Читать книгу Doreen, The Story of a Singer - Ada Ellen Bayly - Страница 7

Table of Contents

"A man must grab whatever he can get;

We human creatures are not angels yet.

You must not stab, nor strangle, a poor neighbour,

For, if you did, why you would lose his labour;

No, take advantage of his cramped position

To mangle him with your cruelest condition.

Rob soul and body by superior wit

And fortune; ignorant hunger will submit.

If he should gash you, that were ugly murder:

Dribble his life-blood slowly—you're in order."— Hon. Roden Noel.

When John Desmond had dismissed the car at the Lodge on the previous afternoon, he made his way quickly to Castle Karey and went straight to the drawing-room, with the intention of telling Mrs. Hereford that he was obliged to go home that very evening. He found, however, that Miriam was the sole occupant of the room; she was leaning back in a great armchair, with "Vanity Fair" in her hand.

"You see," she said, "I am dutifully obeying you and beginning to read Thackeray to improve my mind. But what is the matter?" for suddenly she observed the great change that had come over his expression, and she glanced from his troubled eyes to the letter which he held—a bill from Oxford, as it happened, but a missive which exactly suited his purpose.

"I have bad news," he said hoarsely, "and am obliged to go home at once. The Lodge people put this letter into my hands as I passed,—they had been to Kilbeggan and had called for the afternoon post. Do you know where Mrs. Hereford is? Can I speak to her?"

"Aunt has gone out," said Miriam. "As the afternoon kept fine, she drove to the Glebe House to see the Macgregors. Oh, I am so sorry for your trouble! Is it illness?"

"No," he said, his brow contracting. "A worse trouble, and one which will not bear talking of. It will force me to go; it will cut me off from you for ever."

The wild look in his eyes terrified Miriam.

"You must not say that!" she cried. "Nothing could do that, for we are—friends."

Her voice faltered; she laid her hand pleadingly on his arm, but he shrank away as if the touch were torture to him.

"There is one thing that must part us," he said vehemently, "and that is disgrace. Since you have been here, since I learned to love you, my life has been a dream of happiness. That is all over now. I must go home, and I beg you just to forget me."

"I cannot forget," said Miriam faintly.

"I implore you not to waste another thought on me!" he replied, with a vehemence which alarmed her. Then turning abruptly away he strode out of the room, leaving the girl perplexed and greatly troubled, almost inclined to think that the tutor must be going out of his mind. She went slowly upstairs to dress for dinner, and on returning to the drawing-room found her aunt full of concern about the news that Max had just brought to her.

"I have ordered dinner somewhat earlier, dear," she said as Miriam crossed the room. "You have heard perhaps that Mr. Desmond is obliged to catch the nine o'clock train to-night."

"Does he go to-night?" said Miriam, her heart sinking.

"He is packing now; it is some family trouble, I am afraid, from the message he sent me," said Mrs. Hereford. She broke off as the butler approached her with something a little unusual in his well-regulated expression.

"If you please, ma'am, can Baptiste speak to you?"

"Certainly; send him in here," said Mrs. Hereford, and the next moment the French valet entered. He was a new acquisition and had won much favour in the household by his extreme good-nature; but he could neither speak nor apparently understand a word of English. With much excitement he now announced that his master begged Mrs. Hereford to come upstairs at once, for Mr. Desmond was seriously ill.

And so after all the flight from Castle Karey had to be abandoned; for by the time the nine o'clock train steamed out of Kilbeggan station the local doctor had pronounced without the least hesitation that the tutor was suffering from inflammation of the brain, probably caused by the shock he had undergone in receiving bad news from his home.

Max had insisted on sharing the night watch with his valet; and since Baptiste was known to have some experience of nursing, and proved extremely handy in the sick-room, the doctor seemed content, and left them with strict orders to keep the room perfectly quiet and to exclude all other people.

This was an injunction that the boy was ready enough to obey; for he was in deadly terror lest Desmond should, in his delirium, let fall some word which would betray the secret of Foxell's death. He never stirred from his post till, at six the next morning, the doctor looked in again to see how his patient was progressing, and, finding Desmond asleep, took a cheerful view of the attack and spoke hopefully of the future.

