The Knight Of Gwynne, Vol. 2

CHAPTER XIII. AN UNCEREMONIOUS VISIT

As winter drew near, with its dark and leaden skies, and days and nights of storm and hurricane, so did the worldly prospect of Lady Eleanor and her daughter grow hourly more gloomy. Bicknell’s letters detailed new difficulties and embarrassments on every hand. Sums of money supposed to have been long since paid and acknowledged by Gleeson, were now demanded with all the accruing interest; rights hitherto unquestioned were now threatened with dispute, as Hickman O’Reilly’s success emboldened others to try their fortune. Of the little property that still remained to them, the rents were withheld until their claim to them should be once more established by law. Disaster followed disaster, till at length the last drop filled up the measure of their misery, as they learned that the Knight’s personal liberty was at stake, and more than one writ was issued for his arrest.

The same post that brought this dreadful intelligence brought also a few lines from Darcy, the first that had reached them since his departure.

His note was dated from the “‘Hermione’ frigate, off the Needles,” and contained little more than an affectionate farewell. He wrote in health, and apparently in spirits, full of the assurance of a speedy and happy meeting; nor was there any allusion to their embarrassments, save in the vague mention of a letter he had written to Bicknell, and who would himself write to Lady Eleanor.

“It is not, dearest Eleanor,” wrote he, “the time we would have selected for a separation, when troubles thicken around us; yet who knows if the incident may not fall happily, and turn our thoughts from the loss of fortune to the many blessings we enjoy in mutual affection and in our children’s love, all to thicken around us at our meeting? I confess, too, I have a pride in being thought worthy to serve my country still, not in the tiresome monotony of a depot, but in the field, – among the young, the gallant, and the brave! Is it not enough to take off half this load of years, and make me fancy myself the gay colonel you may remember cantering beside your carriage in the Park – I shame to say how long ago! I wonder what the French will think of us, for nearly every officer in command might be superannuated, and Abercrombie is as venerable in white hairs as myself! There are, however, plenty of young and dashing fellows to replace us, and the spirit of the whole army is admirable.

“Whither we are destined, what will be our collective force, and what the nature of the expedition, are profound secrets, with which even the generals of brigades are not intrusted; so that all I can tell you is, that some seven hundred and fifty of us are now sailing southward, under a steady breeze from the north-northwest; that the land is each moment growing fainter to my eyes, while the pilot is eagerly pressing me to conclude this last expression of my love to yourself and dearest Helen. Adieu.

“Ever yours,

“Maurice Darcy.”

As with eyes half dimmed by tears Lady Eleanor read these lines, she could not help muttering a thanksgiving that her husband was at least beyond the risk of that danger of which Bicknell spoke, – an indignity, she feared, he never could have survived.

“And better still,” cried Helen, “if a season of struggle and privation awaits us, that we should bear it alone,’ and not before his eyes, for whom such a prospect would be torture. Now let us see how to meet the evil.” So saying, she once more opened Bicknell’s letter, and began to peruse it carefully; while Lady Eleanor sat, pale and in silence, nor even by a gesture showing any consciousness of the scene.

“What miserable trifling do all these legal subtleties seem!” said the young girl, after she had read for some time; “how trying to patience to canvass the petty details by which a clear and honest cause must be asserted! Here are fees to counsel, briefs, statements, learned opinions, and wise consultations multiplied to show that we are the rightful owners of what our ancestors have held for centuries, while every step of usurpation by these Hickmans would appear almost unassailable. With what intensity of purpose, too, does that family persecute us! All these actions are instituted by them; these bonds are all in their hands. What means this hate?”

Lady Eleanor looked up; and as her eyes met Helen’s, a faint flush colored her cheek, for she thought of her interview with the old doctor, and that proposal by which their conflicting interests were to be satisfied.

“We surely never injured them,” resumed the young girl, eagerly; “they were always well and hospitably received by us. Lionel even liked Beecham, when they were boys together, – a mild and quiet youth he was.”

“So I thought him, too,” said Lady Eleanor, stealing a cautious glance at her daughter. “We saw them,” continued she, more boldly, “under circumstances of no common difficulty, – struggling under the embarrassment of a false social position, with such a grandfather!”

