Only an Irish Girl by Margaret Wolfe Hungerford (online e reader txt) 📖

It is dreadful to think of handsome Launce, with his brilliant prospects, being sacrificed to this woman, ten years older than he is, and the widow of a very "shady" major of dragoons.

"It is not as if he loved her!" says Belle, almost with a sob. "He does not love her. It's all a 'bewitchment,' as old Aileen would say; and, when she has got him, he'll be miserable."

"But we mustn't let her get him, dear; we must stop it, you and I."

"Then I'm sure I don't see how we are to manage it," Belle sighs.

Neither does Honor, but she is not going to admit that.

Twilight is setting in when Belle gets up to go home.

"Oh, dear, why have I stayed so long?" she says, with a little nervous sigh. "It will be almost dark before I get out on the road."

"And what about me here alone all the day--and I shall be alone for hours yet! The _pater_ has gone down to the Low Acres, and the boys are shooting Colonel Frenche's covers. They can't be home till dark."

"I don't know how you live, and that's the truth, Honor. We often say so at home. I should go mad, I know I should."

"Oh, I don't feel like that in the least; but sometimes I am lonely--very!"

And in truth it is a very wistful face that watches pretty Belle hurrying down the avenue. Honor has grown very thin and pale of late, and to-night, in her white gown, she looks thinner and paler than ever. She is feeling the need of a friend sorely. Often Brian Beresford's words come back--"If ever you should want me, either as friend or lover, send for me, and I will come."

She wants him now--his friendship, she feels, would be a stay and shield for her--but she never dreams of taking him at his word, and asking him to come back to Donaghmore.

She is feeling unusually depressed as she looks out at the sky, which is slowly changing from pink and opal to a sullen gray.

A morbid dread has been upon her all the day, and the sighing of the wind in the pine-trees--for a storm is rising over a neighboring mountain--does not tend to make her more cheerful. She stands a little while watching the grass bending before the breeze and the dead leaves swirling and eddying round on the smooth-cropped lawn.

"The rain will be coming down before Aileen could get half-way home," she says to herself, and straightway goes down to the kitchen to forbid her old nurse's departure.

The old woman is sitting before the fire, her head slightly turned, as if she were listening.

At the sound of Honor's step on the tiled floor she springs upright.

"How ye startled me, honey! Shure in that soft white gown ye might pass for one of the blessed saints themselves. I took ye for a spirit--I did an' troth, Miss Honor, at the first glance."

She seems unusually tired and excited, but she will not hear of staying for the night at Donaghmore.

"Is it a tough old woman like me to be afeard of a sough of wind or a few drops of rain? No, no, my lamb! I'll go home this night, the saints being willin'!"

It is almost dark in the front hall as the girl passes through; only a faint gray light comes in at the open door.

In the drawing-room the windows stand open just as she left them; and, wondering a little at the old butler's carelessness, she proceeds to fasten them herself.

As she does so she sees a man cross the drive quickly from the servants' quarters at the back of the house. He is followed after a brief space of time by another man, and both disappear in the direction of the gates.

"I did not know they had visitors in the kitchen to-night," she says to herself, and straightway forgets all about it.

More than an hour passes before she hears her father's step in the hall.

"Where are the boys?" he says, as she comes out of the drawing-room to speak to him.

"They have not come from the colonel's yet. They said they might be late."

"A man has been shot on Keif Moss--shot dead, and by mistake for some one else, they tell me."

She reads the fear that is blanching the strong man's face, and making his voice sound low and husky in the empty hall.

"Not Launce, father! Don't tell me that it is Launce!"

"Heaven only knows! It was some one who was coming from that hateful Rose Mount; and, let Launce go east or west, he ends there before the day is out."

She knows it is too true; and suddenly her composure gives way, her strength with it, and, throwing her arms about her father's neck, she bursts into tears.

Very drearily the hours pass to the old man and the girl waiting and listening in the large lonely house.

It is twelve o'clock before Horace comes home. He has seen nothing of his brother since they met for lunch at the colonel's. He would ride off then and there to make inquiries if his father would let him; but the squire will not hear of such a thing. He sends them to their own rooms, and sees to the fastening of doors and windows--a thing Honor has never known him to do in all his life before--and then he sits down in the large empty dining-room--the scene of many a jovial feast--to wait for the morning light, and the news that must come with it!

