Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

by Maria Edgeworth

  “You are my Lard Glenthorn, I presume,” said he.

  “I am.”

  “Then you will come with me, if you plase, my lard,” said he.

  “Make no resistance, or I will shoot you instantly,” cried I, presenting my pistol with one hand, and seizing him by the collar with the other. I dragged him (for I had force enough, now my energy was roused) to the spot appointed for my signal. The boat appeared opposite the mouth of the cave. Every thing answered my expectation.

  “There,” said I, pointing to the boat, “there are my armed friends; they have a four-pounder — the match is ready lighted — your plot is discovered. Go in to your confederates in that cave; tell them so. The trap-door is secured above; there is no escape for them: bid them surrender: if they attempt to rush out, the grape shot will pour upon them, and they are dead men.”

  I cannot say that my rebel captain showed himself as stout as I could have wished, for the honour of my victory. The surprise disconcerted him totally: I felt him tremble under my grasp. He obeyed my orders — went into the cave to bring his associates to submission. His parley with them, however, was not immediately successful: I suppose there were some braver fellows than he amongst them, whose counsel might be for open war. In the mean time our yeomen landed, and surrounded the cave on all sides, so that there was no possibility of escape for those within. At last they yielded themselves our prisoners. I am sorry I have no bloody battle for the entertainment of such of my readers as like horrors; but so it was, that they yielded without a drop of blood being spilled, or a shot fired. We let them out of their hiding-place one by one, searching each as he issued forth, to be secure that they had no concealed weapons. After they had given up the arms which were concealed in the cave, the next question was, what to do with our prisoners. As it was now late, and they could not all be examined and committed with due legal form to the county gaol, Mr. M’Leod advised that we should detain them in the place they had chosen for themselves till morning. Accordingly, in the cave we again stowed them, and left a guard at each entrance to secure them for the night. We returned to the castle. I stopped at the gate to tell Ellinor and Christy that I was safe. They were sitting up watching for the news. The moment Ellinor saw me, she clasped her hands in an ecstasy of joy, but could not speak. Christy was voluble in his congratulations; but, in the midst of his rejoicing, he could not help reproaching me with forgetting to give him the blunderbush, and to let him have a bit of the fighting. “Upon my honour,” said I, “there was none, or you should have been there.”

  “Oh, don’t be plaguing and gathering round him now,” said Ellinor: “sure he is tired, and look how hot — no wonder — let him get home and to bed: I’ll run and warm it with the pan myself, and not be trusting them.”

  She would not be persuaded that I did not desire to have my bed warmed, but, by some short cut, got in before us. On entering the castle-hall, I found her, with the warming-pan in her hand, held back by the inquisitive servants, who were all questioning her about the news, of which she was the first, and not very intelligible enunciator.

  I called for bread and water for my prisoner in the strong-room, and then I heard various exclamations of wonder.

  “Ay, it is all true! it is no jest! Joe is at the bottom of all. I never liked Joe Kelly — I always knew Joe was not the right thing — and I always said so; and I, and I, and I. And it was but last week I was saying so: and it was but yesterday I said so and so.”

  I passed through the gossiping crowd with bread and water for my culprit. McLeod instantly saw and followed me.

  “I will make bold to come with you,” said he; “a pent rat’s a dangerous animal.” — I thanked him, and acquiesced; but there was no need for the precaution. When we opened the door, we found the conscience or terror-struck wretch upon his knees, and in the most abject terms he implored for mercy. From the windows of the room, which looked into the castle-yard, he had heard enough to guess all that had happened. I could not bear to look at him. After I had set down his food, he clung to my knees, crying and whining in a most unmanly manner. McLeod, with indignation, loosened him from me, threw him back, and locked the door.

  “Cowardice and treachery,” said he, “usually go together.”

  “And courage and sincerity,” said I. “And now we’ll go to supper, my good friends. I hope you are all as hungry as I am.”

  I never did eat any meal with so much appetite.

  “Tis a pity, my lord,” said McLeod, “but that there was a conspiracy against you every day of your life, it seems to do you so much good.”

  CHAPTER XVI.

  “What new wonders? What new misfortunes, Ellinor?” said I, as Ellinor, with a face of consternation, appeared again in the morning in my room, just as I was going down to breakfast: “what new misfortunes, Ellinor?”