“And such a father! Nay, mamma, of the two you must confess the doctor was our favorite. The old man’s selfishness was not half so vulgar as his son’s ambition.”

“And yet, Helen,” said Lady Eleanor, calmly, “such are the essential transitions by which families are formed; wealthy in one generation, aspiring in the next, recognized gentry – mayhap titled – in the third. It is but rarely that the whole series unfolds itself before our eyes at once, as in the present instance, and consequently it is but rarely that we detect so palpably all its incongruities and absurdities. A few years more,” added she, with a deep sigh, “and these O’Reillys will be regarded as the rightful owners of Gwynne Abbey by centuries of descent; and if an antiquary detect the old leopards of the Darcys frowning from some sculptured keystone, it will be to weave an ingenious theory of intermarriage between the houses.”

“An indignity they might well have spared us,” said Helen, proudly.

“Such are the world’s changes,” continued Lady Eleanor, pursuing her own train of thought. “How very few remember the origin of our proudest houses, and how little does it matter whether the foundations have been laid by the rude courage of some lawless baron of the tenth century, or the crafty shrewdness of some Hickman O’Reilly of the nineteenth!”

If there was a tone of bitter mockery in Lady Eleanor’s words, there was also a secret meaning which, even to her own heart, she would not have ventured to avow. By one of those strange and most inexplicable mysteries of our nature, she was endeavoring to elicit from her daughter some expression of dissent to her own recorded opinion of the O’Reillys and seeking for some chance word which might show that Helen regarded an alliance with that family with more tolerant feelings than she did herself.

Her intentions on this head were uot destined to be successful. Helen’s prejudices on the score of birth and station were rather strengthened than shaken by the changes of fortune; she cherished the prestige of their good blood as a source of proud consolation that no adversity could detract from. Before, however, she could reply, the tramp of a horse’s feet – a most unusual sound – was heard on the gravel without; and immediately after the heavy foot of some one, as if feeling his way in the dark towards the door. Without actual fear, but not without intense anxiety, both mother and daughter heard the heavy knocking of a loaded horsewhip on the door; nor was it until old Tate had twice repeated his question that a sign replied he might open the door.

“Look to the pony there!” cried a voice, as the old man peered out into the dark night. And before he could reply or resist, the speaker pushed past him and entered the room. “I crave your pardon, my Lady Eleanor,” said she, – for it was Miss Daly, who, drenched with rain and all splashed with mud, now stood before them, – “I crave your pardon for this visit of so scant ceremony. Has the Knight returned yet?”

The strong resemblance to her brother Bagenal, increased by her gesture and the tones of her voice, at once proclaimed to Lady Eleanor who her visitor was; and as she rose graciously to receive her, she replied that “the Knight, so far from having returned, had already sailed with the expedition under General Abercrombie.”

Miss Daly listened with breathless eagerness to the words, and as they concluded, she exclaimed aloud, “Thank God!” and threw herself into a chair. A pause, which, if brief, was not devoid of embarrassment, followed; and while Lady Eleanor was about to break it, Miss Daly again spoke, but with a voice and manner very different from before: “You will pardon, I am certain, the rudeness of my intrusion, Lady Eleanor, and you, too, Miss Darcy, when I tell you that my heart was too full of anxiety to leave any room for courtesy. It was only this afternoon that an accident informed me that a person had arrived in this neighborhood with a writ to arrest the Knight of Gwynne. I was five-and-twenty miles from this when I heard the news, and although I commissioned my informant to hasten thither with the tidings, I grew too full of dread, and had too many fears of a mischance, to await the result, so that I resolved to come myself.”

“How full of kindness!” exclaimed Lady Eleanor, while Helen took Miss Daly’s hand and pressed it to her lips. “Let our benefactress not suffer too much in our cause. Helen, dearest, assist Miss Daly to a change of dress. You are actually wet through.”

“Nay, nay, Lady Eleanor, you must not teach me fastidiousness. It has been my custom for many a year not to care for weather, and in the kind of life I lead such training is indispensable.” Miss Daly removed her hat as she spoke, and, pushing back her dripping hair, seemed really insensible to the discomforts which caused her hosts so much uneasiness.

“I see clearly,” resumed she, laughing, “I was right in not making myself known to you before; for though you may forgive the eccentricities that come under the mask of good intentions, you ‘d never pardon the thousand offences against good breeding and the world’s prescription which spring from the wayward fancies of an old maid who has lived so much beyond the pale of affection she has forgotten all the arts that win it.”

