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CHAPTER XXXVII. A FENCING-MATCH

“You came in time, – in the very nick, Mr. Gray,” said Frank, with a quiet smile. “My friend here and I had said all that we had to say to each other.”

“Maybe you’d come again; maybe you’d give me five minutes another time?” whispered Meekins, submissively, in Frank’s ear.

“I think not,” said Frank, with an easy significance in his look; “perhaps, on reflection, you’ll find that I have come once too often!” And with these words he left the cell, and, in silent meditation, returned to his companion.

“The fellow’s voice was loud and menacing when I came to the door,” said Gray, as they walked along.

“Yes, he grew excited just at that moment; he is evidently a passionate man,” was Frank’s reply; and he relapsed into his former reserve.

Grounsell, who at first waited with most exemplary patience for Frank to narrate the substance of his interview, at last grew weary of his reserve, and asked him what had occurred between them.

Frank paid no attention to the question, but sat with his head resting on his hand, and evidently deep in thought. At last he said slowly, —

“Can you tell me the exact date of Mr. Godfrey’s murder?”

“To the day, – almost to the hour,” replied Grounsell. Taking out his pocket-book, he read, “It was on a Friday, the 11th of November, in the year 18 – .”

“Great God!” cried Frank, grasping the other’s arm, while his whole frame shook with a strong convulsion. “Was it, then, on that night?”

“Yes,” said the other, “the murder took place at night. The body, when discovered the next morning, was perfectly cold.”

“Then that was it!” cried Frank, wildly. “It was then – when the light was put out – when he crossed the garden – when he opened the wicket – ”

A burst of hysteric laughter broke from him, and muttering, “I saw it, – I saw it all,” he fell back fainting into Grounsell’s arms.

All the doctor’s care and judicious treatment were insufficient to recall the youth to himself. His nervous system, shattered and broken by long illness, was evidently unequal to the burden of the emotions he was suffering under, and before he reached the hotel his mind was wandering away in all the incoherency of actual madness.

Next to the unhappy youth himself, Grounsell’s case was the most pitiable. Unable to account for the terrible consequences of the scene whose events were a secret to himself, he felt all the responsibility of a calamity he had been instrumental in producing. From Frank it was utterly hopeless to look for any explanation; already his brain was filled with wild images of war and battle, mingled with broken memories of a scene which none around his bed could recognize. In his distraction Grounsell hurried to the jail to see and interrogate Meekins. Agitated and distracted as he was, all his prudent reserve and calm forethought were completely forgotten. He saw himself the cause of a dreadful affliction, and already cured in his heart the wiles and snares in which he was engaged. “If this boy’s reason be lost forever, I, and I only, am in fault,” he went on repeating as he drove in mad haste back to the prison.

In a few and scarcely coherent words he explained to Gray his wish to see the prisoner, and although apprised that he had already gone to rest, he persisted strongly, and was at length admitted into his cell.

Meekins started at the sound of the opening door, and called out gruffly, “Who’s there?”

“It’s your friend,” said Grounsell, who had already determined on any sacrifice of his policy which should give him the hope of aiding Frank.

“My friend!” said Meekins, with a dry laugh. “Since when, sir?”

“Since I have begun to believe I may have wronged you, Meekins,” said Grounsell, seating himself at the bedside.

“I see, sir,” rejoined the other, slowly; “I see it all. Mr. Dalton has told you what passed between us, and you are wiser than he was.”

“He has not told me everything, Meekins, – at least, not so fully and clearly as I wish. I want you, therefore, to go over it all again for me, omitting nothing that was said on either side.”

“Ay,” said the prisoner, dryly, “I see. Now, what did Mr. Dalton say to you? I ‘m curious to know; I ‘d like to hear how he spoke of me.”

“As of one who was well disposed to serve him, Meekins,” said Grounsell, hesitatingly, and in some confusion.

“Yes, to be sure,” said the fellow, with a keen glance beneath his gathering brows. “And he told you, too, that we parted good friends, – at least, as much so as a poor man like myself could be to a born gentleman like him.”

“That he did,” cried Grounsell, eagerly; “and young Mr. Dalton is not the man to think the worse of your friendship because you are not his equal in rank.”

“I see, – I believe I see it all,” said Meekins, with the same sententious slowness as before. “Now look, doctor,” added he, fixing a cold and steady stare on the other’s features, “it is late in the night, – not far from twelve o’clock, – and I ask you, would n’t it be better for you to be asleep in your bed, and leave me to rest quietly in mine, rather than be fencing – ay, fencing here – with one another, trying who is the deepest? Just answer me that, sir.”

“You want to offend me,” said Grounsell, rising.

“No, sir; but it would be offending yourself to suppose that it was worth your while to deceive the like of me, – a poor, helpless man, without a friend in the world.”

“I own I don’t understand you, Meekins,” said Grounsell, reseating himself.

“There’s nothing so easy, sir, if you want to do it If Mr. Dalton told you what passed between us to-night, you know what advice you gave him; and if he did not tell you, faix! neither will I – that’s all. He knows what I have in my power. He was fool enough not to take me at my word. Maybe I would n’t be in the same mind again.”

“Come, come,” said Grounsell, good-humoredly, “this is not spoken like yourself. It can be no object with you to injure a young gentleman who never harmed you; and if, in serving him, you can serve yourself, the part will be both more sensible and more honorable.”

“Well, then,” said Meekins, calmly, “I can serve him; and now comes the other question, ‘What will he do for me?’”

