“Your name is M'Keown, sir?” said the lawyer, with that abruptness which so often succeeds in oversetting the balance of a witness's self-possession. “Yes, sir; Darby M'Keown.” “Did you ever go by any other than this?” “They do call me 'Darby the Blast' betimes, av that 'a a name.”
“Is that the only other name you have been called by?” “I misremember rightly, it's so long since I was among friends and acquaintances; but if yer honor would remind me a little, maybe I could tell.” “Well, were you ever called 'Larry the Flail?'” “Faix, I was,” replied he, laughing; “divil a doubt of it.”
“How did you come by the name of 'Larry the Flail'?”
“They gave me the name up at Mulhuldad there, for bating one M'Clancy with a flail.”
“A very good reason. So you got the name because you beat a certain M'Clancy with a flail?”
“I didn't say that; I only said they gave me the name because they said I bate him.”
“Were you ever called 'Fire-the-Haggard'?”
“I was, often.”
“For no reason, of course?”
“Divil a may son. The boys said it in sport, just as they talk of yer honor out there in the hall.”
“How do you mean,—talk of me?”
“Sure I heard them say myself, as I was coming in, that you wor a clever man and a 'cute lawyer. They do be always humbugging that way.”
A titter ran round the benches of the barristers at this speech, which was delivered with a naïve simplicity that would deceive many.
“You were a United Irishman, Mr. M'Keown, I believe?” rejoined the counsel, with a frown of stern intimidation.
“Yes, sir; and a White Boy, and a Defender, and a Thrasher besides. I was in all the fun them times.”
“The Thrashers are the fellows, I believe, who must beat any man they are appointed to attack; isn't that so?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So that, if I was mentioned to you as a person to be assaulted, although I had never done you any injury, you 'd not hesitate to waylay me?”
“No, sir, I wouldn't do that. I'd not touch yer honor.”
“Come, come; what do you mean? Why wouldn't you touch me?”
“I' d rather not tell, av it was plazing to ye.”
“You must tell, sir; speak out! Why wouldn't you attack me?”
“They say, sir,” said Darby,—and as he spoke, his voice assumed a peculiar lisp, meant to express great modesty,—“they say, sir, that when a man has a big wart on his nose there, like yer honor, it's not lucky to bate him, for that's the way the divil marks his own.”
This time the decorum of the court gave way entirely, and the unwashed faces which filled the avenues and passages were all expanded in open laughter; nor was it easy to restore order again amid the many marks of approval and encouragement bestowed on Darby by his numerous admirers.
“Remember where you are, sir,” said the judge, severely.
“Yes, my lord,” said Darby, with an air of submission. “'T is the first time I was ever in sich a situation as this. I 'm much more at my ease when I 'm down in the dock there; it's what I 'm most used to, God help me.”
The whining tone in which he delivered this mock lament on his misfortunes occasioned another outbreak of the mob, who were threatened with expulsion from the court if any future interruption took place.
“You were, then, a member of every illegal society of the time, Mr. Darby?” said the lawyer, returning to the examination. “Is it not so?”
“Most of them, anyhow,” was the cool reply.
“You took an active part in the doings of the year '98 also?”
“Throth I did,—mighty active. I walked from beyant Castlecomer one day to Dublin to see a trial here. Be the same token, it was Mr. Curran made a hare of yer honor that day. Begorrah I wonder ye ever held up yer head after.”
Here a burst of laughter at the recollection seemed to escape Darby so naturally, that its contagious effects were felt throughout the assembly.
“You are a wit, Mr. M'Keown, I fancy, eh?”
“Bedad I 'm not, sir; very little of that same would have kept out of this to-day.”
“But you came here to serve a friend,—a very old friend, he calls you.”
“Does he?” said Darby, with an energy of tone and manner very different from what he had hitherto used. “Does Master Tom say that?”
As the poor fellow's cheek flushed, and his eyes sparkled with proud emotion, I could perceive that the lawyer's face underwent a change equally rapid. A look of triumph at having at length discovered the assailable point of the witness's temperament now passed over his pale features, and gave them an expression of astonishing intelligence.
“A very natural thing it is, Darby, that he should call you so. You were companions at an early period,—at least of his life; fellow-travellers, too, if I don't mistake?”
Although these words were spoken in a tone of careless freedom, and intended to encourage Darby to some expansion on the same theme, the cunning fellow had recovered all his habitual self-possession, and merely answered, if answer it could be called,—
“I was a poor man, sir, and lived by the pipes.”
The advocate and the witness exchanged looks at this moment, in which their relative positions were palpably conveyed. Each seemed to say it was a drawn battle; but the lawyer returned with vigor to the charge; desiring Darby to mention the manner in which our first acquaintance began, and how the intimacy was originally formed.
He narrated with clearness and accuracy every step of our early wanderings; and while never misstating a single fact, contrived to exhibit my career as totally devoid of any participation in the treasonable doings of the period. Indeed, he laid great stress on the fact that my acquaintance with Charles de Meudon had withdrawn me from all relations with the insurgent party, between whom and the French allies feelings of open dislike and distrust existed. Of the scene at the barrack his account varied in nothing from that I had already given; nor was all the ingenuity of a long and intricate cross-examination able to shake his testimony in the most minute particular.
“Of course, then, you know Sir Montague Crofts? It is quite clear that you cannot mistake a person with whom you had a struggle such as you speak of.”
“Faix, I'd know his skin upon a bush,” said Darby, “av he was like what I remember him; but sure he may be changed since that. They tell me I'm looking ould myself; and no wonder. Hunting kangaroos wears the constitution terribly.”
“Look around the court, now, and say if he be here.”
Darby rose from his seat, and shading his eyes with his hand, took a deliberate survey of the court. Though well knowing, from past experience, in what part of the assembly the person he sought would probably be, he seized the occasion to scrutinize the features of the various persons, whom under no other pretence could he have examined.
