After that night no more is seen or heard of the old abbot.
"Wait till the moonlight nights are past, and he'll turn up again,"
Launce says in his scoffing way.
But the nights are dark enough now--it is an almost sunless September,
and yet they see nothing of the figure. To Honor has come an additional
trouble--the engagement between her brother and Belle Delorme is broken
off. Poor little Belle goes about like a ghost; her miserable eyes,
which go so far to contradict the smile on her lips, fairly haunt Honor.
"If Launce ever loved her he could not bear to see her looking like
that!" the girl says, in her angry surprise that he, her favorite
brother, should prove so cruel. But Launce just now has eyes for no one
but Kate Dundas.
The widow is more fascinating than ever. Two gentlemen are staying on a
visit with her, one from London and one--who is eyed with suspicious
disfavor by her poorer neighbors--from Dublin Castle itself.
There are dinners or card-parties almost every night, and, to use a
vulgar expression, Launce Blake is never off the doorstep.
People are beginning to say that he will marry her and snap his fingers
at the old squire, who, for some reason best known to himself, is no
admirer of the brilliant widow.
"It's the greatest pity in the world that you couldn't keep your
temper!" Honor says reproachfully to her friend, when she comes to tell
her that the engagement is at an end. "I always told you Launce would
not stand being found fault with; sure a child could lead him."
"Yes," Belle answers bitterly, "such a child as Kate Dundas! I knew
from the first how it would end, dear. The woman means to marry him,
and she will do it."
Honor sighs. It is dreadful to think of handsome Launce, with his
brilliant prospects, being sacrificed to this woman, ten years older
than he is, and the widow of a very "shady" major of dragoons.
"It is not as if he loved her!" says Belle, almost with a sob. "He does
not love her. It's all a 'bewitchment,' as old Aileen would say; and,
when she has got him, he'll be miserable."
"But we mustn't let her get him, dear; we must stop it, you and I."
"Then I'm sure I don't see how we are to manage it," Belle sighs.
Neither does Honor, but she is not going to admit that.
Twilight is setting in when Belle gets up to go home.
"Oh, dear, why have I stayed so long?" she says, with a little nervous
sigh. "It will be almost dark before I get out on the road."
"And what about me here alone all the day--and I shall be alone for
hours yet! The _pater_ has gone down to the Low Acres, and the boys are
shooting Colonel Frenche's covers. They can't be home till dark."
"I don't know how you live, and that's the truth, Honor. We often say
so at home. I should go mad, I know I should."
"Oh, I don't feel like that in the least; but sometimes I am
lonely--very!"
And in truth it is a very wistful face that watches pretty Belle
hurrying down the avenue. Honor has grown very thin and pale of late,
and to-night, in her white gown, she looks thinner and paler than ever.
She is feeling the need of a friend sorely. Often Brian Beresford's
words come back--"If ever you should want me, either as friend or
lover, send for me, and I will come."
She wants him now--his friendship, she feels, would be a stay and
shield for her--but she never dreams of taking him at his word, and
asking him to come back to Donaghmore.
She is feeling unusually depressed as she looks out at the sky, which
is slowly changing from pink and opal to a sullen gray.
A morbid dread has been upon her all the day, and the sighing of the
wind in the pine-trees--for a storm is rising over a neighboring
mountain--does not tend to make her more cheerful. She stands a little
while watching the grass bending before the breeze and the dead leaves
swirling and eddying round on the smooth-cropped lawn.
"The rain will be coming down before Aileen could get half-way home,"
she says to herself, and straightway goes down to the kitchen to forbid
her old nurse's departure.
The old woman is sitting before the fire, her head slightly turned, as
if she were listening.
At the sound of Honor's step on the tiled floor she springs upright.
"How ye startled me, honey! Shure in that soft white gown ye might pass
for one of the blessed saints themselves. I took ye for a spirit--I did
an' troth, Miss Honor, at the first glance."
She seems unusually tired and excited, but she will not hear of staying
for the night at Donaghmore.
"Is it a tough old woman like me to be afeard of a sough of wind or a
few drops of rain? No, no, my lamb! I'll go home this night, the saints
being willin'!"
It is almost dark in the front hall as the girl passes through; only a
faint gray light comes in at the open door.
