Madam Gillin drew back a step; for, stung to the quick by the beginning of her speech, my lady made as if to strike her foe with the toy-bayonet; but, reason coming to the rescue, she tossed it on the ground. This last insult was too much. To speak plainly of such shameful things to her very face! The brazen hardened papist hussy! But vulgar Gillin laughed at the fierce impulse with such a jeering crow as startled Mr. Curran in the antechamber.
'Do you want fisticuffs?' she gibed, with a plump white fist on either hip. 'I warrant ye'd get the worst of such a tussle, my fine madam, for all your haughty airs--you--who should act as serving-wench to such as I. Nay! Calm yourself. I'm off. This is the first time we've ever spoken--I hope it may be the last, for that will mean that you have behaved properly to your second son. I've no desire to cross your path; you cruel, wicked, heartless woman!'
Lady Glandore, her thin lips curling, took Terence by the hand for all reply, and bade him kneel.
'Swear,' she said in low clear tones, drawing forward the astonished Shane, 'that you will be faithful to your elder brother as a vassal to a suzerain, that you will do him no treason, but act as a junior should with submission to the head of his house.'
The little boy had been crying with all his might ever since they brought in that ghastly heap. Confused and awed by his mother's hard manner he repeated her words, then broke into fresh sobs, whilst Madam Gillin stared and clasped her hands together as she turned to go.
'Sure the woman's cracked,' she muttered. 'What does she mean? The feudal system's passed. No oath can be binding on a child of twelve. Maybe she's not wicked--only mad--as mad as my lord was. Well, God help the child! What's bred in the bone will out! Deary me! There's something quare about all these half-English nobles.'
Mr. Curran waited, according to agreement, lest anything should be required by my lady; and though by no means a lady's man, was not sorry so to do, for the conduct of the countess in her sudden bereavement had been, to say the least of it, extraordinary, and he was curious to observe what would happen next. There was something beneath that haughty calmness which roused his curiosity. Was she regretting the past, conscious only of the sunshine, forgetful now of storms; or was she rejoicing at a release? Holding no clue, conjecture was waste of brain-power.
So Mr. Curran resolved to reserve his judgment, and turned his attention to what was going on without, while the servants stole backwards and forwards, improvising the preparations for a wake.
The proceedings outside were well-nigh as lugubrious as those within. A thick mist and drizzling rain were descending on the town, turning the roads to quagmires, the ornamental draperies to dish-clouts, the wreaths to funereal garlands. The illuminations, concerning which expectation had been so exercised, flickered and guttered dismally. Groups of men in scarlet, their powder in wet mud upon their coats, reeled down the greasy pavement, waking the echoes with a drunken view-halloo or a fragment of the Volunteer hymn. Some were making an exhaustive tour of the boozing-kens; some staggered towards the lottery-rooms in Capel Street, or the Hells of Skinner's Row; some were running-a-muck with unsteady gait, and sword-tip protruded through the scabbard for the behoof of chairmen's calves; while some again, in a glimmer of sobriety, were examining the smirched stockings and spattered breeches which precluded their appearance at Smock Alley. Chairs and coaches flitted by, making for Moira House or the Palace of his Grace of Leinster, for all kept open-house to-night, and Mr. Curran's crab-apple features puckered into a grin as he marked how fearfully faces were upturned to Daly's, where one of the elect was lying stiff and stark. But the grin soon faded into a look of sadness, as, like some seer, he apostrophised his countrymen.
'O people!' he reflected, 'easily gulled and hoodwinked, how long will your triumph last? This is but a grazing of the ark on Ararat--a delusive omen of the subsiding of the waters. Our bark is yet to be tossed, not on a sinking, but on a more angry flood than heretofore. Eat and drink, for to-morrow you die. What was your ancestors' sin that ye should be saddled with a curse for ever? Your land was the Isle of Saints, yet were ye pre-doomed from the beginning; for when the broth of your character was brewed, prudence was left out and discord tossed in instead. And the taskmaster, knowing that in discord lies his strength, plays on your foibles for your undoing. How long may the prodigy of your co-operation last? Alas! It pales already. To-morrow is your supreme trial of strength, and your chiefs are at daggers-drawn. What will be the end? What will be the end?'