The house of Lisronan

Front matter

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Chapter I

“ OU have no news of how affairs are going in England, X I suppose, Owen ? ”

Owen D’Arcy roused himself. He recognized that the question had its origin in a desire to turn the conversation into a fresh channel and that he ought to be grateful for it. When a man has proposed to a woman for the fifth time in three years, and for the fifth time been very gently but very firmly refused, it is only right that his mind should be directed to other matters, however little interest the other matters may hold for him at the moment. And in truth they had little.

Wanting Ethna Lisronan as he had never wanted anything before in life, it seemed to Owen bitterly hard that all his efforts, all his devotion, should count as nothing against her loyalty to a memory. He looked across almost angrily to where she sat, distressed at heart but calm to outward appearance, under the blue-green shadow of the old yew.

A straight shaft of sunlight had made its way through the black branches and fell full on her, finding golden threads in the bunches of satin-smooth dark-brown curls that clustered about her ears. Her narrow black eyebrows were drawn together in a little frown, her long lashes cast a shadow on the delicate line of her cheek. She looked infinitely less than her twenty-eight summers and, to the eyes of the man who might not win her, infinitely sweet.

He cursed the dead man who had had her love — ^who still held it.

‘‘ I — I am anxious about the boy,” she went on in the sweet minor voice that was not the least of her charms. “ I fear — nay, I know not exactly what I fear ; but things have been so bad for us — so terribly bad — and ’tis whispered that they may be so again.”

Owen D’Arcy shook his head, but rather dubiously.

“If the treaty Sarsfield made is held to ” he began,

and then left the sentence unfinished.

Ethna glanced up. “ That is what I am afraid of,” she said very low, looking across at him with a shadow of fear clouding her soft eyes, which held all the light and laughter of a sunlit stream in their liquid dark-grey depths.

Owen was silent for a moment, then, “ I served under the Prince of Orange,” he said. “ He is a man whose word may mean much — or little— according to his needs.”

“ So I have heard. And he — hates us. He would wipe every Catholic out of existence if he could.” D’Arcy frowned. He was not particularly fond of the elder faith himself, nor of those who professed it, and just now he had an idea that their difference in religion widened the gulf between Ethna and himself. He suspected old Father Moran, her confessor, of a bias against a heretic.

“ Eemember what Holland suffered at the hands of Spain,” he said rather drily.

The shadow in Ethna’s eyes deepened.

“ Owen,” she said passionately, “ I can remember nothing but what my own people suffered because they were loyal and faithful to the Church. Not for worlds would I hurt you or seem to slight your religion, but — but ”

‘‘ Go on, Ethna.”

Lady Lisronan smoothed out the embroidery on her lap with nervous fingers.

‘‘ We Irish Catholics are as Ishmael,” she faltered after a pause. “ No one lifts hand or voice in our defence. No one remembers, for our justification, the bitter, horrible wrongs inflicted on us. Think of the scores and scores of our women who were sold — shipped and sold — to the Algerines by Cromwell’s men. Nay, two of my own father’s sisters went amongst them. Think of that terrible 1st of May, forty -three years ago, when every Catholic, high and low, who remained in his home — on land inherited from his forefathers — ^was put to the sword without heed for age or sex. The whole three kingdoms ring with execrations should any injury be wrought on an Irish Protestant, but if a hundred of us be slaughtered in cold blood who denounces it ? Who bears it in mind in later years when some poor wretch is moved to savage reprisals ? I am not saying unjust or untrue things, am I, Owen ? ”

No — more’s the pity ! But why think of the matter at all, dear ? Those times are past, we hope. Let them lie buried.”

“ Aye, but are they past, Owen ? If I could only feel sure of it ! There was so much talk of them in my childhood that I cannot forget them, try as I may. You never heard my grandfather speak of what befel him — of how he stood, bound hand and foot, while two of Broghill’s men stripped his wife naked, and hung her by the heels until she died — or of what they did to the child, my father’s brother — I pray you never may. I wake now at night sometimes, thinking I hear his voice again — and see his face. He had been through a worse hell thanany that lies beyond the grave — and my terror is that Dermot may some day know the same.”

