My Lords of Strogue. Volume 1 of 3

My lady meditated for a time, reviewing this intelligence. 'Then these United Irish did not intend to be mere wind-bags?' she thought, and my Lord Camden was beginning to be afraid of them. Her common-sense told her that if, in a tussle, they got even for a moment the upper hand, their vengeance would fall heavily upon the perpetrators of such reckless escapades as that which Shane had just narrated. At any rate, it was not good to give them such food for complaint. My lady's caste prejudices blinded her to the fact that when half-a-dozen youths (even blue-blood ones) set on a single man and slay him, the act is no better than murder, though they are content to deplore it for a minute as an accident. There was no doubt left in her mind that Doreen's advice had been of the very best. She must even go to Ennishowen, however great the pain might be to herself in the revival of unpleasant memories. So, shaking her head, she remarked: 'Dear Shane! in '45 the Scotch rebels advanced within a hundred miles of London. If 5,000 ragged Highlanders are capable of that, why should not the French army march on Dublin? Lord Clare spoke to me yesterday on the subject of the yeomanry. It seems that the Privy Council expect you to undertake this district.'

'I should like that!' Shane said.

'It would not be wise, though,' returned his mother, quietly. 'The aristocracy will have a difficult game to play if these silly people really aim at violence. The executive will have brought it on themselves, and it's only fair that they should get out of their own difficulties in their own way. In '82, when your father and I both wore the uniform, the case was different. Landlord and tenant were united, as lord and servant of the soil, against a foreigner who had maltreated both. Things have changed since then. The position of the nobles is different. They have become Anglicised. Much of their interest is English. Yet it would be best for them not too openly to join the foreigner in coercing their own tenants-at least, not just now.'

The cunning old lady was saying what she did not quite believe, having in view an object, and Shane looked at her in surprise.

'If riots take place,' the countess proceeded, 'the commander-in-chief will put them down, if he thinks proper, with the English troops who have come over lately; and he and they will bear the odium. The Irish nobles would be placing themselves in a false position by interfering against their own people with too great alacrity. At all events, they will gain a point by waiting.'

'But, mother, the other lords are heading the squireens. If I hold back they will say I am a coward!'

'Not so, my son. Your proceedings every day would give the lie to that. I grant that if you sat here, or roystered on in Dublin, you might be accused of shuffling, which would not do. But if you went away? Not to England, no! That would not do either. Why not go to Ennishowen, under the pretext that here everything is safe under the paternal rule of the executive, whilst in the vast wild northern district, over which you hold sway, it would be politic for the lord to be amongst his tenants? You would be of local service, and at that distance no one could be sure whether or no your future actions were guided by events.'

'You do not believe that this pack of fools will do any harm?'

'Certainly not, or I would not counsel you to go away. Cannot you see that in ignoble squabbles with the scum it is best to keep clean hands by remaining neutral? They will be put down-of course they will be put down; but, you stupid fellow, we must so manage that you have no hand in it. We will go to Glas-aitch-é. 'Tis long since we were there.'

Shane twirled the satin ear of Eblana round his finger absently. This move of his mother's puzzled him. What would his life be away at wild Glas-aitch-é without his boon companions, among boors who had probably never heard of a Hellfire Club? In earlier days he used to be madly fond of field-sports, was still devoted to certain branches of the chase. But suddenly to leave the joys of a gay metropolis to bury himself in a hut on practically a desert island, was no pleasant prospect. And dear Norah, too, must she be left behind? Accustomed as he was to bow to his mother's ascendency in political questions as in the management of the estates, the vision of Norah deploring in dishevelled loneliness the absence of his fascinating self was too much for him.

'I cannot go, mother! It would look like flight,' he said with a show of firmness.

My lady was too acute not to read his thoughts; too wise to expect her son to yield without a flutter. She moved with stately sweep to where he sat, and, pressing his face with her two hands, whispered fondly as she knelt down beside him. 'My darling, do you not know that I would cut my heart out for you, that I would walk to the stake to save you one needless pang? Men can never realise the fulness of a mother's love-the sublimity of its unselfishness-the majesty of its devotion. It is the one ray of the Divine which has been allowed to glimmer forth on our dull earth. Do you suppose I would counsel you to aught that could bring you injury? that I have not anxiously weighed each side of the question before deciding what is best? You know that I love you much better than myself. You know that Heaven has denied you cleverness. You are not clever, my poor child; but we can't help that, can we? And you are not good, I am sorely afraid. Yet as your mother I love you no whit the less. Try to comprehend what a mother's love is like-how large-how grandly blind in that it might see but will not!'

As she spoke, the poor lady who had been so buffeted by worldly troubles was transfigured by the strength of her affection for this one being. The fact of her loving nothing else served but to increase her love. As one, some of whose senses have decayed whilst others are proportionately sensitised, she felt with intensity all which affected her firstborn. It was strange that she could not remember that Terence also was her son-that he had pined for such a display as this all his life in vain-that even now (yawning in the Four-courts) he would have upset the presiding judge and sent all the attorneys to a man into the Liffey, and galloped at breakneck speed to Strogue if his mother would only have given him one of the looks which she was lavishing on Shane-one of those hand-touches that are in nowise akin to 'paddling,' but which send stronger thrills through us than the most languishing of eyes.

'Ireland is being involved in complicated difficulties,' she pursued. 'You must be obedient, and allow me to lead you through them safely. It will only be for a month or two. Then all will be over, and we can come back here again. Say you will do as I wish?'

Shane never could long withstand his mother's coaxing, when she condescended to implore. Is it not always thus? Is it not worth while to be haughty, arrogant, ill-tempered-as the case may be-if only for the fuller appreciation of our benignity when we elect to be benign? Shane clung to the dowager's last straw, which with artful artlessness she had held out to him. It would only be for a month or two. It would do Norah all the good in life to miss her beloved for a space; while he was away, she would measure his merits, and fly with rapture to his bosom on his return. It would be rather fun, too, again to visit for a few weeks the haunts he used so to doat upon. But it ill became him as one of the sterner sex to be over-easily persuaded.

'It will be very dull up there, mother,' he objected.

'How civil of you,' the countess said, kissing him, for she saw the point was gained. 'If you are a good boy, I will ask your uncle to let Doreen come too. Her eccentricities will enliven us.'

'You are always talking of Doreen?' complained my lord. 'I can't see why you make so much fuss about her.'

'Then we won't take her,' responded my lady, with prompt and Machiavellian wisdom.

'I care not,' he returned 'Perhaps we had better take her, and I'll teach her to shoot seals.'

And so the matter was decided, whilst my lady made up her mind that, once in Donegal, her son should stop there under one pretext or another until all danger from Miss Gillin should be averted.

END Of VOL. I