"It is matter of complete indifference to me who Miss Martin marries, if she only continue to reside where she does at present. I 'm certain she 'd not consult _me_ on the subject; I'm sure I'd never control _her_. It is a _mesalliance_, to be sure; but it would be equally so, if she, with her rustic habits and uneducated mind, were to marry what would be called her equal. In the present case, she 'll be a little better than her station; in the other, she 'd be vastly beneath it!"

"Poor Molly!" said he, half aloud; and, for the first time, there was a touch of his father's tone and manner in the words.

Lady Dorothea looked at him, and with a slight shrug of the shoulders seemed to sneer at his low-priced compa.s.sion.

"Scoff away!" said he, sternly; "but if I thought that any consent we gave to this scheme could take the shape of a coercion, I 'd send the estate to the--"

"You have, sir; you have done all that already," broke in Lady Dorothea.

"When the troubled breathing that we hear from yonder room ceases, there is no longer a Martin of Cro' Martin!"

"Then what are we losing time for?" cried he, eagerly. "Are moments so precious to be spent in attack and recrimination? There's Scanlan sitting on a bench before the door. Call him up--tell him you accept his terms--let him start for London, post haste. With every speed he can master he 'll not be a minute too soon. Shall I call him? Shall I beckon to him?"

"Send a servant for him," said Lady Dorothea, calmly, while she folded up the letter, and laid it on the table at her side.

Martin rang the bell and gave the order, and then, a.s.suming an air of composure he was very far from feeling, sat silently awaiting Scanlan's entrance. That gentleman did not long detain them. He had been sitting, watch in hand, for above an hour, looking occasionally up at the windows, and wondering why he had not been summoned. It was, then, with an almost abrupt haste that he at last presented himself.

"Read over that letter, sir," said Lady Dorothea, "and please to inform me if it rightly conveys your propositions."

Scanlan perused Ma.s.singbred's letter carefully, and folding it up, returned it. "Yes, my Lady," said he, "I think it embraces the chief points. Of course there is nothing specified as to the mode of carrying them out,--I mean, as to the security I should naturally look for. I believe your Ladyship does not comprehend me?"

"Not in the least, sir."

"Well, if I must speak plainer, I want to be sure that your concurrence is no mere barren concession, my Lady; that, in admitting my pretensions, your Ladyship favors them. This is, of course," said he, in a tone of deference, "if your Ladyship condescends to accept the terms at all; for, as yet, you have not said so."

"If I had not been so minded, sir, this interview would not have taken place."

"Well, indeed, I thought as much myself," said he; "and so I at once entered upon what one might call the working details of the measure."

"How long will it take you to reach London, sir?" asked she, coldly.

"Four days, my Lady, travelling night and day."

"How soon after your arrival there can you make such arrangements as will put this affair out of all danger, using every endeavor in your power?"

"I hope I could answer for that within a week,--maybe, less."

"You'll have to effect it in half that time, sir," said she, solemnly.

"Well, I don't despair of that same, if I have only your Ladyship's promise to all that is set down there. I 'll neither eat nor sleep till the matter is in good train."

"I repeat, sir, that if this settlement be not accomplished in less than a week from the present moment, it may prove utterly valueless."

"I can only say I'll do my best, my Lady. I'd be on the road this minute, if your Ladyship would dismiss me."

"Very well, sir,--you are free. I pledge myself to the full conditions of this letter. Captain Martin binds himself equally to observe them."

"I 'd like it in writing under your Ladyship's hand," said Scanlan, in a half whisper, as though afraid to speak such doubts aloud. "It is not that I have the least suspicion or misgiving in life about your Ladyship's word,--I'd take it for a million of money,--but when I come to make my proposals in person to Miss Mary--"

"There, sir, that will do!" said she, with a disdainful look, as if to repress an explanation so disagreeable. "You need not enter further upon the question. If you address me by letter, I will reply to it."

