The cold night wind waved the bed-curtains, and he paused for a moment — all was still again — and he stepped in upon the floor of the room. He held in his hand what appeared to be a steel instrument, shaped something like a hammer, but larger and sharper at the extremities. This he held rather behind him, while, with three long, tip-toe strides, he brought himself to the bedside.
I felt that the discovery must now be made, and held my breath in momentary expectation of the execration in which he would vent his surprise and disappointment. I closed my eyes — there was a pause, but it was a short one. I heard two dull blows, given in rapid succession: a quivering sigh, and the long-drawn, heavy breathing of the sleeper was for ever suspended. I unclosed my eyes, and saw the murderer fling the quilt across the head of his victim: he then, with the instrument of death still in his hand, proceeded to the lobby-door, upon which he tapped sharply twice or thrice. A quick step was then heard approaching, and a voice whispered something from without. Edward answered, with a kind of chuckle, ‘Her ladyship is past complaining; unlock the door, in the devil’s name, unless you’re afraid to come in, and help me to lift the body out of the window.’
The key was turned in the lock — the door opened — and my uncle entered the room.
I have told you already that I had placed myself under the shade of a projection of the wall, close to the door. I had instinctively shrunk down, cowering towards the ground on the entrance of Edward through the window. When my uncle entered the room he and his son both stood so very close to me that his hand was every moment upon the point of touching my face. I held my breath, and remained motionless as death.
‘You had no interruption from the next room?’ said my uncle.
‘No,’ was the brief reply.
‘Secure the jewels, Ned; the French harpy must not lay her claws upon them. You’re a steady hand, by G —— ! not much blood — eh?’
‘Not twenty drops,’ replied his son, ‘and those on the quilt.’
‘I’m glad it’s over,’ whispered my uncle again. ‘We must lift the — the THING through the window, and lay the rubbish over it.’
They then turned to the bedside, and, winding the bedclothes round the body, carried it between them slowly to the window, and, exchanging a few brief words with some one below, they shoved it over the windowsill, and I heard it fall heavily on the ground underneath.
‘I’ll take the jewels,’ said my uncle; ‘there are two caskets in the lower drawer.’
He proceeded, with an accuracy which, had I been more at ease, would have furnished me with matter of astonishment, to lay his hand upon the very spot where my jewels lay; and having possessed himself of them, he called to his son:
‘Is the rope made fast above?’
‘I’m not a fool — to be sure it is,’ replied he.
They then lowered themselves from the window. I now rose lightly and cautiously, scarcely daring to breathe, from my place of concealment, and was creeping towards the door, when I heard my cousin’s voice, in a sharp whisper, exclaim: ‘Scramble up again! G — d d —— n you, you’ve forgot to lock the room-door!’ and I perceived, by the straining of the rope which hung from above, that the mandate was instantly obeyed.
Not a second was to be lost. I passed through the door, which was only closed, and moved as rapidly as I could, consistently with stillness, along the lobby. Before I had gone many yards, I heard the door through which I had just passed double-locked on the inside. I glided down the stairs in terror, lest, at every corner, I should meet the murderer or one of his accomplices.
I reached the hall, and listened for a moment to ascertain whether all was silent around; no sound was audible. The parlour windows opened on the park, and through one of them I might, I thought, easily effect my escape. Accordingly, I hastily entered; but, to my consternation, a candle was burning in the room, and by its light I saw a figure seated at the dinner-table, upon which lay glasses, bottles, and the other accompaniments of a drinking-party. Two or three chairs were placed about the table irregularly, as if hastily abandoned by their occupants.
A single glance satisfied me that the figure was that of my French attendant. She was fast asleep, having probably drank deeply. There was something malignant and ghastly in the calmness of this bad woman’s features, dimly illuminated as they were by the flickering blaze of the candle. A knife lay upon the table, and the terrible thought struck me— ‘Should I kill this sleeping accomplice in the guilt of the murderer, and thus secure my retreat?’