But this is fated to be a night long remembered at Donaghmore. All her life long Honor will look back upon it with dread--will remember the deep anxiety, amounting to despair, that makes its black hours as they creep by seem like days in ordinary life.

It is a moonless night, and the wind, which has risen to a gale, fills the air with noises--the rattling of loosely-fastened shutters, the sough of the pine trees behind the house, the thousand-and-one eerie sounds that a high wind and night bring into empty rooms and corridors.

It is useless to go to bed--she could not sleep. Even if there was no storm, the horrible doubt--which grows less a doubt every hour--that the man who has met his death on Keif Moss is her brother Launce would be enough to banish sleep from her eyes.

And then Aileen's dream of the grave cut deep in the moss, and hidden from sight by green branches--it all comes back vividly now, and adds to the girl's torture. She has no longer the strength to scoff at these things. And, if that was a warning of the death that was lying in wait for her darling, then the other dream of the grave out there on the lawn, in view of their own windows, might not that come true?

As the thought occurs to her, she draws back the curtains and looks out. It is too dark to see anything, and she is turning away, when the glimmer of a light in the direction of the old ruins makes her start and pause.

"What can it be?" she asks herself.

It is glowing more brightly now, a fixed point that grows more luminous every instant, till suddenly--as she stands watching it--it goes out.

The gale is at its height now, making doors and windows rattle, tearing at the branches of the stout old trees, rioting and shrieking over the empty fields; but it is not the wind that Honor hears as she stands there breathless, one hand to her heart, the other holding by the bed-rail to steady her from falling. It is the sound of an opening door, of softly-tramping feet, of harsh voices speaking in a muffled key, that makes them ten times more terrible and threatening.

At the same instant Horace--his room is next to hers--rushes past the door and down the stairs in headlong haste.

Then rise the shrill screams of women, and over all her father's voice, resolute and undaunted.

"Not from this house, my men." The words come up clearly to her as she stands at the top of the stairs, faint and dizzy with fright. "Not while a drop of blood runs in our veins. You may kill me--it is an easy thing to shoot an old man----" But here his words are drowned in a burst of yells and howlings terrible to listen to.

The next moment Honor is down in the hall, and has pushed her way past her brother and the terrified servants to where her father stands, his back to the dining-room, his face turned toward the little group of men who, with black masks over their faces, have forced their way into the hall.

It is a terrible scene--the girl will never forget it. These uncouth menacing figures, the frightened faces of the women gathered about the staircase, her young brother, as pale as any woman there, but cool and calm. But the one figure distinct from all the rest is that of her father, drawn to his full height, his resolute face turned full upon his cowardly assailants. He looks quite ten years younger than he did when she left him a few hours before, and there is a stern look on his face that frightens her. She has heard of the "fighting Blakes," and she begins to understand that even yet the old spirit has not died out in the race.

He sees her, but he makes no effort to send her away. In this supreme hour of trial the love of his heart recognizes her right to be with him even if it should be the bitter end.

"Go back, Miss Honor!" some one shouts. "Shure, we would not hurt a hair of your head!"

But the girl smiles coldly. She has no fear for herself; her one care, her one dread is for the safety of those others, who are dearer to her a thousand-fold than her own safety.

The men talk fast and furiously, but she hardly hears their words. She is waiting for what must come after, when all their threats have failed, as she knows so well they will fail.

They demand arms--with which they know the house to be well supplied. "Give them arms, and they will go in peace, for the present, squire," one man adds, with menacing emphasis.

For answer Robert Blake raises his right arm, and they see the muzzle of a revolver; and now a louder and more angry cry comes from the crowd.

"You know me, James Phelan," the squire says calmly, addressing an old tenant whose voice he has recognized; "tell these men that I am a dead shot, and I will fire if they come a yard nearer."

For an instant the crowd sways back, then it rallies. Those behind push the front rows mercilessly forward. The men are thoroughly excited now--there are more of them than at first appeared--and Honor feels that the next few moments will decide her fate and that of those dear to her.

Suddenly the great hall lamp falls to the floor with a crash, and the whole place is in profound darkness. For an instant the men, pressing toward their prey, pause, afraid, it may be, of a stray bullet striking them in the obscurity.

Then a loud shout is raised, and the hall, the stairs, the corridors are filled with a