Her voice sank to a whisper and Owen D’Arcy was conscious, hot as the day was, of a sudden shiver.

‘‘ ’Tis a nightmare to me,” she went on after a second’s silence, and has been ever since the first whisper of the Revolution. I played a coward’s part — lying close at home, letting none of mine lift hand for either side, lest the boy should suffer. There are times when I grow hot thinking of it — I, the wife and daughter of soldiers — but there are other times, times when I remember my grandfather’s words, and then I’m glad ! It’s a hard thing to be a woman, Owen, and a ”

‘‘ Alone in the world,” had been the words in her mind, but she remembered in time. “ And a mother,” she finished lamely with a sudden wave of pink in her cheeks.

‘‘ I think your fears are really groundless,” said D’Arcy slowly. He had guessed the unspoken end of the sentence and winced, not so much at it as at the strong and shadowy barrier between them of which it was a symbol. ‘‘ None of Dermot’s name took any side in the fight — and the boy’s age is sufficient warrant for his neutrality, were warrant needed. Even if the treaty is violated, I cannot see how his property could be touched, save through some inconceivable villainy. I think in fretting as you do, that you cross a ford you may never meet.”

“ I pray you are right — but I am the veriest coward where Dermot is concerned.”

To this D’Arcy made no immediate response and another silence fell between them. Both sat looking away beyond the shadow of the old yew across a stretch of sunlit daisyspangled grass which sloped to the river.

Lisronan House stood in a little oasis of cultivation snatched from the bog. Eagles and ravens harried its fowl-yard, grey wolves, out of the wooded glens beyond Monadarrig, came on winter nights to nose about its sheeppens. Outside the limit of a few fields — a farm or two — lay mile upon mile of brown bare land, honeycombed with little lakes, seamed by deep ravines.

The major part of the large, and valuable Lisronan property lay in northern Munster, but its late owner had preferred the wide spaces, the far silver horizons, dear to his youth — and his widow held sacred all that he had loved. Owen broke the silence at last.

I shall travel into England next month,” he said, to London. It was my luck once to serve the Prince of Orange signally — and though I misdoubt me that it will please him to remember it, yet for very shame he cannot deny the one favour I shall ask. ’Twill be a promise that happen what may in his lifetime no harm shall befall Dermot. I’ll have it in writing — kings’ memories are short — and the Prince is a Stuart in that respect. That should set your mind at rest, Ethna.”

Owen ! ’Twould be too good of you — too good ! ” she cried with the smile that had years before made him her slave. I can never thank you enough.”

“ Do you think I want thanks ? ” he asked rather bitterly.

“ Thanks for any service for you ! Surely you know better than that ! ”

A poignant regret that it was beyond her power to give what he so well deserved stabbed Ethna, not for the first time.

“ I know that you are the best friend I have ever had — or shall have, Owen/’ she said in her gentlest tones.

A faint sound of splashing broke the silence that followed. Both glanced instinctively to where the wide amber river ran ghttering over the shallows half a mile away. A black pony was splashing his way across in a rain of diamond drops, followed by two dark specks, each of which cleaved a slate-grey arrow-head in the silver water.

“ Dermot,” said Owen. “ Faith ! But he seems in a hurry ! ”

As Dermot’s mother laid down her embroidery to watch the pony’s scampering rush up the long field with the deerhounds at his heels there was a light in her eyes that even the first Dermot had never seen. She had all the traditional attributes of her race, and the maternal instinct is the strongest the Irish woman knows.

Dermot pulled up when he got near the yew, slipped off, and leading the pony walked decorously up to where his mother sat.