"And now, sir," he said, laying a kindly hand on the boy's shoulder, "as you will be wanted when your friend wakes, I advise you to go and rest. Baptiste will keep out all intruders, and you look to me very much fagged."

Max was fain to own that he was tired, though not sleepy; his head ached miserably, and seeing that the day was bright and clear, he said he would walk up the avenue with the doctor. His companion put several questions to him, but they were all easy enough to answer, since they concerned Desmond's previous health.

They were so much absorbed in their talk, that they passed the Lodge and walked a little way along the high-road until Max was recalled to the present by the sight of the little gray lodging-house and of the landlady in her garden hanging up clothes to dry.

Mrs. Keoghn seemed delighted to catch sight of them; she came to her gate, without even pausing to hang up the wet shirt she held in her hands.

"Good morning to ye, gintlemen," she said. "Have ye heard the news that's goin' round about the agent?"

"What news?" said the doctor. Max struggled desperately to express nothing but a half-careless curiosity, though his heart beat like a sledge hammer.

"They say he never came back yesterday, and his wife is onaisy in her mind, and thinks he has been made away with; and for the matther of that, it's well hated he is by many a one, the cold-hearted crathur! She will have it that the Fenians have been and murthered him."

"Pooh!" said the doctor. "There are no Fenians about here. Are the police taking it up yet?"

"Sure, and they are, sir. The country is to be searched for him, and all the village is astir about it. Mrs. Foxell won't give them a moment's peace till he's found; one would think they had been the best o' friends, but sure and I've heard the folk say they were a rare quarrelsome couple, and that she had a scolding tongue. Maybe that soured the agent's temper and made him harder to the tenants."

"I must go and hear about it," said the doctor cheerfully. "But depend upon it, the fellow will turn up all right. When was he last at the Castle, Mr. Hereford?"

"I heard that he was there in the morning," said Max. "I believe my mother saw him."

"Well, good morning to you," said the doctor. "Why, your hand is cold; you are not so used to being up all night, as I am. Take a brisk walk,—nothing like a walk before breakfast for the circulation."

He turned away, but Max lingered a moment longer beside the gate. "Miss Doreen was not over-tired yesterday, I hope?" he asked.

"Bless you, no, sir," replied the landlady. "Why, she was off at five o'clock this morning, runnin' up the mountain yonder as brisk as could be."

With a strong desire to know how the sharer of his miserable secret was bearing her burden, Max followed the direction which Mrs. Keoghn had indicated and began to climb Kilrourk. He had not gone far when he descried the red cloak among the moss-grown rocks to the left, and, stealing quietly over the dewy turf, saw that the child was fast asleep. Her little peaceful face touched his heart strangely; he bent down and kissed her softly and reverently on the forehead. Doreen smiled in her sleep and, feeling for his hand, held it closely in both her own. The clasp of her fingers on his had a curious effect on him; spite of all the misery and fear which had oppressed him only a few minutes before, Doreen seemed witching him into a content as blissful and dreamlike as her own. Just at that moment, a thrush alighted on the arbutus tree above them, and his song roused the child. Her dark blue eyes looked right into Max Hereford's with a smile of recognition.

"I was dreaming of you," she said, with a direct simplicity which confused him a little.

"I found you sleeping on the mountain with your crook at your side, like Little Bo-Peep," he replied laughing.

Doreen, with a puzzled face, looked at the crooked stick lying on the turf among the little yellow flowers of the tormentilla; she looked at the storm-twisted boughs of the fir tree, she looked across the glen to the mountains beyond, and then with a shudder and a sudden look of dismay and fear, she sprang to her feet as the recollection of Lough Lee and the sinking agent returned to her.

"Oh!" she said, with a sob in her throat, "will it always come back to one like that? Is it only in dreams that we can be quite at rest?"

"I am so sorry for you, dear," he said, taking her hand in his as they climbed higher up the mountain. "Has the night been very hard for you, too?"

"I couldn't sleep," said Doreen. "And the dark was dreadful! I kept on thinking I should see—you know what."

"Poor little soul! you were quite alone, then?"

