CHAPTER XVIII.
At the distance of about a quarter of a mile from Clive Grange was a group of six or seven cottages, of neat and comfortable appearance, tenanted by labourers on Mr. Clive's own farm. They were all respectable, hard-working people; and as Clive himself was not without his prejudices, especially upon religious matters, he had contrived that most of those whom he employed should be Roman Catholics. As there were not many of that church in the part of the country where he lived, some of these men had come from a distance. He would not, indeed, refuse a good workman and a man of high character on account of his being a Protestant, but he had a natural preference for persons of his own views, and all things equal, chose them rather than any others. This preference was known far and wide; and consequently, when any of his distant friends wished to recommend an honest man of the Romish creed to employment, where they were certain to be well treated, they wrote to Mr. Clive, so that he had rarely any difficulty in suiting himself.
In one of these cottages, at a much later hour than usual, a light was burning on the night of which I have been speaking; and within, over the smouldering embers of a small wood fire, sat a tall man of the middle age, with a peculiar deep-set blue eye, fringed with dark lashes, which is very frequently to be found amongst the Milesian race. His figure was bent, and his hands stretched out over the smouldering hearth to gain any little heat that it gave out; and, as he thus sat, his eyes were bent upon the red sparks amongst the white ashes, with a grave, contemplative gaze. He seemed dull, and somewhat melancholy, and from time to time muttered a few words to himself with the peculiar tone of his countrymen.
"Ay-e!" he said, as something struck him in the half-extinguished fire, "that one's gone out too. If the priest stays much longer they'll all be out, one after the other. Well, it's little matter for that; we must all go out some time or another, and very often when we think we are burning brightest. That young lad now, I dare say, when he went out for his walk, never fancied his neck would be broke before he came home again. Sorrow a bit! He got what he deserved anyhow, and I'd ha' done it for him if the master hadn't--Hist! That must be the priest's step coming down the hill. He is the only man likely to be out so late in this country, and going with such a slow step, though the lads are having a bit of a shindy to-night they tell me."
The next moment the latch was lifted, the door opened, and Mr. Filmer walked in. The labourer instantly rose and placed a wooden chair for his pastor by the side of the fire, saying, "Good night, your reverence! It's mighty cold this afternoon."
"I don't find it so," answered Filmer; "but I dare say you do, sitting all alone here, with but a little spark like that. I was afraid you would get tired of waiting, and go to bed. I am much obliged to you for sitting up as I told you."
"Oh! in course I did as your reverence said," answered Daniel Connor. "I always obey my priest."
"That's right, Dan," answered Mr. Filmer. "Now I have come to tell you what I want you to do, like a good lad."
"Anything your reverence says, I am quite ready to do," replied the Irishman. "I kept the matter quite quiet as you said, and not a bare word about it passed my lips to any of the servants, for I am not going to say anything that can hurt the master, for a better never lived than he."
"No, Dan," answered the priest; "but I'll tell you what you must do, you must say a word or two to serve him." And Filmer fixed his eyes keenly upon the man's face, which brightened up in a moment with a very shrewd and merry smile, as he replied, "That I'll do with all my heart, your reverence. It's but the telling me what to say and I'll say it."
"Well then, you see, Dan," continued Filmer, "this is likely to be a bad business for Mr. Clive, if we do not manage very skilfully. He is somewhat obstinate himself, and might with difficulty be persuaded to take the line of defence we want, and which indeed is necessary to his own safety. Now the first thing that will take place here is the coroner's inquest."
"Ay! I suppose so," said Connor; "but they shan't get anything out of me there, I can answer for it. I can be as blind as a mole when I like, and as deaf too."
"But you must be somewhat more, Dan," was the priest's reply. "You see, if suspicion fixes to no one, and the jury bring in a verdict of wilful murder against some person or persons unknown, the magistrates will never leave inquiring into the matter till they fix it upon your poor master. What we must do must be to turn the first suspicions upon some one else, so as to keep Mr. Clive free of them altogether, and then he will be safe enough."
"Won't that be something very like murder, your reverence?" asked Connor, abruptly, with a very grave face. "I never did the like of that, and I think it's a sin, is it not?"
"The sin be upon me," answered Filmer, sternly. "Cannot I absolve you, Daniel Connor, for that which I bid you do? Are you going to turn heretic too? Do you doubt that the church has power to absolve you from your sins, or that where she points out the course to you the end does not justify the means?"
"Oh, no! the blessed saints forbid!" exclaimed Connor, eagerly. "I don't doubt a word of it; I am quite sure your reverence is right; I was only just asking you, like!"
"Oh! if that's all," answered Mr. Filmer, "and you are not beginning to feel scandalous doubts from living so long amongst a number of heretics all about, I will answer your question plainly. It is not at all like murder, nor will there be any sin in it. The person who is likely to be suspected will be able easily to clear himself in the end; so that he runs no risk of anything but a short imprisonment, which may perhaps turn to the good of his soul, for I shall not fail to visit him, and show him the way to the true light. But in the mean time, Mr. Clive will be saved from all danger; and if you look at the matter as a true son of the church, you will see that there is no choice between a believer like Mr. Clive and an obstinate heretic and unbeliever like this other man."
"Oh! if it is a heretic!" exclaimed Connor, with a laugh, "that quite alters the matter; I didn't know he was a heretic."
"You do not suppose, I hope," replied Mr. Filmer, "that I would have proposed such a thing if he was not. All my children are equally dear to me, be they high or low, and I would not peril one to save another."
