As he thus apostrophized the tipsy sleeper, he busied himself in trimming the candle, and making himself ready to accompany Mr. Garvey, by throwing on his loose coat; and this done, the two worthies began to ascend the crazy and darksome stairs — sometimes startled by the scampering of the rats down the shadowy corridors, and sometimes more awfully by the roar of the thunder. Altogether, the expedition had in it something so strange and even so ghastly, that Mr. Garvey, as he followed his villainous-looking conductor through deserted, damp-stained lobbies, and up half-rotten stairs, to the chamber where the helpless victim of violence and villainy was lying, felt himself growing indescribably nervous and uncomfortable.
“Didn’t you hear a step on the stair,” asked Coyle, pausing with a look of something between wrath and horror, at the door, when their dreary ramble terminated; histh — listen.”
“No, no, God bless us all; no, nothing of the sort,” said Garvey, hurriedly; “come here quick — don’t keep us standing in this cursed place all night; turn the key, will you, and let us in; see, let me in first,” he added, glancing nervously back into the darkness; “though, egad, no — go on yourself, the lady may be — God bless us she may be dead; I hear no sounds within, eh!”
“Well, what if she is,” said Coyle, with an ugly forced smile, and a real shudder, “sure moping Molly’s there, at all events, and she’s not dead, I take it.”
He turned the key in the door, and they entered a wretched damp-stained apartment, in the further end of which a door stood partially open, and a faint light gleamed through the aperture. Treading cautiously, he scarce knew why, Coyle led the way to the chamber of sickness, perhaps of death.
Cowering over a wretched fire, sate the half-witted girl, the sole attendant of the unhappy lady — a pale, withered, smoke-dried creature, with smirched face, and filthy hands and arms, muttering and jabbering to herself, and stealing looks of idiotic malevolence and jealousy toward the intruders.
“She’s asleep — asleep only,” whispered Coyle, pointing to the bed; “the coverlet moves with the breathing — see it; but histh!” he added, grasping Garvey by the arm, “I do hear a step coming — if it’s flesh or blood, it’s that rip of hell; she’s at her tricks, histh! here — sure enough, here she comes — she’s resolved she or I must go under the daisies, the red burning villain.”
Thus speaking, Coyle waddled swiftly to the outer door, and just as he passed it, and took his stand upon the lobby, the tall form of his repulsive helpmate glided into the passage from the stairhead, and advanced, with a slight degree of unsteadiness, and with many a sinister grin and toss of the head, carrying a candle in one hand, and, as her husband descried, much to his uneasiness, a case knife in the other.
“Well,” said Coyle, in a tone whose gruffness but imperfectly disguised its trepidation, “what in the fiend’s name are you after now? did not I tell you to keep below, eh? did not I warn you against this floor? — yes or no?”
“An’ who cares if you did,” said she, with an ominous grin, while her face glowed absolutely scarlet, with the combined excitement of whiskey and wrath, “why you lump of gallows carrion, is it for you I’d turn drudge in my own house? — do you think I’m afeard of your knuckles, you coward? Aye, shake your fist as long as you like, but dar to touch me, as much as with a finger, and that minute I’ll let the light into your puddens.”
As she thus spoke she continued to advance, and when she came to the concluding threat she flourished the knife and uttered a kind of hiss through her gapped and carious teeth, which might have rivalled the sibilations of an awakened viper.
“Keep back, I tell you, or I’ll make you,” he ejaculated, with all the vehemence of fear.
“Keep back yourself,” she cried, with another flourish of the weapon she carried, “keep out of my way — back with you, for into that room I’ll go this night or I’ll know the reason why.”
As she spoke the virago advanced with an infernal glare upon the unwieldy sentinel, who watched her motions, in return, with a gaze of mingled fear and rage. As she came up to him he propped his broad shoulders resolutely against the doorpost, and drawing up his sinewy leg, received her upon his clouted heel with a kick, so well aimed and vigorous that she reeled back to the end of the passage, and stood, with lacklustre eyes and livid face, gaping and gasping against the wall.
