Tales from "Blackwood," Volume 7

by Unknown

I lay silent, sick at the thoughts of my own meanness in his eyes; while he advanced, shading the light of the candle from my face, and in a low cold tone, asked if I desired anything?

I shall never forget him as he stood, the light thrown full upon his strong features and broad chest, and shining purple through the fingers of his large hand. “I asked, sir, did you require any assistance?” he repeated. “Are you in pain?” he went on. I now replied that my chief pain was caused by my own unworthy appearance; made a confused apology for my misconduct, and offered my acknowledgments for the protection I had received. “You have saved the life of my child,” he said, turning slightly from me, “and protection is a debt which must be paid; for your follower, he must thank the same circumstance for what little life his own mad conduct has left him.” Without another word, he took a phial from the table, and, pouring out a draught, handed it to me; I mechanically drunk it off; but ere I had taken it from my lips, he was gone. I heard the doors close and the bolts shoot after him with strange forebodings; and when the sound of his footsteps had died away in the long passage beyond, fell back in a wild maze of apprehension and self-censure, till I again sank into a heavy sleep.

When I awoke, there was a yellow twilight in my little cabin, from the scattering of a red ray of the sunset which streamed through a crevice in the door. I had therefore slept a whole day; my fever was abated; the gnawing pain had left my head, and I longed to eat. I knocked upon the boards, and the door was presently opened; but it was some time ere my eyes could endure the flood of light which then burst in. The figure which at length became visible amid it, was little worthy so goodly a birth. The lank, slack, ill-hinged anatomy of Peg, with a bottle in one hand, and a long horn spoon in the other, advanced, and in no gracious tone demanded what was my will. I turned and lay silent; for I never felt an awkward situation so embarrassing as then. My gorge rose at the malignant cause of all my disasters; but interest and discretion told me to be civil if I spoke at all. I gave no answer; she was in no humour to suffer such trifling with her time. “Hear till him, Jamie!” she exclaimed to some one behind her, “hear till him, the fashious scunner! he dunts folk frae their wark as if he was the laird o’ the Lang Marches himsell, and then——” “Good Mistress Margaret——” “Mistress me nae mistresses! there’s ne’er a wife i’ the parish has a right to be mistressed, since she deeit wha’s wean ye wad betray! Deil hae me gin I can keep my knieves aff ye, ye ill-faured bluid-seller!”—“Ill-faured what?” shouted I. “No just ill-faured neither, blest be the Maker, and mair’s the pity; ye’re a clean boy eneugh, as I weel may say, wha had the strippin’ and streekin’ o’ ye; but I say that ye’re just a bluid-seller, a reformer, a spy, gin ye like it better!” She backed down the steps, and holding a leaf of the door at each side, stretched in her neck, and went on, “Ay, spy, Willie Macdonnell, spy to your teeth.—Isna your name upon your sark breast? and arena the arms that ye disgrace upon your seal, and daur ye deny them? daur ye deny that ye’re the swearer away o’ the innocent bluid o’ puir Hughy Morrison, wham ye hangit like a doug upon the lamp-posts o’ Doonpatrick? Daur ye hae the face to deny that ye come here e’en noo to reform upon Square O’More and his bonny wean? Daur ye hae the impurence to deny it?” Here I was relieved by the entrance of Mr O’More himself. I addressed him in a tone as cool and conciliatory as I could command. “I am much relieved to find, sir, that any harshness I may have to complain of, has originated in a mistake. I am Mr Macdonnell of Redrigs. It was only last week that I returned from England. I have not been in this part of the country for many years; and can only say, that if any person bearing my name deserves the character you seem to impute to me, I detest him as cordially as you do.” He eyed me with visibly increased disgust. “It will not pass, sir, it will not pass. I have had notice of your intentions. Mr Macdonnell of Redrigs is in Oxford.”—“I tell you, sir, he is here!” I cried, starting up in bed. “Back, back!” he exclaimed to the servants who were pressing round; they fell back, and he came up to me. “Hark ye, sir, instead of assuming a name to which you have no right——” The passion which had been burning within me all along, blazed out in uncontrollable fury. I started with a sudden energy out into the floor; dashed backwards and forwards through the room, stamping with indignation, while I asserted my honour, and demanded satisfaction; but the fire which had for a minute animated me failed; my tongue became confused and feeble; the whole scene whirled and flickered round me, and I sank exhausted, and in a burning fever, on a seat.

Every one who has suffered fever knows what a fiery trance it is. How long mine had continued I could not guess; when the crisis came, it was favourable, and I awoke, cool and delighted, from a long sweet sleep. That scene I had already witnessed, of sunset through the room beyond, was again before me; the same grey and purple haze hung over the mountain, and the same rich sky from above lit up the river-reaches; the dim old room was warm in the mellow light; the folding-doors stood wide open, but on the steps where the marrer of the whole had stood before, lo! the radiance revelling through her hair; the rich light flushing warm through the outline of her face and neck; the sweet repose of satisfaction and conscious care beaming over her whole countenance; benign and beautiful stood Madeline O’More, her finger on her lips. “She, too, thinks me a spy,” I muttered, in the bitterness of my heart, and hid my face upon the pillow. But who can describe my delight when I heard her well-remembered accents murmur beside me, “Oh no, believe me, indeed I do not!” I looked up. She was covered with blushes—I felt them reflected on my own cheek—there was a conscious pause. “Then you do believe that I am what I have told you?” I said at last. “O yes! but indeed you must forgive the error,” she replied; and readily did I admit its justifiableness, when she went on to tell me that a friend had ridden a long journey to warn them against a person bearing my name, and answering to my appearance—an apostate from their own cause, and a noted spy, who, upon some vague information of their retreat, had set out with the intention of discovering and betraying them; and that their friend (in whom I at once recognised the priest I had seen her father conduct from the house) had left them but a few minutes before I arrived.

