“Who and what are you, sirrah, who shame not to offer rudeness to an unprotected girl?” demanded the stalworth cavalier, in the same deep tones of contemptuous command. “Forbear, scoundrel, and begone! or by Saint Jago! your punishment shall be sharp and lasting!”
“Pish! man; do you think to bully me?” rejoined the ruffian, with a darker scowl. “I don’t want to be at mischief; but if you put me to it, I’ll blow a brace of holes through your purty face, ‘ma bouchal,’ and give you to the otters.”
The dark eyes of the soldier flashed actual fire, as with the speed of light, his sabre gleaming in his hand, he sprang upon his brawny adversary.
“You will have it, then!” roared his opponent, while at the same instant he levelled one of his long horse-pistols in the face of the advancing dragoon; but as instantaneously a whirring sweep of his adversary’s sabre, missing his fingers by scarcely a hair’s-breadth, struck the weapon so tremendous a blow, that it leaped from his hand, and, spinning through the air as if hurled by the arm of a giant, it plunged far away into the stream, flinging the foam from about it a yard high into the air, and before the weapon had yet touched the water, the swordsman, dashing his sabre-hilt into his antagonist’s face, struck him so astounding a blow, that he rolled over and over headlong upon the sward; and in the next instant, ere he had recovered his senses, the triumphant soldier had planted his knee upon his breast, and secured the remaining pistol of his fallen opponent. All this happened with the rapidity of lightning.
“And now, what have you to plead why I should not rid the earth of you this moment? Speak, miscreant! — what mercy have you a right to look for?”
The swarthy dragoon cocked the weapon while he thus spoke, and eyed his truculent foe with a look of the deadliest significance.
The prostrate object of this menacing address, in return, stared with a vacant look, which gradually kindled into astonishment, and almost joy, in the face of the stranger; and after a brief interval of a second or two, in a tone which bespoke the extremity of wonderment and surprise, he replied by a few hurried sentences, and, as it seemed, of vehement interrogatory, in the Irish tongue.
“Hey day!” cried the officer, rising hastily, so as to relieve the defeated combatant, and drawing himself up to his full height, and folding his arms, he coolly looked down upon the swollen and bloody face of the soi-disant militia-man, with a smile, or a sneer — it might be either — while he calmly added —
“I little expected to have met you here, Mr. Hogan. Get up, and shake thyself, man; this is but child’s play, compared with what we have both encountered in other countries. You were not wont to be so easily upset, though, sooth to say, you seem to have had a tolerably heavy buffet.”
“I’ve met my master, that’s all,” said the fellow, as he pressed his broad hand upon the wound he had just received, and then looked gloomily upon the blood which covered his fingers; “but no matter; I take it in good humour; and, as you say, it’s not the first time I’ve seen the colour of my own blood.”
“Not the first, but marvellously nigh being the last!” rejoined the tall soldier, contemptuously. “Get up, sirrah, and begone! I spare you for the sake of former acquaintance; though, as you well know, your pranks in Flanders would have been better requited by a rope’s-end, the wheel, or the gibbet, than thus. Up, sirrah, and depart!”
So saying, he discharged the pistol among the trees, and handed the smoking weapon to the wounded man, who had now arisen, crestfallen and bloody, from the ground.
“There — take it! and let me see you walk down yon pathway as far as the eye can follow,” continued he, sternly; “and for old acquaintance sake, I tell you, that if I see you attempt to load again, or even so much as stop to look back upon me, I will send a leaden messenger after you, straight enough to find you even through a keyhole. What I say, I say — and so good night.”
“Short courtesy — short courtesy, sir,” rejoined the fellow; “but it’s all one to me. It was your way when you were little more than a boy; and soft talk doesn’t come with years and hard knocks. But, never mind, I owe you no grudge for this night’s work, and mean you no wrong. So good night, and no harm done.”
Having thus spoken, the ill-favoured personage in the blue laced coat turned upon his heel, and strode rapidly down the little path, without once turning or pausing upon his way, until he was lost among the deepening shadows and thickening brushwood in the distance.
“And what has become of the girl?” exclaimed the dragoon.