“Ha, ha! take that, young woman,” cried he, with brutal exultation, “your tongue doesn’t wag quite so glib now, I’m thinking.”
He was interrupted, however, before he could complete his triumphant apostrophe, for, recovering her breath, the enraged and murderous hag hurled herself rather than rushed upon him, and dashed the knife at his throat; it ripped the skin from his chin to his ear, but nothing more, and, scarce knowing what he did, he swung her from him against the side wall, and then sprung backward to secure himself from a repetition of the assault, behind the door. Ere he could close it, however, the drunken beldame had thrust her head, shoulder, and one arm through the aperture, and with eyes whose deadly gleam lent new vigour to his terrified resistance, while the veins of her forehead actually stood out with the prominence of knotted cordage, she tugged and strained at the door with the frenzied exertion of a strength which tasked that of her bleeding spouse to the uttermost. As thus they strove her foot slipped, and she would have fallen across the threshold had not the door closed, with the full pressure of Coyle’s whole strength and weight, across her neck, and held her thus suspended and helpless. Setting his knee and his shoulder still more firmly against the planks, he strained the door with strangling pressure upon the throat of the wretched woman, watching the gradual blackening and quivering of her frightful face, with an expression half vindictive and half horrified.
“Let it go man, let it go Coyle,” cried Garvey, who saw enough to fill him with horror, “let it go, I tell you, for God’s sake,” and in the impatience of his terror and irresolution, he actually wrung his hands, and danced upon the floor. “Coyle, Coyle, are you mad? don’t you see? she’s black — she’s dead; let go — its murder; I tell you let go.”
Coyle, meanwhile, kept staring with the same expression, at once malignant and appalled, upon the gaping, livid face of his victim, while he still continued to exert the whole pressure of his deadly weight.
And this scene of hate and murder, enacted at the very threshold of death, and under the awful voice of heaven’s thunder!
“I hear voices, and steps too; voices and steps — they are coming,” cried Garvey, “come here Molly — moping Molly — for God’s sake, Molly, bear witness; I had nothing to do with it. Coyle, remember it was all your own doing; my good little precious girl, you saw it all. Oh! my God, is there no way out — is there no way out?” and, as he spoke,. he ran and rummaged round the room, in the vain hope of finding some mode of exit.
Coyle, meanwhile, heard the approaching sounds; in breathless alarm he retreated from the fatal door — down fell the hideous burthen which it had sustained — the knees drawn up to the chest in the last mortal spasm — and all still and grim in the frightful blackness of death.
“They’re coming,” he muttered, with an oath, “Margery get up — get up girl,” he continued, thrusting the body with his foot. “Hell and death she’s gone — she’s done for; lend a hand Garvey, you helpless muff you, lend a hand and haul her under the bed!”
It was too late, however, for any such precautionary measures. O’Gara, accompanied by half-a-dozen musketeers of the militia, were now upon the passage; retreat or concealment was alike out of the question. The arrest of the murderer, and the deliverance of the imprisoned lady, were already virtually effected.
CHAPTER XL.
THE HOUR OF DEATH.
NEXT morning Caleb Crooke, his wrinkled forehead surmounted by a velvet cap, from under which a few scant white locks escaped, and his keen grey eyes peering through the spring spectacles which compressed his nostrils, at a letter which he had but just opened, sate in his usual chair of state, be
fore a desk piled with papers and parchments. Directly opposite to him, and almost as grimy as the dingy wainscoting of the dark apartment, sate his confidential clerk — a lank, starch, sanctimonious looking gentleman, somewhere about fifty, and with a slight squint, which made his face anything but a “letter of recommendation.” This sallow and somewhat sinister looking official, pursued his scrivenery in industrious taciturnity, and without ever raising his eyes for a moment, except to dip his pen in the ink, on which occasion, as often as it occurred, he shot a single stealthy glance at his employer’s countenance, and forthwith again applied himself to his monotonous task.
Crooke had no sooner concluded the letter, than he shook his head, sighed, and muttered some half-dozen bitter ejaculations within himself, then rose in great trouble, and having taken a turn or two up and down the chamber, exclaimed —
“This is the sorest blow of all — the deed destroyed! — and just at such a time — the villains — the robbers!”
