The O'Donoghue: Tale of Ireland Fifty Years Ago

Kerry heard it not, but opening the door cautiously, he entered.

“‘Tis the Captain, Miss Kate, wants to know if he could see the master.”

“Yes,” said she, in a voice scarcely above a whisper. “Who is with him? Is there a prisoner there?”

“Faix, there is then; but Captain Travers will tell you all himself.”

“Captain Travers!” cried Kate, a deep flush covering her face.

“Yes, madam,” said Frederick, as he entered at the same moment.

“I am but too happy to bear pleasant tidings, to think of my want of courtesy in intruding unannounced.”

“Leave the room – shut the door, Kerry,” said Kate, as with eyes fixed on Travers she waited for him to continue.

“Your cousin is safe, Miss O’Donoghue – he has reached the fleet, and is already on his way to France.”

“Thank God!” cried Kate fervently, as she fell upon her uncle’s shoulders, and whispered the tidings into his ear.

The old man looked up and stared wildly around him.

“Where’s Mark, my love – where did you say he was?”

“He’s safe, uncle – he’s on board of a French ship, and bound for France, beyond the reach of danger.”

“For France! And has he left me – has he deserted his old father?”

“His life was in peril, sir,” whispered Kate, who, stung by the old man’s selfishness, spoke almost angrily.

“My boy has abandoned me,” muttered the O’Donoghue, the one idea, absorbing all others, occupied his mind, and left him deaf to every explanation or remonstrance.

“You are right, Miss O’Donoghue,” said Travers, gently, “his danger was most imminent – the evidence against him was conclusive and complete; and although one of the principal witnesses could not have appeared, Lanty Lawler – ”

“And was he an informer?”

“He was, madam; but amid the mass of treachery he has met a just fate. Barrington, determined to punish the fellow, has come forward, and given himself up; but with such evidence of the horse-dealer’s guilt, that his conviction is certain; the sums he received from France are all proved under his own hand, and now that Hemsworth is no more, and Lawler’s treachery has no patron, his case has little hope. He is at this moment my prisoner; we took him on the mountain where he had gone with a party to secure Mr. Mark O’Donoghue, for whose capture a large reward was offered.”

As Kate listened to this recital, delivered in a tone which showed the contempt the speaker entertained for an enterprise undertaken by such actors, her own indignant pride revolted at the baseness of those with whom her cousin was associated.

“Yes,” said she at length, and speaking unconsciously aloud, “no cause could prosper with supporters like these; there must be rottenness in the confederacy that links such agencies as these together. And had my cousin not one friend? – was there not one to wring his hand at parting?” said she hurriedly, changing the theme of her thoughts.

“There was one,” said Travers, modestly; “Mr. O’Donoghue was noble-hearted enough, even in the hour of calamity, to forget an ancient grudge, and to call me his friend. He did more – he wished we had been friends for many a day before.”

“Would that you had,” said Kate, as the tears burst forth, and ran down her cheeks.

“And we might have been such,” continued Travers, “had not deceit and malevolence sowed discord been our families. You know not, Miss O’Donoghue, how deeply this treachery worked, and how artfully its plans were conceived. The very hopes whose disappointment has darkened my life, were fed and fostered by him, who knew how little reason I had to indulge them; forgive me, I pray, if I allude to a subject I ought never to recall. It was Hemsworth persuaded me that my suit would not prove unsuccessful; it was by his advice and counsel I risked the avowal which has cost me the happiness of my future life. I will speak of this no more,” said Travers, who saw in the deep blush that covered Kate’s features, the distress the theme occasioned her. “It was a selfish thought that prompted me to excuse my hardihood at the cost of your feelings.”

“I will not let you speak thus, sir,” said Kate, in a voice faint from excessive emotion, “there was no such hardihood in one favoured by every gift of fortune stooping to one humble as I am; but there were disparities wider than those of rank between us, and if I can now see how greatly these were exaggerated by the falsehood and treachery of others, yet I know that our opinions are too wide apart, to make agreement aught else than a compromise between us.”

“Might not time soften, if not obliterate such differences,” whispered Travers, timidly.

“It could not with me,” said Kate, resolutely; “this is the losing side ever, and my nature is a stubborn one – it has no sympathies save with those in misfortune; but we can be friends,” said she, extending her hand frankly towards him – “friends firm and true, not the less strong in regard, because our affections have not overcome our convictions.”

“Do not speak so decisively,” Miss O’Donoghue, said Travers, as his lip trembled with strong emotion; “even at this moment how much has misrepresentation clouded our knowledge of each other; let time, I entreat of you, dissipate these false impressions, or give me, at least, the opportunity of becoming more worthy of your esteem.”

