The Knight Of Gwynne, Vol. 1

“And yet I have fears, my dear Helen, and very great fears just now,” said Daly in a low whisper, only audible by herself, and she turned her full and beaming eyes upon him for an explanation. As if anxious to escape the interrogatory, Daly arose hastily. “I must crave your indulgence for an abrupt leave-taking, Lady Eleanor,” said he, approaching, as he kissed the hand held out to him; “I shall be able to tell the Knight that I left you both well, and under safe protection. Captain Forester, adieu; you need no admonition of mine respecting your charge;” and, with a low and courtly salute, he departed.

“Rely upon it, Captain Forester, he’s bent on mischief now. I never saw him particularly mild and quiet in his manner that it was not the prelude to some desperate ebullition,” said Lady Eleanor.

“He is the very strangest of all mortals.”

“Say, the most single-minded and straightforward,” interposed Helen, “and I ‘ll agree with you.”

“When men of strong minds and ambitious views are curbed and held in within the petty sphere of a small social circle, they are, to my thinking, intolerable. It is making a drawing-room pet of a tiger; every step he takes upsets a vase or smashes a jar. You smile at my simile.”

“I ‘m sure it’s a most happy one,” said Forester, continuing.

“I enter a dissent,” cried Helen, playfully. “He’s a tiger, if you will, with his foes, but in all the relations of private life, gentleness itself; for my part, I can imagine no more pleasing contrast to the modern code of manners than Mr. Bagenal Daly.”

“There, Captain Forester, if you would win Miss Darcy’s favor, you have now the model for your imitation.”

Forester’s face flushed, and he appeared overwhelmed with confusion, while Helen went on with her embroidery, tranquil as before.

“I believe,” resumed Lady Eleanor, – “I believe, after all, I am unjust to him; but much may be forgiven me for being so; he has made my son a wild, thoughtless boy, and my daughter – ”

“No indiscretions, Mamma,” cried Helen, holding up her hand.

“Well, he has made my daughter telle que vous la voyez.”

Forester was too well bred to venture on a word of flattery or compliment, but his glowing color and sparkling eyes spoke his admiration.

Lady Eleanor’s quick glance remarked this; and, as if the thought had never occurred before, she seemed amazed, either at the fact or at her own previous inattention.

“Let us finish that second volume you were reading, Captain Forester,” said she, glad to cut short the discussion. And, without a word, he took the book and began to read.

CHAPTER XVII. BAGENAL DALY’S JOURNEY TO DUBLIN

It is not our desire to practise any mystery with our reader, nor would the present occasion warrant such. Mr. Daly’s hurried departure for Dublin was caused by the receipt of tidings which had that morning reached him, conveying the startling intelligence that his friend the Knight had accepted terms from the Government, and pledged himself to support their favored measure.

It was a time when men were accustomed to witness the most flagrant breaches of honor and good faith. No station was too high to be above the reach of this reproach, no position too humble not to make its possessor a mark for corruption. It was an epidemic of dishonesty, and people ceased to wonder as they heard of each new victim to the malady.

Bagenal Daly well knew that no man could be more exempt from an imputation of this nature than the Knight of Gwynne: every act of his life, every sentiment he professed, every trait of his character, flatly contradicted the supposition. But he also knew that though Darcy was unassailable by all the temptations of bribery, come in what shape they might, that his frank and generous spirit would expose him to the stratagems and devices of a wily and insidious party, and that if, by any accident, an expression should fall from him in all the freedom of convivial enjoyment that could be tortured into even the resemblance of a pledge, he well knew that his friend would deem any sacrifice of personal feeling light in the balance, rather than not adhere to it.

Resolved not to lose a moment, he despatched Sandy to order horses along the line, and having passed the remainder of the day in the preparations for his departure, he left the abbey before midnight. A less determined traveller might have hesitated on setting out on such a night: the long menacing storm had at length burst forth, and the air resounded with a chaos of noise, amid which the roaring breakers and the crash of falling trees were uppermost; with difficulty the horses were enabled to keep their feet, as the sea washed heavily over the wall and deluged the road, while at intervals the fallen timber obstructed the way and delayed his progress. Difficulty was, however, the most enjoyable stimulant to Daly’s nature; he loved an obstacle as other men enjoy a pleasure, and, as he grew older, so far from yielding to the indolence of years, his hardy spirit seemed to revel in the thought that amid dangers and perils his whole life had been passed, yet never had he suffered himself to be a beaten enemy.