“I had well nigh forgotten her. Ha! by the mass, swooned or dead! I trust the villain has not hurt her!”
In truth the poor girl, terrified by the peril from which she had but just escaped, and scared and shocked by the scene of violence — the first she had ever witnessed — which had been enacted in her presence, but the moment after, had indeed lost all consciousness, and sunk in utter insensibility at the foot of the oak tree, against which she had leaned for support.
From the shallow river brink he took water in his hand, and throwing back the crimson hood, he dashed it in her face; and as consciousness slowly returned, he had ample leisure to admire that miracle of beauty. Pale as monumental marble were the matchless features, round whose beautiful stillness wantoned her rich golden ringlets in the fitful breeze of evening — her small and classic head rested on the high knotted roots of the old oak tree, all unconscious, and nothing dreaming of dangers, bygone or to come; and in the perfect features, and the softly oval face, moveless though they were, there reigned a look so sweet, so heavenly, and withal so noble, that she seemed an existence too guileless, pure, and lofty for this earth, a native of another sphere, a messenger of preternatural grace and goodness, arrested in her beautiful and bounteous wanderings, even in the wild wood where she lay, by some too potent magic locked in enchanted slumbers. And he, the handsome stalworth warrior, who bends over her with haughty brow and eyes of fire, might seem the predestinated champion, chosen and appointed from his birth to break the spell of the enchanter’s power, and set the heavenly captive free again. He watches her with a fixed stern look, in which is seen something of wonder and admiration, as well there may; for in all his wanderings in foreign lands and splendid courts, it never yet has been his fortune to behold a face that could compare with that on which he gazes now. Yes! the spell is broken — the glow of life returns, in the faintest, finest tint; like the first blush of the coming morning, it steals over her deathlike cheek, and gently flows into her parted lips in ruddier streams; and now the long dark lashes tremble, and now she sighs from the very depths of her innocent true heart; and now her eyes are opened — beautiful eyes! dark, lustrous, soft — she looks around in wild alarm; and now she remembers all — she essays to rise — she draws her mantle closely round her, and glances round in fearful haste, but the dreaded form is no longer there, her defender stands beside her, and she knows that she is safe.
“The darkness of night is fast descending — you may have far to go,” said he gravely and respectfully, after a pause of a few minutes had allowed her time fully to recover her scattered recollections. “Pardon me, when I say it were meet for you to pursue your way as speedily as may be; you shall have my protection until you have passed this dangerous cover. You are still faint — prithee lean upon my arm. So your path lies this way— ’tis well, then, our way lies together.”
Thus speaking, he led the beautiful and trembling girl through the pathway she had that evening so joyously traced; and side by side in silence they reached the road, and stood upon the antique bridge — his good steed following in his master’s steps with the submissive docility and affection of a well-trained dog, now snuffing the crisp grass by the path-side, and now with cocked ears and glowing eyes lifting his head to catch some distant sound.
Never, since the five tall arches of Glindarragh bridge first rose from the dark flashing waters of the chafing stream, did its gray battlements enclose two nobler and more handsome forms. Never yet did glitterin
g court or gay saloon behold a pair so meetly matched for grace and stately beauty, as did that wildly-wooded steep old bridge in Munster: and never yet was beauty of two different orders more gracefully contrasted, than in the youthful soldier and the fair girl, on whom, as side by side they traversed the broken road, the last flush of the glorious sunset fell in soft splendour. He so tall, so dark, so stern — his glossy black hair flowing to his shoulders — his face colourless, except for the clear olive tint, which might have almost become a Moorish prince, so clear and dark was its hue — his eyes so full of speaking fire — his mouth so finely chisseled and so stem, darkly surmounted with that grim moustache — can human face wear a haughtier, sterner beauty than reigns in his? While she, poor fluttered Grace — her noble brow shaded by the rich curls of her hair — her face so soft, so exquisitely turned — as full of varying dimples as the wimpling sunny tide that flows so gently by them — flushed with the mantling glow of agitation — hangs on his arm, tremblingly, modestly, yet with the ineffable loftiness of true nobility, and all the pride of artless purity. Thus they move side by side, the very types of sternness and of softness, of protection and dependence, of strength and weakness: nay, the contrast was not less striking even in their dress — he elaborately attired in all the gorgeous and splendid habilaments of martial equipment, according to the punctilious but magnificent style of those days, and she with but a simple hood and cloak of red cloth thrown hastily over her dress.