“It's not on the bench, sir, you need look for him,” said the lawyer, as M'Keown remained for a considerable time with his eyes bent in that direction.
“Bedad there's no knowing,” rejoined Darby, doubtfully; “av he was dressed up that way, I wouldn't know him from an old ram.”
He turned round as he said this, and gazed steadfastly towards the bar. It was an anxious moment for me: should Darby make any mistake in the identity of Crofts, his whole testimony would be so weakened in the opinion of the jury as to be nearly valueless. I watched his eyes, therefore, as they ranged over the crowded mass, with a palpitating heart; and when at last his glance settled on a far part of the court, very distant from that occupied by Crofts, I grew almost sick with apprehension lest he should mistake another for him.
“Well, sir,” said the lawyer; “do you see him now?”
“Arrah, it's humbugging me yez are,” said Darby, roughly, while he threw himself down into his chair in apparent ill temper.
A loud burst of laughter broke from the bar at this sudden ebullition of passion, so admirably feigned that none suspected its reality; and while the sounds of mirth were subsiding, Darby dropped his head, and placed his hand above his ear. “There it is, by gorra; there's no mistaking that laugh, anyhow,” cried he; “there's a screech in it might plaze an owl.” And with that he turned abruptly round and faced the bench where Crofts was seated. “I heard it a while ago, but I couldn't say where. That's the man,” said he, pointing with his finger to Crofts, who seemed actually to cower beneath his piercing glance.
“Remember, sir, you are on your solemn oath. Will you swear that the gentleman there is Sir Montague Crofts?”
“I know nothing about Sir Montague,” said Darby, composedly, while rising he walked over towards the edge of the table where Crofts was sitting, “but I'll swear that's the same Captain Crofts that I knocked down while he was shortening his sword to run it through Master Burke; and by the same token, he has a cut in the skull where he fell on the fender.” And before the other could prevent it, he stretched out his hand, and placed it on the back of the crown of Crofts's head. “There it is, just as I tould you.”
The sensation these words created in the court was most striking, and even the old lawyer appeared overwhelmed at the united craft and consistency of the piper. The examination was resumed; but Darby's evidence tallied so accurately with my statement that its continuance only weakened the case for the prosecution.
As the sudden flash of the lightning will sometimes disclose what in the long blaze of noonday has escaped the beholder, so will conviction break unexpectedly upon the human mind from some slight but striking circumstance which comes with the irresistible force of unpremeditated truthfulness. From that moment it was clear the jury to a man were with Darby. They paid implicit attention to all he said, and made notes of every trivial fact he mentioned; while he, as if divining the impression he had made, became rigorously cautious that not a particle of his evidence could be shaken, nor the effect of his testimony weakened by even a passing phrase of exaggeration. It was, indeed, a phenomenon worth studying, to see this fellow, whose natural disposition was the irrepressible love of drollery and recklessness,—whose whole heart seemed bent on the indulgence of his wayward, careless humor,—suddenly throw off every eccentricity of his character, and become a steady and accurate witness, delivering his evidence carefully and cautiously, and never suffering his own leanings to repartee, nor the badgering allusions of his questioner, to draw him for a moment away from the great object he had set before him; resisting every line, every bait, the cunning lawyer threw out to seduce him into that land of fancy so congenial to an Irishman's temperament, he was firm against all temptation, and even endured that severest of all tests to the forbearance of his country,—he suffered the laugh more than once to be raised at his expense, without an effort to retort on his adversary.
The examination lasted three hours; and at its conclusion, every fact I stated had received confirmation from Darby's testimony, down to the moment when we left the barrack together.
“Now, M'Keown,” said the lawyer, “I am about to call your recollection, which is so wonderfully accurate that it can give you no trouble in remembering, to a circumstance which immediately followed the affair.”
As he got thus far, Crofts leaned over and drew the counsel towards him while he whispered some words rapidly in his ear. A brief dialogue ensued between them; at the conclusion of which the lawyer turned round, and addressing Darby, said,—
“You may go down, sir; I 've done with you.” “Wait a moment,” said the young barrister on my side, who quickly perceived that the interruption had its secret object. “My learned friend was about to ask you concerning something which happened after you left the barrack; and although he has changed his mind on the subject, we on this side would be glad to hear what you have to say.”
Darby's eyes flashed with unwonted brilliancy; and I thought I caught a glance of triumphant meaning towards Crofts, as he began his recital, which was in substance nothing more than what the reader already knows. When he came to the mention of Fortescue's name, however, Crofts, whose excitement was increasing at each moment, lost all command over himself, and cried out,—
“It's false! every word untrue! The man was dead at the time.”
The court rebuked the interruption, and Darby went on.
“No, my lord; he was alive. But Mr. Crofts is not to blame, for he believed he was dead; and, more than that, he thought he took the sure way to make him so.”
These words produced the greatest excitement throughout the court; and an animated discussion ensued, how far the testimony could go to inculpate a party not accused. It was ruled, at last, the evidence should be heard, as touching the case on trial, and not immediately as regarded Crofts. And then Darby began a recital, of which I had never heard a syllable before, nor had I conceived the slightest suspicion.
The story, partly told in narrative form, partly elicited by questioning, was briefly this.
Daniel Fortescue was the son of a Roscommon gentleman of large fortune, of whom also Crofts was the illegitimate child. The father, a man of high Tory politics, had taken a most determined part against the patriotic party in Ireland, to which his son Daniel had shown himself, on more than one occasion, favorable. The consequence was, a breach of affection between them; widened into an actual rupture, by the old man, who was a widower, taking home to his house the illegitimate son, and announcing to his household that he would leave him everything he could in the world.