It was now my turn to apologise and explain. She listened, with many pleas of palliation for the indignities I had endured, to my account of my business in Ireland, and the circumstances which had led me to Glen——; but when I came to account for my appearance at Moyabel, her confusion satisfied me that the motive was already known. I felt suddenly conscious of having been dreaming about her; and I knew that a fevered man’s dream is his nurse’s perquisite: dissimulation, after what I knew and suspected to have passed, would have been as impossible as repugnant. So then and there, among that mellow sunset in the sick chamber, I confessed to her how my whole thoughts had been haunted by her image, since the time when her father had hurried her from the scene of our meeting; how I could not rest while any scheme, how wild soever, promised me even a chance of again beholding her; how this had induced me to snatch at the first opportunity of discovering her, and had brought on that disastrous adventure which had ended in my wound; but that I still endured another, which I feared would prove incurable, if I might not live upon the hope (and I took her hand) of gaining her to be my heart’s physician constantly.

Footsteps suddenly sounded in the passage. I released her hand, and she hid her confusion, in a hasty escape through a side-door, just before her father made his appearance at that of the hall. He advanced with a frank expression of pleasure and concern; took his seat by my bedside; congratulated me on the favourable issue of my illness, and repeated those apologies and explanations which his daughter had already made; adding that his first intention had been to detain me prisoner, so that I could have no opportunity of betraying them until their departure for France; but that the moment he had heard my undisguised ravings, he perceived the injustice of which he had been guilty; that Aleck’s speech having returned soon after, (for the poor fellow was so beaten that he could not say a word for three days—but I have taken good care of him), another evidence, however unnecessary, was afforded by his declaration; and that, therefore, a messenger was immediately despatched to Knowehead, with private letters, explaining our situation and its causes, and resting on the honour of my friend for the security of all. The trust had been well reposed: Aleck, who was able to go home in a few days, had come the night before (although returned that morning) with the intelligence of the real spy having applied for information to the old gentleman; but that, loyal subject and zealous Protestant as he was, he had given him no more than a civil indication of his door. All this he told with a gratified and grateful air, and left me to a night of happy dreams.

Next morning, however, he came to me, and in a serious, nay severe manner, told me, that as I had divulged the motive which brought me thither in my ravings, he felt it a duty to himself and to me, now that I was established in my recovery, to inform me that, while he forgave my intrusion on a privacy he had already begged me not to break, he must desire that there should be no recurrence of attentions to his daughter, which might distract a heart destined either for the service of a free Catholic in regenerated Ireland, or for that of Heaven in a nunnery.

He had laid his hand upon the table, and it unconsciously rested upon the seals of my watch. “Look,” said I, “at these trinkets; I shall tell you what they are, and let them be my answer. That rude silver seal, with the arms and initials, was dug from my father’s orchard, along with the bones of his ancestor, who fell there beneath the knives of free Catholics in —41, a greyhaired man, among the seven bodies of his murdered wife and children. Look again at that curious ring; it was worn by his son, the sole survivor of all that ancient family who escaped, a maimed and famished spectre, out of Derry, after the same party had driven him to eat his sword-belt for hunger. Look once again at this more antique locket; it contains the hair of a maternal ancestor, who perished for the faith among the fagots of Smithfield; and look, here, at my own arm—that wound I received when a child, from the chief of a ‘Heart of Steel’ banditti, who, under the same banner, lighted our family’s escape from rape and massacre, by the flames of their own burning roof-tree; and yet I—I, every drop of whose blood might well cry out for vengeance, when I see these remembrancers of my wrongs in the hands of my wrongs’ defender, do yet take that hand, and long to call him father.”

I was here interrupted by the sudden entrance of a splashed and wearied messenger: advancing with a military salute, he presented a letter to Mr O’More. “Pardon me,” he said, hastily tearing it open, “this is on a matter of life and death.” He read it in great agitation; led the messenger aside; gave some hurried orders; took down his arms from the mantelpiece; and drawing his belt, and fixing in his pistols while he spoke, addressed me:—“Notwithstanding what you have urged, my determination remains unaltered. I must leave Moyabel, for I cannot now say how long: you shall be taken care of in my absence: farewell, sir, farewell.” He shook me by the hand, and hurried away. I heard confusion in the house, and thought I could distinguish the sweet voice of Madeline, broken by sobs at his departure. A considerable party seemed to leave the house; for there was a great trampling of horses in the courtyard, and two or three mounted men passed by the windows. At length they were out of hearing, and I determined not to lose another minute of the precious opportunity. My clothes had been brought from Knowehead, and I was so much recovered that I found myself able to rise, and set about dressing immediately. My continental visions of beard were more than realised; and if I failed to produce a shapely moustache, ’twas not for lack of material. With fluttering expectation, I selected the most graceful of the pantaloons; drew on my rings; arrayed myself in the purple velvet slippers, cap, and brocade dressing-gown; took one lingering last look at the little mirror, and descended into the parlour. I drew a writing-table to me, and penned a long letter to Knowehead, another to Redrigs, and had half-finished a sonnet to Madeline. The day was nearly past, and she had not yet made her appearance.