They had now reached the centre of the ancient bridge, and the soldier paused, as the dusky towers and battlements of Glindarragh Castle rose in their grim and massive proportions before him.
“Can these be — are they,” he said, after a breathless pause, “the towers of Glindarragh?”
The lady assented.
“These — these, then, are the towers of Glindarragh,” repeated the tall soldier, with an expression of deep and melancholy interest, as he gazed fixedly upon the ancient fabric. “Glindarragh Castle, the ancient home and rightful property of the banished O’Briens.”
He paused for a few moments in silent contemplation of the building, and then, with a sigh, he suddenly turned to resume his way.
“Where does your home lie?” he inquired, in a saddened tone. “I would fain see you in safety beneath its shelter; the times are perilous, and the night draws on.”
“Glindarragh castle is my home, sir,” said the girl, with simple dignity.
“And you?” said he quickly.
“I am Sir Hugh Willoughby’s only daughter,” she rejoined proudly, while she raised her head, and the hood falling backward left her golden ringlets to the rising night-wind.
The dark cavalier instinctively withdrew his arm and recoiled a pace or two, while a swarthier glow for a moment crossed his haughty countenance; and as the fair girl marked his ungracious action, and looked in his stern and now almost forbidding countenance, she felt, she knew not why, a pang of wounded pride, a feeling something akin to humiliation, disappointment, and even to sorrow. Turning haughtily from her, he drew near the battlement of the bridge, and raising his powerful voice, he halloed for some one to approach. The summons being answered, and the sound of the advancing steps being audible in the distance, he turned again toward the half-offended girl, and said, with the extremest coldness, and even severity —
“I have now done a soldier’s duty — you are safe, and here I leave you in the care of your own people. Spare your thanks for those who can accept them, as for me I will not. What I have done, I would do again for you or for another as freely as just now. I ask for it no acknowledgment but this, that you tell Sir Hugh Willoughby, from me, that I neither intended a favour nor accepted thanks — that a long account of a very different kind remains between us still unclosed, and that in these unsettled times, when truth and treason are brought sternly to the test, he may perchance hear again of Torlogh Dhuv O’Brien.”
As he thus spoke, the light breeze blew the curls from his forehead, and the grim omen, the triple scar, deeply sunk in his bold and lofty brow, for the first time met her eyes. With a slight and haughty salutation he raised his plumed hat, and as the messenger from the castle reached the spot, he sprang into his war-saddle, struck the spurs into his horse’s flanks, and in a moment the hereditary enemy of her father’s house was out of sight,
CHAPTER VI.
THE FEUD OF THE COUSINS, SHOWING THAT GRAY LOCKS DO NOT ALWAYS MAKE COOL HEADS — AND THAT A BLACK HEART MAY BEAT UNDER A RED MANTLE.
WHILE Grace Willoughby was lightly crossing the old bridge of Glindarragh, upon the eventful ramble whose adventures we have just recounted, and at a distance of some half dozen miles from the scene of our last chapter, there occurred an accidental meeting between persons strikingly contrasted in many respects. Two old roads, one descending the precipitous front of a furze-clothed rocky hill, the other sweeping round its base, among stunted sloes and hawthorn trees, which skirt the banks of a wayward trout stream, converge at a point where the brawling rivulet is overspanned by a steep old bridge, whose grey battlements rustle with a luxuriant mantle of ivy, darkened under the shadow of clustering bushes. Over this stream the united roads are carried by the bridge, and thence along the lower country, under a double row of ash and elm trees. Descending the steepest of these roads, toward the bridge, rode a cavalier, followed by a mounted servant: the gentleman was advanced in years — perhaps a winter or two past sixty, as nearly as one might guess; his countenance was bold, frank, and imperious — his features somewhat high and marked — his eye keen grey, shadowed by a thick, grizzled eyebrow — his figure was portly, but firm and robust; he wore a dark-green coat, cut in the cumbrous fashion of the time, with huge cuffs rolled back to the elbow, showing abundance of shirt sleeve and ruffles, and all richly overlaid with gold lace — a pair of huge jack-boots encased his legs, the folds of a laced cravat fluttered upon his breast, and from under his broadleafed hat the curls of a handsome peruke escaped in masses upon his shoulders. He bestrode a tall, well-trained hunter of iron grey; and his saddle was covered with red plush, trimmed with gold. In a word, his equipment was that of a country gentleman of wealth and worship in his day; and his aspect and bearing those of a man accustomed to be heard with deference; and, perhaps, too little habituated to restrain the impulses of a somewhat fiery and impatient temper.
