Lewis Wingfield - My Lords of Strogue. Volume 2 of 3

Bond and Russell and others argued that misgovernment had come to such a pass, that it might be endured no more without merited disgrace. These bully squireens, these venal, brow-beating grandees, must be shown, before more harm was done, that there must be a bound to their arrogance.

If a tide be bravely stemmed, it will rage awhile; then settle within its limits. Were the French coming? French or no French, the people must rise; observant Europe would applaud, for even unfortunate heroism commands respect and pity; pike-heads by thousands lurked beneath potato plots, pike-poles in myriads were stacked under thatched roofs. Surely the spirit of the ancient kings would animate their sons in this emergency!

Most of the conspirators were for doing something definite at once. Tom Emmett and his brother were in favour of delay.

'We have waited so long,' Tom said, 'that a few weeks more will make little difference, save in the increased exasperation of the people. Lord Clare was obliged by public opinion to set us free. We must do our duty as men. With French assistance success is certain; without it, more than doubtful. Wait, at least, till Terence Crosbie's return-the young aristocrat who has taken up our cudgels. We shall be none the worse for waiting; and now that he has been baptised into the true cause, his presence will be valuable in our councils. The labourer who entered the vineyard at the last hour was not deprived of his reward. We are terribly weak in military capacity; maybe Heaven, who has awakened so late in the day a scion of a noble house, may point to him as a future leader. Wait at least and see him.'

Young Robert enthusiastically seconded his brother's motion, for his instinctive dread of bloodshed impelled him to postpone the decisive moment; and he was possessed, besides, with a strong belief in Terence, whom he had known intimately during his sojourn at the Priory. Russell and the others obstinately combated the point, urged thereto by youthful jealousy and wounded self-esteem. True, none of the council were of mature years; but to be lectured and prated at by this boy Robert, who was yet a student in Alma Mater, was an indignity which it behoved them to resent.

Doreen, who, after her noteworthy row upon the bay, threw aside the appearance of apathy she had assumed, saw this new danger with concern. Torn well-nigh to death already by factions of many kinds, was Erin to sit by and see her last forlorn hope, her last bodyguard of champions, scattered by the same curse? Miss Wolfe became seized by a frenzy for galloping across country. Her horses were constantly brought back to the stable with their coats turned, their flanks heaving, their skins reeking with foam.

'No doubt the girl was crazed,' my lady averred, as constantly as she marked the grooming of the animals from her bedroom window-seat. 'Why could she not ride like a well-brought-up young person in the green alleys of the Phœnix, or amble on the mall of Stephen's Green?'

My lady did not know that Doreen met separately, at certain cottages, the different members of the Directory; that she prayed and exhorted each one, as though he were alone to blame, to wisdom and a sacrifice of paltry vanity; and that she came away from each interview with such a dread of impending failure-a distrust of these budding generalissimos-that it required the most reckless gallops, with a dangerous fence or two en route , to calm her nerves sufficiently to meet my lady's scrutiny with the accustomed mask of composure on her face.

At the Abbey she had little to complain of now, for all were too busy to take much heed of her. Shane, with a prospect of departing northward, which rumours of accumulating outrages seemed to make more and more urgent, shilly-shallied and delayed, and selected guns and fishing-rods, and invited little knots of Cherokees, and spent more and more time at the Little House, as though the effort to tear himself away from Dublin delights and beloved Norah were too much for his resolution.

Under the circumstances he was not likely to trouble his cousin with attentions; and Doreen breathed freely again so far as her private affairs were concerned, for she perceived that this project of her aunt's was fading into a vision which never would and never could be realised. Any one who watched might see that Shane was desperately smitten with Norah, and Doreen was in no wise jealous. Norah was a nice girl, Doreen determined, who was worthy to become a countess, and she would help to make her happy as much as she could.

My lady's fancies were mere whimsies. If the marriage could be accomplished, she would of course come in time to like her new daughter-in-law. Many domineering old ladies object to eligible maidens, merely because they have not fixed on them themselves.

Miss Wolfe, in her regained independence of thought, felt half inclined to carry it beyond her own concerns, to speak openly to Shane, to go and call on Norah, or meet her as if by chance, and declare that she had come over to the enemy.

But the little love-idyl was destined to an interruption, whether she interfered or not; for Glandore was pledged to go to the north-to tear himself from the arms of metaphoric Capua. Would he remain faithful to his lady-love, when removed from the direct influence of her attractions? The notion of his going, Doreen remembered with a quiet sense of fun, was her own; and selfishly glad she was to have been so inspired, for away at Ennishowen his thoughts would be diverted into a new channel. Even if he did not learn there to forget Norah, his mind would certainly be freed from vague visions of his absent cousin. Thus she, in any case, would be safe. Situated as the concerns of the patriots were, all her own energies would be needed on the spot-for without some one to threaten and cajole, the bundle was sure to fall to pieces.

She would be glad, therefore, when the establishment at the Abbey should break up, when all the vans and horses and carriages should migrate to Donegal, leaving her-a waif-behind, with nothing to attend to but serious business.

Of course when my lady and her son started for Ennishowen, she would return to her old home in Dublin. She would inhabit once more her little bedroom in Molesworth Street, and would make herself so necessary to her father by fond artful prodigalities of love and tenderness, as to prevent him from ever allowing her to leave him any more. It was all very well, when she was a child, to send her to abide with her aunt, but now she was a woman, and her place was with her father. Then a small inward voice whispered, which caused her heart to beat quick time:

'What if, by my loving influence, I might change at length his views? He is weak, but so kind and excellent; he leans on my aunt because hers is the more masculine nature of the two; and he yearns for support and countenance. Why should he not come to lean on me? My will is as strong as hers-our mutual affection unstained by a difference, unruffled by a ripple! Oh! if I could persuade him that there are nobler aspirations than mere gathering of gold. That if, instead of money-grubbing to make me a fortune (well-meaning, tender father!) he would spend all he has freely for his country's sake, I would love him all the more dearly for my beggary; what if, by constant dropping on the stone of obstinacy, I could bring him to feel this-how happy, how truly happy, we might come to be together!'

Then, in less exalted moments of reflection, she felt that she deceived herself, that this might never be; that if she elected, in theory, to embrace for a holy cause the vow of poverty in her own person, she had no right to force her convictions upon a man whose glass of life was more than half run out, whose life ran in a groove, and who had so distinct a predilection for flesh-pots. Well, without going to extremes, it would be a joy to guide him just a little, to prevent his truckling too glaringly to Castle influence. If only he were not attorney-general and prosecutor for the Crown!' When the French expedition shall have arrived,' she thought, 'and swept this wicked Government into the sea, how intense a satisfaction will it be to say to the Irish Directory, "Spare at least my father, for my sake! I have worked heart and soul in the cause; you owe me this boon, the only one I ask of you!"'