 | CHAPTER V. Dermot O'Brien; or, The taking of Tredagh |  |
5. CHAPTER V.
“And, for that right is right, to follow right
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.”
Tennyson.
The apartment into which the young earl led the lady of his
love—for such it may be admitted that she was, and one in every
way worthy of his distinctions, whether natural or social—was
a low-roofed square room, raised a few steps above the level of
the neighboring chambers, and looking through a large mullioned
oriel window into a small spot of garden, situated in the
very centre of the castle, and overlooked only by the battlements
of the tall square towers which surrounded it on every
side but this by their blank and windowless walls.
It was for this reason probably that Ellinor Desmond had
selected its as her own withdrawing room, or bower—as ladies
apartments were still sometimes called—and it was perhaps,
the only one in the castle fitted, from its seclusion and conveniences,
to be the abode of a young and delicate girl, almost
alone, in the midst of a society of rude and half civillised clansmen.
The entrance to it lay through an ante-chamber, communicating
by a narrow passage, on either hand of which was a
small chamber for attendants, with the grand reception saloon
of the castle, in which the mother of the earl—a stern old
stately matron of the olden school, who remembered the civil
war of the great Tyrone, and the iron rule of Elizabeth—was
wont to sit in cold and solitary state.
There she was not, however, as the young and handsome
pair passed through it on their way to Ellinor's bower—being,
in consequence of the page's message, absent upon those hospitable
cares intent which had not as yet been devolved upon
menials. In the ante-chamber, however, there were three pretty,
and one reading aloud to her companions some merry
French romance; for their laughter was heard, fresh and musical,
before the earl and his fair companion reached the door of
the room in which they sat.
They all three rose on the entrance of their lady, and cour-tesied
gracefully, and with more of a lady-like demeanor than
we should now expect from mere servant maidens; but at
that period, when the lines of distinction between the commonalty
and gentry were drawn so much more broadly than at
present, the personal attendants of the great and noble were for
the most part drawn from the humbler branches of their own
families, or composed of the young aspirants of other noble
lines, who scrupled not to perform what we should now deem
menial offices, until their term of servitude should fit them, in
their turn, to command others.
The former of these cases was most general with the female
portion of the household, except for ladies of the very highest
rank of nobility, who were waited upon by gentlewomen of
birth and breeding—the latter with the pages and equerries,
who rose gradually to the rank even of knighthood itself—when
knighthood was not a mere empty name—and were often of
birth as noble as he whose cloak they brushed, or whose spurs
they buckled to his heel.
And in the present instance, one of her pretty girls in waiting
was a far-off cousin of her own; while the two others
were—what was in those days and in Ireland accounted a yet
nearer connexion—her foster sisters; and all three had been
brought up with their young mistress in a French convent, as
was very usual among the Catholics, both of Ireland and
Great Britain; and hence, in no small degree, the grace and
courtesy of their demeanor, and assuredly the fluent use of the
French tongue.
Without pausing, however, longer than to say a kind word
en passant, Ellinor Desmond and her lover passed into the little
communicated through a small oratory, with its lamp burning
before the sweet picture of Madonna, its prie-dieu, and its velvet
hassocks, with the garden beyond.
That was a gay and cheerful little chamber, lighted up as it
was brilliantly by a flashing fire of bog-pine which blazed
brilliantly on the hearth—rendered agreeable by the cavernous
thickness of the castle walls, and its elevated site, surrounded
by unshorn woods and dashing waters, and by the
gleam of two huge candles, home-manufactured from native
virgin wax, burning in unfique silver candelabra.
