When O’Rorke left Kate, it was not the direction of the post-office that
he took; he went straight to the head inn of the town, on the doorsteps
of which he stationed himself, anxiously watching for the arrival of
another traveller. Nor had he long to wait, for as the town clock struck
the half-hour, a chaise and pair galloped up to the door, and young
Ladarelle cried out from the window, “The last seven miles in forty-six
minutes! What do you say to that! Is dinner ready?” asked he, as he
descended.
“Everything’s ready, Sir,” said O’Rorke, obsequiously, as, pushing
the landlord aside, he assumed the office of showing the way up-stairs
himself.
“Tell Morse to unpack some of that sherry,” said Ladarelle; and then
laughingly added, “Order your own tap, Master O’Rorke, for I’m not going
to throw away Dalradern wine upon _you_.”
O’Rorke laughed too--perhaps not as genially, but he could afford
to relish such a small joke even against himself--not to say that it
conveyed an assurance he was well pleased with, that Ladarelle meant him
to dine along with himself.
As the dinner was served, Ladarelle talked away about everything. It was
his first visit to Ireland, and, though it amused him, he said he hoped
his last also. Everything was absurd, laughable, and poverty-stricken
to his eyes; that is to say, Pauperism was so apparent on all sides, the
whole business of life seemed to be carried on by make-shifts.
The patriot O’Rorke had need of much forbearance as he listened to the
unfeeling comments and ignorant inferences of the “Saxon.” He heard him,
however, without one word of disclaimer, and with a little grin on his
face, that if Ladarelle had been an Irishman, and had one drop of
Irish blood in his body, he would not have accepted as any evidence of
pleasure or satisfaction.
“Order whatever you mean to have,” said Ladarelle, as the meal was
concluded, “and don’t let us have that fellow coming into the room every
moment.”
O’Rorke made his provision accordingly, and having secured a kettle,
in case it should be his caprice to make punch, he bolted the door and
resumed his place.
“There’s your letter!” said Ladarelle, throwing a coarse-looking scrawl,
sealed with green wax, on the table; “and I’ll be shot if I understand
one line of it!”
“And why not?” asked the other, angrily. “Is it the writing’s so bad?”
“No; the writing can be made out. I don’t complain of that. It’s your
blessed style that floors me! Now, for instance, what does this mean?
‘Impelled by the exuberant indignation that in the Celtic heart rises to
the height of the grandest sacrifices, whether on the altars------’”
O’Rorke snatched the letter from his hand, crushed it into a ball, and
threw it into the fire. “You’ll not have it to laugh at another time,”
cried he, sternly, and with a stare so full of defiance that Ladarelle
looked at him for some seconds in amazement, without speaking.
“My good friend,” said he, at last, with a calm, measured voice, “it is
something new to me to meet conduct like this.”
“Not a bit newer or stranger than for me to be laughed at. Bigger and
stronger fellows than you never tried that game with me.”
“I certainly never suspected you would take it so ill. I thought if any
one knew what a joke meant, it was an Irishman.”
“And so he does; none better. The mistake was, you thought an Englishman
knew how to make one.”
“Let there be an end of this,” said Ladarelle, haughtily. “If I had kept
you in your proper place, you would never have forgotten yourself!” And
as he spoke, he flung his cigar into the fire, and arose and walked up
and down the room.
O’Rorke hung his head for a moment, and then, in a tone of almost abject
contrition, said, “I ask your pardon, Sir. It was just as you say; my
head was turned by good treatment.”
If Ladarelle had been a physiognomist, he would not have liked the
expression of the other’s face, the hue of utter sickness in the cheek,
while the eyes flashed with a fiery energy; but he noted none of these,
and merely said, as he resumed his place:
“Don’t let it happen again, that’s all. Tell me now what occurred when
you got back to Westport, for the only thing I know is that you met her
there the morning you arrived.”
“I’ll tell it in three words: She was on the quay, just come after
a severe night at sea, when I was trying to make a bargain with a
fisherman to take me over to the island. I didn’t see her till her hand
was on my arm and her lips close to my ear, as she whispered:
“‘What news have you for me?”
“‘Bad news,’ says I; ‘the sorrow worse.’
“She staggered back, and sat down on the stock of an anchor that was
there, and drew the tail of her cloak oyer her face, and that’s the way
she remained for about a quarter of an hour.