He was a slim, brown-faced, small-featured boy of eleven, with the same fine grey eyes, the same straight brows and the same long black lashes that distinguished Ethna. To a superficial observer the likeness between mother and son was very marked, but Owen had discovered the one great difference years before and sometimes wondered idly how

II two pairs of eyes so alike in colour and beauty could differ so utterly in tbe message they gave to the world.

Sorrow had been powerless to subdue the lurking laughter in Ethna’s. They laughed even when her face was grave ; their mirth was as irrepressible as the mirth of a Connacht bog-stream leaping seaward down the mountain on a silver March morning.

Dermot’s/on the contrary, with the same brilliance and the same liquid depths, had a fated look which nothing dispelled — ^that shadow of profound grief, or brooding resentful melancholy, that haunts so many Irish eyes.

Even now when he stood panting before them, with hair ruffled by the gallop, and white teeth gleaming, to outward appearance as happy a little animal as the deerhound pup at his heels, it was present — and Owen, being Irish and therefore given to sudden fancies, wondered all at once whether Ethna’s fears might not be, after all, prophetic.

‘‘ There’s a gentleman, madame, at the ford,” said the boy breathlessly. “ His mare hath broken her knees and he craves permission to leave her in the stable here. There he comes ! ”

He turned as he spoke and pointed across the river to the wide slope of bog-land on the further side, down which a figure, followed by a limping horse, came slowly.

Ethna began to fold her work.

‘‘We must find him another horse — or perhaps he would prefer to lie the night here,” she said.

“ I misdoubt we’ve a horse to carry him,” answered Dermot. ’Tis a very big man — huge — and very red in the face,” he added reflectively, as though this must in itself involve additional weight.

“ Big — red in the face,” repeated D’Arcy, frowning, “ sounds like — but, no — ^tbat could hardly be.”

“ He has a foreign way of speaking and he was swearing to himself in a strange tongue,” put in Dermot.

“ French ? ” asked his mother quickly.

“ No, madame — one I have not heard before. He names himself Van — ? Van — ? Van der Wynykt.”

D’Arcy looked annoyed.

“ Gad, then it is Albrecht Wynykt ! ” he said. “ He has added the ‘ Van der ’ since our last meeting. If I may advise, Ethna, I would not bid him to lie the night here. The inn at Lisronan is good enough for him.”

“You know him then ? ”

“ Yes — ^knew him in the Low Countries. He’s a swaggering underbred brute — a man unfit to sit in any lady’s company. He got his troop solely because when the Prince of Orange wanted money he was ready to lend on better terms than the Amsterdam Jews.”

Ethna glanced nervously at Dermot.

“ It might be unwise to offend him, Owen,” she murmured. “ Men with money to lend often have the ear of higher powers. He may wish to stay.”

“ In that case ”

“ Well ? ”

“ Oh, ’twas only that — an’ it pleased you, I’d stay too.” The shadow went out of Ethna’s face.

“ Of course it would please me, Owen,” she said eagerly. “ Dermot, when you have taken Toby to the stable, run and tell Anne to prepare the green chamber and the brown for guests.”

Chapter II

ISRONAN was not in any way a typical Irish house.

It had been built in the first years of Charles II’s reign by an English architect and on a Tudor model, with no thought for defence and no heed to the Irish storms. The living rooms possessed wide, latticed casements — in themselves a novel innovation — ^and opened out of a long gallery hung with weapons and armour, which had in bygone days gleamed in the vaulted hall of the Lisronans’ old home.

Ethna was proud of her house and its belongings ; her homespun linen, her dairy, her pot-pourri, the few bits of china — ^rare in Ireland then — ^the oak furniture that gleamed with dark lights when the sunlight shone on it.

She rustled about the withdrawing room this June evening, a ghostly figure in the dusk, moving a bowl of roses here, setting straight a chair there, tidying away her embroidery. But for once her heart was not in the work. Though she settled things from force of habit, her thoughts were centred on her Dutch guest. Her dishke for him already outdid Owen’s.

