Lulled into a state of fancied security—suspecting no trick, thinking of no worse trouble in the future than a day when the arrears would have to be paid—the old man was, by reason of utter ignorance, and, it may be, natural carelessness, drifting on rocks from which his ship could never have been hindered breaking to pieces,—when he was saved as by a miracle.
What would be the ultimate end it might have puzzled a wiser than the General to say, but for a time, at least, Woodbrook was though not out of debt, out of danger. Every one connected with the matter felt nothing more could be done in the affair till John came home.
Meantime it oozed out, as indeed no one strove to prevent the story doing, that Mr. Brady and his friend had laid a deliberate trap for the General, and people began to say some very hard things about the master of Maryville in consequence; all the sins of his youth and his manhood were rehearsed, as sins will be on such occasions; all the wrong he had done in his lifetime, all the right he had left undone, all his errors of omission and commission, all his subterfuges and tricks, his faults social and domestic, the grief he had caused to many an honest father and mother; these things and others like them were disinterred from the always open grave of the past, and discussed alike in mansion and cottage in the town of Kingslough, and in other towns, besides in the country districts throughout all that part.
After a fashion, he had, up to this time, been making way with his fellows. His wife was not visited by any lady higher in rank than the wife of the minister who preached at the barn-like little meeting-house a couple of miles or so from Maryville, but men of a better class, though of a bad way of living, did not object to be seen in Mr. Brady’s company, and were willing to drink, smoke, make small bets and play cards with him, not merely at various hotels and inns in Kingslough and the other towns, but at his own house.
Now there came a change, nameless, perhaps, but certain. There was no direct cut, no absolute incivility, no alteration in manner of which it was possible to take notice, but his former acquaintances were always in a hurry when he met them, always had an engagement, always had to meet some one or go somewhere, and rarely now could find time to spend an hour or two in the evening at Maryville.
After all it was not right, these men opined, to have tried to drive the old General out of Woodbrook. The line must be drawn somewhere, and Kingslough drew it at that point which Mr. Brady had tried to cross.
Kingslough considered he ought to have refrained from meddling with a gentleman. Nothing could have revealed so certainly the taint in Mr. Brady’s blood as an attempt of such a nature. The marquis went up at once in public estimation. Many persons who had long been wishing to change their political creed, since Radical notions had begun to make Liberalism rather the creed of the vulgar, took that opportunity of turning their coats.
“It was a very fine thing of Ardmorne to do,” said Kingslough, Kilcurragh, Glenwellan, and the neighbouring districts. He had gone with General Riley to the Bank of Ireland himself, it was stated; he had found the extra money required beyond what the bank would advance. He had written to request Mr. John Riley’s presence, and arranged that his prospects should not suffer in consequence. In a time of trouble he had proved more than a friend, and then it was so clever of him to have found out that danger menaced the Rileys, and of what nature.
Of course, some one must have given him a clue, but he followed it up to the last inch of thread. Then came the question, who could have hinted the matter to him?
Conjecture, which it is never possible to balk, guessed every likely and unlikely person in the county. Rumour, which is the readiest inventor of fiction on earth, prepared a score of circumstantial tales on the subject, and ran them through society with as much regularity as any other serial writer might.