The walls were wainscoted with dark bog-oak, almost as
black as ebony, pannelled in exquisitely-wrought compartments,
between clustered columns and fretted ogives of the
same material in elaborate relief. The dark hues of this
woodwork were relieved, in the first place, by the exceeding
brightness of the polished surface, which reflected the lights
like a mirror; and in the second, by a number of fine cabinet
pictures, by the best masters of the English, Flemish and Spanish
schools, all at that day nearly in their prime of perfection, set
off by massive gilded frames, one of which hung in the centre
of each compartment. The curtains which mantled the single
deep window, the draperies of the oratory, the cushions of the
large soft settees and arm-chairs, the very cloth of the round
table, strewn with books, bijouterie, musical instruments, writing
materials, and articles of female fancy-work—the name of
which is legion—were of rich crimson velvet, deeply laced
and fringed with gold. A spinet, the piano-forte of that day,
and a superb Irish harp completed the furniture of the lady's
bower; but among its decorations were two or three articles
not yet enumerated, so characteristic of the time, and so
illustrative of feminine employments in the good days of old,
that they should not be passed over without notice.
In a deep gothic niche, above the fire-place—which was
itself a quaint, low-browed arch, richly carved, yawning above
finest Milan steel, azure, engrailed with gold, complete from
spur to plume, with the shield slung about the neck, the lance
in the gauntlet of the right hand, while that of the left rested
on the pommel of the heavy straight sword, the dagger of
mercy in the girdle, and the hammer-at-arms and battle-axe
lying crossed at the feet of the effigy.
The whole of this superb panoply was as efficient, as bright,
and in as perfect order as if it had been intended for immediate
use; yet the fashion of the armor was obsolete; and the
use of complete suits had already passed away, even among
leaders, as inconsistent with the rapidity of modern warfare,
and of little use against musquetry—of none against ordnance.
The meaning, however, of that suit in that position, and of its
careful preservation, was displayed in a gilt-lettered scroll beneath
the alcove on which it stood. The words ran thus
quaint in device, and antique in form:—
Remember Florence Desmond,
WHO FORGOT NOT
HIS COUNTRY OR HIS GOD.
These be ye arms he wore.
His bones he near his Savlour's grave,
Rest for his soul, all Desmonds, crave.
than this: that indignant at the gradual subjugation of his
countrymen to the Anglo-Normans of the neighboring isle, he
had assumed the red cross and fallen in the Holy Land, though
in what crusade, or in what era, romance and history alike fail
to record. How the arms of the patriot champion had returned
to his native land, was no less a matter of obscurity than
the date or manner of his death; but he had been a bold man
who had expressed a doubt about the authenticity of the arms,
or the truth of the legend—at least in the presence of an
O'Brien or a Desmond.
One thing was clear alone—that they hung there, religiously
preserved, not so much a monument of the hereditary warrior's
valor and renown, as a memento of his Celtic hatred for
the rule of the stranger, with no faint inculcation of the charge,
“go thou and do likewise,” to his descendants of the most remote
posterity.
This for the age and the country—perhaps I might say for
the country in all ages.
But of the difference of female occupations at that day and
in our time, the evidences were in no degree less obvious or
decisive.
Among the instruments of music, and articles of virtu upon
the table, many of which would make the brightest eyes glance
with eager expectation in this nineteenth century, lay a pair of
embroidered hawking-gloves, fashioned for no hands—as the
delicate size showed at a glance—but those of the soft Ellinor;
a velvet pouch and belt, with the lures for the truant falcon,
peeped out from beneath some written music of the old notation,
and the leaves of an open book were kept down in lieu of
presse papier, by a small dagger with gold hilt and scabbard,
rough with the toil of Cellini's chisel.
Then, in the chimney corner, stood a light birding-piece,
with a new-fangled wheel-lock, such as a lady's hand might
balance; on the wall, near it, hung an ivory-inlaid cross-bow,
with a quiver full of deer and bird bolts, besides a miscellaneous
assortment of hawk's bells and jesses; silver-embossed
curbs, and shell-mounted bridle-reins, and two or three pair of
carved and gilded spurs, certainly suited for no larger heel
than that of the fair mistress of the temple which I have entered,
but with no sacrilegious tread.