"I thought of going to mother; but then, you know, she might have guessed, or I might have told the secret in my sleep. Afterwards God talked to me, and it was better," she concluded abruptly, with the instinctive reserve which veils all that is most sacred. There was a pause. Max looked down at the little, tired, white face with a sort of wondering admiration. "Then," continued Doreen, "I climbed up here and saw the sunrise for the first time, and the country looked so beautiful! I never knew before how much I loved it. Oh! I am so glad God made me Irish, but I do wish He had made me a boy; then when I grew up, I could serve the country."

"What would you do?" asked Max, smiling at her eagerness.

"I would speak," she cried, her eyes flashing; "I would make the English understand how different things are over here—would make them long to see justice shown to Ireland, as mother says they longed to see justice shown to Italy. They were ready enough, mother said, to make much of Garibaldi; but my father, only for what he had written and for belonging to the Fenians, was thrust into prison."

"If you can't be a second Daniel O'Connell, you can, I should think, be the national singer," said Max.

Doreen sighed. "Do you think I could?" she said. "Yet, even if it were possible, all that is so indirect. How I wish I were you—rich, and a man, and with the power to speak."

"How do you know I have the power?" asked the boy, half amused, half startled by her tone of conviction.

"I have known it ever since that day you took me first in your boat; don't you remember how after the picnic you and Mr. Desmond and Miss Hereford made speeches for fun? The others were as silly as could be, but you made us really laugh and really cry; and when you told the legend of the Castle, it made me shiver all down my back like lovely music. Why should we not have a nice secret between us, and a nice promise!" she exclaimed, her face lighting up. "Let us plan that you shall go into Parliament when you are older, and promise me that you will speak for Ireland."

He smiled at her enthusiasm.

"My mother would like nothing better than that I should stand a few years hence for Firdale; but if I adopt your principles, there would be small chance of my getting in. I will promise, though, to speak for Ireland if ever I have the power and the chance."

And vague dreams of a far-away future began to float before him as Doreen climbed Kilrourk at his side, chanting to herself her favourite song,—

" 'God save Ireland,' said the heroes;

'God save Ireland,' said they all;

'Whether on the scaffold high,

Or the battle-field we die,

Oh, what matter, when for Erin dear we fall!' "

"Why, in England they call your heroes the Manchester murderers," said Max.

"Yes," said Doreen. "But we Irish call it murder to hang three men because one policeman was accidentally shot. Had a policeman burst open a lock with a pistol, and an Irishman chanced to be behind the door, would they have called that a murder, do you suppose? How well I remember walking in the funeral procession in Dublin that was got up in their honour! There were two thousand of us children, and in the whole procession twenty-five thousand people."

"Then they were buried in Ireland?"

"Oh no! in quicklime in the prison graveyard," said Doreen. "But that doesn't matter at all; your own great patriots were mostly dishonoured after death—dug up, you know, by their opponents and gibbeted. The Manchester martyrs live on in the hearts of the Irish people."

Max had been diverted for the time from his anxieties by the little girl's eager words, but a cloud of care settled down upon him as once more he reached Castle Karey.

That afternoon when, after spending many hours with his tutor, he had just had the satisfaction of seeing him fall asleep, a low knock was heard at the door, and Baptiste, who had been dozing for a few minutes, stole with cat-like tread across the room to ask what was needed. Looking up, Max saw that his mother stood in the doorway, beckoning to him.

"I want you down in the library for a few minutes," she said, as he joined her in the passage, noiselessly closing the door behind him. "A most extraordinary thing has happened. Mr. Foxell, the agent, disappeared yesterday, and not a trace of him is to be found. Two constables and a detective are down below, and they want to put a few questions to you as to when you last saw the poor man. It is thought likely that he has been murdered."

Max made an inarticulate exclamation. To one of his highly nervous temperament the prospect of the interview was appalling; the dread of ruining his friend and the dread of lying made his heart throb with a horrible anxiety such as he had never before known. He walked on steadily, trying to think that he was going to shield the man who had been to him friend as well as tutor, yet with a faint perception even then that John Desmond's noblest course of action would have been to surrender himself, and plead guilty to manslaughter in a moment of frenzy. They could scarcely have called the affair wilful murder, and the tutor's impulse to disappear and save Mrs. Hereford and Miriam from all the wretchedness of being mixed up in such a case was perhaps more chivalrous than wise or honest. Doreen's talk about the men who had been hung for rescuing the Fenian prisoners returned to him, however, unpleasantly.

