Jack Hinton: The Guardsman

CHAPTER XXXIX. AN UNLOOKED-FOR MEETING

I made many ineffectual efforts to awake on the morning after my adventure. Fatigue and exhaustion, which seem always heaviest when incurred by danger, had completely worn me out, and scarcely had I succeeded in opening my eyes and muttering some broken words, ere again I dropped off to sleep, soundly, and without a dream. It was late in the afternoon when at length I sat up in my bed and looked about me. A gentle hand suddenly fell upon my shoulder, and a low voice, which I at once recognised as Father Tom’s, whispered —

‘There now, my dear fellow, lie down again. You must not stir for a couple of hours yet.’

I looked at him fixedly for a moment, and, as I clasped his hand in mine, asked —

‘How is she, father?’

Scarcely were these words spoken when I felt a burning blush upon my cheek. It was the confidence of long months that found vent in one second – the pent-up secret of my heart that burst from me unconsciously, and I hid my face upon the pillow, and felt as though I had betrayed her.

‘Well – quite well,’ said the old man, as he pressed my hand forcibly in his own. ‘But let us not speak now. You must take more rest, and then have your arm looked to. I believe you have forgotten all about it.’

‘My arm!’ repeated I, in some surprise; while, turning down the clothes, I perceived that my right arm was sorely bruised, and swollen to an immense size. ‘The rocks have done this,’ muttered I. ‘And she, father – what of her, for heaven’s sake?’

‘Be calm, or I must leave you,’ said the priest ‘I said before that she was well. Poor boy!’

There was something so touching in the tone of the last words that without my knowing why, I felt a kind of creeping fear pass across me, and a dread of some unknown evil steal over me.

‘Father,’ said I, springing up, and grasping him with both my hands, while the pain of my wounded arm shot through my very heart, ‘you are an honest man, and you are a man of God: you would not tell me a lie. Is she well?’ The big drop fell from my brow as I spoke.

He clasped his hands fervently together as he replied, in a voice tremulous with agitation, ‘I have not told you a lie!’ He turned away as he spoke, and I lay down in my bed with a mind relieved, but not at rest.

Alas, how hard it is to be happy! The casualties of this world come on like waves, one succeeding the other. We may escape the heavy roll of the mighty ocean, and be wrecked in the still, smooth waters of the landlocked bay. We dread the storm and the hurricane, and we forget how many have perished within sight of shore. But yet a secret fear is ever present with us when danger hovers near; and this sense of some impending evil it was which now darkened me, and whispered me to be prepared.

I lay for some time sunk in my reflections, and when I looked up, the priest was gone. A letter had fallen on the floor, as if by accident» and I rose to place it on my table, when, to my surprise, I found it addressed to myself. It was marked ‘On His Majesty’s service,’ and ran thus: —

‘Dublin Castle.

‘Sir, – I have received his Excellency’s orders to inform you that unless you, on receipt of the present letter, at once return to your duty as a member of the staff, your name will be erased from the list, and the vacancy immediately filled up. – I have the honour to be, etc.,

‘Henry Horton.’

What could have caused the great alteration in his Excellency’s feelings that this order evinced I could not conceive, and I felt hurt and indignant at the tone of a letter which came on me so completely by surprise. I knew, however, how much my father looked to my strict obedience to every call of duty, and resolved that, come what would, I should at once resume my position on the duke’s staff.

These were but momentary reflections. My thoughts recurred at once to where my heart was dwelling – with her whose very image lived within me. Try how I would, I could think of no pleasure in which she took not part, imagine no scheme of life in which she was not concerned. Ambition had lost its charm; the path of glory I had longed to tread, I felt now as nothing beside that heather walk which led me towards her; and if I were to have chosen between the most brilliant career high station, influence, and fortune could bestow, and the lowly condition of a dweller in these wild mountain solitudes, I felt that not a moment of hesitation or doubt would mark my decision. There was a kind of heroism in the relinquishing all the blandishments of fortune, all the seductions of the brilliant world, for one whose peaceful and humble life strayed not beyond the limits of these rugged mountains; and this had its charm. There were times when I loved to ask myself whether Louisa Bellew would not, even amid all the splendour and display of London life, be as much admired and courted as the most acknowledged of beauty’s daughters: now I turned rather to the thought of how far happier and better it was to know that a nature so unhackneyed, a heart so rich in its own emotions, was never to be exposed to the callous collision of society and all the hardened hypocrisy of the world. My own lot, too, how many more chances of happiness did it not present as I looked at the few weeks of the past, and thought of whole years thus gliding away, loving and beloved!