And with these broken exclamations, he stood sometimes scratching his head, sometimes wringing his hands, the very image of perplexity and dismay.
“Well,” said he, at last, “I all along had my suspicions of that sneaking dog of a priest — what possessed me to disregard them? Good heaven, why did I trust him — why was I mad enough to trust him? trust a priest, and with such a commission! I ought to be kicked, and cursed, and burnt for it.”
The door opened at this moment, and the priest himself, Father O’Gara, entered the room.
The constrained, suspicious, and disconcerting reception which awaited him, was so far from repelling the young ecclesiastic, that without awaiting even the ceremony of an invitation, he seated himself, and at once opened the subject of his visit. The conversation that ensued was long, animated, and earnest. Its results we need not here detail; suffice it for the present to remark, that before it had proceeded for more than five minutes, the grimy clerk on a sudden remembered a notice which he had forgotten to serve, and with his principal’s permission, hurried out of the room.
Meanwhile a scene of agony, almost of terror, the last farewell of two beings, who had been for many a year to each other dearer than all the world beside, filled Sir Hugh’s dark and desolate cell with sobs, and prayers, and blessings. We shall not attempt to describe it.
And now the hour of noon drew near — the awful hour which was to consign Sir Hugh Willoughby to the hands of the executioner. Every stir in the castleyard, every sound upon the stairs, was listened to in the breathless agony of suspense, by his distracted child; every coming moment was dreaded as the herald of the officers of death. Pale, but calm and resigned, the old man sat in his grim prison, whose damps and gloom might meetly have foreshadowed the chill shadows of the tomb to which he was hurrying. In prayer he had sought and found that heroism which more nobly, and far more securely than human pride and resolution, can sustain the heart of man through the terrors of such a scene.
In misery uncontrollable, and wildest despair, poor Grace wept, and trembled, and clung to him, and sobbed, like a creature bereft of reason; and through these dreadful moments, the brave old man strove, though in vain, by words of fortitude and comfort, to calm the wild transports of her breaking heart.
At length the dreaded sounds were actually heard. The ill-omened scream of the rusty lock, the clang and rattle of chains and bars, along with gruff voices upon the passage, the door itself rolled back, and the gaoler entered; but oh! praised be heaven, is it possible — with a REPRIEVE!
Yes, Sir Hugh Willoughby, though still under sentence, and a prisoner as before, is again reprieved until the king’s further pleasure shall be known.
Oh! who can describe the overwhelming delirium of joy which welcomed this unlooked for respite, and in the intoxication of deliverance from present ruin, hailed the precarious boon with all the rapturous ecstacy which might have greeted an entire deliverance in the king’s full pardon.
*
The first rapture of his sudden rescue had for some time subsided, and in calmer happiness now, Sir Hugh and his darling child mingled their smiles and tears, as hand locked in hand, the kind words and fond looks of dearest affection were exchanged between them; when once more the prison door flew open, and breathless with eagerness and haste, old Caleb Crooke, supported by O’Gara and Torlogh O’Brien, stood in the scanty light which struggled through the bars of the dungeon.
“My dear old patron — my admirable friend — worthy knight,” cried Crooke, scarce intelligibly, through want of breath and extreme vehemence, while the tears, spite of all his efforts, coursed one another down his rugged cheeks, “I’ll never forgive you; how could you think of being hanged, without letting your agent, and honest, trusty, humble old friend Caleb Crooke, whose fortune you made, and whose fortune and whose self you have as good a right to command as if they were, in fact, as they are in right, and in gratitude, your own — without letting him know a word about it; confound me, confound me, I say, if I ever forgive it.”
As he thus spoke, he wrung his old benefactor’s two hands in his own, with a vehemence which was all but dislocating.