To Daniel, the blow was all that he needed to precipitate his ruin. He abandoned the university, where already he had distinguished himself, and threw himself heart and soul into the movement of the “United Irish” party. At first, high hopes of an independent nation,—a separate kingdom, with its own train of interests, and its own sphere of power and influence,—was the dream of those with whom he associated. But as events rolled on it was found, that to mature their plans it was necessary to connect themselves with the masses, by whose agency the insurrectionary movement was to be effected; and in doing so, they discovered, that although theories of liberty and independence, high notions of pure government, may have charms for men of intellect and intelligence, to the mob the price of a rebellion must be paid down in the sterling coin of pillage and plunder,—or even, worse, the triumphant dominion of the depraved and the base over the educated and the worthy.
Many who favored the patriotic cause, as it was called, became so disgusted at the low associates and base intercourse the game of party required, that they abandoned the field at once, leaving to others, less scrupulous or more ardent, the path they could not stoop to follow. It was probable that young Fortescue might have been among these, had he been left to the guidance of his own judgment and inclination; for, as a man of honor and intelligence, he could not help feeling shocked at the demands made by those who were the spokesmen of the people. But this course he was not permitted to take, owing to the influence of a man who had succeeded in obtaining the most absolute power over him.
This was a certain Maurice Mulcahy, a well-known member of the various illegal clubs of the day, and originally a country schoolmaster. Mulcahy it was who first infected Fortescue's mind with the poison of this party,—now lending him volumes of the incendiary trash with which the press teemed; now newspapers, whose articles were headed, “Orange outrage on a harmless and unresisting peasantry!” or, “Another sacrifice of the people to the bloody vengeance of the Saxon!” By these, his youthful mind became interested in the fate of those he believed to be treated with reckless cruelty and oppression; while, as he advanced in years, his reason was appealed to by those great and spirit-stirring addresses which Grattan and Curran were continually delivering, either in the senate or at the bar, and wherein the most noble aspirations after liberty were united with sentiments breathing love of country and devoted patriotism. To connect the garbled and lying statements of a debased newspaper press with the honorable hopes and noble conceptions of men of mind and genius, was the fatal process of his political education; and never was there a time when such a delusion was more easy.
Mulcahy, now stimulating the boyish ardor of a high-spirited youth, now flattering his vanity by promises of the position one of his ancient name and honored lineage must assume in the great national movement, gradually became his directing genius, swaying every resolution and ruling every determination of his mind. He never left his victim for a moment; and while thus insuring the unbounded influence he exercised, he gave proof of a seeming attachment, which Fortescue confidently believed in. Mulcahy, too, never wanted for money; alleging that the leaders of the plot knew the value of Fortescue's alliance, and were willing to advance him any sums he needed, he supplied the means of every extravagance a wild and careless youth indulged in, and thus riveted the chain of his bondage to him.
When the rebellion broke out, Fortescue, like many more, was horror-struck at the conduct of his party. He witnessed hourly scenes of cruelty and bloodshed at which his heart revolted, but to avow his compassion for which would have cost him his life on the spot. He was in the stream, however, and must go with the torrent; and what will not stern necessity compel? Daily intimacy with the base-hearted and the low, hourly association with crime, and perhaps more than either, despair of success, broke him down completely, and with the blind fatuity of one predestined to evil, he became careless what happened to him, and indifferent to whatever fate was before him.
Still, between him and his associates there lay a wide gulf. The tree, withered and blighted as it was, still preserved some semblance of its once beauty; and among that mass of bigotry and bloodshed, his nature shone forth conspicuously as something of a different order of being. To none was this superiority more insulting than to the parties themselves. So long as the period of devising and planning the movement of an insurrection lasts, the presence of a gentleman, or a man of birth or rank, will be hailed with acclamation and delight. Let the hour of acting arrive, however, and the scruples of an honorable mind, or the repugnance of a high-spirited nature, will be treated as cowardice by those who only recognized bravery in deeds of blood, and know no heroism save when allied to cruelty.
Fortescue became suspected by his party. Hints were circulated, and rumors reached him, that he was watched; that it was no time for hanging back. He who sacrificed everything for the cause to be thus accused! He consulted Mulcahy; and to his utter discomfiture discovered that even his old ally and adviser was not devoid of doubt regarding him. Something must be done, and that speedily,—he cared not what. Life had long ceased to interest him either by hope or fear. The only tie that bound him to existence was the strange desire to be respected by those his heart sickened at the thought of.
An attack was at that time planned against the house and family of a Wexford gentleman, whose determined opposition to the rebel movement had excited all their hatred. Fortescue demanded to be the leader of that expedition; and was immediately named to the post by those who were glad to have the opportunity of testing his conduct by such an emergency.
The attack took place at night,—a scene of the most fearful and appalling cruelty, such as the historian yet records among the most dreadful of that dreadful period. The house was burned to the ground, and its inmates butchered, regardless of age or sex. In the effort to save a female from the flames, Fortescue was struck down by one of his party; while another nearly cleft his chest across with a cut of a large knife. He fell, covered with blood, and lay seemingly dead. When his party retreated, however, he summoned strength to creep under shelter of a ditch, and lay there till near daybreak, when he was found by another gang of the rebel faction, who knew nothing of the circumstances of his wound, and carried him away to a place of safety.
For some months he lay dangerously ill. Hectic fever, consequent on long suffering, brought him to the very brink of the grave; and at last he managed by stealth to reach Dublin, where a doctor well known to the party resided, and under whose care he ultimately recovered, and succeeded at last in taking a passage to America. Meanwhile his death was currently believed, and Crofts was everywhere recognized as the heir to the fortune.
Mulcahy, of whom it is necessary to speak a few words, was soon after apprehended on a charge of rebellion, and sentenced to transportation. He appealed to many who had known him, as he said, in better times, to speak to his character. Among others, Captain Crofts—so he then was—was summoned. His evidence, however, was rather injurious than favorable to the prisoner; and although not in any way influencing the sentence, was believed by the populace to have mainly contributed to its severity.
Such was, in substance, the singular story which was now told before the court,—told without any effort at concealment or reserve; and to the proof of which M'Keown was willing to proceed at once.
“This, my lord,” said Darby, as he concluded, “is a good time and place to give back to Mr. Crofts a trifling article I took from him the night at the barracks. I thought it was the bank-notes I was getting; but it turned out better, after all.”