“‘Tell it to me now, Mr. O’Rorke,’ said she; ‘and as you hope to see
Glory, tell me the truth, and nothing more.’
“‘It’s little I have to tell,’ says I, sitting down beside her. ‘The
ould man was out on a terrace when I gave him your letter. He took it
this way, turning it all round, and then looking up at me, he says: “I
know this handwriting,” says he, “and I think I know what’s inside of
it, but you may tell her it’s too late.” He then muttered something
about a sea-bathing place abroad that I couldn’t catch, and he went on:
“She didn’t know when she was well-------“’
“‘No, no, that he never said!’ says she, bursting in--‘that he never
said!’
“‘Not in them words,’ says I, ‘certainly not, but it came to the same,
for he said she used to be as happy here as the days was long!’
“‘True; it was all true,’ said she to herself. ‘Go on.’
“’” Go back,” says he, “and say, that sorry as I was at first, I’m
getting over it now, and it wouldn’t be better for either of us to hold
any more correspondence.” And with that he gave me the letter back,
sealed as it was.’”
“What made you say that?” cried Ladarelle.
“Because I knew she’d never ask for it; or if she did, I’d say, ‘I had
it in my trunk at home.’ The first thing was to get her to believe me,
at any cost.”
“Is _that_ her way?” asked the other, thoughtfully.
“That’s her way. She’s not given to have suspicions, you can see that.
If you talk to her straight ahead, and never break down in what you say,
she’ll look at you openly, and believe it all; but if ever she sees you
stop, or look confused, or if she catches you taking a sly look at her
under the eyes, you’re done--done entirely! The devil a lawyer from this
to Dublin would put you through such a cross-examination; and I defy the
cleverest fellow that ever sat in the witness-box to baffle her. And she
begins quite regular--quiet, soft, and smooth as a cat.”
“What do I care for all this? She may be as shrewd as she pleases this
day fortnight, Master O’Rorke. Let us only have the balls our own, and
we’ll win the game before she gets a hazard.”
This illustration from the billiard-table was not fully intelligible to
O’Rorke, but he saw its drift, and he assented.
“Where was I? Oh, I remember. ‘He gave me the letter back,’ says I, ‘and
told the servants to see I had my supper, and everything I wanted.
“‘He did this with his hand, as much as to say, “You may go away;” but
I made as if I didn’t understand him, and I waited till the servant left
the place, and then I drew near him, and said:
“‘I think,’ says I, ‘it would be better your honour read the letter,
anyhow. Maybe there’s something in it that you don’t suspect.’
“‘“Who are you,” says he, “that’s teaching _me_ manners?”’
“I didn’t say them was his words, but something that meant the same.
“‘“I know every line that’s in it. I know far better than you--ay, or
than she suspects--the game she would play.”’
“She gave a little cry, as if something stung her. Andeed, I asked her,
What was it hurt her? But she never answered me, but stood up straight,
and, with a hand up this way, she said something to herself, as if
she was making a vow or taking an oath. After that, it wasn’t much she
minded one word I said, and lucky for me it was, for I was coming to
the hard part of my story--about your honour; how you heard from the
servants that I was in the house, and sent for me to your own room, and
asked me hundreds of questions about her. Where she was, and who with,
and what she wrote about, and then how angry you grew with your uncle--I
called him your uncle, I don’t know why--and how you said he was an
unfeeling old savage, that it was the same way he treated yourself,
pampering you one day, turning you out of doors the next. ‘And at last,’
says I--‘I couldn’t keep it in any longer--I up and told him what I came
about, and that your letter was asking a trifle of money to defend your
grandfather for his life.’
“Sorrow matter what I said, she never listened to me. I told her you
swore that her grandfather should have the first lawyer in the land,
and that you’d come over yourself to the Assizes. I told her how you put
twenty pounds into my hand, and said, ‘Tim’--no, not Tim--‘Mr. O’Rorke,
there’s a few pounds to begin. Go back and tell Miss Kate she has a
better and truer friend than the one she lost; one that never forgot
the first evening he seen her, and would give his heart’s blood to save
her.’