“But it’s all settled, now,” he continued, with unabated impetuosity “all settled, all right — the deed — the settlement that was burnt, you know — but, no, you don’t know — egad, I forgot, but no matter — it’s found again — that is — not it — but an attested copy, which is all one you know; and — and— “
Here honest Caleb was taken with so obstinate a fit of coughing, that he became utterly unintelligible; and O’Gara, consulting the anxiety of his hearers, and undeterred by Crooke’s deprecatory gestures, took upon him the office of spokesman forthwith, and thus proceeded: —
“And to the preservation and discovery of this deed, under God, you are indebted for your reprieve — and for more, for your perfect security against ever suffering the execution of the’ sentence under which you lie. The wretches who conspired your death aimed in reality at your estate, and finding that that is limited to another on your death, are resolved to enjoy it at least during your life; and to extend the term of this enjoyment, they, of course, desire to protract that life, with which it ends. But, sir, there is more— “
“Let me — let me — young gentleman — let me” insisted Crooke, who had now recovered breath — and, with gentle violence, pushing back the young priest with his open hand, he continued— “yes, indeed, there is more, as he said — a great deal more. This young man — this Colonel Torlogh O’Brien, has behaved — I will say it, though he nods and frowns at me all the while — nobly, ay, sir, nobly. The French court had, it seems, long since promised him their interest, in seeking the restitution of his Irish ancestral patrimony — of which you know Glindarragh is a chief portion. The ambassador was prepared to press this upon the King — but he has waived his claim to your forfeited life interest, on condition that you shall be liberated, immediately, upon bail. The terms are agreed to — and at this moment, the necessary bonds are being drawn up. I ought to add — because the thing tells handsomely for him — that Colonel Sarsfield requested to be your second bail — so, please God, by tomorrow morning, you shall be once more a free man.”
What followed, we need not detail — nor yet all that passed between the beautiful Grace Willoughby, and the brave and handsome soldier, whose proud but generous heart she had irrevocably won.
Torlogh O’Brien remained with Sir Hugh until the hour arrived, when the prison rules of Dublin Castle obliged Grace Willoughby to leave her father for the night; and, accompanied by her woman, she took her leave, and returned in a coach to her apartments in the Carbrie. There we shall leave her, in the deep solitude and silence of the night, to commune with her own heart — and to calm, if possible, the tumult of its sweet and bitter emotions and remembrances.
The young soldier, being thus alone with Sir Hugh, opened fully to him the purport of his interview with Grace in the castle garden. Deeply, however, to his mortification and disappointment, the young m
an found his proposal coldly, though not unkindly, listened to. Sir Hugh Willoughby had his pride and reserve as well as Torlogh O’Brien; and in his fallen fortunes he could not bear the thought that his family should be beholden, either for rank or wealth, to the generous forgiveness of an hereditary foe. The strong and unfavourable prejudices with which he had at first regarded Colonel O’Brien, had, it is needless to say, long since entirely disappeared; but his present humbled position was not the attitude in which to entertain an offer, which, in his eyes, wore too much the appearance of an obligation.
Pained and chagrined, though not actually offended at what, under all the circumstances, seemed to him the unreasonable conduct of the knight, Torlogh O’Brien was constrained to take his departure with a heart still troubled with perplexing doubts, and dark anxieties for the future.
“Well, Sir Hugh Willoughby,” he said, with a proud but melancholy air; “to speak frankly, I did not anticipate so cold an answer to my suit; it pains me the more that I may not see you for many months again. Tonight I proceed to take, in person, the command of my regiment; and so it is even possible, in times so troublous and uncertain as the present, I may never see you more. Farewell, Sir Hugh — farewell — we part, at least, as friends.”
As Torlogh O’Brien rode slowly through the moonlit streets, chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy, he found himself under the walls of the now quiet Carbrie; and, as his eye wandered on among the gables, and vanes, and projecting beam-heads, which varied the front of the antique structure, something more than the romantic influence of the misty moonshine, under which the old fabric was shimmering, induced him to draw bridle, and break the rapid pace of his steed into a walk. He checked even this moderate motion, as he reached that part of the mansion in which Sir Hugh’s lodgings were situated, and looked up, with passionate regret, to the quaint casements, within which he knew his beautiful Grace was, even at that moment, mayhap, thinking of her own true lover.
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 84