Nothing could be easier — it was but to draw the blade across her throat — the work of a second. An instant’s pause, however, corrected me. ‘No,’ thought I, ‘the God who has conducted me thus far through the valley of the shadow of death, will not abandon me now. I will fall into their hands, or I will escape hence, but it shall be free from the stain of blood. His will be done.’
I felt a confidence arising from this reflection, an assurance of protection which I cannot describe. There was no other means of escape, so I advanced, with a firm step and collected mind, to the window. I noiselessly withdrew the bars and unclosed the shutters — I pushed open the casement, and, without waiting to look behind me, I ran with my utmost speed, scarcely feeling the ground under me, down the avenue, taking care to keep upon the grass which bordered it.
I did not for a moment slack my speed, and I had now gained the centre point between the park-gate and the mansion-house. Here the avenue made a wider circuit, and in order to avoid delay, I directed my way across the smooth sward round which the pathway wound, intending, at the opposite side of the flat, at a point which I distinguished by a group of old birch-trees, to enter again upon the beaten track, which was from thence tolerably direct to the gate.
I had, with my utmost speed, got about half way across this broad flat, when the rapid treading of a horse’s hoofs struck upon my ear. My heart swelled in my bosom as though I would smother. The clattering of galloping hoofs approached — I was pursued — they were now upon the sward on which I was running — there was not a bush or a bramble to shelter me — and, as if to render escape altogether desperate, the moon, which had hitherto been obscured, at this moment shone forth with a broad clear light, which made every object distinctly visible.
The sounds were now close behind me. I felt my knees bending under me, with the sensation which torments one in dreams. I reeled — I stumbled — I fell — and at the same instant the cause of my alarm wheeled past me at full gallop. It was one of the young fillies which pastured loose about the park, whose frolics had thus all but maddened me with terror. I scrambled to my feet, and rushed on with weak but rapid steps, my sportive companion still galloping round and round me with many a frisk and fling, until, at length, more dead than alive, I reached the avenue-gate and crossed the stile, I scarce knew how.
I ran through the village, in which all was silent as the grave, until my progress was arrested by the hoarse voice of a sentinel, who cried: ‘Who goes there?’ I felt that I was now safe. I turned in the direction of the voice, and fell fainting at the soldier’s feet. When I came to myself; I was sitting in a miserable hovel, surrounded by strange faces, all bespeaking curiosity and compassion.
Many soldiers were in it also: indeed, as I afterwards found, it was employed as a guardroom by a detachment of troops quartered for that night in the town. In a few words I informed their officer of the circumstances which had occurred, describing also the appearance of the persons engaged in the murder; and he, without loss of time, proceeded to the mansion-house of Carrickleigh, taking with him a party of his men. But the villains had discovered their mistake, and had effected their escape before the arrival of the military.
The Frenchwoman was, however, arrested in the neighbourhood upon the next day. She was tried and condemned upon the ensuing assizes; and previous to her execution, confessed that ‘SHE HAD A HAND IN MAKING HUGH TISDAL’S BED.’ She had been a housekeeper in the castle at the time, and a kind of chere amie of my un
cle’s. She was, in reality, able to speak English like a native, but had exclusively used the French language, I suppose to facilitate her disguise. She died the same hardened wretch which she had lived, confessing her crimes only, as she alleged, that her doing so might involve Sir Arthur T —— n, the great author of her guilt and misery, and whom she now regarded with unmitigated detestation.
With the particulars of Sir Arthur’s and his son’s escape, as far as they are known, you are acquainted. You are also in possession of their after fate — the terrible, the tremendous retribution which, after long delays of many years, finally overtook and crushed them. Wonderful and inscrutable are the dealings of God with His creatures.
Deep and fervent as must always be my gratitude to heaven for my deliverance, effected by a chain of providential occurrences, the failing of a single link of which must have ensured my destruction, I was long before I could look back upon it with other feelings than those of bitterness, almost of agony.
