Next morning Mr. Curran rode early to the Abbey, with news of the arrests which he had been powerless to prevent. He looked with an eye less jaundiced than usual upon the world, for the sea-breeze instilled fresh life into him, weary and jaded as he was from many causes, and he felt that he deserved well of her ladyship for saving her son from a scandal. Though he laughed and joked in company, in private he was nearly always sad, partly by constitution, partly by reason of the sights he saw around him; and as he rode along this morning and meditated concerning his foe Lord Clare, the flecks of sunlight that chequered his mind vanished, leaving only darkness and despondency behind. Oh, that chancellor! Would no one free Ireland from a tutelage which became hourly more oppressive and capricious? Why could not the innocent conspirators be left alone? Theobald, the whale, was gone. Sure, naught but stirring up of dirty water could be gained by harrying the minnows. It was unwise to have locked up the lads with such a rattling of locks and muskets. The raid upon Tom Emmett's office, too, was a deplorable proceeding. No new or special charge of iniquity had been brought against his paper. Yet the place was ransacked in his absence, his property destroyed, his chairs and tables tossed out of window as though they carried treason in their varnish. Lord Clare must be mad, or desperately wicked. If he brought the country to ruin, it should not be for want of warning. To protest in parliament is one thing, to argue and implore in private is another. The little lawyer decided to speak openly to Lord Clare at their very next meeting, and clinched the matter in his mind with such a thump of his hunting-crop as caused his pony to leap forward and nearly throw his master from the saddle.
Madam Gillin and her daughter Norah were gardening as he rode past their hedge, and the former hallooed to him to stop. Mr. Curran could scarce forbear laughing at her appearance, so grotesquely serious did she look in a frayed turban soiled with pomade, and a crumpled frock of extravagant fashion, from under which peeped a pair of satin slippers down at heel. It was a thrifty habit with Madam Gillin to wear out her old quality-clothes at home, for she said that Norah must have a fine dowry somehow, and that for that purpose it would be needful to economise. Now her garments and her child's were always of the flimsiest and most tawdry mode, profusely adorned with feathers and spangles, trimmed with outrageous frills and furbelows; and the twain, who did not trouble soap and water unless about to receive company, might be seen any day over the hedge which divided their property from the main-road, strutting up and down among the flower-beds like moulting peacocks or birds of paradise in a decline. Madam Gillin was lying nervously in wait for news this morning, and hailed Curran's appearance with relief, for her nurse, Jug Coyle, had heard of the arrests from frequenters of her shebeen, and vague rumours were afloat that Terence was among the captured. Oddly enough, although she had appointed herself guardian in ambush to the younger son, she had never spoken to him: yet was she well posted in all that concerned her protégé down to minutest details; for were not all the array of grooms, farriers, dog-boys, foot-boys, tay-boys--what not?--in the habit of frequenting that too-convenient boozing-ken whose insidious hospitality was so offensive to their mistress at the Abbey? This was Madam Gillin's real reason for having established Jug at the Irish Slave. Through her she commanded an army of spies who, for a drop of the crather, studied my lady's face, translated her thoughts, imagined motives, as servants will who are argus-eyed, imaginative, inquisitive, endowed with a hundred ears. She was true to her trust of watching over Terence, though she seemed to know nothing at all about him, resolved, if need were, to do battle on his behalf, to point the finger of public-opinion at my lady if she behaved badly; and now she was sore perplexed concerning him, albeit he wist not of a guardian angel in a dirty old turban and crushed ostrich feathers.
Mr. Curran set her mind at rest, and turned up the avenue which led to the Abbey. The youth had certainly been present at the meeting, because the Emmetts were among his closest friends; but he was not affiliated, he assured her; and both agreed that his imagination must not be permitted to take fire; that he must never be allowed to become a member of the society.
When his nag turned the corner of the shrubbery, the little lawyer found those he sought grouped in front of the hall-door. My lady, in grey brocade, with a twist of lace through her white hair, was standing erect with crossed arms, looking with satisfaction at Doreen and Shane. The girl, though self-willed, had evidently taken her hint, and was preparing to lay siege to Shane; at least his fond mother chose to think so, and was deceived, as mothers often are. Just as grave people, for an idle whim, will turn for a moment from lofty contemplations to consider a pebble by the wayside, so calm Doreen had been bitten by a conceit. In her self-examination she had become convinced, with sorrow, that the part of Judith was beyond her strength, if Shane was to play Holofernes; and, disgusted with her own weakness, had permitted her mind to settle on my lady's nickname of Miss Hoyden. Being proved incapable of supreme sacrifice, she felt a wrathful desire for self-abasement, and resolved that, if she could not please her aunt in great things, she would do so at least in little ones, at the expense of private tastes.