  “Oh! the worst that could befall me!” cried she, wringing her hands; “the worst, the very worst! — to be the death of my own child!” said she, with inexpressible horror. “Oh! save him! save him! for the love of heaven, dear, save him! If you don’t save him, ’tis I shall be his death.”

  She was in such agony, that she could not explain herself farther for some minutes.

  “It was I gave the information against them all to you. But how could I ever have thought Owen was one of them? My son, my own son, the unfortunate cratur; I never thought but what he was with the militia far away. And how could it ever come into my head that Owen could have any hand in a thing of the kind?”

  “But I did not see him last night,” interrupted I.

  “Oh! he was there! One of his own friends, one of the military that went with you, saw him among the prisoners, and came just now to tell me of it. That Owen should be guilty of the like! — Oh! what could have come over him! He must have been out of his rason. And against you to be plotting! That’s what I never will believe, if even I’d hear it from himself. But he’s among them that were taken last night. And will I live to see him go to gaol? — and will I live to see — No, I’d rather die first, a thousand and a thousand times over. Oh! for mercy’s sake!” said she, dropping on her knees at my feet, “have pity on me, and don’t let the blood of my own child be upon me in my old days.”

  “What would you have me do, Ellinor?” said I, much moved by her distress.

  “There is but one thing to do,” said she. “Let him off: sure a word from you would be enough for the soldiers that are over them on guard. And Mr. McLeod has not yet seen him; and if he was just let escape, there would be no more about it; and I’d I engage he shall fly the country, the unfortunate cratur! and never trouble you more. This is all I ask: and sure, dear, you can’t refuse it to your own Ellinor; your old nurse, that carried ye in her arms, and fed ye with her milk, and watched over ye many’s the long night, and loved ye; ay, none ever loved, or could love ye so well.”

  “I am sensible of it; I am grateful,” interrupted I; “but what you ask of me, Ellinor, is impossible — I cannot let him escape; but I will do my utmost.”

  “Troth, nothing will save him, if you would not say the word for him now. Ah! why cannot you let him off, then?”

  “I should lose my honour; I should lose my character. You know that I have been accused of favouring the rebels already — you saw the consequences of my protecting your other son, though he was innocent and injured, and bore an excellent character.”

  “Christy; ay, true: but poor Owen, unlucky as he is, and misguided, has a better claim upon you.”

  “How can that be? Is not the other my foster-brother, in the first place?”

  “True for him.”

  “And had not I proofs of his generous conduct and attachment to me?”

  “Owen is naturally fonder of you by a great deal,” interrupted she; “I’ll answer for that.”

  “What! when he has just been detected in conspiring against my life?”

  “That’s what I’ll never believe,” cried Ellinor, vehemently: “that he might be drawn in, may b
e, when out of his rason — he was always a wild boy — to be a united-man, and to hope to get you for his captain, might be the case, and bad enough that; but, jewel, you’ll find he did never conspire against you: I’d lay down my life upon that.”

  She threw herself again at my feet, and clung to my knees.

  “As you hope for mercy yourself in this world, or the world to come, show some now, and do not be so hard-hearted as to be the death of both mother and son.”

  Her supplicating looks and gestures, her words, her tears, moved me so much, that I was on the point of yielding; but recollecting what was due to justice and to my own character, with an effort of what I thought virtuous resolution, I repeated, “It is impossible: my good Ellinor, urge me no farther: ask any thing else, and it shall be granted, but this is impossible.”

  As I spoke, I endeavoured to raise her from the ground; but with the sudden force of angry despair, she resisted.

  “No, you shall not raise me,” cried she. “Here let me lie, and break my heart with your cruelty! ’Tis a judgment upon me — it’s a judgment, and it’s fit I should feel it as I do. But you shall feel too, in spite of your hard heart. Yes, your heart is harder than the marble: you want the natural touch, you do; for your mother has knelt at your feet, and you have denied her prayer.”

  “My mother!”

  “And what was her prayer? — to save the life of your brother.”

  “My brother! Good heavens! what do I hear?”