Yet bend not your brows in scorn, gentle and delicate dames
and damsels of this present day; nor with profane tongue stigmatise
your sister beauty of a bygone century as coarse or masculine,
or rude, though she did, at times, suffer the winds of
heaven to visit her unsoiled brow and glowing cheek in their
speed—to launch her falcon on the track of the clanging heron,
to speed her bird-shot after the flying partridge, or her bolt
after the bounding roe; for she could bend her flexible throat
and round her snowy arms over the harp as graciously as the
must languid of you all; could warble notes as soft, and arch
her blashing neck away in feigned reluctance from the very
words she loved to listen, with an air of as artificial nature as
if she had been the pupil of the most fashionable madame in
the land. If they did break their fasts more heartily on the roast
capon or the venison pasty, and qualify their cups with bourdeaux
or malvoisie in lieu of chocolate or congo, their bodies
were as delicately modelled, their complexions as pure—aye!
and their souls as womanly and finely organised—as any in
times older or more modern, unless the pencils of Vandyke
and Lustie, the pens of Sidney Lovelace and Montrose, have
all conspired to cheat us with a fiction.
But as they were in those days, they entered the bower,
which, to their eyes, seemed courtly and decorous and refined,
as perhaps to ours it would appear picturesque, chivalrous, and
romantic: and well might it so appear, for in those days if they
thought less of pictures, and talked less of chivalry, and read
less of romance, yet assuredly there was more of all the three
crowded into every hour of their lives, in their costumes and
customs, in their actions and devotions, in their opinions and
observances—than into a whole life of ours.
They entered; and strange playmates for a delicate and
youthful girl, a huge Irish greyhound of the old wolf-breed,
—already becoming rare, and now all but extinct, reared itself
slowly up from the deer-skin on which it had been resting in
front of the glowing embers, shook itself, and yawned lazily;
and then stalking forward with a calm majesty of demeanor, not
inconsistent with its immense size—to greet his mistress, thrust
his long shaggy muzzle into her white hand, and wagged his
long feathered stern with genuine affection.
At the same time a beautiful little long-winged merlin—the
smallest, and one of the most daring of the falcon tribe—which
had been dozing, without hood, bells, or jesses, on the top of a
high-backed arm chair, rose instantly, with a shrill quavering
cry, upon its long arrowy pinions, and darting toward her with
the speed of lightning, folded its wings as rapidly as if they had
disappeared altogether, and sat motionless on her snowy shoulder,
murmuring in a low tone of pleasure, and carefully averting
its sharp talons from her skin.
“See, dear one,” said the young earl, pressing her hand
with a half-melancholy smile, “how all things seem to love
and worship thee; how even the wildest of the fowls of air,
the fiercest of the hounds of chase, appear to change their natures,
to lay aside their shyness and their savage moods to do
homage to my lady. God grant that it may be so ever!” And
he sighed slightly as he ceased from speaking.
Women are quick emphatically to judge, not by words
alone, but by every tone and accent of the human voice,
the feelings of the heart that inspires them, especially if it
be the heart of a man, and a man whom they love.
And Dermot O'Brien had not spoken six words before Ellinor's
soft eyes were fixed upon his face, half doubtfully, half
sadly; but when he ended she said instantly:
“Something has occurred, Dermot, of much moment—I am
sure of it; and you are greatly moved and distempered—else
you would not speak so despondently. Tell me at once; what
is it?”
And patting the head of the tall greyhound, she bade him gently
to lie down, removed the merlin from her shoulder to her
wrist, on which he sate as contentedly as if he had been on his
own familiar perch, pruning his ruffled feathers. Then seating
herself quietly, yet with an anxious expression on her features,
in a great easy chair, she motioned O'Brien to a stool before her
feet, and waited to hear his tale.
“I spoke from my heart, Ellinor,” replied the earl, “when
dear girl, when you believe that I am moved. I trust that I
am moved without reason. But there is now near at hand—aye!
under this very roof—a wilder and a fiercer beast than hawk or
hound—aye! than the very wolves which our ancestors were
wont to hunt over the hills of yore. Do you mark me?”
“I know not what or whom you mean, O'Brien. This
stranger who accompanied you home to-night?”
“It is no stranger, Ellinor. Would God that he were a
stranger. Think you a stranger could have moved me thus?”
“If not a stranger, who?—speak, Dermot!”
“A kinsman—Hugh O'Neil!”
