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CHAPTER XLIII. THE ASSIZE TOWN

When I had dressed, I found that I had above an hour to spare before dinner; so taking my hat I strolled out into the town. The streets were even more crowded now than before. The groups of country-people were larger, and as they conversed together in their native tongue, with all the violent gesticulation and energetic passion of their nature, an inexperienced spectator might well have supposed them engaged in active strife. Now and then a kind of movement, a species of suppressed murmur from the court-house, would turn every eye in that direction; and then every voice was hushed, not a man moved. It was evident that some trial of the deepest interest was going forward, and on inquiry I learned that it was a murder case, in which six men were concerned. I heard also that the only evidence against them was from one of their own party, who had turned, as the lawyers term it, ‘approver.’ I knew well that no circumstance was more calculated than this to call forth all that is best and worst in Irish character, and thought, as I walked along through the dense crowd, I could trace in the features around me the several emotions by which they were moved.

Here was an old grey-headed man leaning on a staff, his lack-lustre eyes gazing in wonder at some speaker who narrated a portion of the trial, his face all eagerness, and his hands tremulous with anxiety; but I felt I could read the deep sorrow of his heart as he listened to the deed of blood, and wondered how men would risk their tenure of a life which in a few days more, perhaps, he himself was to leave for ever. Here beside him was a tall and powerfully-built countryman, his hat drawn upon his eyes, that peered forth from their shadow dark, lustrous, and almost wild in their expression; his face, tanned by season and exposure, was haggard and care-worn, and in his firmly-clenched lips and fast-locked jaw you could read the resolute purpose of one who could listen to nothing save the promptings of the spirit of vengeance, and his determination that blood should have blood. Some there were whose passionate tones and violent gestures showed that all their sympathy for the prisoners was merged in the absorbing feeling of detestation for the informer; and you could mark in such groups as these that more women were mingled, whose bloodshot eyes and convulsed features made them appear the very demons of strife itself. But the most painful sight of all was the children who were assembled around every knot of speakers, their eyes staring and their ears eagerly drinking in each word that dropped; no trace of childhood’s happy carelessness was there, no sign of that light-hearted youth that knows no lasting sorrow. No: theirs were the rigid features of intense passion, in which fear, suspicion, craft, but above all, the thirst for revenge, were writ. There were some whose clenched hand and darkened brow betokened the gloomy purpose of their hearts; there were others whose outpoured wrath heaped curses on him who had betrayed his fellows. There was grief, violent, wild, and frantic; there was mute and speechless suffering; but not a tear did I see, not even on the cheek of childhood or of woman. No! their seared and withered sorrow no dew of tears had ever watered; like a blighting simoon the spirit of revenge had passed over them, and scorched and scathed all the verdant charities of life. The law which in other lands is looked to for protection and security, was regarded by them as an instrument of tyranny; they neither understood its spirit nor trusted its decisions; and when its blow fell upon them, they bent their heads in mournful submission, to raise them when opportunity offered in wild and stern defiance. Its denunciations came to them sudden and severe; they deemed the course of justice wayward and capricious, the only feature of certainty in its operation being that its victim was ever the poor man. The passionate elements of their wild natures seemed but ill-adapted to the slow-sustained current of legal investigation; they looked upon all the details of evidence as the signs of vindictive malice, and thought that trickery and deceit were brought in arms against them. Hence each face among the thousands there bore the traces of that hardened, dogged suffering that tells us that the heart is rather steeled with the desire to avenge than bowed to weep over the doomed.

Before the court-house a detachment of soldiers was drawn up under arms, their unmoved features and fixed attitudes presenting a strange contrast to the excited expressions and changeful gestures of those about them. The crowd at this part was thickest, and I could perceive in their eager looks and mute expressions that something more than common had attracted their attention. My own interest was, however, directed in another quarter; for through the open window of the court-house I could hear the words of a speaker, whom I soon recognised as the counsel for the prisoners addressing the jury. My foraging-cap passed me at once through the ranks, and after some little crushing I succeeded in gaining admission to the body of the court.

Such was the crowd within, I could see nothing but the heads of a closely-wedged mass of people, save at the distant part of the court the judges, and to their right the figure of the pleader, whose back was turned towards me.

