--how weirdly fair! Not the vestige ofa dwelling as far as eye can reach--except that speck below us.'
Unpoetic Shane had been busy counting the wildfowl, watching thehawks, marking the sublime slow wheeling of a pair of eagles far awayin ether heavenward. At the call of his cousin he brought his thoughtsdown to earth, and cried out:
'By the Hokey! a nice coast for the French to land upon. I wish themjoy of it if they try. If they do we shall be in the thick of it, forlook! You can just discern Glas-aitch-e---that dot in the sea, nobigger than a pin's point--between Dunaff and Malin. A fleet wouldhave to pass close by us that was making either for Lough Swilly orLough Foyle. But come--a canter down the hill, and we will see what wecan get to eat. This sharp air gives one a plaguy appetite!'
Doreen spoke truly, for Ennishowen is weirdly fair. The atmosphere ofwinter gave the desolation she had passed through a special charm. Theponderous banks of rolling steel-grey clouds, which had only just beenconquered by a battling sun, gave a ghastly beauty to its wildness.Dun and steel-grey, sage-green and russet-brown, with here and there abit of genuine colour--a vivid tuft of the Osmunda fern. Suchchromatic attributes were well in harmony with the intense stillness,broken only by the rustle now and then of whirring wings, or the sharpboom of the frightened bittern. But beyond Carndonagh the face ofnature changed--or would have, if it had been summer--for bleakelevated moorland and iron gorge vary but little with the season,whilst lower-lying districts are more privileged. During the warmmonths the track between Carndonagh and Malin is like a garden--anoasis of rich, damp, dewy verdure from the ever-dripping vapours ofthe Atlantic--an expanse of emerald mead saturated with the moistureof the ocean. Every bush and bank breaks forth in myriad flowers. Eachtarn is edged with blossom, each path is tricked with glory. It is asif Persephone had here passed through the granite-bound gates of hell,and had dropped her garland at its portals. White starry water-liliesclothe the lakelets. The bells of the fuschia-hedges glow red frombeneath a burthen of honeysuckle and dog-roses; orange-lilies andsheets of yellow iris cast ruddy reflections into the streams, whilepurple heather and patches of wild heartsease vie with each other in afriendly struggle to mask the wealth of green.
Strabagy Bay cuts deep into the peninsula. A rider must skirt its edgewith patience, rewarded now and again by some vision of surprise, ashe finds himself at a turn in the pathway on the summit of a precipice1200 feet above the water, or in a sheltered cove where waves of_celadon_ and malachite plash upon a tawny bed. At one point, if thetide happens to be in, he must sit and await its ebb; for the onlypassage is by a ford across the sand, which is dangerous to thestranger at high-water. Not so to the dwellers in this latitude, forthey speed like monkeys along the overhanging crags, or like thewaddling penguins and sea-parrots that are padding yonder crannieswith the softest down from off their breasts for the behoof of a yetunborn brood.
Towards Malin Head the ground rises gradually from a shingly beachtill it breaks off abruptly to seaward in a sheer wall of quartz andgranite--a vast frowning face, vexed by centuries of tempest, batteredby perennial storms, comforted by the clinging embrace of vegetation,red and russet heath of every shade, delicate ferns drooping fromcracks and fissures, hoary lichens, velvet mosses, warm-tintedcranesbill; from out of which peeps here and there the glitter of apoint of spar, a stain of metal or of clay, a sparkling vein of ore.The white-crested swell which never sleeps laps round its foot incurdled foam; for the bosom of the Atlantic is ever breathing--heavingin arterial throbs below, however calm it may seem upon the surface.Away down through the crystal water you can detect the blackened baseresting on a bank of weed--dense, slippery citrine hair, swinging intwilit masses slowly to and fro, as if humming to itself, under thesurface, of the march of Time, whose hurry affects it not; for whathave human cares, human soul-travail, human agony, to do with thisenchanted spot, which is, as it were, just without the threshold ofthe world? The winter waves, which dash high above the bluffs inspray, have fretted, by a perseverance of many decades, a series ofcaverns half-submerged; viscous arcades, where strange wingedcreatures lurk that hate the light; beasts that, hanging like somevillanous fruit in clusters, blink with purblind eyes at the fisheswhich dart in and out, fragments of the sunshine they abhor; at theinvading shoals of seals, which gambol and turn in clumsy sport, witha glint of white bellies as they roll, and a shower of prismatic gems.