For a moment's space, the girl moved not, nor offered any
answer; but she turned deathly pale, and a visible shudder
ran through her lovely frame:
“Over God's forefend!” she answered at last, and then
added, “but how?—how?—as a prisoner?”
“As a hostage, or—a guest!”
“A guest!” the beautiful woman interrupted him, her eyes
actually lightening with indignation—“a guest! Hugh O'Neil
a guest of the O'Brien! The traitor—the apostate of the loyal
and the true!—or have you too become Parliamentarian, Puritan—how
do they phrase it? You—you and Hugh O'Neil!
I should have thought that the bones of your father would
have burst their cerements—I should have thought those arms
would have resounded on their stand, as his foot crossed the
threshold!”
As she spoke the words, with a cheek again flushed and
glowing, and a raised voice, the iron hand of the effigy, to
which she pointed slipped from the pommel of the sword, and
fell, with a heavy hollow clang against the giambeaux.
“Are your words prophetical?” cried the young man, starting.
“or is this trickery!”—But he lost not his presence of mind, or
readiness of action for a moment; but snatching one of the
wax candles, sprang up on a stool and proceeded to examine the
was nothing to be seen; though, as he commenced his scrutiny,
the old hound, which had started up at the iron clang,
lifted his nose into the air and uttered a low, long-drawn howl,
such as the superstitious of mankind construe into a recognition
of some disembodied presence.
“It was nothing, Dermot,” said the girl, shaking off her own
emotion at the sight of his—“For shame! A soldier scared
by a mere empty sound!—It was nothing—a mere accident!”
“A very strange one,” he replied, resuming his seat slowly.
“But everything is strange now-a-days! Here, in the mere
killing of a stag, with all my hounds around me, and my men
within call, my foot must fail me, and my sword fly my hand;
and then, who of all mankind must spring out of the earth—
where not an eye of man has seen him these twice five years,
as if the fiend himself had sent him, but this Hugh O'Neil, to
preserve my life; when, fifty times rather had I lost it than owe
thanks to him who, I believe it—God forgive me, almost as I believe
in Him—murthered my father!”
“Good heaven!—can this be so, Dermot?' exclaimed Ellinor,
again turning deadly pale from the mere apprehension of
her lover's peril. “And did he save your life?”
“I would to heaven that I had lost it, rather!”
“Oh! say not so—say not so—Dermot! God pardon you
the word, and him, if it may be, some of his sins, for the deed.”
“I do say so, Eily,” answered the young earl mournfully.—
“I do say so, notwithstanding; for I see not the end or object
of his coming hither—unless it be ruin and misery to us all.”
“But you have not yet told me wherefore or how he came
hither.”
“He asked it, nay insisted on it, as the guerdon for the saving
of my life; and I could not refuse it; for he would be slain
surely for a renegade by the first of our people whom he mot
withal—a fate which, how richly he might merit it soever,
would scarce comport with my honor.”
“True, true. You could scarce do otherwise. But what
makes he in Ireland at all?”
“He boasts himself repentant—that is, a double traitor!—
but I doubt him a spy, rather, and am almost—heaven forgive
me when I shame my manhood to confess it—afraid of him.”
“There is no shame that the bravest of mankind should fear
a serpent; and if ever there was such in the guise of man, such
is Hugh O'Neil. But tell me all,” she added, “or how can I
advise you?”
Then, in a few concise and clear sentences, he set before
her all that had passed, not forgetting the intelligence which he
had brought, and his evident intention of doing all the service
he could for the moment to the king's cause, whatever might
be his ulterior objects.
“But such an instrument?” was the first right-minded impulse
of the high, noble-hearted girl.—“will not so base an
instrument, even if he could be trusted, draw down dishonor
if not ruin, even upon a righteous cause?”
“I think so, Eily—in God's truth, I think so!”
“And my brother, and Florence, Dermot, what thinks he?”
“Even as I; and coursels that I hold him as a hostage, in
all honor, but in durance, until to-morrow shall bring forth
the truth or falsehood of his tidings. He has him in ward
even now.”