Little as I heard of the speech, I was overwhelmed with surprise at what I did hear. Touching on the evidence of the ‘approver’ but slightly, the advocate dwelt with a terrific force upon the degraded character of a man who could trade upon the blood of his former friends and associates. Scarce stopping to canvass how the testimony bore home upon the prisoners, he burst forth into an impassioned appeal to the hearts of the jury on faith betrayed and vows forsworn, and pictured forth the man who could thus surrender his fellows to the scaffold as a monster whose evidence no man could trust, no jury confide in; and when he had thus heightened the colouring of his description by every power of an eloquence that made the very building ring, he turned suddenly towards the informer himself, as, pale, wan, and conscience-stricken, he cowered beneath the lightning glance from an eye that seemed to pierce his secret soul within him, and apostrophising his virtues, he directed every glance upon the miserable wretch that writhed beneath his sarcasm. This seemed, indeed, the speakers forte. Never did I hear anything so tremendous as the irony with which he described the credit due to one who had so often been sworn and forsworn – ‘who took an oath of allegiance to his king, and an oath of fealty to his fellows, and now is here this day with a third oath, by which, in the blood of his victim, he is to ratify his perjury to both, and secure himself an honourable independence.’ The caustic satire verged once – only once – on something that produced a laugh, when the orator suddenly stopped: —

‘I find, my lord, I have raised a smile. God knows, never did I feel less merriment. Let me not be condemned. Let not the laugh be mistaken. Few are those events that are produced by folly and vice that fire the hearts with indignation, but something in them will shake the sides with laughter. So, when the two famous moralists of old beheld the sad spectacle of Life, the one burst into laughter, the other melted into tears. They were each of them right, and equally right. But these laughs are the bitter, rueful laughs of honest indignation, or they are the laughs of hectic melancholy and despair. But look there, and tell me where is your laughter now!’

With these words he turned fully round and pointed his finger to the dock, where the six prisoners side by side leaned their haggard, deathlike faces upon the rail, and gazed with stupid wonder at the scene before them. Four of the number did not even know the language, but seemed by the instinct of their position to feel the nature of the appeal their advocate was making, and turned their eyes around the court as if in search of some one look of pity or encouragement that should bring comfort to their hearts.

The whole thing was too dreadful to bear longer, so I forced my way through the crowd, and at last reached the steps in front of the building. But here a new object of horror presented itself, and one which to this hour I cannot chase from before me. In the open space between the line formed by the soldiers and the court knelt a woman, whose tattered garments scarce covered a figure emaciated nearly to starvation; her cheeks, almost blue with famine, were pinched inwards, and her hands, which she held clasped with outstretched arms before her, were like the skinny claws of some wild animal. As she neither spoke nor stirred, there was no effort made to remove her; and there she knelt, her eyes, bloodshot and staring, bent upon the door of the building. A vague fear took possession of me. Somewhere I had seen that face before. I drew near, and as a cold thrill ran through my blood, I remembered where. She was the wife of the man by whose bedside I had watched in the mountains. A half dread of being recognised by her kept me back for a moment; then came the better feeling that perhaps I might be able to serve her, and I walked towards her. But though she turned her eyes towards me as I approached, her look had no intelligence in it, and I could plainly see that reason had fled, and left nothing save the poor suffering form behind it. I endeavoured to attract her attention, but all in vain. At last I tried by gentle force to induce her to leave the place; but a piercing shriek, like one whose tones had long dwelt in my heart, broke from her, with a look of such unutterable anguish, that I was obliged to desist and leave her. The crowd made way for me as I passed out, and I could see in their looks and demeanour the expression of grateful acknowledgment for even this show of feeling on my part; while some muttered as I went by, ‘God reward ye,’ ‘the Lord be good to ye,’ as though at that moment they had nothing in their hearts save thoughts of kindness and words of blessing.

I reached my room, and sat down a sadder, perhaps a wiser man; and yet I know not this. It would need a clearer head than mine to trace all the varying and discordant elements of character I had witnessed to their true source; to sift the evil from the good; to know what to cherish, what to repress, whereon to build hope or what to fear. Such was this country once! Has it changed since?

CHAPTER XLIV. THE BAD DINNER

At nine o’clock the jury retired, and a little afterwards the front drawing-room of the Head Inn was becoming every moment more crowded, as the door opened to admit the several members of the bar, invited to partake of Mrs. Rooney’s hospitalities. Mrs. Rooney’s, I say; for the etiquette of the circuit forbidding the attorney to entertain the dignitaries of the craft, Paul was only present at his own table on sufferance, and sought out the least obtrusive place he could find among the juniors and side-dishes.

No one who could have seen the gay, laughing, merry mob of shrewd, cunning-looking men that chatted away there would have imagined them a few moments previously engaged in a question where the lives of four of their fellow-men hung in the balance, and where at the very moment the deliberation was continuing that should, perhaps, sentence them to death upon the scaffold.

