Tubbermore, too, fell back into its former condition of ruin and decay. No one seemed to know into whose hands the estate had fallen, but the talismanic word “Chancery” appeared to satisfy every inquiry, and account for a desolation that brooded over the property and all who dwelt on it. The very “Cottage” had yielded to the course of time, and little remained of it save a few damp discolored walls and blackened chimneys; while here and there a rare shrub, or a tree of foreign growth, rose among the rank weeds and thistles, to speak of the culture which once had been the pride of this lovely spot.
Had there been a “curse upon the place” it could not have been more dreary and sad-looking!
Of the gate-lodge, where Keane lived, a few straggling ruins alone remained, in a corner of which a miserable family was herded together, their wan looks and tattered clothing showing that they were dependent for existence on the charity of the very poor. These were Keane's wife and children, to whom he never again returned. There was a blight over everything. The tenantry themselves, no longer subject to the visits of the agent, the stimulus to all industry withdrawn, would scarcely labor for their own support, but passed their lives in brawls and quarrels, which more than once had led to a felon's sentence. The land lay untilled; the cattle, untended, strayed at will through the unfenced fields. The villages on the property were crammed by a host of runaway wretches whose crimes had driven them from their homes, till at length the district became the plague-spot of the country, where, even at noonday, few strangers were bold enough to enter, and the word “Tub-bermore” had a terrible significance in the neighborhood round about.
Let us now turn for the last time to him whose fortune had so powerfully influenced his property, and whose dark destiny seemed to throw its shadow over all that once was his. For years Roland Cashel had been a wanderer. He travelled every country of the Old World and the New; his appearance and familiarity with the language enabling him to assume the nationality of a Spaniard, and thus screen him from that painful notoriety to which his story was certain to expose him. Journeying alone, and in the least expensive manner,—for he no longer considered himself entitled to any of the property he once enjoyed,—he made few acquaintances and contracted no friendships. One object alone gave a zest to existence,—to discover Mr. Cor-rigan, and place within his hands the title-deeds of Tubber-more. With this intention he had searched through more than half of Europe, visiting the least frequented towns, and pursuing inquiries in every possible direction; at one moment cheered by some glimmering prospect of success, at another dashed by disappointment and failure. If a thought of Linton did occasionally cross him, he struggled manfully to overcome the temptings of a passion which should thwart the dearest object of his life, and make vengeance predominate over truth and honesty. As time rolled on, the spirit of his hatred became gradually weaker; and if he did not forgive all the ills his treachery had worked, his memory of them was less frequent and less painful.
His was a cheerless, for it was a friendless, existence. Avoiding his own countrymen from the repugnance he felt to sustain his disguise by falsehood, he wandered from land to land and city to city like some penitent in the accomplishment of a vow. The unbroken monotony of this life, the continued pressure of disappointment, at last began to tell upon him, and in his moody abstractions—his fits of absence and melancholy—might be seen the change which had come over him. He might have been a long time ignorant of an alteration which not only impressed his mind, but even his “outward man,” when his attention was drawn to the fact by overhearing the observations of some young Englishmen upon his appearance, as he sat one evening in a café at Naples. Conversing in all that careless freedom of our young countrymen, which never supposes that their language can be understood by others, they criticised his dress, his sombre look, and his manner; and, after an animated discussion as to whether he were a refugee political offender, a courier, or a spy, they wound up by a wager that he was at least forty years of age; one of the party dissenting on the ground that, although he looked it, it was rather from something on the fellow's mind than years.
“How shall we find out?” cried the proposer of the bet. “I, for one, should n't like to ask him his age.”
“If I knew Spanish enough, I'd do it at once,” said another.
“It might cost you dearly, Harry, for all that; he looks marvellously like a fellow that wouldn't brook trifling.”
“He would n't call it trifling to lose me ten 'carlines,' and I 'm sure I should win my wager; so here goes at him in French.” Rising at the same moment, the young man crossed the room and stood before the table where Cashel sat, with folded arms and bent-down head, listening in utter indifference to all that passed. “Monsieur,” said the youth, bowing.
Cashel looked up, and his dark, heavily browed eyes seemed to abash the other, who stood, blushing, and uncertain what to do.