“Then are you better counselled than by a weak girl, such as
I. But what fear you, or what harm can he work here in
ward, if not in durance?”
“Past doubt, this intelligence is true, else had he not trusted
himself here; and this proven true, we can no longer hold
him in ward even. He must be either sent in honor forth, or
dwell here in honor. Now, though this information he has
brought can in truth avail us nothing—as without him we must
have heard of it ere long from Ormond—he will build much
on it in support of his future usefulness; and of his own past
millany, will weave arguments right plausible why by his present
penitence, the less too that he is a canting hypocrite—why he
can do good service for the king in future.”
“Still what fear?—who will believe or trust in this double
traitor? Florance you say, has his eyes open?”
“Had he and I our wills, uncurbed by scrupulous honor, he
should swing at daybreak from the castle flag-staff; and I
would send his head from a culverin into the garrison of Dublin,
to tell them his espials.”
“You do not dread your mother, who has so deep cause to
distrust, to detest him?—You do not fear me?”
“I do fear my mother, somewhat. I do fear not you, but
for you, everything! I doubt not that he knows you are here—
here within these walls—and that you chiefly drew him hither?”
“If you fear not me, fear for me nothing!” answered the
spirited girl. “The grandchild, daughter, sister of Florence
Desmond fears not what man can do unto her. Fear not for
me, O'Brien,” she said, smiling cheerfully, rather to cheer her
lover than that she felt any joy herself. “What better guardian
can I have than my good gallant Fingal here, who never
leaves his mistress?—Or if I need a weapon, what better than
this trusty steel,”—and with the word, she raised the dagger
from the book on which it lay—“which has once already saved
an Irish girl's honor, and drank the blood of her foul assailant.”
“A frail weapon, Eily,” he said, taking her delicate fingers
between his own, “in so weak a hand as this. It would
scarcely find a traitor's heart beneath a corslet of the Ironsides.”
“Then should it find an honest and a loyal heart beneath
the velvet boddice of a lady! Still it should save my honor!”
“You are a brave girl, Ellinor,” he replied, gazing with passionate
admiration upon her speaking lineaments, and into her
bright eyes, kindled as they were, with high and glorious fire.
“God of his mercy grant that you never be so tried!—But
it is not so that I fear for you.”
“How then, O'Brien?—Tell me—tell me.”
“The priest, Ellinor, the priest!”
“His reverence!” she answered, pausing a moment, and
again slightly shuddering. “Dermot, I think you never loved
Father Daly.”
“Never, Eily, indeed; not he me.”
“Oh, you are wrong there!—you are wrong. He says he
has loved you ever, and would have served you, but you would
not from the beginning.”
“Tush! tush!—the truth is not in him.”
“The truth not in him?” said Ellinor, doubtfully, and almost
reproachfully—“the truth not in Father Daly! Oh! Heaven
forgive you, Dermot; you are sinful!”
“Aye, I know you believe in him, and love and fear him—
fear him, perhaps, even more than you love or believe him. My
mother fears him only and entirely, loving him not at all, and
believing him thus far only—that he can lock or unlock for her
the gates of Paradise.”
“And do not you believe that, Dermot?”
“No more than I believe that man can scale the crystal battlements
of heaven, and storm the everlasting habitations of
the blessed! No, Eily; I love not the priest, nor fear the man,
ner believe his teachings; for he teaches always and ever
that Thou shalt do evil, in the hope that good may come of
it;' and I believe that a damnable, and not a Christian doctrine.
But I do fear his influence upon those whom I love—and
when I think of them, I almost hate his arts, and almost tremble
at his power.”
Does he teach that, O'Brien?” asked the girl, gazing at her
lover with wide eyes of bewilderment and wonder, but never
dreaming of doubting his spoken word.
“Hath he never taught it to thee?”
“Never! never!—else had I spurned both him and his teaching.
that must claim the attributes of the Allwise; for man may see
and know the present evil, but God alone can foreknow the
consequence! Out on it! our on it!—does he teach this?”
“He would call theo a weak vessel,” replied Dernot, scornfully.