The whole of that night, and all the following day, the violence of the storm was unabated; uprooted trees and wrecked villages met his eye as he passed, while, in the larger towns, the houses were strongly barred and shuttered, and scarcely one living thing to be seen through the streets. Nothing short of the united influence of bribery and intimidation could procure horses in such a season, and had any messenger of less sturdy pretensions than honest Sandy been despatched to order them, they would have been flatly refused. Bagenal Daly and his man were, however, too well known in that part of Ireland to make such a course advisable, and though postboys and ostlers condoled together, the signal of Daly’s appearance silenced every thought of opposition, and the words, “I ‘m ready!” were an order to dash forward none dared to disobey.

So had it continued until he reached Moate, where he found a message from Sandy, informing him that no horses could be procured, and that he must bring on those from Athlone the entire way to Kilbeggan.

“You hear me,” cried Daly to the astonished postboy, who for the last two miles had spared neither whip nor spur, in the glad anticipation of a speedy shelter, – “you hear me. To Kilbeggan.”

“Oh, begorra! that’s impossible, yer honor. If it was the month of May, and the road was a bowling-green, the bastes couldn’t do it.”

“Go on!” cried Daly, shutting up the glass, and throwing himself back in the chaise.

But the postboy only buttoned up the collar of his coat around his face, thrust his whip into his boot, and, drawing his sleeves over his hands, sat a perfect picture of fatalism.

“I say, go on!” shouted Daly, as he lowered the front window of the chaise.

A low muttering from the driver, still impassive as before, was all the reply, and at the same instant a sharp report was heard, and a pistol bullet whizzed beside his hat.

“Will you go now?” cried Bagenal Daly, as he levelled another weapon on the window; but no second entreaty was necessary, and, with his bead bent down almost to the mane, and with a mingled cry for mercy and imprecation together, he drove the spurs into his jaded beast, and whipped with all his might through the almost deserted town. With the despairing energy of one who felt his life was in peril, the wretched postboy hurried madly forward, urging the tired animals up the hills, and caring neither for rut nor hollow on his onward course, till at length, blown and exhausted, the animals came to a dead stand, and, with heaving flanks and outstretched forelegs, refused to budge a step farther.

“There!” cried the postboy, as, dropping from the saddle, he fell on his knees upon the road, “shoot, and be d – d to you; I can do no more.”

The terrified expression of the fellow’s face as the lamp of the chaise threw its light upon him, seemed to change the current of Daly’s thoughts, for he laughed loud and heartily as he looked upon him.

“Come, come,” said he, good-humoredly, “is not that Kilbeggan where I see the lights yonder?”

“Sorra bit of it,” sighed the other, “it is only Horseleap.”

“Well, push on to Horseleap; perhaps they ‘ve horses there.”

“Begorra! you might as well look for black tay in a bog-hole; ‘t is a poor ‘shebeen’ is the only thing in the village;” and, so saying, he took the bridle on his arm, and walked along before the horses, who, with drooping heads, tottered after at a foot pace.

About half an hour of such travelling brought Daly in front of a miserable cabin, over the door of which a creaking sign proclaimed accommodation for man and beast. To the partial truth of this statement the bright glare of a fire that shone between the chinks of the shutters bore witness, and, disengaging himself from the chaise, Daly knocked loudly for admission. There are few less conciliating sounds to the ears of a hot-tempered man than those hesitating whispers which, while exposed to a storm himself, he hears deliberating on the question of his admission. Such were the mutterings Daly now listened to, and to which he was about to reply by forcing his entrance, when the door was opened by a man in the dress of a peasant, who somewhat sulkily demanded what he wanted.

“Horses, if you have them, to reach Kilbeggan,” said Daly, “and if you have not, a good fire and shelter until they can be procured;” and as he spoke, he pushed past the man, and entered the room from which the blazing light proceeded.

With his back to the fire, and hands thrust carelessly into the pockets of his coat, stood a man of eight-and-thirty or forty years of age; in dress, air, and appearance he might have been taken for a country horse-dealer; and so, indeed, his well-worn top-boots and green coat, cut in jockey fashion, seemed to bespeak him. He was rather under the middle size, but powerfully built, his wide chest, long arms, and bowed legs all indicating the possession of that strength which is never the accompaniment of more perfect symmetry.