A kind of stir, and the sound of voices beneath my window, broke my musings, and I rose and looked out. It proceeded from the young girl and the country lad who formed the priest’s household. They were talking together before the door, and pointing in the direction of the highroad, where a cloud of dust had marked the passage of some carriage – an event rare enough to attract attention in these wild districts.

‘And did his reverence say that the Captain was to be kept in bed till he came back?’

‘Ah, then, sure, he knew well enough,’ said Mary, ‘that the young man would be up and off to the castle the moment he was able to walk – ay, and maybe before it too. Troth, Patsey, it’s what I’m thinking – there’s nobody knows how to coort like a raal gentleman.’

‘Och, botheration!’ said Patsey, with an offended toss of his head, and a look of half malice.

‘Faix, you may look how you like, but it’s truth I’m telling ye. They know how to do it. It isn’t winking at a body, nor putting their great rough arms round their neck; but it’s a quiet, mannerly, dacent way they have, and soothering voice, and a look under their eyes, as much as to say, “Maybe ye wouldn’t, now?”’

‘Troth, Mary,’ said Patsey sharply, ‘it strikes me that you know more of their ways than is just convenient – eh, do you understand me now?’

‘Well, and if I do,’ replied Mary, ‘there’s no one can be evenin’ it to you, for I’m sure it wasn’t you taught me!’

‘Ye want to provoke me,’ said the young man, rising, and evidently more annoyed than he felt disposed to confess; ‘but, faix, I’ll keep my temper. It’s not after spaking to his reverence, and buying a cow and a dresser, that I ‘m going to break it off.’

‘Heigh-ho!’ said Mary, as she adjusted a curl that was most coquettishly half falling across her eyes; ‘sure there’s many a slip betune the cup and the lip, as the poor dear young gentleman will find out when he wakes.’

A cold fear ran through me as I heard these words, and the presentiment of some mishap, that for a few moments I had been forgetting, now came back in double force. I set about dressing myself in all haste, and, notwithstanding that my wounded arm interfered with me at each instant, succeeded at last in my undertaking. I looked at my watch; it was already six o’clock in the afternoon, and the large mountains were throwing their great shadows over the yellow strand. Collecting from what I had heard from the priest’s servants that it was their intention to detain me in the house, I locked my door on leaving the room, and stole noiselessly down the stairs, crossed the little garden, and passing through the beech hedge, soon found myself upon the mountain path. My pace quickened as I breasted the hillside, my eyes firmly fixed upon the tall towers of the old castle, as they stood proudly topping the dense foliage of the oak-trees. Like some mariner who gazes on the long-wished-f or beacon that tells of home and friends, so I bent my steadfast looks to that one object, and conjured up many a picture to myself of the scene that might be at that moment enacting there. Now I imagined the old man seated, silent and motionless, beside the bed where his daughter, overcome with weakness and exhaustion, still slept, her pale face scarce coloured by a pinkish flush that marked the last trace of feverish excitement; now I thought of her as if still seated in her own drawing-room, at the little window that faced seaward, looking perhaps upon the very spot that marked our last night’s adventure, and, mayhap, blushing at the memory.

As I came near the park I turned from the regular approach to a small path, which, opening by a wicket, led to a little flower-garden beside the drawing-room. I had not walked many paces when the sound of some one sobbing caught my ear. I stopped to listen, and could distinctly hear the low broken voice of grief quite near me. My mind was in that excited state when every breeze that rustled, every leaf that stirred, thrilled through my heart; the same dread of something, I knew not what, that agitated me as I awoke came fresh upon me, and a cold tremor crept over me. The next moment I sprang forward, and as I turned the angle of the walk beheld – with what relief of heart! – that the cries proceeded from a little child, who, seated in the grass, was weeping bitterly. It was a boy of scarce five years old that Louisa used to employ about the garden – rather to amuse the little fellow, to whom she had taken a liking, than for the sake of services which at the best were scarcely harmless.