"There it is, my Lady," said he, producing a sealed epistle, and placing it on the table before her. "I had it ready, just not to be losing time.

My London address is inside; and if you'll write to me by to-morrow's post,--or the day after," added he, remarking a movement of impatience in her face--"You shall have your bond, sir,--you shall have your bond,"

broke she in, haughtily.

"That ought to be enough, I think," said the Captain, with a degree of irritation that bespoke a long internal conflict.

"I want nothing beyond what I shall earn, Captain Martin," said Scanlan, as a flash of angry meaning covered his features.

"And we have agreed to the terms, Mr. Scanlan," said her Ladyship, with a great effort to conciliate. "It only remains for us to say, a good journey, and every success attend you."

"Thank you, my Lady; I'm your most obedient. Captain, I wish you good-bye, and hope soon to send you happy tidings. I trust, if Mr.

Martin asks after me, that you 'll give him my respectful duty; and if--"

"We'll forget nothing, sir," said Lady Dorothea, rising; and Scanlan, after a moment's hesitation as to whether he should venture to offer his hand,--a measure for which, happily, he could not muster the courage,--bowed himself out of the room, and closed the door.

"Not a very cordial leave-taking for one that's to be her nephew,"

muttered he, with a bitter laugh, as he descended the stairs. "And, indeed, my first cousin, the Captain, is n't the model of family affection. Never mind, Maurice, your day is coming!" And with this a.s.suring reflection he issued forth to give orders for his journey.

A weary sigh--the outpouring of an oppressed and jaded spirit--broke from Lady Dorothea as the door closed after him. "Insufferable creature!" muttered she to herself? and then, turning to the Captain, said aloud, "Is that man capable of playing us false?--or, rather, has he the power of doing so?"

"It is just what I have been turning over in my own mind," replied he.

"I don't quite trust him; and, in fact, I'd follow him over to London, if I were free at this moment."

"Perhaps you ought to do so; it might be the wisest course," said she, hesitatingly.

"Do you think I could leave this with safety?" asked he. But she did not seem to have heard the question. He repeated it, and she was still silent. "If the doctors could be relied on, they should be able to tell us."

"To tell us what?" asked she, abruptly, almost sternly.

"I meant that they'd know--that they'd perhaps be in a position to judge--that they at least could warn us--" Here he stopped, confused and embarra.s.sed, and quite unable to continue. That sense of embarra.s.sment, however, came less of his own reflections than of the cold, steady, and searching look which his mother never ceased to bend on him. It was a gaze that seemed to imply, "Say on, and let me hear how dest.i.tute of all feeling you will avow yourself." It was, indeed, the meaning of her stare, and so he felt it, as the color came and went in his cheek, and a sense of faintish sickness crept over him.

"The post has arrived, my Lady, and I have left your Ladyship's letters on the dressing-table," said a servant. And Lady Dorothea, who had been impatiently awaiting the mall, hastened at once to her room.

CHAPTER XXVI. A LETTER THAT NEVER REACHES ITS ADDRESS

It was not without a very painful emotion that Lady Dorothea turned over a ma.s.s of letters addressed to her husband. They came from various quarters, written in all the moods of many minds. Some were the mere gossip of clubs and dinnerparties,--some were kindly and affectionate inquiries, gentle reproachings on his silence, and banterings about his pretended low spirits. A somewhat favorite tone is that same raillery towards those whose lot in life seems elevated above the casualties of fortune, forgetting the while that the sunniest path has its shadows, and they whom we deem exempt from the sore trials of the world have their share of its sorrows. These read strangely now, as he to whom they were addressed lay breathing the heavy and labored breath, and muttering the low broken murmurs that prelude the one still deeper sleep!