  “You hear the truth: you hear that I am your lawful mother. Yes, you are my son. You have forced that secret from me, which I thought to have carried with me to my grave. And now you know all: and now you know how wicked I have been, and it was all for you; for you that refused me the only thing ever I asked, and that, too, in my greatest distress, when my heart was just breaking: and all this time too, there’s Christy — poor good Christy; he that I’ve wronged, and robbed of his rightful inheritance, has been as a son, a dutiful good son to me, and never did he deny me any thing I could ask; but in you I have found no touch of tenderness. Then it’s fit I should tell you again, and again, and again, that he who is now slaving at the forge, to give me the earnings of his labour; he that lives, and has lived all his days, upon potatoes and salt, and is content; he who has the face and the hands so disguised with the smoke and the black, that yourself asked him t’other day did he ever wash his face since he was born — I tell ye, he it is who should live in this castle, and sleep on that soft bed, and be lord of all here — he is the true and real Lord Glenthorn, and to the wide world I’ll make it known. Ay, be pale and tremble, do; it’s your turn now: I’ve touched you now: but it’s too late. In the face of day I shall confess the wrong I’ve done; and I shall call upon you to give back to him all that by right is his own.”

  Ellinor stopped short, for one of my servants at this instant came into the room.

  “My lord, Mr. McLeod desires me to let you know the guard has brought up the prisoners, and he is going to commit them to gaol, and would be glad to know if you choose to see them first, my lord.”

  Stupified by all I had just heard, I could only reply, that I would come presently. Ellinor rushed past the servant,—”Are they come?” cried she. “Where will I get a sight of them?” I stayed for a few minutes alone, to decide upon what I ought to say and do. A multitude of ideas, more than had ever come in my mind in a twelvemonth, passed through it in these few minutes.

  As I was slowly descending the great staircase, Ellinor came running, as fast as she could run, to the foot of the stairs, exclaiming, “It’s a mistake! it’s all a mistake, and I was a fool to believe them that brought me the word. Sure Ody’s not there at all! nor ever was in it. I’ve seen them all, face to face; and my son’s not one of them, nor ever was: and I was a fool from beginning to end — and I beg your pardon entirely,” whispered she, coming close to my ear: “I was out of my reason at the thought of that boy’s being to suffer, and I, his mother, the cause of it. Forgive all I said in my passion, my own best jewel: you was always good and tender to me, and be the same still, dear. I’ll never say a word more about it to any one living: the secret shall die with me. Sure, when my conscience has borne it so long, it may strive and bear it a little longer for your sake: and it can’t be long I have to live, so that will make all easy. Hark! they are asking for you. Do you go your ways into the great parlour, to Mr. McLeod, and think no more of any thing at all but joy. My son’s not one of them! I must go to the forge, and tell Christy the good news.”

  Ellinor departed, quite satisfied with herself, with me, and with all the world. She took it for granted that she left me in the same state of mind, and that I should obey her injunctions, and think of nothing but joy. Of what happened in the great parlour, and of the examinations of the prisoners, I have but a confused recollection. I remember that Mr. McLeod seemed rather surprised by my indifference to what concerned me so nearly; and that he was obliged to do all the business himself. The men were, I believe, all committed to gaol, and Joe Kelly turned king’s evidence; but as to any further particulars, I know no more than if I had been in a dream. The discovery which Ellinor had just made to me engrossed all my powers of attention.

  CHAPTER XVII.

  “Le vrai n’est pas toujours vraisemblable,” says an acute observer of human affairs. The romance of real life certainly goes beyond all other romances; and there are facts which few writers would dare to put into a book, as there are skies which few painters would venture to put into a picture.

  When I had leisure to reflect, I considered, that as yet I had no proof of the truth of Ellinor’s strange story, except her own assertions. I sent for her again, to examine her more particularly. I was aware that, if I alarmed her, I should so confuse her imagination, that I should never obtain the truth; therefore I composed myself, and assumed my usual external appearance of nonchalance. I received her lolling upon my sofa, as usual, and I questioned her merely as if to gratify an idle curiosity.

  “Troth, dear,” said she, “I’ll tell you the whole story how it was, to make your mind asy, which, God knows, mine never was, from that minute it first came into my head, till this very time being. You mind the time you got the cut in your head — no, not you, jewel; but the little lord that was then, Christy there below that is. — Well, the cut was a terrible cut as ever you seen, got by a fall on the fender from the nurse’s arms, that was drunk, three days after he was born.”