"At least my part is clear," he said to himself, as these thoughts rushed through his mind. "I have sworn secrecy, and must at all costs hold my tongue, however much I may wish that he would have confessed to it himself."

By this time they had reached the library; he opened the door for his mother, and followed her into the room, nodding to the constables, whom he knew by sight, and bowing to the keen-eyed, somewhat cadaverous-looking man in plain clothes, to whom Mrs. Hereford introduced him. The detective was disappointed to find such a very young, boyish-looking Mr. Hereford. A fresh-faced, genial, good-tempered school-boy, he thought to himself, imagining as he looked into Max Hereford's well-opened, fearless eyes, that he could read him like a book.

"I need not trouble you with many questions, sir," he said; "you will have heard from Mrs. Hereford of the disappearance of Lord Byfield's agent, Mr. James Foxell?"

"Yes," said Max. "My mother has just been telling me about it."

"You had heard nothing of it before, I suppose?" He looked him through and through as he put this question.

"Yes," said Max; "I was walking outside the grounds early this morning with the doctor, and Mrs. Keoghn told me that the village was all astir about it."

"And yet you said nothing about it on returning home? How was that?" said the detective.

"I purposely said nothing," said Max steadily. "My mother is not strong, and I knew the story would trouble her and make her nervous."

"I see that this boy is older and more thoughtful than I imagined at first sight of him," thought the detective. "By the bye, Mr. Hereford," he said, "can you throw any light on Foxell's movements yesterday?"

"I heard that he was here at the Castle at nine o'clock," said Max, marvelling at his own composure. "But you have probably been able to trace him later than that?"

"Yes; his wife saw him at ten, but further than that we can get no clue. He told her to expect him at seven in the evening, and, as you know, never returned. Did you see him yesterday?"

"When he was here? No; I merely heard that he had called to speak to my mother."

"When did you last have speech with him?"

Max paused for a moment; his breath came fast, but he still maintained a sort of ghastly composure; then remembering that on the fatal afternoon he had only exchanged words with old Larry and his wife, and that it had been Desmond who had remonstrated throughout with the agent, he said quietly, "I don't think I have spoken to him since Sunday as we came out of church."

With that his ordeal ended, and with relief he found that his mother was urging him to go out, and speaking of some commission which she wanted him to see to at Kilbeggan.

"I will order the car to be brought round at once," she said. "You will be doing a service to Mr. Desmond by fetching this medicine, and already you look quite ill with sitting so much in his room."

Max made no objection to the plan, and as he drove along the mountain road, the difficult problem filled his mind, was it a greater evil to tell a lie or to break an oath? He was thankful that by the wording of the detective's questions he had just been able to steer clear of either course, and yet to keep the man at bay, but the strain of the interview had been great, and he dreaded above all things to be put through a second examination. Little Doreen would at any rate be saved from that. And as his thoughts turned to her once more, an idea struck him and he drove to no less than three shops in Kilbeggan in search of a certain present which he had set his heart on giving her.

The nightly game of cribbage was going on in the little parlour that evening, when Mrs. Keoghn entered with the lamp in one hand and a parcel in the other.

"Nothing has been heard of the agent, ma'am," she remarked. "I make no doubt he's come to some dreadful end."

"Oh, I hope not," said Mrs. O'Ryan, endeavouring to hush up the good landlady, as she noticed that Doreen's eyes had a startled look in them, and that her lips grew white. "What is that parcel?"

"Sure, thin, ma'am, 'tis for Miss Doreen; Mr. Hereford has just left it; he's been to Kilbeggan."

"See, mother," said Doreen, recovering her self-possession. "It is the present he owed me. We had a double cherry at the picnic last week, and I was the first to speak the next day."

Hastily unfolding the paper, she saw with delight a bronze crucifix, and beneath it, hanging by chains to the two arms of the cross, a tiny bronze lamp, with the wick already prepared, and a slip of paper with the comforting assurance that when filled the lamp would burn seven hours. The dread of a second night which had been weighing upon her all day passed away now; and perhaps no gift ever given her brought such a rapture of relief and pleasure, or filled her with such intense gratitude to the donor.