The instincts of a profession are narrow and humiliating things to witness. The surgeon who sees but in the suffering agony of his patient the occasional displacement of certain anatomical details is little better than a savage; the lawyer who watches the passions of hope and fear, distrust, dread, and suspicion, only to take advantage of them in his case, is far worse than a savage. I confess, on looking at these men, I could never divest myself of the impression that the hired and paid-for passion of the advocate, the subtlety that is engaged special, the wit that is briefed, the impetuous rush of indignant eloquence that is bottled up from town to town in circuit, and like soda-water grows weaker at every corking, make but a poor ensemble of qualities for the class who, par excellence, stand at the head of professional life.

One there was, indeed, whose haggard eye and blanched cheek showed no semblance of forgetting the scene in which so lately he had been an actor. This was the lawyer who had defended the prisoners. He sat in a window, resting his head upon his hand – fatigue, exhaustion, but more than all, intense feeling, portrayed in every lineament of his pale face.

‘Ah,’ said the gay, jovial-looking attorney-general, slapping him familiarly on the shoulder – ‘ah, my dear fellow; not tired, I hope. The court was tremendously hot; but come, rally a bit: we shall want you. Bennet and O’Grady have disappointed us, it seems; but you are a host in yourself.’

‘Maybe so,’ replied the other faintly, and scarce lifting his eyes; ‘but you can’t depend on my elevation.’

The ease and readiness of the reply, as well as the tones of the voice, struck me; and I perceived that it was no other than the prior of the Monks of the Screw who had spoken. Mrs. Rooney made her appearance at the moment, and my attention was soon taken away by the announcement of dinner.

One of the judges arrived in time to offer his arm, and I could not help feeling amused at the mock-solemnity of the procession, as we moved along. The judge, I may observe, was a young man, lately promoted, and one whose bright eye and bold, dashing expression bore many more traces of the outer bar than it smacked of the dull gravity of the bench. He took the end of the table beside Mrs. Paul, and the others soon seated themselves promiscuously along the table.

There is a species of gladiatorial exhibition in lawyers’ society which is certainly very amusing. No one speaks without the foreknowledge that he is to be caught up, punned up, or ridiculed, as the case may be. The whole conversation is therefore a hailstorm of short stories, quips, and retorts, intermingled with details of successful bar-stratagems, and practical jokes played off upon juries. With less restraint than at a military mess, there is a strong professional feeling of deference for the seniors, and much more tact and knowledge of the world to unite them. While thus the whole conversation ran on topics of the circuit, I was amazed at Mrs. Rooney’s perfect intimacy with all the niceties of a law joke, or the fun of a nisi prius story. She knew the chief peculiarities of the several persons alluded to, and laughed loud and long at the good things she listened to. The judge alone, above all others, had the lady’s ear. His bold but handsome features, his rich commanding voice (nothing the worse that it was mellowed by a little brogue), his graceful action and manly presence, stamped him as one well suited to be successful wherever good looks, ready tact, and consummate conversational powers have a field for their display. His stories were few, but always pertinent and well told; and frequently the last joke at the table was capped by him, when no one else could have ventured to try it, while the rich roll of his laugh was a guarantee for mirth that never failed.

It was just when my attention was drawn off by Mrs. Booney to some circumstance of our former intimacy, that a hearty burst of laughing from the end of the table told that something unusually absurd was being related.

‘Yes, sir,’ said a shrewd-looking, thin old fellow in spectacles, ‘we capitulated, on condition of leaving the garrison with all the honours of war; and, ‘faith, the sheriff was only too glad to comply.’

‘Bob Mahon is certainly a bold fellow, and never hard pushed, whatever you may do with him.’

‘Bob Mahon!’ said I: ‘what of him?’

‘Keatley has just been telling how he held the jail of Ennis for four weeks against the sheriff. The jailer was an old tenant of his, and readily came into his plans. They were victualled for a long siege, and as the place was strong they had nothing to fear. When the garrison was summoned to surrender, they put a charge of No. 4 into the sub-sheriff, that made him move to the rear; and as the prisoners were all coming from the assizes, they were obliged to let him have his own terms if he ‘d only consent to come out. So they gave him twelve hours’ law, and a clear run for it? and he’s away.’

This was indeed a very quick realisation of Father Tom’s prediction, and I joined in the mirth the story elicited – not the less readily that I was well acquainted with the principal actor in it.

While the laughter still continued, the door opened, and a young barrister stole into the room and whispered a few words into the ear of the counsel for the prisoners. He leaned back in his chair, and pushed his wine-glass hurriedly before him.

‘What, Collinson!’ cried the attorney-general, ‘have they agreed?’ ‘Yes, sir – a verdict of guilty.’