In June the salmon arrive in schools, led each by a solemn pioneer,who knows his own special river; and then the fisher-folk are busy. Soare the seals, whose appetite is dainty. Yet the hardy storm-childrenof Ennishowen love the seals although they eat their fish--for theircoats are warm and soft to wear; their oil gives light through thelong winter evenings for weaving of stuff and net-mending. There is asuperstition which accounts for their views as to the seals; for theybelieve them to be animated by the souls of deceased maiden-aunts. Itis only fair, in the inevitable equalisation of earthly matter, thatour maiden-aunts should taste of our good things, and that we in ourturn should live on theirs.
A mile from the shore--at Swilly's mouth--stands Glas-aitch-e Island,a mere rock, a hundred feet above sea-level, crowned by an antiquefortress, which was modernised and rendered habitable by a caprice ofthe late lord. At the period which now occupies us, it consisted of adwelling rising sheer from the rock on three sides; its rough wallspierced by small windows, and topped by a watch-tower, on which was aniron beacon-basket. The fourth side looked upon a little garden,where, protected by low scrub and chronically asthmatic trees, a fewflowers grew unkempt--planted there by my lady when she first visitedthe place as mistress. On this side, too, was a little creek whichserved as harbour for the boats--a great many boats of every sort andsize; for the only amusement at Glas-aitch-e was boating, with a castfor a salmon or a codling now and again, and an occasional shot
at aseal or cormorant.
My lady arrived there in the yacht, and spent her afternoon alone asshe wished, for it was late at night before Shane and Doreen wererowed across--the latter wearied by the long ride, but calmed inspirit by communing with nature.
It was with a gloomy face and set lips that the Countess of Glandorewandered from room to room, all damp and chill from long neglect, eachchair and table telling its own tale, each faded carpet and curtainwhispering of the hated past, with its desperate anguish ofhumiliation. For this was the heart-chord which twanged most painfullyin my lady's breast upon revisiting the place again. 'Set right thewrong while yet there is time'--how often had that wailing cry echoedin her ears! Yet while there still was time that wrong was neverrighted; for my lady had been so humbled, so abased, so utterlywrenched and mangled, during the year she had dwelt upon that islandwith my lord, that she revolted, with indignant protest, at apossibility of having to traverse the dark Valley of the Shadow yetagain.
As she looked at the chairs and tables, the whole bitterness of thatdegradation flooded back on her. She recalled how, sobbing on thatsofa, she had prayed for death with scorching tears; how, standing bythat casement, the sublime panorama of Donegal had been shut out byboiling drops of agony.
She sat down on an old chair, and looked back upon her life since lastshe touched its worm-eaten woodwork. A life lulled sometimes to a halfforgetfulness, which was nearer to positive happiness than she everexpected to attain. The reflection returned again and again to her,that what had been done was my lord's fault, not hers--that she hadacquiesced as the weaker vessel, and had washed her hands of theconsequences. But then, several times, her peace had been rudelybroken by vague terror of troubles renewed.
Would she be able to avert them? Would her puny woman's arm be strongenough to grapple with Fate? Events certainly looked threatening.Terence had involved himself in a forlorn hope. What if he shouldfall? My lady rose hastily, and flinging wide the window, panted therefor breath. She realised, with a tingling horror of abasement, that ifhe fell, her own burthen would be lightened--that far away, muffled inher inmost soul, there was a voice babbling a hint that it would be amercy if he fell. Her own son! It was a mother's inner voice thatspoke! She pressed her face helplessly upon the tattered curtain, asshe had used to do when imploring a release, and groaned aloud--it waswell that the others had not yet arrived.
Then, her mental vision sharpened by this pang, she wandered on,oblivious of the stories murmured by the tables and the chairs--forshe was peering with all her might into the future now. Things weregoing crooked. There could be no denying that. She had schemed for thebest. What would come of her scheming? Shane was deplorably difficultto manage--looked so like his father sometimes when angered, that sherecoiled as she remembered the expression of his visage when shemoaned over her fate to him upon this very spot all those years ago.He grew daily more difficult to manage, did Shane; because he was aCherokee, a Hellfire; and it stands to reason that an importantattribute for a Hellfire to cultivate must be a scorn of maternallecturing and fiddlefaddle.