With that he produced a strong black leather pocket-book, fastened by a steel clasp. No sooner did Crofts behold it, than, with the spring of a tiger, he leaped forward and endeavored to clutch it. But Darby was on his guard, and immediately drew back his hand, calling out,—
“No, no, sir! I didn't keep it by me eight long years to give it up that way. There, my lords,” said he, as he handed it to the bench, “there's his pocket-book, with plenty of notes in it from many a one well known,—Maurice Mulcahy among the rest,—and you'll soon see who it was first tempted Fortescue to ruin, and who paid the money for doing it.”
A burst of horror and astonishment broke from the assembled crowd as Darby spoke.
Then, in a loud, determined tone, “He is a perjurer!” screamed Crofts. “I repeat it, my lord; Fortescue is dead.”
“Faix! and for a dead man he has a remarkable appetite,” said Darby, “and an elegant color in his face besides; for there he stands.”
And as he spoke, he pointed with his finger to a man who was leaning with folded arms against one of the pillars that supported the gallery.
Every eye was now turned in the direction towards him; while the young barrister called out, “Is your name Daniel Fortescue?”
But before any answer could follow, several among the lawyers, who had known him in his college days, and felt attachment to him, had surrounded and recognized him.
“I am Daniel Fortescue, my lord,” said the stranger. “Whatever may be the consequences of the avowal, I say it here, before this court, that every statement the witness has made regarding me is true to the letter.”
A low, faint sound, heard throughout the stillness that followed these words, now echoed throughout the court; and Crofts had fallen, fainting, over the bench behind him.
A scene of tumultuous excitement now ensued, for while Crofts's friends, many of whom were present, assisted to carry him into the air, others pressed eagerly forward to catch a sight of Fortescue, who had already rivalled Darby himself in the estimation of the spectators.
He was a tall, powerfully-built man, of about thirty-five or thirty-six, dressed in the blue jacket and trousers of a sailor; but neither the habitude of his profession nor the humble dress he wore could conceal the striking evidence his air and bearing indicated of condition and birth. As he mounted the witness table,—for it was finally agreed that his testimony in disproof or corroboration of M'Keown should be heard,—a murmur of approbation went round, partly at the daring step he had thus ventured on taking, and partly excited by those personal gifts which are ever certain to have their effect upon any crowded assembly.
I need not enter into the details of his evidence, which was given in a frank, straightforward manner, well suited to his appearance; never concealing for a moment the cause he had himself embarked in, nor assuming any favorable coloring for actions which ingenuity and the zeal of party would have found subjects for encomium rather than censure.
His narrative not only confirmed all that Darby asserted, but also disclosed the atrocious scheme by which he had been first induced to join the ranks of the disaffected party. This was the work of Crofts, who knew and felt that Fortescue was the great barrier between himself and a large fortune. For this purpose Mulcahy was hired; to this end the whole long train of perfidy laid, which eventuated in his ruin: for so artfully had the plot been devised, each day's occurrence rendered retreat more difficult, until at last it became impossible.
The reader is already aware of the catastrophe which concluded his career in the rebel army. It only remains now to be told that he escaped to America, where he entered as a sailor on board a merchantman; and although his superior acquirements and conduct might have easily bettered his fortune in his new walk in life, the dread of detection never left his mind, and he preferred the hardships before the mast to the vacillation of hope and fear a more conspicuous position would have exposed him to.
The vessel in which he served was wrecked off the coast of New Holland, and he and a few others of the crew were taken up by an English ship on her voyage outward. In a party sent on shore for water, Fortescue came up with Darby, who had made his escape from the convict settlement, and was wandering about the woods, almost dead of starvation, and scarcely covered with clothing. His pitiful condition, but perhaps more still, his native drollery, which even then was unextinguished, induced the sailors to yield to Fortescue's proposal, and they smuggled him on board in a water cask; and thus concealed, he made the entire voyage to England, where he landed about a fortnight before the trial. Fearful of being apprehended before the day, and determined at all hazards to give his evidence, he lay hid till the time we have already seen, when he suddenly came forward to my rescue.
Mulcahy, who worked in the same gang with Darby, or, to use the piper's grandiloquent expression,—for he burst out in this occasionally,—was “in concatenated proximity to him,” told the whole story of his own baseness, and loudly inveighed against Crofts for deserting him in his misfortunes. The pocket-book taken from Crofts by Darby amply corroborated this statement. It contained, besides various memoranda in the owner's handwriting, several letters from Mulcahy, detailing the progress of the conspiracy: some were in acknowledgment of considerable sums of money; others asking for supplies; but all confirmatory of the black scheme by which Fortescue's destruction was compassed.
Whatever might have been the sentiments of the crowded court regarding the former life and opinions of Fortescue and the piper, it was clear that now only one impression prevailed,—a general feeling of horror at the complicated villany of Crofts, whose whole existence had been one tissue of the basest treachery.
The testimony was heard with attention throughout; no cross-examination was entered on; and the judge, briefly adverting to the case which was before the jury, and from whose immediate consideration subsequent events had in a great measure withdrawn their minds, directed them to deliver a verdict of “Not guilty.”
The words were re-echoed by the jury, who, man for man, exclaimed these words aloud, amid the most deafening cheers from every side.
As I walked from the dock, fatigued, worn out, and exhausted, a dozen hands were stretched out to seize mine; but one powerful grasp caught my arm, and a well-known voice called in my ear,—
“An' ye wor with Boney, Master Tom? Tare and 'ounds, didn't I know you'd be a great man yet.”
At the same instant Fortescue came through the crowd towards me, with his hands outstretched.
“We should be friends, sir,” said he, “for we both have suffered from a common enemy. If I am at liberty to leave this—”
“You are not, sir,” interposed a deep voice behind. We turned and beheld Major Barton. “The massacre at Kil-macshogue has yet to be atoned for.”