‘Of course; the evidence was too home for a doubt,’ said he, filling his glass from the decanter.

A sharp glance from the dark eye of the opposite counsel was the only reply, as he rose and left the room.

‘Our friend has taken a more than common interest in this case,’ was the cool observation of the last speaker; ‘but there was no getting over Hanlon’s testimony.’ Here he entered into some detail of the trial, while the buzz and confusion of voices became greater than ever. I took this opportunity of making my escape, and joined Mrs. Rooney, who a short time before had retired to the drawing-room.

Mrs. Paul had contrived, even in the short space since her arrival, to have converted the drawing-room into a semblance of something like an apartment in a private house – books, prints, and flowers, judiciously disposed, as well as an open pianoforte, giving it an air of comfort and propriety far different from its ordinary seeming. She was practising Moore’s newly-published song of, ‘My from this world, dear Bessy, with me,’ as I entered.

‘Pray, continue, my dear Mrs. Rooney,’ said I: ‘I will take it as the greatest possible favour – ’

‘Ah,’ said Mrs..Paul, throwing up her eyes in the most languishing ecstasy – ‘ah, you have a soul, I know you have!’

Protesting that I had strong reasons to believe so, I renewed my entreaty.

‘Yes,’ said she, musing, and in a Siddons tone of soliloquy, ‘yes, the poet is right —

“Music hath charms to smooth the savage beast.”

But I really can’t sing the melodies – they are too much for me. The allusion to former times, when King O’Toole and the rest of the royal family – Ah, you are aware, I believe, that family reasons – ’

Here she pressed her embroidered handkerchief to her eyes with one hand, while she pressed mine convulsively with the other.

‘Yes, yes,’ said I hurriedly, while a strong temptation to laugh outright seized me; ‘I have heard that your descent – ’

‘Yes, my dear; if it wasn’t for the Danes, and the cruel battle of the Boyne, there’s no saying where I might not be seated now.’

She leaned on the piano as she spoke, and seemed overpowered with sorrow. At this instant the door opened, and the judge made his appearance.

‘A thousand pardons for the indiscretion,’ said he, stepping back as he saw me sitting with the lady’s hand in mine. I sprang up, confused and ashamed, and rushing past him hurried downstairs.

I knew how soon my adventure, for such it would grow into, would be the standing jest of the bar mess; and not feeling disposed to be present at their mirth, I ordered a chaise, and before half an hour elapsed was on my road to Dublin.

CHAPTER XLV. THE RETURN

We never experience to the full how far sorrow has made its inroad upon us until we come back, after absence, to the places where we have once been happy, and find them lone and tenantless. While we recognise each old familiar object, we see no longer those who gave them all their value in our eyes; every inanimate thing about speaks to our senses, but where are they who were wont to speak to our hearts? The solitary chamber is then, indeed, but the body of all our pleasure, from which the soul has departed for ever.

These feelings were mine as I paced the old well-worn stairs, and entered my quarters in the Castle. No more I heard the merry laugh of my friend O’Grady, nor his quick step upon the stair. The life, the stir, the bustle of the place itself seemed to have all fled; the court echoed only to the measured tread of the grenadier, who marched backwards and forwards beside the flagstaff in the centre of the open space. No cavalcade of joyous riders, no prancing horses led about by grooms, no showy and splendid equipages; all was still, sad, and neglected-looking. The dust whirled about in circling eddies, as the cold wind of an autumnal day moaned through the arched passages and gloomy corridors of the old building. A care-worn official, or some slatternly inferior of the household, would perhaps pass from time to time; but except such as these, nothing stirred. The closed shutters and drawn-down blinds showed that the viceroy was absent and I found myself the only occupant of the building.

It requires the critical eye of the observant resident of great cities to mark the changes which season and fashion effect in their appearance. To one unaccustomed to their phases it seems strange to hear, ‘How empty the town is! how very few people are in London!’ – while the heavy tide of population pours incessantly around him, and his ear is deafened with the ceaseless roll of equipage. But in such a city as Dublin the alteration is manifest to the least observant. But little frequented by the country gentry, and never except for the few months when the court is there; still less visited by foreigners; deserted by the professional classes, at least such of them as are independent enough to absent themselves – the streets are actually empty. The occupations of trade, the bustle of commerce, that through every season continue their onward course in the great trading cities such as Liverpool, Hamburg, Frankfort, and Bourdeaux, scarce exist here; and save that the tattered garments of mendicancy, and the craving cries of hunger are ever before you, you might fall into a drowsy reverie as you walked, and dream yourself in Palmyra.