She had crossed herself furtively when his back was turned, and had hoped, even in the first moment of meeting, that it might please him to pass on. To sit at the same table with him seemed to her almost beyond endurance.

But it had not pleased the Dutchman to pass Lisronan. On the contrary, he had asked permission to stay the night and now was in the dining-room finishing dinner. Ethna had shirked the meal. Owen was there to play host and Owen had approved her absence.

Lady Lisronan, listening to a loud guffaw which echoed even through closed doors, felt that she had done right. She stood a second irresolute, her nose wrinkled with disgust, and then sUpped out of the withdrawing room into the gallery. This was a long narrow chamber which ran the whole length of the house and had at its eastern end eight wide stone steps leading down to the entrance door, and at its western a flight of stairs.

The arched outer door stood open to-night, framing a vista of crystal clear sky, the colour of lavender and spangled here and there by a point of diamond light. Darkness lay heavy under trees themselves dim and vague of outline. Bats swooped eerily out of one dim spot into another. The moon was as yet hardly above the eastern horizon and a pink gleam of sunset Ungered on the wide parts of the river.

Ethna, having come down the stone stairs and stood a second on the threshold, turned her steps to her own rather untidy little garden, where shadows were growing long and flowers yielding up their evening incense. It was a fragrant, peaceful place, with its high medieval walls of dark green yew and its old oval well ringed by a low ferngrown parapet — fit haunt for fair, peaceful womenfolk. The well, deep and clear as crystal, made a mirror that in May reflected a swaying pink-blossomed apple-branch, and in September an overhanging white lavender bush and the whiter butterflies that haunted it. Moonlight turned the water into a silver shield, sunset into an opal. This June night it gleamed hke a dark jewel between velvet snapdragon flowers and emerald tongues of fern.

The spot had that indefinable atmosphere of sanctity which clings round a place where for many years men and women have come in their more exalted moods. Memories hung about it hke a spell — the memories of vows whispered there, of tales told to eager children in bygone summer twilights, of fair faces smiling down at the pictured face on the water.

Ethna never came to it without something of the same reverence that touched her when she made her genuflexion to the High Altar ; never saw it without a thought of the hours she had spent there with Dermot’s father — that other Dermot who had had all her heart.

She was thinking passionately of him this evening as she paced slowly along the worn flagged path and sat herself down on the parapet in a space between the snapdragons. The sunlight lingered still, reddening the top of the yew hedges and the brooding purple mountains that rose beyond them, and even here in the shadow an aftermath of the golden glow seemed to linger like the dying echoes of music.

Ethna sat very still among the crimson and lemon coloured flowers, her lavender-blue skirt sweeping the flags, her hands crossed in her lap. D’Arcy, who had been following noiselessly, paused where he could see every detail of her — the curls massed in warm brown waves upon the whiteness of neck and forehead, the straight brows, the long sweeping lashes which looked so very black against her clear skin. For a long minute he remained silent, too gratified by the i6 The House of Lisronan

picture slie made to move. Then, as she raised her eyes he came forward.

“ Owen ! ” she said with a httle smile, ‘‘ I never noticec you ! Have you been walking behind me long ? ”

“ Five minutes mayhap — I saw you leave the house.’ Ethna glanced first over one shoulder and then over th( other.

‘‘ I — I don’t hke my guest,” she said very low,

“ Nor I — I am sorry that he should be your guest.”

Lady Lisronan nodded.

‘‘ He frightens me,” she murmured. If you were noi here I should be horribly frightened. I think he has th( evil eye.”

“ I think there’s precious little of him but is evil,’ answered her companion drily. “ ’Twas an ill chance brought him to Lisronan.”

Ethna picked a young fern and nibbled at the stall thoughtfully with small very white teeth.

‘‘ I have never had so great a horror of any one,” she wen1 on. “ Is it a warning, Owen ? ”

D’Arcy laughed. A warning of what ? ” he asked with a shghtly contemptuous note in his voice and an anything but contemptuous glance at the fair face raised tc his.