In the drawing-room the windows stand open just as she left them; and,
wondering a little at the old butler's carelessness, she proceeds to
fasten them herself.
As she does so she sees a man cross the drive quickly from the
servants' quarters at the back of the house. He is followed after a
brief space of time by another man, and both disappear in the direction
of the gates.
"I did not know they had visitors in the kitchen to-night," she says to
herself, and straightway forgets all about it.
More than an hour passes before she hears her father's step in the hall.
"Where are the boys?" he says, as she comes out of the drawing-room to
speak to him.
"They have not come from the colonel's yet. They said they might be
late."
"A man has been shot on Keif Moss--shot dead, and by mistake for some
one else, they tell me."
She reads the fear that is blanching the strong man's face, and making
his voice sound low and husky in the empty hall.
"Not Launce, father! Don't tell me that it is Launce!"
"Heaven only knows! It was some one who was coming from that hateful
Rose Mount; and, let Launce go east or west, he ends there before the
day is out."
She knows it is too true; and suddenly her composure gives way, her
strength with it, and, throwing her arms about her father's neck, she
bursts into tears.
Very drearily the hours pass to the old man and the girl waiting and
listening in the large lonely house.
It is twelve o'clock before Horace comes home. He has seen nothing of
his brother since they met for lunch at the colonel's. He would ride
off then and there to make inquiries if his father would let him; but
the squire will not hear of such a thing. He sends them to their own
rooms, and sees to the fastening of doors and windows--a thing Honor
has never known him to do in all his life before--and then he sits down
in the large empty dining-room--the scene of many a jovial feast--to
wait for the morning light, and the news that must come with it!
But this is fated to be a night long remembered at Donaghmore. All her
life long Honor will look back upon it with dread--will remember the
deep anxiety, amounting to despair, that makes its black hours as they
creep by seem like days in ordinary life.
It is a moonless night, and the wind, which has risen to a gale, fills
the air with noises--the rattling of loosely-fastened shutters, the
sough of the pine trees behind the house, the thousand-and-one eerie
sounds that a high wind and night bring into empty rooms and corridors.
It is useless to go to bed--she could not sleep. Even if there was no
storm, the horrible doubt--which grows less a doubt every hour--that
the man who has met his death on Keif Moss is her brother Launce would
be enough to banish sleep from her eyes.
And then Aileen's dream of the grave cut deep in the moss, and hidden
from sight by green branches--it all comes back vividly now, and adds
to the girl's torture. She has no longer the strength to scoff at these
things. And, if that was a warning of the death that was lying in wait
for her darling, then the other dream of the grave out there on the
lawn, in view of their own windows, might not that come true?
As the thought occurs to her, she draws back the curtains and looks
out. It is too dark to see anything, and she is turning away, when the
glimmer of a light in the direction of the old ruins makes her start
and pause.
"What can it be?" she asks herself.
It is glowing more brightly now, a fixed point that grows more luminous
every instant, till suddenly--as she stands watching it--it goes out.
The gale is at its height now, making doors and windows rattle, tearing
at the branches of the stout old trees, rioting and shrieking over the
empty fields; but it is not the wind that Honor hears as she stands
there breathless, one hand to her heart, the other holding by the
bed-rail to steady her from falling. It is the sound of an opening
door, of softly-tramping feet, of harsh voices speaking in a muffled
key, that makes them ten times more terrible and threatening.
At the same instant Horace--his room is next to hers--rushes past the
door and down the stairs in headlong haste.
Then rise the shrill screams of women, and over all her father's voice,
resolute and undaunted.
"Not from this house, my men." The words come up clearly to her as she
stands at the top of the stairs, faint and dizzy with fright. "Not
while a drop of blood runs in our veins. You may kill me--it is an easy
thing to shoot an old man----" But here his words are drowned in a
burst of yells and howlings terrible to listen to.
The next moment Honor is down in the hall, and has pushed her way past
her brother and the terrified servants to where her father stands, his
back to the dining-room, his face turned toward the little group of men
who, with black masks over their faces, have forced their way into the
hall.
It is a terrible scene--the girl will never forget it. These uncouth
menacing figures, the frightened faces of the women gathered about the
staircase, her young brother, as pale as any woman there, but cool and
calm. But the one figure distinct from all the rest is that of her
father, drawn to his full height, his resolute face turned full upon
his cowardly assailants. He looks quite ten years younger than he did
when she left him a few hours before, and there is a stern look on his
face that frightens her. She has heard of the "fighting Blakes," and
she begins to understand that even yet the old spirit has not died out
in the race.