“She gave a little smile--it was almost a laugh once--and I thought she
was pleased at what I was telling her. Not a bit of it. It was something
about the ould man was in her mind, and something that didn’t mean any
good to him either, for she said, ‘He shall rue it yet.’ And after
that, though I talked for an hour, she never minded me no more than them
fireirons! At last she clutched my arm in her fingers, and said, “‘Do
you know that my uncle declares I am never to go back again? I came away
against his will, and he swore that if I crossed the threshold to come
here, I should never re-cross it again. Do you know,’ says she, ‘I have
no home nor friend now in the whole world, and I don’t know what’s to
become of me.’
“I tried to comfort her, and say that your honour would never see her
in any distress; but she wasn’t minding me, and only went on saying
something about being back again; but whether it meant at the Castle, or
over in Arran, or, as I once thought, back as a child, when she used
to play in the caves along the sea-shore, I couldn’t say, but she cried
bitterly, and for the whole day never tasted bit or sup. We stopped at
a small house outside the town, and I told them it was a young creature
that lost her mother; and the next day she looked so ill and wasted, I
was getting afraid she was going to have a fever; but she said she was
strong enough, and asked me to bring her on here to the gaol, for she
wanted to see her grandfather.
“It was only this morning, however, I got the order from the
sub-sheriff; and indeed he wouldn’t have given it but that he seen her
out of the window, for in all her distress, and with her clothes wet and
draggled, she’s as beautiful a creature as ever walked.”
“Why not marry her yourself, O’Rorke? By Jove! you’re head and ears in
love already. I’ll make you a handsome settlement, on my oath I will.”
“There’s two small objections, Sir. First, there’s another Mrs. O’Rorke,
though I’m not quite sure where at the present setting; and even if
there wasn’t, she wouldn’t have me.”
“I don’t see that; and if it be only the bigamy you’re afraid of, go off
to Australia or America, and your first wife will never trace you.”
O’Rorke shook his head, and, to strengthen his determination perhaps, he
mixed himself a strong tumbler of punch.
“And where are we now?” asked Ladarelle.
O’Rorke, perhaps, did not fully understand the question, for he looked
at him inquiringly.
“I ask you, where are we now? Don’t you understand me?”
“We’re pretty much where we were yesterday; that is, we’re waiting
to know what’s to be done for the ould man in the gaol, and what your
honour intends to do about”--he hesitated and stammered, and at last
said--“about the other business.”
“Well, it’s the other business, as you neatly call it, Mr. O’Rorke, that
interests me at present. Sir Within has written twice to Mr. Luttrell
since you left the Castle. One of his letters I stopped before it
reached the office, the other I suppose has come to hand.”
“No fanlt of mine if it has, Sir,” broke in O’Rorke, hastily, for he
saw the displeasure in the other’s look. “I was twice at the office at
Westport, and there wasn’t a line there for Mr. Luttrell. Did you read
the other letter, Sir?” added he, eagerly, after a moment’s silence.
“I know what’s in it,” muttered Ladarelle, in confusion, for he was not
quite inured to the baseness he had sunk to. “And what is it, Sir?”
“Just what I expected; that besotted old fool wants to marry her.
He tells Mr. Luttrell, and tells it fairly enough, how the estate is
settled, and he offers the largest settlement the entail will permit
of; but he forgets to add that the same day he takes out his license to
marry, we’ll move for a commission of lunacy. I have been eight weeks
there lately, and not idle, I promise you. I have got plenty of evidence
against him. How he goes into the room she occupied at the Castle,
and has all her rings and bracelets laid out on the toilet-table, and
candles lighted, as if she was coming to dress for dinner, and makes her
maid wait there, telling her Madame is out on horseback, or she is in
the garden, she’ll be in presently. One day, too, he made us wait dinner
for her till eight o’clock; and when at last the real state of the case
broke on him, he had to get up and go to his room, and Holmes, his man,
told me that he sobbed the whole night through, like a child.”
“And do you think that all them will prove him mad?” asked O’Rorke, with
a jeering laugh.
“Why not? If a man cannot understand that a person who has not been
under his roof for six or eight months, and is some hundred miles away,
may want candles in her dressing-room, and may come down any minute to
dinner in that very house----”
“Oddity--eccentricity--want of memory--nothing more! There’s never a
jury in England would call a man mad for all that.”
“You are a great lawyer, Mr. O’Rorke, but it is right to say you differ
here from the Attorney-General.”