So, to Lady Glandore's surprise, she appeared on this very morning in fashionable attire, which a week ago she had haughtily declined to wear; a sumptuous high-waisted percale, broidered in forget-me-nots, with great puffed sleeves and tight short skirt; low shoes of blue satin with wide strings; her beautiful hair in a straight sheet down her back, plaited together with straw, as the prevailing fashion was. Perched on the top of her head was a dainty straw bonnet, fit only for a fairy, and she looked under it, with her thoughtful brown face and solemn eyes, like some lovely victim tricked out in incongruous frippery, who was destined to figure in some Hibernian auto-da-fé.
'Young ladies of a strong-minded and serious turn do evidently not array themselves in wonderful garments without a reason,' so my lady argued. 'Neither do they descend to coquetry, save for the snaring of young men. Whom could Miss Wolfe desire to snare, if not her cousin Shane?'
This was well--extremely well. Unhappily, the young lord was not struck with the bonnet, or with the forget-me-nots. His mother saw that she would have to guide his attention to his cousin's blandishments.
Alack! he was in no mood to play the lover, being prosaically engrossed with a throbbing brow and swollen tongue. Shane, although he had 'made his head,' and could drink claret against most people, was apt to feel faded of a morning, and to retaliate for physical ills upon the first person who came within his reach. Last night he had presided over the Blasters, had shattered a decanter on the pate of a gentleman who presumed to breathe hard in his presence, and who, of course, had challenged him to fight. So far so good; but the stranger had shown himself so ill-bred as absolutely to decline to draw his sword till certain business matters could be arranged, and so the meeting was perforce postponed for a few hours--a most rude and inconsiderate proceeding! For might not the champion Blaster, the admirable Hellfire, the Prince of Cherokees, have other work upon his hands before dinner-time? And besides, though money-debts may wait for months without a smirching of the niceties of honour, it is a bad example for the multitude to allow duels to accumulate. Moreover, Shane had promised, as it happened, to promenade with the Gillins, in the Beaux Walk, on this particular afternoon. Even an Irish earl cannot, like Roche's bird, be in two places at a time; and so the youthful fire-eater fretted and fumed, cross with himself and everybody else, heedless of his cousin's bonnet, and longed to force a quarrel upon some one.
Terence was seated a few yards off, on the steps of the young men's wing, which led to his own apartment, giving some directions to his private henchman with regard to the manufacture of flies. Now and then he threw a displeased glance at his pretty cousin, marvelling for whose behoof she had made herself so bewitching, and then, gnawed by carking jealousy, turned to vent his spleen upon his servant.
But honest Phil only grinned as he twined the bright feathers with a skilful hand, nor heeded his master's ill-humour; for was he not his foster-brother, who loved the ground he trod on with the blind devotion of a clansman? He had been brought up with Terence at a respectful distance, had learnt Bible-stories with him from the tiles about the hearth, and made himself generally useful as he increased in years. Nothing came amiss to him. He could farry, cure a cow of the murrain, tin a saucepan, dance a jig, knit a stocking, sing a cronane against any young fellow in the county. There was nothing he would not do for Master Terence. He followed at his heels like a dog, looking into his eyes for orders as dogs do, bearing his whims and caprices with stoical endurance, as we bear the wind that blows on us. He was a type, was Phil, of a creature who vanished with the century; who, sharp and clever enough, professed to no intellect of his own, and was content to be led in all things by another. His attire under all circumstances was the same. A green plush coat, a scarlet vest, and buckskin breeches. A black leather hunting-cap was always, in or out of doors, cocked on one side of his shock head. Some people said he went to bed in it. In his capacity of farrier, he invariably carried a firing-iron as a walking-stick; so that what with the angel in ambush in the dirty finery, and the athletic follower with the firing-iron, Terence Crosbie may be said to have been well protected, even in days when none were out of danger.