I had strolled about for above an hour, in the moody frame of mind my own reflections and the surrounding objects were well calculated to suggest, when, meeting by accident a subaltern with whom I was slightly acquainted, I heard that the court had that morning left the Lodge in the Park for Kilkenny, where the theatricals of that pleasant city were going forward – a few members of the household alone remaining, who were to follow in a day or two.

For some days previous I had made up my mind not to remain in Ireland. Every tie that bound me to the country was broken. I had no heart to set about forming new friendships while the wounds of former ones were still fresh and bleeding; and I longed for change of scene and active occupation, that I might have no time to reflect or look back.

Resolving to tender my resignation on the duke’s staff without any further loss of time, I set out at once for the Park. I arrived there in the very nick of time; the carriages were at the entrance, waiting for the private secretary of his grace and two of the aides-de-camp, who were eating a hurried luncheon before starting. One of the aides-de-camp I knew but slightly, the other was a perfect stranger to me; but the secretary, Horton, was an intimate acquaintance. He jumped up from his chair as my name was announced, and a deep blush covered his face as he advanced to meet me.

‘My dear Hinton, how unfortunate! Why weren’t you here yesterday? It’s too late now.’

‘Too late for what? I don’t comprehend you.’

‘Why, my dear fellow,’ said he, drawing his arm within mine, and leading me towards a window, as he dropped his voice to a whisper, ‘I believe you heard from me that his grace was provoked at your continued absence, and expected at least that you would have written to ask an extension of your leave. I don’t know how it was, but it seemed to me that the duchess came back from England with some crotchet in her head, about something she heard in London. In any case, they ordered me to write.’

‘Well, well,’ said I impatiently; ‘I guess it all. I have got my dismissal. Isn’t that the whole of it?’

He nodded twice, without speaking.

‘It only anticipates my own wishes,’ said I coolly, ‘as this note may satisfy you.’ I placed the letter I had written for the purpose of my resignation in his hand, and continued: ‘I am quite convinced in my own mind that his grace, whose kindness towards me has never varied, would never have dreamed of this step on such slight grounds as my absence. No, no; the thing lies deeper. At any other time I should certainly have wished to trace this matter to its source; now, however, chiming as it does with my own plans, and caring little how fortune intends to treat me, I’ll submit in silence.’

‘And take no notice of the affair further?’

‘Such is my determination,’ said I resolutely.

‘In that case,’ said Horton, ‘I may tell you that some story of a lady had reached the duchess, when in London – some girl that it was reported you endeavoured to seduce, and had actually followed for that purpose to the west of Ireland. There, there! don’t take the matter up that way, for heaven’s sake! My dear fellow, hear me out!’ But I could hear no more; the rushing blood that crowded on my brain stunned and stupefied me, and it took several minutes before I became sufficiently collected to ask him to go on.

‘I heard the thing so confusedly,’ said he, ‘that I cannot attempt anything like connection in relating it. But the story goes that your duel in Loughrea did not originate about the steeplechase at all, but in a quarrel about this girl, with her brother or her cousin, who, having discovered your intentions regarding her, you wished to get rid of, as a preliminary. No one but a fool could credit such a thing.’

‘None but such could have invented it,’ said I, as my thoughts at once recurred to Lord Dudley de Vere.

‘The duke, however, spoke to General Hinton – ’

‘To my father! And how did he – ’

‘Oh, behaved as only he could have done: “Stop, my lord!” said he; “I’ll spare you any further relation of this matter. If it be true, my son is unworthy of remaining on your staff. If it be false, I’ll not permit him to hold an appointment where his reputation has been assailed without affording him an opportunity of defence.” High words ensued, and the end was that if you appeared before to-day, you were to hear the charge and have an opportunity for reply. If not, your dismissal was to be made out, and another appointed in your place. Now that I have told you what I feel the indiscretion of my ever having spoken of, promise me, my dear Hinton, that you will take no step in the matter. The intrigue is altogether beneath you, and your character demands no defence on your part.’

‘I almost suspect I know the person,’ said I gloomily.

‘No, no; I’m certain you can’t. It is some woman’s story; some piece of tea-table gossip, depend on it – in any case, quite unworthy of caring about.’

‘At all events, I am too indifferent at this moment to feel otherwise about anything,’ said I. ‘So, good-bye; Horton. My regards to all our fellows; good-bye!’

‘Good-bye, my boy,’ said he, warmly shaking my hand. ‘But, stop a moment, I have got some letters for you; they arrived only a few days since.’

He took a packet from a drawer as he spoke, and once more bidding him adieu, I set out on my return to the Castle.