Lady Glandore (taught by a rough apprenticeship) quite admitted this;but looked forward now with satisfaction to the taming his spiritwould undergo through a judiciously prolonged residence on a barrenrock, with no one to uphold him in resistance to her will. Here he hadno bully-Blasters to oppose a check to her influence. He would havenobody to talk to but the fisherfolk, save when he sailed down thelough to Letterkenny to be entertained by the squireens in garrison.
She did not fear their influence--poor country oafs! She gauged theinherent weakness of Shane's nature, which cloaked itself under a maskof fierceness; she knew his overbearing, swashbuckling ways would sinkinto a minor key of mewing if they had no encouraging sympathy fromwithout. She knew better than really to believe that 'absence makesthe heart grow fonder.' Nonsense! The heart is too selfish a thing tofeed long upon itself or shadows. If she could only manage to keepShane here long enough, he would become as meek as a lamb, and wouldcease to bleat of Norah in his dreams.
On one side things were going crooked, no doubt, but on the other theywere preternaturally straight. Could they be expected to remain so?
Arthur Wolfe, whose self-interest told him to stay on in Dublin andwatch events, was only too thankful to throw a responsibility on hissister (in whom he trusted), who, oddly enough, was gracious as to theburthen. He might have been compelled to leave Ireland for Doreen'ssake--to take her away out of a false position, and so sacrifice theopportunity of rapid advancement, which is the marked characteristicof a turbulent time.
But this difficulty was got rid off by packing the girl off toDonegal. He could drift where expediency drove, unshackled, to add tohis darling's fortune. Nothing could be more satisfactory to herfather's peace of mind; nothing could jump better with my lady'slong-established plan of joining these two incongruous cousins in holymatrimony. Shut up in idleness in Glas-aitch-e (for the building ofMartello towers could not really engross his attention), what elsecould he do but fall a victim to the charms of his handsome cousin?
One little ghost of doubt yet lingered in my lady's mind, which shedid her best to exorcise. Doreen was dreadfully pigheaded. What ifmoping were to render her more obstinate? She was not a Blaster or aCherokee, but a stern-browed damsel, with much romance, tempered by alittle common-sense, and an awkward tendency to rely upon her ownjudgment. Being a woman, too, she would probably detect at onceanother woman's web, such as might hope to escape the scrutiny of maleobservation. Was it possible that she might choose to upset all heraunt's elaborate scaffolding, after all?
She had her own reasons for determining to tie Shane, wealthy LordGlandore though he might be, to somebody with money. What a pity thathe declined polite society, where complaisant heiresses were to be metwith who would joyfully take his coronet, and afterwards obey hismother. Circumstances had so ordained it that there was absolutely noavailable or possible heiress for him but this stiff-necked Catholic.
It is exasperating, is it not, to mark how people persist in opposingthat which others think is best for them? The prejudiced, warpedCountess of Glandore must have had urgent motives indeed for theprosecution of her project to account for the way in which she wasstooping from her pedestal. Doreen was sharp enough to recognise thisfact, and was never weary of marvelling at the enigma which seemedever and anon to languish, then to spring to new life again. But LadyGlandore, when her mind was made up, could be obstinate too, thoughshe had suffered much buffeting in life's conflict. That these twocousins were to be drawn together somehow, she was resolved.Opposition would come probably from Doreen's side, not Shane's. Whenher friends of the forlorn hope were slain and gone, she would surelysuccumb from mere despair.
My lady was glad, then, when she meditated on Lord Clare's hints as tothe certain fate of the United Irishmen. It was distressful, though,that her own son should be amongst them. Was it distressful, or arelief? Would his mother be sorry if word came that he was dead?
My lady buried her face in the curtain yet again, and rocked her bowedform and wrung her hands. There is a phase of self-hatred andupbraiding which is more poignant than any physical pain, from whichwe emerge more wrecked and broken after each fresh access, and praymore desperately to be set free from torment.
My Lords of Strogue, Vol. 2 (of 3) Page 5