‘Well, Billy,’ said I, ‘what has happened to you, my boy? Have you fallen and hurt yourself?’

‘Na,’ was the only reply; and sinking his head between his knees, he sobbed more bitterly than ever.

‘Has Miss Loo been angry with you, then?’

‘Na, na,’ was the only answer, as he poured forth a flood of tears.

‘Come, come, my little man, what is it? Tell me, and perhaps we can set it all to rights.’

‘Gone! gone away for ever!’ cried the child, as a burst of pent-up agony broke from him; and he cried as though his very heart would break.

Again the terrible foreboding crossed my mind, and without waiting to ask another question I rushed forward, cleared the little fence of the flower-garden at a spring and stood within a few yards of the window. It lay open as usual; the large china vase of moss-roses that she had plucked the evening before stood on the little table beside it. I stopped for an instant to breathe; the beating of my heart was so painful that I pressed my hand upon my side. At that instant I had given my life to have heard Louisa’s voice; but for one single word I had bartered my heart’s blood. But all was as hushed and still as midnight. I thought I did hear something like a sigh; yes, and now I could distinctly hear the rustling sound of some one as if turning in a chair. Sir Simon Bellew, for some cause, or other, I knew never came into that room. I listened again: yes, and now too I could see the shadow of a figure on the floor. I sprang forward to the window and cried out, ‘Louisa!’ The next instant I was in the room, and my eyes fell upon the figure of – Ulick Burke! Seated in a deep arm-chair, his leg resting on a low stool, he was reclining at half-length, his face pale as death, and his very lips blanched; but there rested on the mouth the same curl of insolent mockery that marked it when first we met.

‘Disappointed, I fear, sir,’ said he, in a tone which, however weakened by sickness, had lost nothing of its sneering bitterness.

‘I confess, sir,’ said I confusedly, ‘that this is a pleasure I had not anticipated.’

‘Nor I either, sir,’ replied he, with a dark frown. ‘Had I been able to ring the bell before, the letter that lies there should have been sent to you, and might have spared both of us this “pleasure,” as you are good enough to call it.’

‘A letter for me?’ said I eagerly; then half ashamed at my own emotion, and not indifferent to the sickly and apparently dying form before me, I hesitated, and added, ‘I trust that you are recovering from the effects of your wound.’

‘Damn the wound, sir; don’t speak to me about it! You never came here for that, I suppose? Take your letter, sir!’ A purple flush here coloured his features, as though some pang of agonising pain had shot through him, and his livid lip quivered with passion. ‘Take your letter, sir!’ and he threw it towards me as he spoke.

I stood amazed and thunderstruck at this sudden outbreak of anger, and for a second or two could not recover myself to speak. ‘You mistake me,’ said I.

‘Mistake you? No, confound me! I don’t mistake you; I know you well and thoroughly! But you mistake me, ay, and damnably too, if you suppose that because I ‘m crippled here this insolence shall pass unpunished! Who but a coward, sir, would come thus to taunt a man like me? Yes, sir, a coward! I spoke it – I said it! Would you like to hear it over again? Or if you don’t like it, the remedy is near you – nearer than you think. There are two pistols in that case, both loaded with ball; take your choice, and your own distance; and here, where we are, let us finish this quarrel! For, mark me!’ and here his brow darkened, till the veins, swelled and knotted in his forehead, looked like indigo – ‘mark me, the account shall be closed one day or other!’

I saw at once that he had lashed his fury up to an ungovernable pitch, and that to speak to him was only to increase his passion; so I stooped down without saying a word, and took up the letter that lay at my feet.

‘I am waiting your reply, sir,’ said he, with a low voice, subdued by an inward effort into a seeming quietness of tone.

‘You cannot imagine,’ said I mildly, ‘that I could accept of such a challenge as this, nor fight with a man who cannot leave his chair?’

‘And who has made me so, sir? Who has made me a paralytic thing for life? But if that be all, give me your arm, and help me through that window; place me against that yew-tree, yonder. I can stand well enough. You won’t? – you refuse me this? Oh, coward! coward! You grow pale and red again! Let your white lip mutter, and your nails eat into your hands with passion! Your heart is craven, and you know it!’