“ Of — of danger. Oh, you may smile, but I have had warnings ere this. I had one when Dermot brought home that sorrel mare — the mare that afterwards — you remember ? ”

Owen nodded. Ethna had never before, even to him^ alluded to the accident which had made her a widow, and he gauged by this fact the extent of her present fear.

“ I heard him — Meinherr Van der Wjmykt — talking to the boy,” she went on, dropping her voice nervously. “ They were walking outside my window as I changed my gown. He was asking Dermot questions anent the property— ^what rent roll it carried, and how many tenants and how far it extended. Now, why should it interest him ? ”

“ He’s an underbred hound, and the underbred are ever curious,” answered Owen, but there was a note of uneasiness in his voice, a shadow on his mobile face — and Ethna watching him very closely saw it.

“ Owen, I’m not such a coward as you think,” she said quietly. ‘‘ If you apprehend danger — and I think you do — pray, pray tell me of it. I shall then beg your advice, and follow it whatever it be.”

D’Arcy glanced quickly at her. She was leaning a little forward, one slim hand resting on the wall among the snapdragons, the other hanging over her knee. He realized suddenly that if he were to impress on her the fact that Dermot’s safety could only be compassed by marriage with him — a Protestant and an avowed adherent of the new King — there was a chance, nay almost a certainty that she would consent. Her love of the boy would override all else.

He looked away to the deepening shadows under the yew hedge, beset suddenly by a fierce temptation. He had cared for her ever since that day — twelve years ago now — when he had first seen her, a bride of sixteen, sitting just where she now sat and in just the same attitude. The curious tenacity of purpose and the utter faithfulness of the Irish race were his to an unusual degree. He knew, had known always, that he could make her happy ; and now —

B i8 The House of Lisronan

now at last — a hope almost dead but never quite abandoned raised its head again for a second.

He had heard whispers — nay, most persistent rumoun — ^that the treaty given to the Irish would eventually b( broken. That the Irishmen now in power would use an) means, however dishonourable, to force the Mother Parliament into a betrayal of their compatriots was common talk Already they were showing signs of that complete absence oj moral rectitude which was to make the century of theii ascendency the blackest in Ireland’s history.

It might well be, that Ethna, alone, unprotected, avowedly ‘ Papist,’ and therefore presumably Jacobite, rar great risks — or again it might not. Owen, torn between sentiment and scruple, found the decision bitterly hard, He was silent so long that Ethna put out a hand and caught his sleeve.

Owen ! You do fear some danger,” she said imperatively. Nay, don’t deny it ! I read it in your face. I heard it in your voice when you first saw this man.”

‘‘ What you heard was anger at the thought of such a brute coming near you. As for the danger, there would undeniably be danger were the treaty violated ; but the treaty holds — at present.”

Ethna drew a long breath. “ I’ faith, the ink is hardly dry on it yet,” she said. ‘‘ For very shame it must be kept a Httle while — but you know what the peasants say : ‘ Beware of the head of a bull, the heels of a horse and the smile of an Enghshman.’ ”

Owen D’Arcy smiled, but angrily.

“ Egad and they’ve reason ! ” he answered with more vehemence than usual, adding in a quieter tone, ‘‘ Though in this case — as in most others of our history — Ireland’s worst enemies are inside her own gates.”

Ethna slipped her hand off his sleeve. Like most of her sex, a matter so impersonal as the wrongs of her country interested her httle. In her eyes the Treaty of Limerick had been framed solely to protect Dermot.

‘‘ Should I have come to dinner, Owen ? ” she asked suddenly, flitting to another topic in the little inconsequent way she had. “ I felt I could not sit at meat with that — Dutch savage.”

Owen made a grimace.

“ You showed discrimination,” he answered. Never have I felt more desire to see a man’s food choke him ! ” Lady Lisronan gave a little ripple of laughter.