Although Daly’s appearance unquestionably proclaimed his class in life, the other exhibited no mark of deference or respect to him as he entered, but maintained his position with the same easy indifference as at first.

“You make yourself at home here, good friend, if one might judge from the way you knocked at the door,” said he, addressing Daly with a look whose easy familiarity was itself an impertinence.

“I have yet to learn,” said Daly, sternly, “that a gentleman must practise any peculiar ceremony when seeking the shelter of a ‘shebeen,’ not to speak of the right by which such as you address me as your good friend.”

An insolent laugh, that Daly fancied was re-echoed by some one without, was the first reply to this speech; when, after a few minutes, the man added, “I see you ‘re a stranger in these parts.”

“If I had not been so, the chance is I should have taught you somewhat better manners before this time. Move aside, sir, and let me see the fire.”

But the other never budged in the slightest, standing in the same easy posture as before.

Daly’s dark face grew darker, and his heavy brows met in a deep frown, while, with a spring that showed no touch of time in his strong frame, he bounded forward and seized the man by the collar. Few men were Daly’s equals in point of strength; but although he with whom he now grappled made no resistance whatever, Daly never stirred him from the spot, to which he seemed fast and firmly rooted.

“Well, that’s enough of it!” said the fellow, as with a rough jerk he freed himself from the grasp, and sent Daly several paces back into the room.

“Not so!” cried Daly, whose passion now boiled over, and, drawing a pistol from his bosom, he levelled it at him. Quick as the motion was, the other was equally ready, for his hand now presented a similar weapon at Daly’s head.

“Move aside, or – ”

A coarse, insulting laugh drowned Daly’s words, and he pulled the trigger; but the pistol snapped without exploding.

“There it is, now,” cried the fellow, rudely; “luck’s against you, old boy, so you ‘d better keep yourself cool and easy;” and with these words he uncocked the weapon and replaced it in his bosom. Daly watched the moment, and with a bound placed himself beside him, when, bringing his leg in front, he caught the man round the middle, and hurled him headlong on the ground.

He fell as if he had been shot; but, rolling over, he leaned upon his elbow and looked up, without the slightest sign of passion or even excitement on his features.

“I ‘d know that trip in a thousand; begad, you ‘re Bagenal Daly, and nobody else!”

Although not a little surprised at the recognition, Daly suffered no sign of astonishment to escape him, but drew his chair to the fire, and stretched out his legs before the blaze. Meanwhile, the other, having arisen, leaned over the back of a chair, and stared at him steadfastly.

“I am as glad as a hundred-pound note, now, you did n’t provoke me to lay a hand on you, Mr. Daly,” said he, slowly, and in a voice not devoid of a touch of feeling; “‘t is n’t often I bear malice, but I ‘d never forgive myself the longest day I ‘d live.”

Daly turned his eyes towards him, and, for some minutes, they continued to look at each other without speaking.

“I see you don’t remember me, sir,” said the stranger, at length; “but I ‘ve a better memory, and a better reason to have it besides: you saved my life once.”

“Saved your life!” repeated Daly, thoughtfully; “I ‘ve not the slightest recollection of ever having seen you before.”

“It’s all true I ‘m telling, for all that,” replied the other; “and although it happened above five-and-twenty years since, I’m not much changed, they tell me, in look or appearance.” He paused at these words, as if to give Daly time to recognize him; but the effort seemed in vain, as, after along and patient scrutiny, Daly said, “No, I cannot remember you.”

“Let me see, then,” said the man, “if I can’t refresh your memory. Were you in Dublin in the winter of ‘75?”

“Yes; I had a house in Stephen’s Green – ”

“And used to drive four black thoroughbreds without winkers?”

“It’s clear that you know me, at least,” said Daly; “go on.”

“Well, sir, do you remember, it was about a week before Christmas, that Captain Burke Fitzsimon was robbed of a pair of pistols in the guard-room of the Upper Castle Yard, in noonday, ay, and tied with his own sash to the guard-bed?”

“By Jove! I do. He was regularly laughed out of the regiment.”

“Faix, and many that laughed at him mightn’t have behaved a deal better than he did,” replied the other, with a dogged sternness in his manner. He became silent after these words, and appeared deeply sunk in meditation, when suddenly he drew two splendidly chased pistols from his bosom, and held them out to Daly as he said, “There they are, and as good as they are handsome, true at thirty paces, and never fail.”