Shall I dare to own it? For an instant or two my resolution tottered, and involuntarily my eyes turned to the pistol-case upon the table beside me. He caught the look, and in a tone of triumphant exultation cried out —

‘Bravo, bravo! What! you hesitate again? Oh, that this should not be before the world – in some open and public place – that men should not look on and see us here!’

‘I leave you, sir,’ said I sternly – ‘thankful, for your sake at least, that this is not before the world.’

‘Stop, sir! stop!’ cried he, hoarse with rage. ‘Ring that bell!’ I hesitated, and he called out again, ‘Ring that bell, sir!’

I approached the chimney, and did as he desired. The butler immediately made his appearance.

‘Nicholas,’ cried the sick man, ‘bring in the servants – bring them in here; you hear me well. I want to show them something they have never seen. Go!’

The man disappeared at once, and as I met the scowling look of hate that fixed its glare upon me, once more I felt myself to waver. The struggle was but momentary. I sprang to the window, and leaped into the garden. A loud curse broke from Burke as I did so; a cry of disappointed wrath, like the yell of a famished wolf, followed. The next moment I was beyond the reach of his insolence and his invective.

The passionate excitement of the moment over, my first determination was to gain the approach, and return to the house by the hall door; my next, to break the seal of the letter which I held in my hand, and see if its contents might not throw some light upon the events which somehow I felt were thickening around me, but of whose nature and import I knew nothing.

The address was written in a stiff, old-fashioned hand; but the large seal bore the arms of the Bellew family, and left no doubt upon my mind that it had come from Sir Simon. I opened it with a trembling and throbbing heart, and read as follows: —

‘My dear Sir, – The event of last night has called back upon a failing and broken memory the darkest hour of a long and blighted life, and made the old man, whose steadfast gaze looked onward to the tomb, turn once backward to behold the deepest affliction of his days – misfortune, crime, remorse. I cannot even now, while already the very shadow of death is on me, recount the sad story I allude to; enough for the object I have in view if I say, that, where I once owed the life of one I held dearest in the world, the hand that saved lived to steal, and the voice that blessed me was perjured and forsworn. Since that hour I have never received a service of a fellow-mortal, until the hour when you rescued my child. And oh! loving her as I do, wrapped up as my soul is in her image, I could have borne better to see her cold and dripping corpse laid down beside me than to behold her, as I have done, in your arms. You must never meet more. The dreadful anticipation of long-suffering years is creeping stronger and stronger upon me; and I feel in my inmost heart that I am reserved for another and a last bereavement ere I die.

‘We shall have left before this letter reaches you. You may perhaps hear the place of our refuge, for such it is; but I trust that to your feelings as a gentleman and a man of honour I can appeal, in the certain confidence that you will not abuse my faith – you will not follow us.

‘I know not what I have written, nor dare I read it again. Already my tears have dimmed my eyes, and are falling on the paper; so let me bid you farewell – an eternal fare well. My nephew has arrived here. I have not seen him, nor shall I; but he will forward this letter to you after our departure. – Yours, S. Bellew.’

The first stunning feeling past, I looked round me to see if it were not some horrid dream, and the whole events but the frightful deception of a sleeping fancy. But bit by bit the entire truth broke upon me; the full tide of sorrow rushed in upon my heart. The letter I could not comprehend further than that some deep affliction had been recalled by my late adventure. But then, the words of the hag – the brief, half-uttered intimations of the priest – came to my memory. ‘Her mother,’ said I – ‘what of her mother?’ I remembered Louisa had never mentioned or even alluded to her; and now a thousand suspicions crossed my mind, which all gave way before my own sense of bereavement and the desolation and desertion I felt, in my own heart. I threw myself upon the ground where she walked so often beside me, and burst into tears. But a few brief hours, and how surrounded by visions of happiness and lovet Now, bereft of everything, what charm had life for me! How valueless, how worthless did all seem! The evening sun I loved to gaze on, the bright flowers, the waving grass, the low murmur of the breaking surf that stole like music over the happy sense, were now but gloomy things or discordant sounds. The very high and holy thoughts that used to stir within me were changed to fierce and wrathful passions or the low drooping of despair. It was night, still and starry night, when I arose and wended my way towards the priest’s cottage.