“While I should become less so,” interrupted Kate, rapidly; “no, no; my duties are here,” and she pointed to the old man, who, with an expression of stupid fatuity, sat with his hands clasped, and his eyes fixed on vacancy. “Do not not make me less equal to my task, by calling on me for such a pledge. Besides,” added she, with a smile, “you are too truly English, to suggest a divided allegiance; we are friends; but we can never be more.”

Travers pressed the white hand to his lips without a word, and the moment after his horse was heard descending the causeway, as with desperate speed he hurried from the spot so fatal to all his hopes.

Scarcely had Frederick left the castle, when a chaise and four, urged to the utmost speed, dashed up to the door, and Sir Archy, followed by Herbert, jumped out. The old man, travel-stained and splashed, held an open paper in his hand, and cried aloud, as he entered the drawing-room —

“He’s pardoned, he’s pardoned – a free pardon to Mark!”

“He’s gone, he’s away to France,” said Kate, as fearing to awaken the O’Donoghue to any exertion of intelligence, she pointed cautiously towards him.

“All the better, my sweet lassie,” cried M’Nab, folding her in his arms; “his arm will not be the less bold in battle, because no unforgiven treason weighs upon his heart. But my brother, what ails him? – he does not seem to notice me.”

“He is ill – my father is ill,” said Herbert, with a terrified accent.

“He is worse,” whispered M’Nab to himself, as passing his hand within the waistcoat, he laid it on his heart.

It was so – the courage that withstood every assault of evil fortune – every calamity which poverty and distress can bring down – failed at last; – the strong heart was broken – the O’Donoghue was dead.

We will once more ask our readers to accompany us to the glen, the scene of our story. It was of an evening, calm and tranquil as that on which our tale opened, on a day in August, in the year 1815, that two travellers, leaving the postillion of their carriage to refresh his horses, advanced alone and on foot for above a mile into this tranquil valley; the air had all that deathlike stillness so characteristic of autumn, while over the mountains and the lake the same rich mellow light was shed. As the travellers proceeded slowly, they stopped from time to time, and gazed on the scene; and, although their looks met, and glance seemed to answer glance, they neither of them spoke: from their appearance, it might have been conjectured that they were foreigners. The man, bronzed by weather and exposure, possessed features which, in all their sternness, were yet eminently handsome: he wore a short thick moustache, but the armless sleeve of his coat, fastened on the bosom, was a sign still more indisputable than even his port and bearing, that he was a soldier. His companion was a lady in the very pride and bloom of beauty, but her dress, more remarkably than his, betrayed the foreigner; in the rapid look she turned from the bold scenery around them to the face of him at whose side she walked, one might read either a direct appeal to memory, or the expression of wonder and admiration of the spot. Too much engrossed by his own thoughts, or too deeply occupied by the scene before him, the man moved on, until at last he came in front of a low ruined wall, beneath a tall and overhanging cliff. He stopped for some seconds, and gazed at this with such intentness as prevented him from noticing the figure of a beggar, who, in all the semblance of extreme poverty, sat crouching among the ruins. She was an old, or at least seemed a very old woman – her hair, uncovered by cap or hood, was white as snow, but her features still preserved an expression of quick intelligence, as, lifting her head from the attitude of moping thought, she fixed her eyes stedfastly on the travellers.

“Give her something, ‘mon cher,’” said the lady to her companion in French; but the request was twice made before he seemed conscious of it. The woman, meanwhile, sat still, and neither made any demand for charity, or any appeal to their compassion.

“This is Glenflesk, my good woman,” said he at length, with the intonation of a foreign accent on the words.

The woman nodded assentingly, but made no reply.

“Whose estate is all this here?” said he, pointing with his hand to either side of the valley.

“‘Sorra one o’ me knows whose it is,” said the woman, in a voice of evident displeasure. “When I was a child it was the O’Donoghues’, but they are dead and gone now – I don’t know whose it is.”

“And the O’Donoghues are dead and gone, you say? What became of the last of them? – what was his fate?”

“Is it the one that turned Protestant you mean?” said the woman, as an expression of fiendish malignity shot beneath her dark brows: “he was the only one that ever prospered, because he was a heretic, maybe.”

“But how did he prosper?” said the stranger.

“Didn’t he marry the daughter of the rich Englishman, that lived there beyant? and wasn’t he a member of Parlimint? and sure they tell me that he went out beyond the says to be be Judge somewhere in foreign parts – in India, I believe.”

“And who lives in the old castle of the family?”

“The crows and the owls lives in it now,” said the woman, with a grating laugh – “the same way as the weasels and the rats burrow in my own little place here. Ay, you may stare and wonder, but here, where you see me sit, among these old stones and black timbers, was my own comfortable home – the house I was born and reared in – and the hearth I sat by when I was a child.”

The man whispered a few words to his companion in a deep, low voice – she started, and was about to speak, when he stopped her, saying, “Nay, nay, it is better not;” then, turning to the woman, asked, “And were there, then, no others, whose fortunes you remember?”