“If you are unjust to yourself, Miss Daly, pray be not so to us; nor think that we can be insensible to friendship like yours.”

“Oh, as for this trifling service, you esteem it far too highly; besides, when you hear the story, you’ll see how much more you have to thank your own hospitality than my promptitude.”

“This is, indeed, puzzling me,” exclaimed Lady Eleanor.

“Do you remember having met and received at your house a certain Mr. Dempsey?”

“Certainly, he dined with us on one occasion, and paid us some three or four visits. A tiresome little vulgar man, with a most intense curiosity devouring him to know everything of everybody.”

“To this gift, or infirmity, whichever it be, we are now indebted. Since the breaking-up of the boarding-house at Port Ballintray, which this year was somewhat earlier than usual,” – here Miss Daly smiled slightly, as though there lay more in the words than they seemed to imply, – “Mr. Dempsey betook himself to a little village near Glenarm, where I have been staying, and where the chief recommendation as a residence lay possibly in the fact that the weekly mail-car to Derry changed horses there. Hence an opportunity of communing with the world he valued at its just price. It so chanced that the only traveller who came for three weeks, arrived the night before last, drenched to the skin, and so ill from cold, hunger, and exhaustion that, unable to prosecute his journey farther, he was carried from the car to his bed. Mr. Dempsey, whose heart is really as kind as inquisitive, at once tendered his services to the stranger, who after some brief intercourse commissioned him to open his portmanteau, and taking out writing-materials, to inform his friends in Dublin of his sudden indisposition, and his fears that his illness might delay, or perhaps render totally abortive, his mission to the north. Here was a most provoking mystery for Mr. Dempsey. The very allusion to a matter of importance, in this dubious half-light, was something more than human nature should be tried with; and if the patient burned with the fever of the body, Mr. Dempsey suffered under the less tolerable agony of mental torment, – imagining every possible contingency that should bring a stranger down into a lonely neighborhood, and canvassing every imaginable inducement, from seduction to highway robbery. Whether the sick man’s sleep was merely the heavy debt of exhausted nature, or whether Mr. Dempsey aided his repose by adding a few drops to the laudanum prescribed by the doctor, true it is, he lay in a deep slumber, and never awoke till late the following day; meanwhile Mr. Dempsey recompensed his Samaritanism by a careful inspection of the stranger’s trunk and its contents, and, in particular, made a patient examination of two parchment documents, which, fortunately for his curiosity, were not sealed, but simply tied with red tape.

Great was his surprise to discover that one of these was a writ to arrest a certain Paul Dempsey, and the other directed against the resident of ‘The Corvy,’ whom he now, for the first time, learned was the Knight of Gwynne.

“Self-interest, the very instinct of safety itself, weighed less with him than his old passion for gossip; and no sooner had he learned the important fact of who his neighbor was, than he set off straight to communicate the news to me. I must do him the justice to say, that when I proposed his hastening off to you with the tidings, the little man acceded with the utmost promptitude; but as his journey was to be performed on foot, and by certain mountain paths not always easily discovered in our misty climate, it is probable he could not reach this for some hours.”

When Miss Daly concluded, Lady Eleanor and her daughter renewed their grateful acknowledgments for her thoughtful kindness. “These are sad themes by which to open our acquaintance,” said Lady Eleanor; “but it is among the prerogatives of friendship to share the pressure of misfortune, and Mr. Daly’s sister can be no stranger to ours.”

“Nor how undeserved they were,” added Miss Daly, gravely.

“Nay, which of us can dare say so much?” interrupted Lady Eleanor; “we may well have forgotten ourselves in that long career of prosperity we enjoyed, – for ours was, indeed, a happy lot! I need not speak of my husband to one who knew him once so well. Generous, frank, and noble-hearted as he always was, – his only failing the excessive confidence that would go on believing in the honesty of others, from the prompting of a spirit that stooped to nothing low or unworthy, – he never knew suspicion.” “True,” echoed Miss Daly, “he never did suspect!” There was such a plaintive sadness in her voice that it drew Helen’s eyes towards her; nor could all her efforts conceal a tear that trickled along her cheek.