With a tremulous hand, and a gesture of fretful impatience, she threw them from her one after the other. The topics and the tone alike jarred upon her nerves. They seemed so unfeeling, too, and so heartless at such a moment. Oh, if we wanted to moralize over the uncertainty of life, what a theme might we have in the simple fact that, quicker than the lines we are writing fall from our pen, are oftentimes changing the whole fate and fortune of him for whom we destine them! We are telling of hope where despair has already entered,--we are speaking joy to a house of mourning! But one letter alone remained unopened. It was in Repton's hand, and she broke the seal, wondering how he, who of all men hated writing, should have turned a correspondent.

The "strictly confidential" of the cover was repeated within; but the hour had come when she could violate the caution, and she read on. The first few lines were a half-jesting allusion to Martin's croakings about his health; but even these had a forced, constrained air, and none of the jocular ease of the old man's manner. "And yet," continued he, "it is exactly about your health I am most anxious. I want you to be strong and stout, body and mind, ready for action, and resolute. I know the tone and style that an absentee loves and even requires to be addressed in. He wants to be told that, however he may be personally regretted, matters go on wonderfully well in his absence, that rent is paid, farms improved, good markets abound, and the county a pattern of quietness. I could tell you all this, Martin, and not a syllable of it be true. The rents are not paid, partly from a season of great pressure, but, more still, from an expectancy on the side of the people that something--they know not what--is coming. The Relief Bill only relieved those who wanted to job in politics and make market of their opinions; the ma.s.ses it has scarcely touched. They are told they are emanc.i.p.ated, but I am at a loss to know in what way they realize to their minds the new privilege. Their leaders have seen this. Shrewd fellows as they are, they have guessed what disappointment must inevitably ensue when the long-promised boon can show nothing as its results but certain noisy mob-orators made Parliament men; and so they have slyly hinted,--as yet it is only a hint,--'this is but the first step--an instalment they call it--of a large debt, every fraction of which must yet be paid!'

"Now there is not in all Europe a more cunning or a deeper fellow than Paddy. He has an Italian's subtlety and a Celt's suspicion; but enlist his self-love, his vanity, and his acquisitiveness in any scheme, and all his shrewdness deserts him. The old hackney coach-horses never followed the hay on the end of the pole more hopefully than will he travel after some promised future of 'fine times,' with plenty to eat and drink, and nothing to do for it! They have booked themselves now for this journey, and the delusion must run its course. Meanwhile rents will not be paid, farms not improved, bad prices and poverty will abound, and the usual crop of discontent and its consequent crime. I 'm not going to inflict you with my own opinions on this theme. You know well enough already that I never regarded these 'Agrarian disturbances,' as they are called, in the light of pa.s.sing infractions of the peace, but traced in them the continuous working of a long preconcerted plan,--the scheme of very different heads from those who worked it,--by which the law should ever be a.s.sailed and the right of property everlastingly put in dispute.

In plain words, the system was a standing protest against the sway of the Saxons in Ireland! 'The agitators' understood thoroughly how to profit by this, and they worked these alternate moods of outrage and peace pretty much as the priests of old guided their auguries. They brought the game to that perfection that a murder could shake a ministry, or a blank calendar become the triumph of an Administration!

"Such is, at the moment I am writing, the actual condition of Ireland!

Come home, then, at once,--but come alone. Come back resolved to see and act for yourself. There is a lingering spark of the old feudalism yet left in the people. Try and kindle it up once more into the old healthful glow of love to the landlord. Some would say it is too late for all this; but I will not think so. Magennis has given us an open defiance; we are to be put on our t.i.tle. Now, you are well aware there is a complication here, and I shall want to consult you personally; besides, we must have a search through those registries that are locked up in the strong-room. Mary tells me you carried away the key of it.

I tell you frankly, I wish we could hit upon some means of stopping Magennis. The suit is a small war, that demands grand preparation,--always a considerable evil! The fellow, I am told, is also concocting another attack,--an action against your niece and others for the forcible abduction of his wife. It would read fabulously enough, such a charge, but as old Casey said, 'There never yet was anything you could n't impute at law, if you only employed the word "conspiracy;"'