“No great harm in that same--when he’s in the wrong!”
“I might possibly be rash enough to question your knowledge of law, but
certainly I’ll never dispute your modesty.”
“My modesty is like any other part of me, and I didn’t make myself; but
I’ll stick to this--that ould man is not mad, and nobody could make him
out mad.”
“Mr. Grenfell will not agree with you in that. He was over at the Castle
the night I came away, and he saw the gardener carrying up three immense
nosegays of flowers, for it was her birthday it seemed, however any one
knew it, and Sir Within had ordered the band from Wrexham to play under
her window at nightfall; and as Mr. Grenfell said, ‘That old gent’s
brain seems about as soft as his heart!’ Not bad, was it?--his brain as
soft as his heart!”
“He’s no more mad than I am, and I don’t care who says the contrary.”
“Perhaps you speculate on being called as a witness to his sanity?” said
Ladarelle, with a sneer.
“I do not, Sir; but if I was, I’d be a mighty troublesome one to the
other side.”
“What the deuce led us into this foolish discussion! As if it signified
one rush to me whether he was to be thought the wisest sage or the
greatest fool in Christendom. What _I_ want, and what I am determined
on, is that we are not to be dragged into Chancery, and made town talk
of, because a cunning minx has turned an old rake’s head. I’d be hunted
by a set of hungry rascals of creditors to-morrow if the old man were
to marry. There’s not one of them wouldn’t believe that my chance of the
estate was all ‘up.’”
“There’s sense in _that_; there is reason in what you say now,” said
O’Rorke.
“And that’s not the worst of it, either,” continued Ladarelle, who, like
all weak men, accepted any flattery, even at the expense of the object
he sought; “but my governor would soon know how deep I am, and he’d
cast me adrift. Not a pleasant prospect, Master O’Rorke, to a fellow who
ought to succeed to about twelve thousand a year.”
“Could he do it by law?”
“Some say one thing, some another; but this I know, that if my creditors
get a hold of me now, as the fox said, there would be very little
running left in me when they’d done with me. But here’s the short and
the long of it. We must not let Sir Within marry, that’s the first
thing; and the second is, there would be no objection to any plan
that will give him such a shock--he’s just ready for a shock--that he
wouldn’t recover from. Do you see it now?”
“I see it all, only I don’t see how it’s to be done.”
“I wonder what you are here for, then?” asked the other, angrily. “I
took you into my pay thinking I had a fellow with expedients at his
fingers’ ends; and, except to see you make objections, and discover
obstacles, I’ll be hanged if I know what you’re good for.”
“Go on, Sir, go on,” said O’Rorke, with a malicious grin.
“In one word, what do you propose?” said Ladarelle, sternly.
“Here’s what I propose, then,” said O’Rorke, pushing the glasses and
decanters from him, and planting his arms on the table in a sturdy
fashion--“I propose, first of all, that you’ll see Mr. Crowe, the
attorney, and give him instructions to defend Malone, and get him the
best bar on the circuit. She’ll insist upon that, that’s the first
thing. The second is, that you come down to where she is, and tell her
that when you heard of her trouble that you started off to help her and
stand by her. I don’t mean to say it will be an easy thing to get her to
believe it, or even after she believes it to take advantage of it, for
she’s prouder than you think. Well, toss your head if you like, but you
don’t know her, nor them she comes from; but if you know how to make
her think that by what she’ll do she’ll spite the ould man that insulted
her, if you could just persuade her that there wasn’t another way in
life so sure to break his heart, I think she’d comply, and agree to
marry you.”
“Upon my soul, the condescension overcomes me! You think--you actually
think--she’d consent to be the wife of a man in such a position as
mine!”
“Well, as I said a while ago, it wouldn’t be easy.”
“You don’t seem to know, my good friend, that you are immensely
impertinent!”
“I do not,” was the reply, and he gave it calmly and slowly. At the same
instant a knock came to the door, and the waiter motioned to O’Rorke
that a woman wanted to speak to him outside. “I’m wanted for a few
minutes, Sir, down at the place she’s stopping. The woman says she’s
very ill, and wandering in her mind. I’ll be back presently.”
“Well, don’t delay too long. I’m between two minds already whether I’ll
not go back and give up the whole business.”