“ La ! ^You too ! ” she said. “ ’Twas the knowledge that I should feel the same kept me from the table. And yet — conceive it — he has a wife ! What kind of creature can she be ? ”

“ A Dutch savage, doubtless — of the female sex.”

“ No — no. Irish — he told me so — and his own mother was Irish too.”

‘‘ We are honoured ! ” said Owen drily. Was he — er —

talking about his mother with you, Ethna ? ”,

‘‘ He mentioned that she had been a countrywoman.”

D’Arcy reflected that there was little else about the lady which could have been mentioned with advantage.

But indeed I spoke as sparely with him as I might,”

added Ethna. “ Odious creature ! He ”

Owen’s hand on her arm cut short the sentence.

“ Here is the brute,” he muttered disgustedly. Mu cabus too ! Will you slip away, Etbna, while I attract his attention ? ”

Ethna got up hastily. She had a horror of drunkenness exceedingly out of place in that age. Not the least of Owen D’Arcy’s virtues in her eyes lay in the fact that he took no part in the swinish orgies of the county and had never appeared before her as too many of her acquaintances did.

It took her a second to free her satin skirt from a projecting stone in the old wall, and before she could start Albrecht Van der Wynykt had come lumbering through an arch in the yew hedge into her holy of holies — ^profaning it for ever by his mere presence.

He was, as Dermot had said, a huge man — red-haired, red-faced, and coarse in build as a bull. Sensuality was written in every line of his heavy vicious features, cruelty looked out of his light treacherous eyes. Even the least sensitive must have shrunk from him with the instinctive recoil of a sane mind confronted by the abnormal.

Ethna, standing straight and slim with her skirts twisted round her, made no effort to keep the horror she felt out of her face.

Van der Wynykt was, in point of fact, less drunk than Owen D’Arcy had imagined. He could carry an incredible quantity without becoming more than excited. He stood now just inside the arch and leered at Lady Lisronan.

“ D d fine place,” he said loudly. “ D d fine —

very fitted to a pretty woman like your ladyship.”

Ethna cast a glance of agony at Owen, who held out his arm to her.

Not going, are you ? ” asked the Dutchman, as the couple moved towards him, Ethna almost hidden by Owen. “ Vy the devil should you go, my lady ? Nice garden —

nice company — d d nice company ! ”

He ended the sentence by a laugh that made Lady Lisronan shiver. She did not bid him good evening when she passed ; did not even look at him.

TShe and D’Arcy had gone a hundred yards from where he stood before she even spoke. Then —

‘‘ Oh, Owen ! Oh, if you weren’t here ! ” she whispered tremulously, clinging to his velvet sleeve. ‘‘If I were alone with that — that monster ! ”

D’Arcy’s arm tightened on her hand.

“ You won’t be — so why think of such a thing ? ” he returned in the nervous soothing tone of a man who fears a scene.

He had piloted her away from the garden and out on to the dim sweep of lawn before the house, the eaves of which rose sharp and dark against the clear violet sky.

“ I’ll to my own chamber,” said Ethna, stopping for a second to hft her skirt off the dew-soaked grass.

“ Please, Owen, whatever that dreadful man may do or say, do not get angry with him. ’Tis borne in on me that he will work some of us a mischief yet — so, please, please, give him no cause for malice.”

Owen D’Arcy laughed. “ Oh, you little coward,” he retorted, but very gently. “ How can I get angry with the brute, when an evil fate has put me in the position of his host ? I should like to stand him on his head in the river.”

“ Oh, ’twould pollute it — and kill all the fish for sheer horror. Now here we are at the house, so I will wish you good-night.”

She slipped her fingers from his arm as she spoke and went lightly up two shallow steps to a rose-wreathed open door. On the threshold she paused, turned, held out both hands to liim like a child.

‘‘ Good-night, you best of friends,” she said.

He looked hard at her for a second through the twilight before he bent in the stately fashion of the day to kiss her fingers ; looked and thought bitterly that ‘ friend ’ was the worst title in the world from w'oman to man. Then without a word he turned and walked away.