Fortescue's face grew actually livid at the mention of the word, and his breathing became thick and short.
“Here,” continued Barton, “is the warrant for your committal. And you also, Darby,” said he, turning round; “we want your company once more in Newgate.”
“Bedad, I suppose there's no use in sending an apology when friends is so pressing,” said he, buttoning his coat as coolly as possible; “but I hope you 'll let the master come in to see me.”
“Mr. Burke shall be admitted at all times,” said Barton, with an obsequious civility I had never witnessed in him previously.
“Faix, maybe you 'll not be for letting him out so aisy,” said Darby, dryly, for his notions of justice were tempered by a considerable dash of suspicion.
I had only time left to press my purse into the honest fellow's hand, and salute Fortescue hastily, as they both were removed, under the custody of Barton. And I now made my way through the crowd into the hall, which opened a line for me as I went; a thousand welcomes meeting me from those who felt as anxious about the result of the trial as if a brother or a dear friend had been in peril.
One face caught my eye as I passed; and partly from my own excitement, partly from its expression being so different from its habitual character, I could not recognize it as speedily as I ought to have done. Again and again it appeared; and at last, as I approached the door into the street, it was beside me.
“If I might dare to express my congratulations,” said a voice, weak from the tremulous anxiety of the speaker, and the shame which, real or affected, seemed to bow him down.
“What,” cried I, “Mr. Basset!” for it was the worthy man himself.
“Yes, sir. Your father's old and confidential agent,—I might venture to say, friend,—come to see the son of his first patron occupy the station he has long merited.”
“A bad memory is the only touch of age I remark in you, sir,” said I, endeavoring to pass on, for I was unwilling at the moment of my escape from a great difficulty to lose temper with so unworthy an object.
“One moment, sir, just a moment,” said he, in a low whisper. “You'll want money, probably. The November rents are not paid up; but there's a considerable balance to your credit. Will you take a hundred or two for the present?”
“Take money!—money from you!” said I, shrinking back.
“Your own, sir; your own estate. Do you forget,” said he, with a miserable effort of a smile, “that you are Mr. Burke of Cromore, with a clear rental of four thousand a year? We gained the Cluan Bog lawsuit, sir,” continued he. “'Twas I, sir, found the satisfaction for the bond. Your brother said he owed it all to Tony Basset.”
The two last words were all that were needed to sum up the measure of my disgust and I once more tried to get forward.
“I know the property, sir, for thirty-eight years I was over it. Your father and your brother always trusted me—”
“Let me pass on, Mr. Basset,” said I, calmly. “I have no desire to become a greater object of mob curiosity. Pray let me pass on.”
“And for Darby M'Keown,” whispered he.
“What of him?” said I; for he had touched the most anxious chord of my heart at that instant.
“I'll have him free; he shall be at liberty in forty-eight hours for you. I have the whole papers by me; and a statement to the privy council will obtain his liberation.”
“Do this,” said I, “and I 'll forgive more of your treatment of me than I could on any other plea.”
“May I call on you this evening, or to-morrow morning, at your hotel? Where do you stop, sir?”
“This evening be it, if it hasten M'Keown's liberation. Remember, however, Mr. Basset, I'll hold no converse with you on any other subject till that be settled, and to my perfect satisfaction.”
“A bargain, sir,” said he, with a grin of satisfaction; and dropping back, he suffered me to proceed.
Along the quays I went, and down Dame Street, accompanied by a great mob of people, who thought in my acquittal they had gained a triumph. For so it was; every case had its political feature, and seemed to be intimately connected with the objects of one party or the other. Partisan cheers,—the watchwords of faction,—were uttered as I went, and I was made to suffer that least satisfactory of all conditions, which bestows notoriety without fame, and popularity without merit.
As I entered the hotel, I recognized many of the persons I had seen there before; but their looks were no longer thrown towards me with the impertinence they then assumed. On the contrary, a studied desire to evince courtesy and politeness was evident. “How strange is it!” thought I; “how differently does the whole world smile to the rich man and to the poor!” Here were many who could in nowise derive advantage from my altered condition,—as perfectly independent of me as I of them; and yet even they showed that degree of deference in their manner which the expectant bestows upon a patron. So it is, however. The position which wealth confers is recognized by all; the individual who fills it is but an attribute of the station.
Life had, indeed, opened on me with a new and very different aspect; and I felt, as I indulged in the daydreams which the sudden possession of fortune excites, that to enjoy thoroughly the blessings of independence, one must have experienced, as I had, the hard pressure of adversity. It seemed to me that the long road of gloomy fate had at length reached its turning point, and that I should now travel along a calmer and happier path. Thoughts of the new career that lay before me were blended with the memories of the past; hopes they were, but dashed with the shadows which a blighted affection will throw over the whole stream of life. Still that evening was one of happiness; not of that excited pleasure derived from the attainment of a long coveted object, but the calmer enjoyment felt in the safety of the haven by him who has experienced the hurricane and the storm.
With such thoughts I went to rest, and laid my head on my pillow in thoughtfulness and peace. In my dreams my troubles still lingered. But who regrets the anxious minutes of a vision which wakening thoughts dispel? Are they not rather the mountain shadows that serve to brighten the gleam of the sunlight in the plain?
It was thus the morning broke for me, with all the ecstasy of danger passed, and all the crowding hopes of a happy future. The hundred speculations which in poverty I had formed for the comfort of the poor and the humble might now be realized; and I fancied myself the centre of a happy peasantry, confiding and contented. It would be hard, indeed, to forget “the camp and the tented field” in the peaceful paths of a country life. But simple duties are often as engrossing as those of a higher order, and bring a reward not less grateful to the heart; and I flattered myself to think my ambition reached not above them.
The moments in which such daydreams are indulged are the very happiest of a lifetime. The hopes which are based on the benefits we may render to others are sources of elevation to ourselves; and such motives purify the soul, and exalt the mind to a pitch far above the petty ambitions of the world.