Moving toward the same point, at the same time, by the lower road, and, unlike the gentleman in the green suit, unattended by a servant, rode a lean, athletic man, with a hooked nose, dark prominent eyes of piercing black, a sallow complexion, and a certain unpleasant expresssion of mingled energy and meanness, it might be treachery, in his face, which gave it a character, at once repulsive and intimidating. He wore a mantle of dusky red, which seemed to have seen much service; and in all respects, except in the quality of his steed, had he been studying how best to mark his contempt for those proprieties of fashion, which the elder cavalier seemed so carefully to cultivate, without descending into absolute slovenliness, he could not have succeeded more admirably. This is the identical sallow, sharp-featured man, who, three years before, upon a certain moonlight night, was leaning over a map, in that rich London saloon into which we have already looked.
As the elderly gentleman cautiously walked his horse down the steep descent, he suffered his eye to wander moodily over the broad landscape: an undulating plain of many miles’ extent, bounded by a range of blue hills, softened and dimmed in the haze of evening, and clothed with misty wood in many a sweeping line, and irregular mass, while the winding river, between its bosky banks, shone like burnished gold in the sunset glow, in which all the broad scenery was steeped; and while thus listlessly employed, his attention was arrested by the ringing tramp which announced the approach of the other horseman. He looked first carelessly toward the advancing figure — then again more jealously — and at length, with a darkened brow, and a scornful smile, he averted his gaze, and muttered —
“My pious, mass-going kinsman — so stead my fortun
e, I had as lief meet his brimstone master, the honester devil of the two; if he have any shame or grace left, he’ll try to avoid me.”
Had the speaker been able to dive into the bosom of that ill-favoured cavalier, he would have found within the polluted and fiery depths of that moral Gehenna, somewhat to kindle into fiercer flame, the smouldering fires of bygone feuds — and mayhap to darken his bold heart with the shadows of dismay — he would there have read the fearful records of subtle, deep-laid, deadly schemes, even now ripe for execution, and already moving toward their purpose — of which he, the unconscious, proud old man — he and his fortunes were the foredoomed sport.:
The recognition, as it seemed, was mutual; for the object of this not very complimentary soliloquy checked his steed, as if in momentary indecision; but in that brief interval, a thought which had often before occurred to him, but never until now with practical effect — a strange and sudden thought, smote with the vividness and power of lightning upon his mind. As if he had resolved that the meeting, from which the other so scornfully and bitterly recoiled, should actually occur, he spurred forward, so as to reach the bridge before the arrival of the elder horseman; who, observing this manœuvre with profound contempt, haughtily determined, upon his part, neither to seek nor to avoid the interview, which his hated kinsman seemed resolved to thrust upon him. It was thus that, as he descended the farther side of the steep bridge, at a leisurely walk, he found himself riding beside the cavalier in the red cloak.
“Sir Hugh Willoughby?” said the latter, raising his hat, with a doubtful smile, and stooping with an almost servile salutation.
“Yes, Miles Garrett,” said Sir Hugh, turning full upon him with stern abruptness; and fixing himself more firmly in his seat, while he eyed his companion with a look of fiery scorn and defiance, which seemed to threaten the possibility of a collision much sterner than one of mere words; “here I am, sir, what do you, or what can you desire with me?”
Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu Page 53