Daly gazed alternately from the pistols to their owner, but never uttered a word.

“That same day,” resumed the man, “you were walking down the quay near the end of Watling Street, when there was a cry of ‘Stop thief! – stop him! – a hundred guineas to the man that takes him!’ and shortly after a man crossed the quay, pursued closely by several people, one of them, and the foremost, being Tom Lambert, the constable, the strongest man, they said, of his day, in Ireland. The fellow that ran could beat them all, and was doing it too, when, just as he had gained Bloody Bridge, he saw a child on the pathway all covered with blood, and a bulldog standing over him, worrying him – ”

“I have it all,” said Daly, interrupting him; “‘tis as fresh before me as if it happened yesterday. The robber stopped to save the child, and, seizing the bulldog by the throat, hurled him over the wall into the Liffey. Lambert, as you call him, had by this time come close up, and was within two yards of the man, when I, feeling compassion for a fellow that could be generous at such a moment, laid my hand on the constable’s arm to stop him; he struck me; but if he did, he had his reward, for I threw him over the hip on the crown of his head, and he had a brain fever after it that almost brought him to death’s door. And where were you all this time, and what were you doing?”

“I was down Barrack Street, across the park, and near Knockmaroon Gate, before they could find a door to stretch Tom Lambert on.”

“You!” said Daly, staring at him; “why, it was Freney, they told me, performed that exploit for a wager.”

“So it was, sir,” said the man, standing up and crossing his arms, not without something of pride in his look, – “I’m Freney.”

Daly arose and gazed at the man with all that curious scrutiny one bestows upon some remarkable object, measuring his strong, athletic frame with the eye of a connoisseur, and, as it were, calculating the physical resources of so powerful a figure.

“You see, sir,” said the robber, at last, “I was right when I told you that you saved my life: there were thirteen indictments hanging over my head that day, and if I ‘d been taken they ‘d have hanged me as round as a turnip.”

“You owe it to yourself,” said Daly; “had you not stopped for the child, it was just as likely that I ‘d have tripped you up myself.”

“‘Tis a feeling I never could get over,” said the robber; “‘twas a little boy, about the same age as that, that saved the Kells coach the night I stopped it near Dangan. And now, sir, let me ask you what in the world brought you into the village of Horseleap? For I am sure,” added he with a laugh, “it was never to look after me.”

“You are right there, friend; I’m on my way up to town to be present at the debate in Parliament on the Union, – a question that has its interest for yourself too.”

“How so, sir?” said the other, curiously.

“Plainly enough, man; if they carry the Union, they’ll not leave a man worth robbing in the island. You ‘ll have to take to an honest calling, Freney, – turn cattle-drover. By the way, they tell me you ‘re a good judge of a horse.”

“Except yourself, there’s not a better in the island; and if you ‘ve no objection, I ‘ll mount and keep you company as far as Maynooth, where you ‘ll easily get horses – and it will be broad daylight by that time – to bring you into Dublin.”

“I accept the offer willingly. I’ll venture to say we shall not be robbed on the journey.”

“Well, sir, the horses won’t be here for an hour yet, and if you ‘ll join me in a bit of supper I was going to have when you came in, it will help to pass the time till we are ready to start.”

Daly assented, not the less readily that he had not eaten anything since morning, and Freney left the room to hasten the preparations for the meal.

“Come, Freney,” said Daly, as the other entered the room a few moments after, “was it the strength of conscious rectitude that made you stand my fire as you did a while ago, or did you think me so bad a marksman at four paces?”

“Neither, sir,” replied the robber, laughing; “I saw the pan of the lock half open as you drew it from your pocket, and I knew the priming must have fallen out; but for that – ”

“You had probably fired, yourself?”

“Just so,” rejoined he, with a short nod. “I could have shot you before you levelled at me. Now, sir, here’s something far better than burning powder. I am sure you are too old a traveller not to be able to eat a rasher of bacon.”

“And this I take to be as free of any allegiance to the king as yourself,” said Daly, as he poured out a wineglass-ful of “poteen” from a short black bottle.

“You ‘re right, sir,” said Freney, with a laugh. “We ‘re both duty free. Let me help you to an egg.”

“I never ate better bacon in my life,” said Daly, who seemed to relish his supper with considerable gusto.

“I’m glad you like it, sir. It is a notion of mine that Costy Moore of Kilcock cures a pig better than any man in this part of Ireland; and though his shop is next the police-barracks, I went in there myself to buy this.”