CHAPTER XL. THE PRIEST’S KITCHEN

The candles were burning brightly, and the cheerful bog-fire was blazing on the hearth, as I drew near the window of the priest’s cottage; but yet there was no one in the room. The little tea-kettle was hissing on the hob, and the room had all that careful look of watchful attention bestowed upon it that showed, the zeal of his little household.

Uncertain how I should meet him, how far explain the affliction that had fallen on me, I walked for some time up and down before the door; at length I wandered to the back of the house, and passing the little stable, I remarked that the pony was absent. The priest had not returned perhaps since morning; perhaps he had gone some distance off – in all likelihood accompanied the Bellews; again the few words he had spoken that morning recurred to me, and I pondered in silence over their meaning. As I thus mused, a strong flood of mellow light attracted me as it fell in a broad stream across the little paved court, and I now saw that it came from the kitchen. I drew near the window in silence, and looked in. Before the large turf-fire were seated three persons; two of them, who sat in the shining light, I at once recognised as the servants; but the third was concealed in the shadow of the chimney, and I could only trace the outline of his figure against the blaze. I was not long, however, in doubt as to his identity.

‘Seemingly, then, you’re a great traveller,’ said Patsey, the priest’s man, addressing the unknown.

A long whiff of smoke, patiently emitted, and a polite wave of the hand in assent was the reply.

‘And how far did you come to-day, av I might be so bould?’ said Mary.

‘From the cross of Kiltermon, beyond Gurtmore, my darlin’; and sure it is a real pleasure and a delight to come so far to see as pretty a crayture as yourself.’ Here Patsey looked a little put out, and Mary gave a half smile of encouragement. ‘For,’ continued the other, breaking into a song —

I need scarcely say that the finale of this rude verse was given in a way that only Tipperary Joe could accomplish, as he continued —

‘And that’s yoursel’, devil a less – ye ho, ye ho, tally-ho! I hope the family isn’t in bed?’

‘Troth, seemingly,’ said Patsey, in a tone of evident pique, ‘it would distress you little av they were; you seem mighty well accustomed to making yourself at home.’

‘And why wouldn’t the young man?’ said Mary, apparently well pleased to encourage a little jealousy on the part of her lover, ‘and no harm neither. And ye do be always with the hounds, sir?’

‘Yes, miss, that’s what I be doing. But I wonder what’s keeping the Captain; I’ve a letter here for him that I know ought to have no delay. I run all the way for fourteen miles over Mey’nacurraghew mountain to be here quick with him.’

I opened the door as I heard this, and entered the kitchen.

‘Hurroo! by the mortial,’ cried Joe, with one of his wild shouts, ‘it ‘s himself! Arrah, darlin’, how is every bit in your skin?’

‘Well, Joe, my poor fellow, I am delighted to see you safe and sound once more. Many a day have I reproached myself for the way you suffered for my sake, and for the manner I left you.’

‘There’s only one thing you have any rayson to grieve over,’ said the poor fellow, as the tears started to his eyes, and rolled in heavy drops down his cheeks, ‘and here it is.’

As he spoke, he drew from his bosom a little green-silk purse, half filled with gold.

‘Ah, Captain, jewel, why wouldn’t you let a poor fellow taste happiness his own way? Is it because I had no shoes on me that I hadn’t any pride in my heart? And is it because I wasn’t rich that you wouldn’t let me be a friend to you, just to myself alone? Oh, little as we know of grand people and their ways, troth, they don’t see our hearts half as plain. See, now I ‘d rather you ‘d have come up to the bed that morning and left me your curse – ay, devil a less – than that purse of money; and it wouldn’t do me as much harm.’

He dropped his head as he spoke, and his arms fell listlessly to his side, while he stood mute and sorrow-struck before me.

‘Come, Joe,’ said I, holding out my hand to him – ‘come, Joe, forgive me. If I didn’t know better, remember we were only new acquaintance at that time: from this hour we are more.’

The words seemed to act like a spell upon him; he stood proudly up, and his eyes flashed with their wildest glare, while, seizing my hand, he pressed it to his lips, and called out —