He sees her, but he makes no effort to send her away. In this supreme
hour of trial the love of his heart recognizes her right to be with him
even if it should be the bitter end.
"Go back, Miss Honor!" some one shouts. "Shure, we would not hurt a
hair of your head!"
But the girl smiles coldly. She has no fear for herself; her one care,
her one dread is for the safety of those others, who are dearer to her
a thousand-fold than her own safety.
The men talk fast and furiously, but she hardly hears their words. She
is waiting for what must come after, when all their threats have
failed, as she knows so well they will fail.
They demand arms--with which they know the house to be well supplied.
"Give them arms, and they will go in peace, for the present, squire,"
one man adds, with menacing emphasis.
For answer Robert Blake raises his right arm, and they see the muzzle
of a revolver; and now a louder and more angry cry comes from the crowd.
"You know me, James Phelan," the squire says calmly, addressing an old
tenant whose voice he has recognized; "tell these men that I am a dead
shot, and I will fire if they come a yard nearer."
For an instant the crowd sways back, then it rallies. Those behind push
the front rows mercilessly forward. The men are thoroughly excited
now--there are more of them than at first appeared--and Honor feels
that the next few moments will decide her fate and that of those dear
to her.
Suddenly the great hall lamp falls to the floor with a crash, and the
whole place is in profound darkness. For an instant the men, pressing
toward their prey, pause, afraid, it may be, of a stray bullet striking
them in the obscurity.
Then a loud shout is raised, and the hall, the stairs, the corridors
are filled with a struggling, panting, furious mob.
Honor feels herself lifted out of the crowd, and let down inside the
library, close to the door.
"Don't move for your life, and don't speak!" a voice says softly, close
to her cheek, and then she is alone; and, save for the lightning that
illumines the room almost every moment, she is in darkness.
Outside there are loud hoarse cries, heavy blows, and trampling feet,
the indescribable horror and confusion of a fierce fight fought with
blind rage on both sides.
It cannot be that her father and Horace--for on the servants she does
not count at all--are keeping all these men at bay so long!
The suspense becomes torture. She feels that at any risk she must know
how things are going, and, cautiously opening the door, she looks out.
The hall is full of police; most of the attacking party have been
disarmed--a few have escaped, but she does not know that; three men,
however, are making a pretty tough fight for it still. But even as
Honor stands and looks on, powerless in her dismay, it is over; the men
are struck down and secured.
"This is no sight for you, Honor," a man's voice says suddenly, and,
looking up, she sees Brian Beresford before her, with an ugly cut on
the temple, from which the blood is flowing freely.
"You!" she gasps, holding her hands out to him with a gesture
infinitely touching in one so cold and proud as Honor. "Oh, Brian, I
have been wanting you so! I--I thought you would never come back!"
"You see you were mistaken," he says coolly. How the man's pulse are
throbbing, how the welcome in her glad sweet eyes has thrilled him, no
one looking at him could divine. "I said you were not so unprotected as
you imagined," he adds, looking round with a grim smile. "We got here
in time to foil the rascals--thanks to Aileen!"
"Why, what had Aileen to do with it? She went home hours ago."
"No, she did not. She crossed the mountain to Drum--a stiff climb for a
woman of her years--and gave us notice that the house was to be
attacked some time to-night, and off we came."
"Gave you notice?" the girl repeats. She looks dazed and faint, as well
she may--a hollow-eyed, white-faced wraith of a girl, in her creased
white gown.
The captured men are filing out now in twos and threes, closely
guarded. Suddenly Honor starts forward, she has caught sight of a face
that, disfigured by blows as it is, she would know among a thousand,
and her heart seems to cease beating with the shock.
The tall man marching past between two policemen looks at her for an
instant, and then turns his head aside. It is the one thing too much
for Honor. With a heart-broken cry that has a thrill of horror in it
she falls forward at her cousin's feet.
"Confound the fellow!" he says to himself, as he lifts her gently in
his arms, as if she had been a child. "If he had not held out, like the
fool he is, she need never have known a word about it."