"Well, your reverence, I am quite ready to do whatever you say," answered Connor; "and if you just give me a thought of the right way I'll walk along it as straight as a line."
"The case is this, then," rejoined the priest; "there was a quarrel between this young lord and a Mr. Dudley, which went on more or less through the whole of this day. Dudley went out about eight o'clock, and Lord Hadley followed him and overtook him, and they went on quarrelling by the way. Very soon after that the young lord met with his death. Now men will naturally think that Mr. Dudley killed him, for no one but you and your master and Miss Clive saw him after, till he was speechless. What you must do then is this:--when you hear that the coroner's inquest is sitting, you must come up and offer to give evidence; and you must tell them exactly where you were standing when the young lord came up to the top of the cliff; and then you must say that you saw a man come up to him, and a quarrel take place, and two or three blows struck, and the unhappy lad pitched over the cliff."
"And not a word about Miss Helen?" said the man.
"Not a word," answered Filmer. "Keep yourself solely to the fact of having seen a man of gentlemanly appearance----"
"Oh! he is a gentleman, every inch of him," exclaimed Connor. "No doubt about that, your reverence."
"So you can state," continued the priest; "but take care not to enter too much into detail. Say you saw him but indistinctly."
"That's true enough," cried the labourer; "for it was a darkish night, and I was low down in the glen and he high up on the side of the hill, so that I caught but a glimmer of him, as it were. But it was the master, notwithstanding, that I am quite sure of, or else the devil in his likeness. But, by the blessed saints! I do not think it could be the devil either, for he did what any man would have done in his place, and what I should have done in another minute if he hadn't come up, for I would not have stood by to see the young lady ill-treated, no how."
"Doubtless not," answered the priest; "and it would be hard that the life of such a man should be sacrificed for merely defending his own child."
"Oh, no! that shall never be," answered Connor, "if my word can stop it; and so, father," he continued, with a shrewd look, "I suppose that the best thing I can do is, if I am asked any questions, to say that I didn't rightly see the gentleman that did it; but that he looked like a real gentleman, and may be about the height of this Mr. Dudley. I saw him twice at the farmhouse, and if he is in the room, I can point him out as being about the tallness of the man I saw; and that's not a lie either, for they are much alike, in length at least. Neither one. nor the other stands much under six feet. I'd better not swear to him, however, for that would be bad work."
"By no means," answered the priest. "Keep to mere general facts; that can but cause suspicion. I wish not to injure the young man, but merely to turn suspicion upon him rather than Mr. Clive; and by so doing, to give even Mr. Dudley himself a sort of involuntary penance, which may soften an obdurate heart towards the church which his fathers foolishly abandoned, and leave him one more chance of salvation, if he chooses to accept of it. It is a hard thing, Daniel Connor, to remain for many thousands of years in the flames of purgatory, where every moment is marked and prolonged by torture indescribable, instead of entering into eternal beatitude, where all sense of time is lost in inexpressible joy from everlasting to everlasting; but it is a still harder thing to be doomed in hell to eternal punishment, where the whole wrath and indignation of God is poured out upon the head of the unrepenting and the obstinate for ever and ever."
"It is mighty hard, indeed!" answered the labourer, making the sign of the cross. "The Blessed Virgin keep us all from such luck as that!"
"It is from that I wish to save him," rejoined Mr. Filmer; "but his heart must first be humbled, for you know very well, Daniel, that pride is the source of unbelief in the minds of all these heretics. They judge their own opinions to be far better than the dogmas of the church, the decisions of councils, or the exposition of the fathers; and by the same sin which caused the fall of the angels, they have also fallen from the faith. Let no true son of the church follow their bad example; but knowing that all things are a matter of faith, and that the church is the interpreter mentioned in Scripture, submit their human and fallible reason implicitly to that high and holy authority which is vested in the successor of the Apostle and the Councils of the Church, where they will find the only infallible guide."
"Oh! but I'll do that, certainly," replied Connor, eagerly; and yet a shade of doubt seemed to hang upon him, for he added, the moment after, "But you know, your reverence, that when they swear me they will make me swear to tell the whole truth, and if I do not say that I know it was Mr. Clive, it will be false swearing."
"Heed not that," answered Filmer, with a frown. "Have I not told you that I will absolve you, and do absolve you? Besides, how can you swear to that which you only believe, but do not exactly know. You told me this evening, up at the hall, that you did not see your master's face when he struck the blow."
"Ah! but I saw his face well enough when he was going up," replied the labourer.
"That does not prove that he was the same who did the deed," said Filmer. "Another might have suddenly come there, without your perceiving how."
"He was mighty like the master, any how," said the man, in a low tone; "but I'll say just what your reverence bids me."
"Do so," answered Filmer, turning to leave the cottage; "the church speaks by my voice, and accursed be all who disobey her!"
The stern earnestness with which he spoke; the undoubting confidence which his words and looks displayed in his power, as a priest of that church which pretends to hold the ultimate fate of all beings in its hands; his own apparent faith in that vast and blasphemous pretension; had their full effect upon his auditor, who, though a good man, a shrewd man, and not altogether an unenlightened man, had sucked in such doctrines with his mother's milk, so that they became, as it were, a part of his very nature. "To be sure I will obey," said Connor; "it is no sin of mine if any harm comes of it. That's the priest's affair, any how." And he retired to his bed.