Daly stared, with something of admiration in his look, at the man whose epicurism was indulged at the hazard of his neck; and he pledged the robber with a motion of the head that betokened a high sense of his daring. “I’ve heard you have had some close escapes, Freney.”

“I was never taken but once, sir. A woman hid my shoes when I was asleep. I was at the foot of the Galtee mountains: the ground is hard and full of sharp shingle, and I could n’t run. They brought me into Clonmel, and I was in the heaviest irons in the jail before two hours were over. That’s the strong jail, Mr. Daly; they ‘ve the best walls and the thickest doors there I have ever seen in any jail in Ireland. For,” added he, with a sly laugh, “I went over them all, in a friendly sort of a way.”

“A kind of professional tour, Freney?”

“Just so, sir; taking a bird’s-eye view of the country from the drop, because, maybe, I would n’t have time for it at another opportunity.”

“You ‘re a hardened villain!” said Daly, looking at him with an expression the robber felt to be a finished compliment.

“That’s no lie, Mr. Daly; and if I wasn’t, could I go on for twenty years, hunted down like a wild beast, with fellows tracking me all day, and lying in watch for me all night? Where we are sitting now is the only spot in the whole island where I can say I ‘m safe. This is my brother’s cabin.”

“Your brother is the same man that opened the door for me?”

Freney nodded, and went on: “He’s a poor laboring man, with four acres of wet bog for a farm, and a young woman, in the ague, for a wife, and if it was n’t for myself he ‘d be starving; and would you believe it, now, he ‘d not take to the road for one night – just one single night – to be as rich as the Duke of Leinster; and here am I” – and, as he spoke, his chest expanded, and his dark eyes flashed wildly – “here am I, that would rather be on my black mare’s back, with my holsters at the saddle, watching the sounds of wheels on a lonely road, than I ‘d be any gentleman in the land, barring your own self.”

“And why me?” said Daly, in a voice whose melancholy cadence made it solemn as a death-bell.

“Just because you ‘re the only man I ever heard tell of that was fond of danger for the fun of it. Did n’t I see the leap you took at the Black Lough, just to show the English Lord-Lieutenant how an Irish gentleman rides, with the rein in your mouth, and your hands behind your back? Isn’t that true?”

Daly nodded, and muttered, “I have the old horse still.”

“By the good day! I ‘d spend a week in Newgate to see you on his back.”

“Well, Freney,” said Daly, who seemed not disposed to encourage a conversation so personal in its allusions, “where have you been lately? – in the South?”

“No, sir; I spent the last fortnight watching an old fox that doubled on me at last, – old Hickman, of Loughrea, that used to be.”

“Old Hickman! – what of him?” cried Daly, whose interest became at once excited by the mention of the name.

“I found out, sir, that he was to be down here at Kildare to receive his rents, – for he owns a fine estate here, – and that, besides, Tom Gleeson, the great agent from Dublin, was to meet him, as some said, to pay him a large sum of money for the Knight of Gwynne, – some heavy debt, I believe, owing for many a year.”

“Yes, go on. What then?”

“Well. I knew the reason Hickman wanted the money here: Lord Tyrawley was going to sell him a part of Gore’s Wood, for hard cash – d ‘ye mind, sir, hard cash – down on the nail, for my Lord likes high play at Daly’s – ”

“D – n Lord Tyrawley!” said Daly, impatiently. “What of Hickman?”

“Well, d – n him too! He’s a shabby negur. I stopped ‘him at Ball’s Bridge once, and got but three guineas and some shillings for my pains. But to come back to old Hickman: I found he had arrived at the ‘Black Dog,’ and that Gleeson had come the same evening, and so I disguised myself like an old farmer the next morning, and pretended I wanted his advice about an asthma that I had, just to see the lie of the old premises, and whether he was alone, or had the two bailiffs with him, as usual. There they were, sir, sure enough, and well armed too, and fresh hasps on the door, to lock it inside, all secure as a bank. I saw these things while the old doctor was writing the prescription, for he tore a leaf out of his pocket-book to order me some stuff for the cough, – faith, ‘t is pills of another kind they ‘d have given me if they found me out. That was all I got for my guinea in goold, not to speak of the danger;” and, so saying, he pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket, and held it out towards Daly. “That’s not it, sir; ‘t is the other side the writing is on.”