WHAT WAS DONE WITH THE FUNDS.
The L200 was not spent in a manner of which Lord Castlewell would
have altogether approved. About the end of August Mr. O'Mahony was
summoned back to Ireland, and was induced, at a meeting held at the
Rotunda, to give certain pledges which justified the advanced Irish
party in putting him forward as a new member for the County of Cavan.
The advanced Irish party had no doubt been attracted by the eloquence
he had exhibited both in Galway and in London, and by the patriotic
sentiments which he had displayed. He was known to be a Republican,
and to look for the formation of a Republic to American aid. He had
expressed most sincere scorn for everything English, and professed
ideas as to Irish property generally in regard to which he was
altogether ignorant of their meaning. As he was a sincerely honest
man, he did think that something good for his old country would be
achieved by Home Rule; though how the Home-Rulers would set to work
when Home Rule should be the law of the land, he had not the remotest
conception. There were many reasons, therefore, why he should be a
fit member for an Irish county. But it must be admitted that he would
not have been so unanimously selected had all the peculiarities of
his mind been known. It might be probable that he would run riot
under the lash of his leader, as others have done both before and
since, when he should come to see all the wiles of that strategy
which he would be called upon to support. And in such case the
quarrel with him would be more internecine than with other foes,
such as English members, Scotch members, Conservative Irish members,
and Liberal Irish members, not sworn to follow certain leaders. A
recreant one out of twenty friends would be regarded with more bitter
hatred than perhaps six hundred and thirty ordinary enemies. It
might be, therefore, that a time of tribulation was in store for Mr.
O'Mahony, but he did not consider these matters very deeply when the
cheers rang loud in the hall of the Rotunda; nor did he then reflect
that he was about to spend in an injudicious manner the money which
must be earned by Rachel's future work.
When Rachel had completed her engagement with Mr. Moss, it had been
intended that they should go down to Ambleside and there spend Lord
Castlewell's money in the humble innocent enjoyment of nature. There
had at that moment been nothing decided as to the County of Cavan. A
pork-butcher possessed of some small means and unlimited impudence
had put himself forward. But The Twenty had managed to put him
through his facings, and had found him to be very ignorant in his use
of the Queen's English. Now of late there had come up a notion that
the small party required to make up for the thinness of their members
by the strength of their eloquence. Practice makes perfect, and it is
not to be wondered at therefore if a large proportion of The Twenty
had become fluent. But more were wanted, and of our friend O'Mahony's
fluency there could be no doubt. Therefore he was sent for, and on
the very day of his arrival he proved to the patriotic spirits of
Dublin that he was the man for Cavan. Three days afterwards he went
down, and Cavan obediently accepted its man. With her father went
Rachel, and was carried through the towns of Virginia, Bailyborough,
and Ballyjamesduff, in great triumph on a one-horse car.
This occurred about the end of August, and Lord Castlewell's L200
was very soon spent. She had not thought much about it, but had been
quite willing to be the daughter of a Member of Parliament, if a
constituency could be found willing to select her father. She did not
think much of the duties of Parliament, if they came within the reach
of her father's ability. She did not in truth think that he could
under any circumstances do half a day's work. She had known what it
was to practise, and, having determined to succeed, she had worked
as only a singer can work who determines that she will succeed. Hour
after hour she had gone on before the looking-glass, and even Mr.
Moss had expressed his approval. But during the years that she had
been so at work, she had never seen her father do anything. She knew
that he talked what she called patriotic buncombe. It might be that
he would become a very fitting Member of Parliament, but Rachel had
her doubt. She could see, however, that the L200 quickly vanished
during their triumphant journeyings on the one-horse car. Everybody
in County Cavan seemed to know that there was L200 and no more to be
spent by the new member. There he was, however, Member of Parliament
for the County of Cavan, and his breast was filled with new
aspirations. Enmity, the bitterest enmity to everything English,
was the one lesson taught him. But he himself had other feelings.
What if he could talk over that Speaker, and that Prime Minister,
that Government generally, and all the House of Commons, and all
the House of Lords! Why should not England go her way and Ireland
hers,--England have her monarchy and Ireland her republic, but still
with some kind of union between them, as to the nature of which Mr.
O'Mahony had no fixed idea in his brain whatsoever. But he knew that
he could talk, and he knew also that he must now talk on an arena
for admission to which the public would not pay twenty-five cents or
more. His breast was much disturbed by the consideration that for all
the work which he proposed to do no wages were to be forthcoming.