The only being that had ever really loved me, my nearest and dearest friend, ever ready to sympathise, to counsel, and to assist — the gayest, the gentlest, the warmest heart — the only creature on earth that cared for me — HER life had been the price of my deliverance; and I then uttered the wish, which no event of my long and sorrowful life has taught me to recall, that she had been spared, and that, in her stead, I were mouldering in the grave, forgotten and at rest.
THE BRIDAL OF CARRIGVARAH.
Being a Sixth Extract from the Legacy of the late Francis Purcell, P. P. of Drumcoolagh.
In a sequestered district of the county of Limerick, there stood my early life, some forty years ago, one of those strong stone buildings, half castle, half farmhouse, which are not unfrequent in the South of Ireland, and whose solid masonry and massive construction seem to prove at once the insecurity and the caution of the Cromwellite settlers who erected them. At the time of which I speak, this building was tenanted by an elderly man, whose starch and puritanic mien and manners might have become the morose preaching parliamentarian captain, who had raised the house and ruled the household more than a hundred years before; but this man, though Protestant by descent as by name, was not so in religion; he was a strict, and in outward observances, an exemplary Catholic; his father had returned in early youth to the true faith, and died in the bosom of the church.
Martin Heathcote was, at the time of which I speak, a widower, but his housekeeping was not on that account altogether solitary, for he had a daughter, whose age was now sufficiently advanced to warrant her father in imposing upon her the grave duties of domestic superintendence.
This little establishment was perfectly isolated, and very little intruded upon by acts of neighbourhood; for the rank of its occupants was of that equivocal kind which precludes all familiar association with those of a decidedly inferior rank, while it is not sufficient to entitle its possessors to the society of established gentility, among whom the nearest residents were the O’Maras of Carrigvarah, whose mansion-house, constructed out of the ruins of an old abbey, whose towers and cloisters had been levelled by the shot of Cromwell’s artillery, stood not half a mile lower upon the river banks.
Colonel O’Mara, the possessor of the estates, was then in a declining state of health, and absent with his lady from the country, leaving at the castle, his son young O’Mara, and a kind of humble companion, named Edward Dwyer, who, if report belied him not, had done in his early days some PECULIAR SERVICES for the Colonel, who had been a gay man — perhaps worse — but enough of recapitulation.
It was in the autumn of the year 17 — that the events which led to the catastrophe which I have to detail occurred. I shall run through the said recital as briefly as clearness will permit, and leave you to moralise, if such be your mood, upon the story of real life, which I even now trace at this distant period not without emotion.
It was upon a beautiful autumn evening, at that glad period of the season when the harvest yields its abundance, that two figures were seen sauntering along the banks of the winding river, which I described as bounding the farm occupied by Heathcote; they had been, as the rods and landing-nets which they listlessly carried went to show, plying the gentle, but in this case not altogether solitary craft of the fisherman. One of those persons was a tall and singularly handsome young man, whose dark hair and complexion might almost have belonged to a Spaniard, as might also the proud but melancholy expression which gave to his countenance a character which contrasts sadly, but not uninterestingly, with extreme youth; his air, as he spoke with his companion, was marked by that careless familiarity which denotes a conscious superiority of one kind or other, or which may be construed into a species of contempt; his comrade afforded to him in every respect a striking contrast. He was rather low in stature — a defect which was enhanced by a broad and square-built figure — his face was sallow, and his features had that prominence and sharpness which frequently accompany personal deformity — a remarkably wide mouth, with teeth white as the fangs of a wolf, and a pair of quick, dark eyes, whose effect was heightened by the shadow of a heavy black brow, gave to his face a power of expression, particularly when sarcastic or malignant emotions were to be exhibited, which features regularly handsome could scarcely have possessed.
‘Well, sir,’ said the latter personage, ‘I have lived in hall and abbey, town and country, here and abroad for forty years and more, and should know a thing or two, and as I am a living man, I swear I think the girl loves you.’
‘You are a fool, Ned,’ said the younger.