  “I remember to have heard my father talk of some accident of this sort, which happened to me when I was an infant.”

  “Ay, sure enough it did, and that was what first put him in the notion of taking the little lord out of the hands of the Dublin nurse-tenders, and them that were about my Lady Glenthom, and did not know how to manage her, which was the cause of her death: and he said he’d have his own way about his son and heir any way, and have him nursed by a wholesome woman in a cabin, and brought up hardy, as he, and the old lord, and all the family, were before him. So with that he sends for me, and he puts the young lord, God bless him, into my arms himself, and a donny thing he was that same time to look at, for he was but just out of the surgeon’s hands, the head just healed and scarred over like; and my lord said there should be no more doctors never about him. So I took him, that is, Christy, and you, to a house at the sea, for the salt water, and showed him every justice; and my lord often came to see him whilst he was in the country; but then he was off, after a time, to Dublin, and I was in a lone place, where nobody came, and the child was very sick with me, and you was all the time as fine and thriving a child as ever you see; and I thought, to be sure, one night, that he would die wid me. He was very bad, very bad indeed; and I was sitting up in bed, rocking him backwards and forwards this ways: I thought with myself, what a pity it was, the young lord should die, and he an only son and heir, and the estate to go out of the family the Lord knows where; and then the grief the father would be in: and then I thought how happy he would be if he had such a fine babby as
you, dear; and you was a fine babby to be sure: and then I thought how happy it would be for you, if you was in the place of the little lord: and then it came into my head, just like a shot, where would be the harm to change you? for I thought the real lord would surely die; and then, what a gain it would be to all, if it was never known, and if the dead child was carried to the grave, since it must go, as only poor Ellinor O’Donoghoe’s, and no more about it. Well, if it was a wicked thought, it was the devil himself put it in my head, to be sure; for, only for him, I should never have had the sense to think of such a thing, for I was always innocent like, and not worldly given. But so it was, the devil put it in my head, and made me do it, and showed me how, and all in a minute. So, I mind, your eyes and hair were both of the very same colour, dear; and as to the rest, there’s no telling how those young things alter in a few months, and my lord would not be down from Dublin in a hurry, so I settled it all right; and as there was no likelihood at all the real lord would live, that quieted my conscience; for I argued, it was better the father should have any sort of child at all than none. So, when my lord came down, I carried him the child to see, that is you, jewel. He praised me greatly for all the care I had taken of his boy; and said, how finely you was come on! and I never see a father in greater joy; and it would have been a sin, I thought, to tell him the truth, after he took the change that was put upon him so well, and it made him so happy like. Well, I was afeard of my life he’d pull off the cap to search for the scar, so I would not let your head be touched any way, dear, saying it was tinder and soft still with the fall, and you’d cry if the cap was stirred; and so I made it out indeed, very well; for, God forgive me, I twitched the string under your chin, dear, and made you cry like mad, when they would come to touch you. So there was no more about it, and I had you home to myself, and, all in good time, the hair grew, and fine thick hair it was, God bless you; and so there was no more about it, and I got into no trouble at all, for it all fell out just as I had laid it out, except that the real little young lord did not die as I thought; and it was a wonder but he did, for you never saw none so near death, and backwards and forwards, what turns of sickness he took with me for months upon months, and year after year, so that none could think, no more than me, there was any likelihood at all of rearing him to man’s estate. So that kept me easier in my mind concerning what I’d done; for as I kept saying to myself, better the family should have an heir to the estate, suppose not the right, than none at all; and if the father, nor nobody, never found it out, there was he and all the family made happy for life, and my child made a lord of, and none the wiser or the worse. Well, so I down-argued my conscience; and any way I took to little Christy, as he was now to be called — and I loved him, all as one as if he was my own — not that he was ever as well-looking as Ody, or any of the childer I had, but I never made any differ betwixt him and any of my own — he can’t say as I did, any how, and he has no reason to complain of my being an unnat’ral mother to him, and being my foster-child I had a right to love him as I did, and I never wronged him in any way, except in the one article of changing him at nurse, which he being an infant, and never knowing, wa” never a bit the worse for, nor never will, now. So all’s right^ dear, and make your mind asy, jewel; there’s the whole truth of the story, for you.”