But while Mr. O'Mahony was being elected Member of Parliament for
County Cavan, things were going on very sadly in County Galway.
Wednesday, the 31st of August, had been the day fixed for the trial
of Pat Carroll; and the month of August was quickly wearing itself
away. But during the month of August Captain Clayton found occasion
more than once to come into the neighbourhood of Headford. And though
Mr. Jones was of an opinion that his presence there was adequately
accounted for by the details of the coming trial, the two girls
evidently thought that some other cause might be added to that which
Pat Carroll had produced.
It must be explained that at this period Frank Jones was absent from
Morony Castle, looking out for emergency men who could be brought
down to the neighbourhood of Headford, in sufficient number to save
the crop on Mr. Jones's farm. And with him was Tom Daly, who had some
scheme in his own head with reference to his horses and his hounds.
Mr. Persse and Sir Jasper Lynch had been threatened with a wide
system of boycotting, unless they would give up Tom Daly's animals.
A decree had gone forth in the county, that nothing belonging to
the hunt should be allowed to live within its precincts. All the
bitterness and the cruelty and the horror arising from this order are
beyond the limit of this story. But it may be well to explain that at
the present moment Frank Jones was away from Castle Morony, working
hard on his father's behalf.
And so were the girls working hard--making the butter, and cooking
the meat, and attending to the bedrooms. And Peter was busy with them
as their lieutenant. It might be thought that the present was no time
for love-making, and that Captain Clayton could not have been in the
mood. But it may be observed that at any period of special toil in a
family, when infinitely more has to be done than at any other time,
then love-making will go on with more than ordinary energy. Edith
was generally to be found with her hair tucked tight off her face
and enveloped in a coarse dairymaid's apron, and Ada, when she ran
downstairs, would do so with a housemaid's dusting-brush at her
girdle, and they were neither of them, when so attired, in the
least afraid of encountering Captain Clayton as he would come out
from their father's room. All the world knew that they were being
boycotted, and very happy the girls were during the process. "Poor
papa" did not like it so well. Poor papa thought of his banker's
account, or rather of that bank at which there was, so to say, no
longer any account. But the girls were light of heart, and in the
pride of their youth. But, alas! they had both of them blundered
frightfully. It was Edith, Edith the prudent, Edith the wise, Edith,
who was supposed to know everything, who had first gone astray in
her blundering, and had taken Ada with her; but the story with its
details must be told.
"My pet," she said to her elder sister, as they were standing
together at the kitchen dresser, "I know he means to speak to you
to-day."
"What nonsense, Edith!"
"It has to be done some day, you know. And he is just the man to come
upon one in the time of one's dire distress. Of course we haven't got
a halfpenny now belonging to us. I was thinking only the other day
how comfortable it is that we never go out of the house because we
haven't the means to buy boots. Now Captain Clayton is just the man
to be doubly attracted by such penury."
"I don't know why a man is to make an offer to a girl just because he
finds her working like a housemaid."
"I do. I can see it all. He is just the man to take you in his arms
because he found you peeling potatoes."
"I beg he will do nothing of the kind," said Ada. "He has never said
a word to me, or I to him, to justify such a proceeding. I should at
once hit him over the head with my brush."
"Here he comes, and now we will see how far I understand such
matters."
"Don't go, Edith," said Ada. "Pray don't go. If you go I shall go
with you. These things ought always to come naturally,--that is if
they come at all."
It did not "come" at that moment, for Edith was so far mistaken that
Captain Clayton, after saying a few words to the girls, passed on
out of the back-door, intent on special business. "What a wretched
individual he is," said Edith. "Fancy pinning one's character on
the doings of such a man as that. However, he will be back again
to dinner, and you will not be so hard upon him then with your
dusting-brush."
Before dinner the Captain did return, and found himself alone with
Edith in the kitchen. It was her turn on this occasion to send up
whatever meal in the shape of dinner Castle Morony could afford.
"There you have it, sir," she said, pointing to a boiled neck of
mutton, which had been cut from the remains of a sheep sent in to
supply the family wants.
"I see," said he. "It will make a very good dinner,--or a very bad
one, according to circumstances, as they may fall out before the
dinner leaves the kitchen."