‘I may be a fool,’ replied the first speaker, ‘in matters where my own advantage is staked, but my eye is keen enough to see through the flimsy disguise of a country damsel at a glance; and I tell you, as surely as I hold this rod, the girl loves you.’
‘Oh I this is downright headstrong folly,’ replied the young fisherman. ‘Why, Ned, you try to persuade me against my reason, that the event which is most to be deprecated has actually occurred. She is, no doubt, a pretty girl — a beautiful girl — but I have not lost my heart to her; and why should I wish her to be in love with me? Tush, man, the days of romance are gone, and a young gentleman may talk, and walk, and laugh with a pretty country maiden, and never breathe aspirations, or vows, or sighs about the matter; unequal matches are much oftener read of than made, and the man who could, even in thought, conceive a wish against the honour of an unsuspecting, artless girl, is a villain, for whom hanging is too good.’
This concluding sentence was uttered with an animation and excitement, which the mere announcement of an abstract moral sentiment could hardly account for.
‘You are, then, indifferent, honestly and in sober earnest, indifferent to the girl?’ inquired Dwyer.
‘Altogether so,’ was the reply.
‘Then I have a request to make,’ continued Dwyer, ‘and I may as well urge it now as at any other time. I have been for nearly twenty years the faithful, and by no means useless, servant of your family; you know that I have rendered your father critical and important services — — ‘ he paused, and added hastily: ‘you are not in the mood — I tire you, sir.’
‘Nay,’ cried O’Mara, ‘I listen patiently — proceed.’
‘For all these services, and they were not, as I have said, few or valueless, I have received little more reward than liberal promises; you have told me often that this should be mended — I’ll make it easily done — I’m not unreasonable — I should be contented to hold Heathcote’s ground, along with this small farm on which we stand, as full quittance of all obligations and promises between us.’
‘But how the devil can I effect that for you; this farm, it is true, I, or my father, rather, may lease to you, but Heathcote’s title we cannot impugn; and even if we could, you would not expect us to ruin an honest man, in order to make way for YOU, Ned.’
‘What I am,’ replied Dwyer, with the calmness of one who is so accustomed to contemptuous insinuations as to receive them with perfect indifference, ‘is to b
e attributed to my devotedness to your honourable family — but that is neither here nor there. I do not ask you to displace Heathcote, in order to made room for me. I know it is out of your power to do so. Now hearken to me for a moment; Heathcote’s property, that which he has set out to tenants, is worth, say in rents, at most, one hundred pounds: half of this yearly amount is assigned to your father, until payment be made of a bond for a thousand pounds, with interest and soforth. Hear me patiently for a moment and I have done. Now go you to Heathcote, and tell him your father will burn the bond, and cancel the debt, upon one condition — that when I am in possession of this farm, which you can lease to me on what terms you think suitable, he will convey over his property to me, reserving what life-interest may appear fair, I engaging at the same time to marry his daughter, and make such settlements upon her as shall be thought fitting — he is not a fool — the man will close with the offer.’
O’Mara turned shortly upon Dwyer, and gazed upon him for a moment with an expression of almost unmixed resentment.
‘How,’ said he at length, ‘YOU contract to marry Ellen Heathcote? the poor, innocent, confiding, lighthearted girl. No, no, Edward Dwyer, I know you too well for that — your services, be they what they will, must not, shall not go unrewarded — your avarice shall be appeased — but not with a human sacrifice! Dwyer, I speak to you without disguise; you know me to be acquainted with your history, and what’s more, with your character. Now tell me frankly, were I to do as you desire me, in cool blood, should I not prove myself a more uncompromising and unfeeling villain than humanity even in its most monstrous shapes has ever yet given birth to?’
Dwyer met this impetuous language with the unmoved and impenetrable calmness which always marked him when excitement would have appeared in others; he even smiled as he replied: (and Dwyer’s smile, for I have seen it, was characteristically of that unfortunate kind which implies, as regards the emotions of others, not sympathy but derision).
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 670