“Too weak for the strong meats, which are not made
for babes or sucklings. But you have heard him teach this
many times, Eily.”
“Never!—When?—How?”
“Have you not heard him hint, with dark inuendoes, that
this very Hugh O'Nell, whom you well know he never
would condemn, or give up as altogether outcast, even when
condemned of the Church, might be still acting ad majorem
Dei gloriam, in betraying his king for a time—in drawing his
sword against his country—even in seeming to foreswear his
God—that he might, in a word, be playing the traitor only in
order again to betray those hereafter to whom he was then be
traying others?”
“A—h!” cried the girl, abhorrently, with a long sharp inhalation
of her breath, rather than an articulate word, letting
her arms fall down by her sides despondently—“ A—h!
Dermot!”
“You recollect, Ellinor?”
“I do! I do—it is true. Though I thought not of it before.”
“And now, when this O'Neil is reconciled to the Church—
is ready to play the traitor in behalf of this king whose father
he betrayed, will not the priest return to his old preaching?—
will he not put all trust himself in his disciple?—will he not
force all others to receive him, either by fear or by favor?”
“Alas! O'Brien!” exclaimed Ellinor now thoroughly
alarmed, and unable to contradict the deductions which be drew
from such premises—“But is this O'Neil's story?”
“Not to me nor to Florence Desmond! He knows too well
that we would have scourged him till his bones were bare with
our dog-whips, had he but breathed such infamy to ears of
since no was an urchin of ten years, to play upon the weaknessos
of every one who crossed his path, for his own profit.
He is as sure of the priest as the soaring eagle of the lambkin;
although the serpent were the better simile; for the priest's
wisdom surpasses far his innocence.”
“And will his reverence believe him?”
“Before he shall have told a tale. Hugh's subtle craft was
ever kindred and congenial to the priest's astute wiliness; and
he did not a little by his casuistry to lend it yet a keener edge.
I tell you he will jump at the conclusion, or ere a word be
spoken; and this man's double villany shall be accounted to
him as merit, ere his defence be opened.”
“And thence what fear you?”
“Everything that is evil. The necessity of enduring this
man, knowing him to be a villain, and believing him to be a
spy; the necessity of having him ever near to us—privy to
our councils—present in our camps—a participator in our
battles—a partner in our fortunes; the peril of his betraying
all and everything to Cromwell, and we foreseeing all, yet
unable to parry anything! And above all, and worst of all,
the agony—for it will be nothing less to me—of seeing him
daily at my board—of believing him to be the controller of
yours, of my mother's destiny! By heaven! it drives me mad
to think of it!”
“Of my destiny! Hugh O'Neil the controller of my destiny!
Do you conceive it possible? Dermot O'Brien—I would
dio sooner fifty deaths—I had almost said die sooner, soul and
body! Do you think I have forgotten—forgotten his insolence,
his violence, his crimes?—Never! I say—never! never!”
“You know not—you cannot tell. Even here, the powers
of the Church are immense, and the artifices of the unworthy
of her sons yet more boundless.”
“And you believe Father Daly capable—?”
“I think Father Daly,” he interrupted her, “no true priest
—but an ambitious, daring, worldly-minded, and unscrupulous
bad man. Ambitious and unscrupulous, not perhaps for himself;
but for whatever he may deem the advancement of the
Church; and by advancement, he means secular interest and
worldly power. I think him capable of sacrificing mine or my
mother's life, or your honor—may, his own brother's life, or his
own sister's honer, to the winning of the stakes for which he
plays!”
“And yet you consort with him—take counsel with him—and
in some sort obey him.”
“Alas! my Ellinor—in this our hapless country, I must do
so, or abandon at once king and country, principle and creed,
to the Puritan invader.”
“But wherefore, Dermot?—in the name of heaven, wherefore?”