"Then they will have to fall out very quickly," said Edith. But the
colour had flown to her face, and in that moment she had learned to
suspect the truth. And her mind flew back rapidly over all her doings
and sayings for the last three months. If it was so, she could never
forgive herself. If it was so, Ada would never forgive her. If it was
so, they two and Captain Yorke Clayton must be separated for ever.
"Well; what is it?" she said, roughly. The joint of meat had fallen
from her hands, and she looked up at Captain Clayton with all the
anger she could bring into her face.
"Edith," he said, "you surely know that I love you."
"I know nothing of the kind. There can be no reason why I should know
it,--why I should guess it. It cannot be so without grievous wrong on
your part."
"What wrong?"
"Base wrong done to my sister," she answered. Then she remembered
that she had betrayed her sister, and she remembered too how much of
the supposed love-making had been done by her own words, and not by
any spoken by Captain Clayton. And there came upon her at that moment
a remembrance also of that other moment in which she had acknowledged
to herself that she had loved this man, and had told herself that the
love was vain, and had sworn to herself that she would never stand
in Ada's way, and had promised to herself that all things should be
happy to her as this man's sister-in-law. Acting then on this idea
merely because Ada had been beautiful she had gone to work,--and this
had come of it! In that minute that was allowed to her as the boiled
mutton was cooling on the dresser beneath her hand, all this passed
through her mind.
"Wrong done by me to Ada!" said the Captain.
"I have said it; but if you are a gentleman you will forget it. I
know that you are a gentleman,--a gallant man, such as few I think
exist anywhere. Captain Clayton, there are but two of us. Take the
best; take the fairest; take the sweetest. Let all this be as though
it had never been spoken. I will be such a sister to you as no man
ever won for himself. And Ada will be as loving a wife as ever graced
a man's home. Let it be so, and I will bless every day of your life."
"No," he said slowly, "I cannot let it be like that. I have learned
to love you and you only, and I thought that you had known it."
"Never!"
"I had thought so. It cannot be as you propose. I shall never speak
of your sister to a living man. I shall never whisper a word of her
regard even here in her own family. But I cannot change my heart as
you propose. Your sister is beautiful, and sweet, and good; but she
is not the girl who has crept into my heart, and made a lasting home
for herself there,--if the girl who has done so would but accept
it. Ada is not the girl whose brightness, whose bravery, whose wit
and ready spirit have won me. These things go, I think, without any
effort. I have known that there has been no attempt on your part; but
the thing has been done and I had hoped that you were aware of it. It
cannot now be undone. I cannot be passed on to another. Here, here,
here is what I want," and he put his two hands upon her shoulders.
"There is no other girl in all Ireland that can supply her place if
she be lost to me."
He had spoken very solemnly, and she had stood there in solemn mood
listening to him. By degrees the conviction had come upon her that he
was in earnest, and was not to be changed in his purpose by anything
that she could say to him. She had blundered, had blundered awfully.
She had thought that with a man beauty would be everything; but with
this man beauty had been nothing; nor had good temper and a sense of
duty availed anything. She rushed into the dining-room carrying the
boiled mutton with her, and he followed. What should she do now? Ada
would yield--would give him up--would retire into the background, and
would declare that Edith should be made happy, but would never lift
up her head again. And she--she herself--could also give him up,
and would lift up her head again. She knew that she had a power of
bearing sorrow, and going on with the work of the world, in spite of
all troubles, which Ada did not possess. It might, therefore, have
all been settled, but that the man was stubborn, and would not be
changed. "Of course, he is a man," said Edith to herself, as she put
the mutton down. "Of course he must have it all to please himself. Of
course he will be selfish."
"I thought you were never coming with our morsel of dinner," said Mr.
Jones.
"Here is the morsel of dinner; but I could have dished it in half the
time if Captain Clayton had not been there."
"Of course I am the offender," said he, as he sat down. "And now I
have forgotten to bring the potatoes." So he started off, and met
Florian at the door coming in with them. Mr. Jones carved the mutton,
and Captain Clayton was helped first. In a boycotted house you will
always find that the gentlemen are helped before the ladies. It
is a part of the principle of boycotting that women shall subject
themselves.
Captain Clayton, after his first little stir about the potatoes, ate
his dinner in perfect silence. That which had taken place upset him
more completely than the rifles of two or three Landleaguers. Mr.