To myself, and to my own enjoyments, wealth could contribute less than to most men. The simple habits of a soldier's life satisfied every wish of my mind. The luxuries which custom makes necessary to others I never knew; and I formed my resolution not to wander from this path of humble, inexpensive tastes, so that the stream of charity might flow the wider.
These were my waking thoughts. Alas, how little do we ever realize of such speculations! and how few glide down the stream of life unswayed by the eddies and crosscurrents of fortune! The higher we build the temple of our hopes, the more surely will it topple to its fall. Who shall say that our greatest enjoyment is not in raising the pile, and our happiest hours the full abandonment to those hopes our calmer reason never ratified?
As yet it had not occurred to me to think what position the world might concede to one whose life had been passed like mine, nor did I bestow a care upon a matter whereon so much of future happiness depended. These, however, were considerations which could not be long averted. How they came, and in what manner they were met must remain for a future chapter of my history.
In my last chapter I brought my reader to that portion of my story which formed the turning-point of my destiny. And here I might, perhaps, conclude these brief memoirs of an early life, whose chief object was to point out the results of a hasty and rash judgment, which, formed in mere boyhood, exerted its influence throughout the entire of a lifetime. Only one incident remains still to be told; and I shall not trespass on the good-natured patience of my readers by any delay in the narrative.
From being poor, houseless, and unknown, a sudden turn of fortune had made me wealthy and conspicuous in station; the owner of a large estate,—almost a lead-ing man in my native county. My influence was sufficient to procure the liberation of M'Keown; and my interference in his behalf mainly contributed to procure for Fortescue the royal pardon. The world, as the phrase is, went with me; and the good luck which attended every step I took and every plan I engaged in was become a proverb among my neighbors.
Let not any one suppose I was unmindful or ungrateful, if I confess, that even with all these I was not happy. No: the tranquil mind, the spirit at ease with itself, cannot exist where the sense of duty is not. The impulse which swayed my boyish heart still moved the ambition of the man. The pursuits I should have deemed the noblest and the purest seemed to me uninteresting and ignoble; the associations I ought to have felt the happiest and the highest appeared to me vulgar, and low, and commonplace. I was disappointed in my early dream of liberty, and had found tyranny where I looked for freedom, and intolerance where I expected enlightenment; but if so, I recurred with tenfold enthusiasm to the career of the soldier, whose glories were ever before me. That noble path had not deceived me; far from it. Its wild and whirlwind excitement, its hazardous enterprise, its ever-present dangers, were stimulants I loved and gloried in. All the chances and changes of a peaceful life were poor and mean compared to the hourly vicissitudes of war. I knew not then, it is true, how much of enjoyment I derived from forgetful ness; how many of my springs of happiness flowed from that preoccupation which prevented my dwelling on the only passion that ever stirred my heart,—my love for one whose love was hopeless.
How thoroughly will the character of an early love tinge the whole of a life! Our affections are like flowers,—they derive their sweetness and their bloom from the soil in which they grow: some, budding in joy and gladness, amid the tinkling plash of a glittering fountain, live on ever bright and beautiful; others, struggling on amid thorns and wild weeds, overshadowed by gloom, preserve their early impressions to the last,—their very sweetness tells of sadness.
To conquer the memory of this hopeless passion, I tried a hundred ways. I endeavored, by giving myself up to the duties of a country gentleman, to become absorbed in all the cares and pursuits which had such interest for my neighbors. Failing in this, I became a sportsman; I kept horses and dogs, and entered, with all the zest mere determination can impart, upon that life of manly exertion, so full of pleasure to thousands. But here again without succeeding.
I went into society; but soon retired from it, on finding, that among the class of my equals the prestige of my early life had still tracked me. I was in their eyes a rebel, whose better fortune had saved him from the fate of his companions. My youth had given no guarantee for my manhood; and I was not trusted. Baffled in every endeavor to obliterate my secret grief, I recurred to it now, as though privileged by fate, to indulge a memory nothing could efface. I abandoned all the petty appliances by which I sought to shut out the past, and gave myself up in full abandonment to the luxury of my melancholy.
Living entirely within the walls of my demesne, never seen by my neighbors, not making nor receiving visits, I appeared to many a heartless recluse, whose misanthropy sought indulgence in solitude; others, less harshly, judged me as one whose unhappy entrance on life had unfitted him for the station to which fortune had elevated him. By both I was soon forgotten.
The peasantry were less ungenerous, and more just. They saw in me one who felt acutely for the privations they were suffering; yet never gave them that cheap, delusive hope, that legislative changes will touch social evils,—that the acts of a parliament will penetrate the thousand tortuous windings of a poor man's destiny. They found in me a friend and an adviser. They only-wondered at one thing,—how any man could feel for the poor, and not hate the rich. So long had the struggle lasted between affluence and misery, they could not understand a compromise.
Bitter as their poverty had been, it never extinguished the poetry of their lives. They were hungry and naked; but they held to their ancient traditions, and they built on them great hopes for the future. The old family names, the time-honored memories of place, the famous deeds of ancestors, made an ideal existence powerful enough to exclude the pressure of actual daily evils; and they argued from what had been to what might be, with a persistency of hope it seemed almost cruel to destroy. So deeply were these thoughts engrained into their natures, they felt him but half their friend who ventured to despise them. The relief of present poverty, the succor of actual suffering, became in their eyes an effort of mere passing kindness. They looked to some great amelioration of condition, some wondrous change, some restoration to an imaginary standard of independence and comfort, which all the efforts of common interference fell sadly short of; and thus they strained their gaze to a government, a ruling power, for a boon undefined, unknown, and illimitable.
To expectations like these advice and slight assistance are as the mere drop of water to the parched tongue of thirst; and so I found it. I could neither encourage them in their hopes of such legislative changes as would greatly ameliorate their condition, nor flatter them in the delusion that none of their misfortunes were of home origin; and thus, if they felt gratitude for many kindnesses, they reposed no confidence in my opinion. The trading patriot, who promised much while he pocketed their hard-earned savings; the rabid newspaper writer, who libelled the Government and denounced the landlord,—were their standards of sympathy; and he who fell short of either was not their friend.
