My Lords of Strogue. Volume 2 of 3

What a pity that he uttered those last few words! Curran beheld again the well-known Lord Clare. Terence became hot with resentment.

'If you are preparing a St. Bartholomew,' he said, 'why should I be specially favoured? Murderer!'

'Murderer?' echoed Curran, with a scorn which incensed the chancellor. 'Worse than murderer! Common butcher of your fellows! You have netted the leaders-you will goad the leaderless sheep to leap after them. You will drive them to rise against you. Then you'll massacre them for rising. You'll turn your artillery against the helpless peasants. You'll mow them down like grass. You know their peculiarities-so far you are Irish. With a cudgel or a shillalagh there's none can beat 'em. But they're bad at firearms. Firearms! The use of gunpowder's been forbidden them for ever so many years!'

'On my honour, it's provoking to save people despite themselves,' affirmed the exasperated chancellor. 'If the boy's hanged it'll be your fault, Curran.'

'I wish for no mercy,' said moody Terence, 'from such hands as yours, my lord. I remember Orr. So will you on your death-bed. Here comes Cassidy again. Come, Mr. Curran, we'll stroll to his chambers for a glass of claret.'

The trio departed together arm-in-arm, and Lord Clare looked after their retreating figures with extreme vexation as, mounting his horse, he rode slowly to Ely Place.

CHAPTER X.

THE BIRD AND THE FOWLER

The three allies retired to Cassidy's chambers, to laugh at their ease over Lord Clare's discomfiture.

'Bedad! he's losing his nerve,' Cassidy asserted, as he poured a ruby bumper down his throat. 'Did ye see how wild he aimed-like a gossoon that had never blazed? Maybe he's of the same kidney as the spalpeen in the play who betune the sheets is frighted by the Banshees.'

'Richard the Third at Bosworth?' suggested Mr. Curran. 'If he gets his deserts the chancellor's death-bed will be a fearsome spectacle.'

'It must be an awful thing to have innocent blood upon your conscience,' Terence mused. 'Yet how many are there among us now whose arms are steeped in it to the shoulder! Is it not strange that confessions of murder are nearly always of some single case? Wholesale murderers don't seem to be so troubled. The heart must be callous, I suppose, before it becomes capable of wholesale murder. Hence Shakespeare was wrong as to his ghosts on Bosworth Field. Richard slept undisturbed the sleep of the infantine and just.'

Cassidy seized the bottle, and poured himself out another bumper. 'I hate this city at night!' he said. 'Since General Lake's curfew order, it is like a sepulchre. I vow it's pleasant to hear the patrol, or the jolly sodger-boys returning home. What, Mr. Curran, are you off? These are ticklish times for night-journeys. Be not too venturesome. Better stop here. Sure I'll be glad to give you hospitality till morning.'

'And leave my Primrose to fret alone at home? No, thank you. She'll be dying to hear how her favourite is going on. I must say I'm as relieved as she can be that he should leave for England. One half-fledged victim saved at any rate out of the nest from the maw of Moiley.'

'What was Lord Clare talking of when I came up?' asked the giant, abruptly.

'He was advising this imprudent young gentleman to make for other shores,' grunted Curran, strapping on spatterdashes for his ride; 'and he was right.'

'You know you don't think so in your heart,' Terence retorted. 'With Tom Emmett and others at Kilmainham, it is more necessary than ever that Cassidy here and I should be vigilant. We've put our hands to the rudder, you know. We must summon hither some of the head men from Cork, at once. If Cassidy agrees with me, we'll write the letters before morning. It is essential that the gaps in the central committee should be filled up.'

'Can't you see how you are playing into their hands? Poor flies, whose feet stick in the web!' Curran sneered. 'You break from one mesh to catch in the next. Each time you break away, the struggle becomes harder; because the spider gums his lines, and your legs are sticky with the gluten! Little by little, by small crafty hawls, the executive are draining the society of all its master-minds. When they shall be safely snared; when no leaders with any pretension to worth are left, then they'll bring about a rising. The plan shows intimate knowledge of Irish nature capped by British phlegm. It's enough to make a man with his wits about him pitch himself headlong down the nearest well.'

'We will be very prudent,' Terence said. 'Yet of what avail is prudence with secret sleuthhounds on our track?'

Honest Phil, who had been squatting in a corner on the floor, with his gaze fixed upon his master, could bear this talk no longer.

'Faix! it's meeself that knows who 'tis. Ochone! sad's the day, I know it,' he murmured in the voice of tribulation.

The three turned eagerly round. 'You know who 'tis!' they cried out in chorus.

Then Phil related all he knew of Biddy-interlarding the narrative with many groans, in that the golden-tressed darling of his heart should, by turning out such a shocking monster, seem to impugn his taste.