Jones was also silent. He was a man at the present moment nearly
overwhelmed by his cares. And Ada, too, was silent. As Edith looked
at her furtively she began to fear that her pet suspected something.
There was a look of suffering in her face which Edith could read,
though it was not plain enough written there to be legible to others.
Her father and Florian had no key by which to read it, and Captain
Clayton never allowed his eyes to turn towards Ada's face. But it was
imperative on both that they should not all fall into some feeling of
special sorrow through their silence. "It is just one week more," she
said, "before you men must be at Galway."
"Only one week," said Florian.
"It will be much better to have it over," said the father. "I do not
think you need come back at all, but start at once from Galway. Your
sisters can bring what things you want, and say good-bye at Athenry."
"My poor Florian," said Edith.
"I shan't mind it so much when I get to England," said the boy. "I
suppose I shall come home for the Christmas holidays."
"I don't know about that," said the father. "It will depend upon the
state of the country."
"You will come and meet him, Ada?" asked Edith.
"I suppose so," said Ada. And her sister knew from the tone of her
voice that some evil was already suspected.
There was nothing more said that night till Edith and Ada were
together. Mr. Jones lingered with his daughters, and the Captain took
Florian out about the orchard, thinking it well to make him used
to whatever danger might come to him from being out of the house.
"They will never come where they will be sure to be known," said the
Captain; "and known by various witnesses. And they won't come for
the chance of a pop shot. I am getting to know their ways as well as
though I had lived there all my life. They count on the acquittal of
Pat Carroll as a certainty. Whatever I may be, you are tolerably safe
as long as that is the case."
"They may shoot me in mistake for you," said the boy.
"Well, yes; that is so. Let us go back to the house. But I don't
think there would be any danger to-night anyway." Then they returned,
and found Mr. Jones alone in the dining-room. He was very melancholy
in these days, as a man must be whom ruin stares in the face.
Edith had followed Ada upstairs to the bedrooms, and had crept after
her into that which had been prepared for Captain Clayton. She could
see now by the lingering light of an August evening that a tear had
fallen from each eye, and had slowly run down her sister's cheeks.
"Oh, Ada, dear Ada, what is troubling you?"
"Nothing,--much."
"My girl, my beauty, my darling! Much or little, what is it? Cannot
you tell me?"
"He cares nothing for me," said Ada, laying her hand upon the pillow,
thus indicating the "he" whom she intended. Edith answered not a
word, but pressed her arm tight round her sister's waist. "It is so,"
said Ada, turning round upon her sister as though to rebuke her. "You
know that it is so."
"My beauty, my own one," said Edith, kissing her.
"You know it is so. He has told you. It is not me that he loves;
it is you. You are his chosen one. I am nothing to him,--nothing,
nothing." Then she flung herself down upon the bed which her own
hands had prepared for him.
It was all true. As the assertions had come from her one by one,
Edith had found herself unable to deny a tittle of what was said.
"Ada, if you knew my heart to you."
"What good is it? Why did you teach me to believe a falsehood?"
"Oh! you will kill me if you accuse me. I have been so true to you."
Then Ada turned round upon the bed, and hid her face for a few
minutes upon the pillow. "Ada, have I not been true to you?"
"But that you should have been so much mistaken;--you, who know
everything."
"I have not known him," said Edith.
"But you will," said Ada. "You will be his wife."
"Never!" ejaculated the other.
Then slowly, Ada got up from the bed and shook her hair from off her
face and wiped her eyes with her handkerchief. "It must be so," she
said. "Of course it must, as he wishes it. He must have all that he
desires."
"No, not so. He shall never have this."
"Yes, Edith, he must and he shall. Do you not know that you loved him
before you ever bade me to do so? But why, oh why did you ever make
that great mistake? And why was I so foolish as to have believed
you? Come," she said, "I must make his bed for him once again. He
will be here soon now and we must be away." Then she did obliterate
the traces of her form which her figure had made upon the bed, and
smoothed the pillow, and wiped away the mark of her tear which
had fallen on it. "Come, Edith, come," said she, "let us go and
understand each other. He knows, for you have told him, but no one
else need know. He shall be your husband, and I will be his sister,
and all shall be bright between you."
"Never," said Edith. "Never! He will never be married if he waits for
me."
"My dear one, you shall be his wife," said Ada. Such were the last
words which passed between them on that night.