“Because in this most wretched and distracted land, our
priesthood have become—as nowhere else—the demagogues,
the leaders of the popular will in matters wholly secular and
political. And neither I nor Ormond—not even great Tyrone
himself in his day of glory, can stir one inch in opposition to
their will, and hold so much oven as our own vassals in subjecttion,
much less lead on the men of Ireland at large to conflict
with the foe. As they inflame, or hold back lukewarm, so
will the people burn and rage, or fall away and fly. And of
this be sure—he will take O'Neil's side, and magnify him if he
can, even to making him a leader; because his knavish low-born
craft may be made the tool of the priest's high towering
and ambitions skill, where my blunt onwardness of purpose,
and Florence Desmond's soul of honor, would mock at any indirection,
although it were disguised by all Rome's deepest
sophistry.”
“I see—I understand. See, perhaps, and understand more
than you believe or expect. This is my counsel, Dermot, since
you have sought: let not the priest on any account speak
his truth be certain, or his falsehood without question. If the
last, you will deal with him; how, I desire not to think, nor be
informed. I will go forthwith and disclose all this—all your
doubts—and all my fears—for I do fear now very much,
O'Brien; and for reasons which have come upon me, slowly,
but certainly, while you have been speaking—to your mother.
I think I can prevail with her, in no event to receive him at
her bourd, or suffer him beneath the same roof with her. But
be that as it may, mark and receive my vow, Dermot O'Brien.”
“What mean you, Eily?” cried the young man, half-alarmed
by the eager and wild excitsment of her manner, and the passion
which trembled in every accent of her raised voice.—
“Eily, my own dear girl, what mean you?”
“Listen and hear,” she answered with a grave, sad smile;
and with the words, she kneeled down on the hearth-stone, and
stretched out her arms toward the beautiful, calm face of the
Madonna, which seemed to look down quiet, unmoved, and beniguant,
upon the dark and passionate agitation of this lovely
child of earth. “And you, Virgin Mother, dearest, and holiest,
and best beloved; and ye, saints and angels, and thou,
Heavenly Father of all those who are afflicted and oppressed,
and turn to thee for aid—hear, and receive, and ratify my vow;
for in your presence, on the hearth-stone of my murthered uncle's
hall, I swear, that never, by word or deed, by sign or thought,
will I receive, or countenance, or admit to my presence, willingly,
this man, this Hugh O'Neil, whom I believe his murthere—that
never, knowingly and willingly, will I sit at the
same board, or kneel at the same altar, break of the same bread,
drink of the same cup, or breathe of the same air with him,
so may ye help me at my utmost need, whom I have called to
hear my vow! And if I fail of this, so may all they whom I
most love eschew me, and more also. Amen! Amen! So be
it!”
And as she spoke, she drew out the dagger which she had
fervently.
Then she arose to her feet with a serener aspect, and more
composed demeanor, and taking the earl by the hand, said, in
“low, soft whisper:
“Now, Dermot, are you satisfied? For if not, I swear to
you, that when you ask me, with true cause for asking—and
without cause you would not—whether by day or night,
whether from the board or the altar—whether to the court or
the camp—to the midnight wilderness or the beleaguered city.
—to a foreign land or a native grave, undoubting and unquestioning,
I will go with you. Your country—as the Hebrew
maiden said—shall be my country, and your God shall be mine,
for in life I know you will forget neither; and if the one
should fall and the other forsake, at least we can die for them
together. Now, Dermot, are you satisfied?”
“Angel!” he cried, “angel! Now indeed you have made
me brave—now you have made me strong. Hugh O'Neil, do
your worst! Sir priest, work your wiliest! The daring of
the one, the deceit of the other—I scorn and I defy you!—
Farewell, Eily, dearest, bravest, best. Fare you well, for a
little while. I go to the priest. Lose no time, I beseech you,
but seek out my mother, and tell her all, all, everything. We
will meet anon in the great hall. Till then, once more, farewell!”
And with the words, he turned and left the room with a
bolder port and a heart far more at ease, than he had carried
since his first meeting with his loathed and despised kinsman;
but she, as soon as he was gone, exhausted by the very vehemence
of her late emotion, and unsustained any longer by
his exciting presence, sank back into her armed chair, covered
her face with her hands, and wept bitterly.
| CHAPTER V. Dermot O'Brien; or, The taking of Tredagh | |