In a word, the social state of the people was rotten to its very core. Their highest qualities, degraded by the combined force of poverty, misrule, and superstition, had become sources of crime and misery. They had suffered so long and so much, their patience was exhausted; and they preferred the prospect of any violent convulsion which might change the face of the land, whatever dangers it might come with, to a slow and gradual improvement of condition, however safe and certain.
To win their confidence at the only price they would accord it, I never could consent to; and without it I was almost powerless for good. Here again, therefore, did I find closed against me another avenue for exertion; and the only one of all I could have felt a fitting sphere for my labor. The violence of their own passionate natures, the headlong impulses by which they suffered themselves to be swayed, left them no power of judgment regarding those whose views were more moderate and temperate. They could understand the high Tory landlord, whom they invested with every attribute of tyranny, as their open, candid opponent; they could see a warm friend in the violent mob-orator of the day; but they recognized no trait of kindness in him who would rather see them fed than flattered, and behold them in the enjoyment of comfort sooner than in the ecstasy of triumph.
From “Darby the Blast”—for he was now a member of my household—I learned the light in which I was regarded by the people, and heard the dissatisfaction they expressed that one who “sarved Boney” should not be ready to head a rising, if need be. Thus was I in a false position on every side. Mistrusted by all, because I would neither enter into the exaggerations of party, nor become blind to the truth my senses revealed before me, my sphere of utility was narrowed to the discharge of the mere duties of common charity and benevolence, and my presence among my tenantry no more productive of benefit than if I had left my purse as my representative.
Years rolled on, and in the noiseless track of time I forgot its flight. I now had grown so wedded to the habits of my solitary life, that its very monotony was a source of pleasure. I had intrenched myself within a little circle of enjoyments, and among my books and in my walks my days went pleasantly over.
For a long time, I did not dare to read the daily papers, nor learn the great events which agitated Europe. I tried to think that an interval of repose would leave me indifferent to their mention; and so rigidly did I abstain from indulging my curiosity, that the burning of Moscow, and the commencement of the dreadful retreat which followed, was the first fact I read of.
From the moment I gave way, the passion for intelligence from France became a perfect mania. Where were the different corps of the “Grand Army”? where the Emperor himself? by what great stroke of genius would he emerge from the difficulties around him, and deal one of his fatal blows on the enemy?—were the questions which met me as I awoke, and tortured me during the day.
Each movement of that terrible retreat I followed in the gazettes with an anxiety verging on insanity. I tracked the long journey on the map, and as I counted towns and villages, dreary deserts of snow, and vast rivers to be traversed, my heart grew faint to think how many a brave soldier would never reach that fair France for whose glory he had shed his best blood. Disaster followed disaster; and as the news reached England, came accounts of those great defections which weakened the force of the “Grand Army,” and deranged the places formed for its retiring movements.
They who can recall to mind the time I speak of, will remember the effect produced in England by the daily accounts from the seat of war; how heavily fell the blows of that altered fortune which once rested on the eagles of France; how each new bulletin announced another feature of misfortune,—some shattered remnant of a great corps d'armée cut off by Cossacks,—some dreadful battle engaged against superior numbers, and fought with desperation, not for victory, but the liberty to retreat. Great names were mentioned among the slain, and the proudest chivalry of Gaul left to perish on the far-off steppes of Russia.
Such were the fearful tales men read of that terrible campaign; and the joy in England was great, to hear that the most powerful of her enemies had at length experienced the full bitterness of defeat. While men vied with one another in stories of the misfortunes of the Emperor,—when each post added another to the long catalogue of disasters to the “Grand Army,”—I sat in my lonely house, in a remote part of Ireland, brooding over the sad reverses of him who still formed my ideal of a hero.
I thought how, amid the crumbling ruins of his splendid force, his great soul would survive the crash that made all others despair; that each new evil would suggest its remedy as it arose, and the mind that never failed in expedient would shine out more brilliantly through the gloom of darkening fortune than even it had done in the noonday splendor of success. When all others could only see the tremendous energy of despair, I thought I could recognize those glorious outbursts of heroism by which a French army sought and won the favor of their Emperor. The routed and straggling bodies which hurried along in seeming disorder, I gloried to perceive could assume all the port and bearing of soldiers at the approach of danger, and form their ranks at the wild “houra” of the Cossack as steadily as in the proudest day of their prosperity.
The retreat continued: the horrible suffering of a Russian winter added to the carnage of a battle-tide, which flowed unceasingly from the ruined walls of the Kremlin to the banks of the Vistula: the battle of Borisow and the passage of the Berezina followed fast on each other. And now we heard that the Emperor had surrendered the chief command to Murat, and was hastening back to France with lightning speed; for already the day of his evil fortune had thrown its shadow over the capital. No longer reckoned by tens of thousands, that vast army had now dwindled down to divisions of a few hundred men. The Old Guard scarce exceeded one thousand; and of twenty entire regiments of cavalry, Murat mustered a single squadron as a bodyguard. Crowds of wounded and mutilated men dragged their weary limbs along over the hardened snow, or through dense pine forests where no villages were to be met with,—a fatuous determination to strive to reach France, the only impulse surviving amid all their sufferings.
With the defections of D'York and Massenbach, then began that new feature of disaster which was so soon to burst forth with all the fell fury of long pent-up hatred. The nationality of Germany—so long, so cruelly insulted—now saw the day of retribution arrive. Misfortune hastened misfortune, and defeat engendered treason in the ranks of the Emperor's allies. Murat, too, the favorite of Napoleon, the king of his creation, deserted him now, and fled ignominiously from the command of the army.