Cassidy emptied the claret bottle, then flung it on the ground in his boisterous way-swearing, with ogrish snapping of the jaws, that he'd be even with the traitress; that he would throttle her with his own big fingers.

Knitting his brows Mr. Curran walked up and down, his hands behind his back. Terence stared at his henchman, bewildered by this new light.

After a pause Mr. Curran spoke. 'Phil's right and wrong,' he said. 'The woman may have betrayed much. But now her teeth are drawn-that's as regards the present, I mean. What a labyrinth it is! She may rake up old stories of the past, of which "juries of the right sort" will make the properest use-but she can tell nothing that has happened since the "Irish Slave" was burnt.'

'Her mother Jug Coyle's still living at the Little House,' Cassidy suggested; 'maybe she-'

'Impossible. We know now that after the destruction of the shebeen this precious young lady went to live in barracks with the soldiers.'

'Murther! and I've kissed her often,' the giant sighed with contrition, as though by that unlucky fact virtue must have gone out of him.

'Anyways,' added Terence, 'she could never have had a hand in the arrest at Cutpurse Row. Somebody supplied a list of delegates. Who was it? It's terrible not to know!'

'Therein lies the hopelessness of the whole affair,' declared Mr. Curran, preparing to depart. 'Blindman's-buff's nothing to it. With such wriggling in the grass it's simply putting honest heads into the wild beast's mouth for nothing. I won't say what I should think about it were circumstances otherwise. But as the wretched case stands, it would be a great load off my mind, my dear boy, if you were out of the bagarre.'

Cassidy scrutinised the face of Terence narrowly, who wore a look of moody uncertainty. 'Councillor Curran's right,' he said at length. 'Better show a clean pair of heels, and save your neck.'

The young man glanced up in anger, and the other smiled with a good-humoured nod.

'It was kind of Lord Clare,' Curran went on, walking hither and thither, much perturbed-'it certainly was kind of him to speak as he did. Maybe he's not so bad as I think. If so, the Lord forgive me! That there should be a warrant for you ready signed is not surprising. Warrants are pretty nearly dead letters just now, but it would not do to kidnap the brother of Lord Glandore without proper authority; and this secret foe that he spoke about is too sharp to do things unwarily. Once taken, your life's not worth a pin's fee with the Staghouse crew, ready to swear anything, and some one prepared to dictate. Who have ye ever injured, Terence? – think.'

'My Lord Clare said all that!' exclaimed Cassidy, disconcerted. Plunging his hands deep in his breeches-pockets, he whistled 'The Sword' softly to himself, while an expression of concern puckered his jolly lineaments.

'The hopes of the society will centre on you now,' the giant observed presently. 'As it is, the peculiarity of the attitude ye have taken these several months past, combined with your exalted rank, makes your position dangerous. The society'll look to you, now that Emmett and the rest are gone. Though all my heart's with it, it's little real use myself'll be, worse luck-I'm stupid. Theobald told me so. Tom Emmett's often called me a blundering booby.'

This confession was made with such deprecating humility that Terence was touched, and held out his hand.

'You wrong yourself,' he said. 'Cheer up. We'll stand by each other. But I'm not above taking good advice.'

'Ye'll go?' his two friends said, in different cadence.

'No, no!' replied Terence. 'That may not be. It's plain my duty's here, and here I'll remain. But Emmett and the others were foolhardy; for the future I'll keep myself concealed. We'll knead together a new directory at once. A great responsibility has fallen on my shoulders for which I am not fitted; yet I'll do my best, and play my part as others do. It is possible, as you say, that the delegates will look up to me. They'll want to be kept together-no easy task. Would that Miss Wolfe were here to help!' he concluded, sighing.

A malignant shadow flitted across the giant's face, and faded. 'Hide!' he echoed, with a bluntness which sounded a little like a taunt. 'Where can ye hide, and Sirr not find ye?'

'I'll go home to Strogue to-morrow, and then-'

'The first place they would go to if you were wanted,' objected Curran.

'Only to look over some papers and destroy them. I know of a safe place where they'll not find me.'

'Ah!' exclaimed the giant, with a tinge of curiosity, 'and you've papers to destroy at Strogue?'

'Here is a scheme I've drawn out for the capture of Dublin. The lords of the Privy Council-'

'Put it away!' roared the choleric little lawyer. 'Is it the back of me ye want to see? I won't know these things, since I still wear the King's silk gown, yet ye're for ever flourishing them under my nose!'

In a tantrum Mr. Curran departed, like a small snuff-scented whirlwind, accompanied by Phil, who went to fetch his horse.

Terence and Cassidy exchanged glances, and burst into peals of laughter.

'What a character it is!' Cassidy declared, as he busied himself with the brewing of cold punch-a grave matter, in which his companion too was soon equally engrossed.