“The Elbe! the Elbe!” was now the cry amid the shattered ranks of that army which but a year before saw no limit to its glorious path. The Elbe was the only line remaining which promised a moment's repose from the fatigues and privations of months long. Along that road the army could halt, and stem the tide of pursuit, however hotly it pressed. The Prussians had already united with the Russians; the defection of Austria could not be long distant; Saxony was appealed to, as a member of the German family, to join in arms against the Tyrant; and the wild “houra” of the Cossack now blended with the loud “Vorwarts” of injured Prussia.
“Where shall he seek succor now? What remains to him in this last eventful struggle? How shall the Emperor call back to life the legions by whose valor his great victories were gained, and Europe made a vassal at the foot of his throne?” Such was the thought that never left me day or night. Ever present before me was his calm brow, and his face paler, but not less handsome, than its wont. I could recall his rapid glance; the quick and hurried motion of his hand; his short and thick utterance, as words of command fell from his lips; and his smile, as he heard some intelligence with pleasure.
I could not sleep,—scarcely could I eat. A feverish excitement burned through my frame, and my parched tongue and hot hand told how the very springs of health were dried up within me. I walked with hurried steps from place to place; now muttering the words of some despatch, now fancying that I was sent with orders for a movement of troops. As I rode, I spurred my horse to a gallop, and in my heated imagination believed I was in presence of the enemy, and preparing for the fray. Great as my exhaustion frequently was, weariness brought no rest. Often I returned home at evening, overcome by fatigue; but a sleepless night, tortured with anxieties and harassed with doubts and fears, followed, and I awoke to pursue the same path, till in my weakened frame and hectic cheek the signs of illness could no longer be mistaken.
Terrified at the ravages a few weeks had made in my health, and fearful what secret malady was preying upon me, Darby, without asking any leave from me, left the house one morning at daybreak, and returned with the physician of the neighboring town. I was about to mount my horse, when I saw them coming up the avenue, and immediately guessed the object of the visit. A moment was enough to decide me as to the course to pursue; for well knowing how disposed the world ever is to stamp the impress of wandering intellect on any habit of mere eccentricity, I resolved to receive the doctor as though I was glad of his coming, and consult with him regarding my state. This would at least refute such a scandal, by enlisting the physician among the allies of my cause.
By good fortune, Dr. Clibborn was a man of shrewd common sense, as well as a physician of no mean skill.
In the brief conversation we held together, I perceived, that while he paid all requisite attention to any detail which implied the existence of malady, his questions were more pointedly directed to the possibility of some mental cause of irritation,—the source of my ailment. I could see, however, that his opinion inclined to the belief that the events of the trial had left their indelible traces on my mind; which, inducing me to adopt a life of isolation and retirement, had now produced the effects he witnessed.
I was not sorry at this mistake on his part. By suffering him to indulge in this delusive impression, I saved myself all the trouble of concealing my real feelings, which I had no desire to expose before him. I permitted him, therefore, to reason with me on the groundless notions he supposed I had conceived of the world's feeling regarding me, and heard him patiently as he detailed the course of public duty, by fulfilling which I should occupy my fitting place in society, and best consult my own health and happiness.
“There are,” said he, “certain fixed impressions, which I would not so combat. It was but yesterday, for instance, I yielded to the wish of an old general officer, who has served upwards of half a century, and desires once more to put himself at the head of his regiment. His heart was bent on it. I saw that though he might consent to abandon his purpose, I was not so sure his mind might bear the disappointment; for the intellect will sometimes go astray in endeavoring to retrace its steps. So I thought it better to concede what might cost more in the refusal.”
The last words of the doctor remained in my head long after he took his leave, and I could not avoid applying them to my own case. Was not my impression of this nature? Were not my thoughts all centred on one theme as fixedly as the officer's of whom he spoke? Could I, by any effort of my reason or my will, control my wandering fancies, and call them back to the dull realities amongst which I lived?
These were ever recurring to me, and always with the same reply. It is in vain to struggle against an impulse which has swallowed up all other ambitions. My heart is among the glittering ranks and neighing squadrons of France; I would be there once more; I would follow that career which first stirred the proudest hopes I ever cherished.
That same evening the mail brought the news that Eugène Beauharnais had fallen back on Magdeburg, and sent repeated despatches to the Emperor, entreating his immediate presence among the troops, whom nothing but Napoleon himself in the midst of them could restore to their wonted bravery and determination. The reply of Napoleon was briefly,—
“I am coming; and all who love me, follow me.”
How the words rang in my ears,—“Tous ceux qui m'aiment!” I heard them in every rustling of the wind and motion of the leaves against the window; they were whispered to my sense by every avenue of my brain; and I sat no longer occupied in reading as usual, but with folded arms, repeating word by word the brief sentence.
It was midnight. All was still and silent through the house; no servant stirred, and the very wind was hushed to a perfect calm. I was sitting in my library, when the words I have repeated seemed spoken in a low, clear voice beside me. I started up: the perspiration broke over my forehead and fell upon my cheek with terror; for I knew I was alone, and the fearful thought flashed on me,—this may be madness! For a second or two the agony of the idea was almost insupportable. Then came a resolve as sudden. I opened my desk, and took from it all the ready money I possessed; I wrote a few hurried lines to my agent; and then, making my way noiselessly to the stable, I saddled my horse and led him out.
In two hours I was nearly twenty miles on my way to Dublin. Day was breaking as I entered the capital. I made no delay there; but taking fresh horses, started for Skerries, where I knew the fishermen of the coast resorted.
“One hundred pounds to the man who will land me on the coast of France or Holland,” said I to a group that were preparing their nets on the shore.
A look of incredulity was the only reply. A very few words, however, settled the bargain. Ere half an hour I was on board. The wind freshened, and we stood out to sea.
“Let the breeze keep to this,” said the skipper, “and we'll make the voyage quickly.”
Both wind and tide were in our favor. We held down Channel rapidly; and I saw the blue hills grow fainter and fainter, till the eye could but detect a gray cloud on the horizon, which at last disappeared in the bright sun of noon, and a wide waste of blue water lay on every side.