“What do you require from him?”

“To leave this place at once, – before morning,” said the other, earnestly. “I don’t want to see them that might make me change my mind; to be on board of a ship at Waterford, and away out of Ireland forever, with three hundred pounds, – I said two, but I ‘ll want three, – and for that – for that “ – here he hesitated some seconds, – “for that I ‘ll do what I promised.”

“And this business will never be spoken of more.”

“Eh! what?” cried Meekins, starting.

“I mean that when your terms are complied with, what security have we that you ‘ll not disclose this secret hereafter?”

Meekins slowly repeated the other’s words twice over to himself, as if to weigh every syllable of them, and then a sudden flashing of his dark eyes showed that he had caught what he suspected was their meaning.

“Exactly so; I was coming to that,” cried he. “We ‘ll take an oath on the Gospel, – Mr. Frank Dalton and myself, – that never, while there’s breath in our bodies, will we ever speak to man or mortal about this matter. I know a born gentleman would n’t perjure himself, and, as for me, I ‘ll swear in any way, and before any one, that your two selves appoint.”

“Then there’s this priest,” said Grounsell, doubtingly. “You have already told him a great deal about this business.”

“If he has n’t me to the fore to prove what I said, he can do nothing; and as to the will, he never heard of it.”

“The will!” exclaimed Grounsell, with an involuntary burst of surprise; and, brief as it was, it yet revealed a whole world of dissimulation to the acute mind of the prisoner.

“So, doctor,” said the fellow, slowly, “I was right after all. You were only fencing with me.”

“What do you mean?” cried Grounsell.

“I mean just this: that young Dalton never told you one word that passed between us; that you came here to pump me, and find out all I knew; that, cute as you are, there ‘s them that’s equal to you, and that you ‘ll go back as wise as you came.”

“What’s the meaning of this change, Meekins?”

“It well becomes you, a gentleman, and a justice of the peace, to come to the cell of a prisoner, in the dead of the night, and try to worm out of him what you want for evidence. Won’t it be a fine thing to tell before a jury the offers you made me this night! Now, mind me, doctor, and pay attention to my words. This is twice you tried to trick me, for it was you sent that young man here. We ‘ve done with each other now; and may the flesh rot off my bones, like a bit of burned leather, if I ever trust you again!”

There was an insolent defiance in the way these words were uttered, that told Grounsell all hope of negotiation was gone; and the unhappy doctor sat overwhelmed by the weight of his own incapacity and unskilfulness.

“There, now, sir, leave me alone. To-morrow I ‘ll find out if a man is to be treated in this way. If I ‘m not discharged out of this jail before nine o’clock, I ‘ll know why, and you ‘ll never forget it, the longest day you live.”

Crestfallen and dispirited, Grounsell retired from the cell and returned to the inn.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. A STEP IN VAIN

Grounsell lost no time in summoning to his aid Mr. Hipsley, one of the leading members of the Irish bar; but while he awaited his coming, difficulties gathered around him from every side. Lenahan, the old farmer, who was at first so positive about the identity of the prisoner, began to express some doubts and hesitations on the subject “It was so many years back since he had seen him, that it was possible he might be mistaken;” and, in fact, he laid far more stress on the fashion of a certain fustian jacket that the man used to wear than on any marks and signs of personal resemblance.

The bold defiance of Meekins, and his insolent threats to expose the Daltons to the world, assailed the poor doctor in various ways; and although far from feeling insensible to the shame of figuring on a trial, as having terrorized over a prisoner, the greater ruin that impended on his friends absorbed all his sorrows.

Had he been the evil genius of the family, he could scarcely have attained a greater degree of unpopularity. Frank’s illness – for since the night at the jail his mind had not ceased to wander – was, in Kate’s estimation, solely attributable to Grounsell’s interference, all the more unpardonable because inexplicable. Lady Hester regarded him as the disturber of all social relations, who, for some private ends, was involving everybody in lawsuits; and the old Count had most natural misgivings about a man who, having assumed the sole direction of a delicate affair, now confessed himself utterly unable to see the way before him.

To such an extent had mortification and defeat reduced the unhappy doctor, that when Hipsley arrived he was quite unable to give anything like a coherent statement of the case, or lay before the astute lawyer the points whereon he desired guidance and direction. Meanwhile the enemy were in a state of active and most menacing preparation. Meekins, discharged from jail, was living at an inn in the town, surrounded by a strong staff of barristers, whose rank and standing plainly showed that abundant pecuniary resources supplied every agency of battle.

Numerous witnesses were said to have been summoned to give their evidence, and the rumor ran that the most ardent votary of private scandal would be satiated with the tales and traits of domestic life the investigation would expose to the world.

Hipsley, who with practised tact soon saw the game about to be played, in vain asked Grounsell for some explanation of its meaning. There was a degree of malignity in all the proceedings which could only be accounted for on the supposition of a long-nourished revenge. How was he to understand this? Alas! poor Grounsell knew nothing, and remembered nothing. Stray fragments of conversation and scattered passages of bygone scenes were jumbled up incoherently in his brain, and it was easy to perceive that a very little was wanting to reduce his mind to the helpless condition of Frank Dalton’s.

The charge of a conspiracy to murder his relative, brought against a gentleman of fortune and position, was an accusation well calculated to excite the most painful feelings of public curiosity, and such was now openly avowed to be the allegation about to be brought to issue; and, however repugnant to credulity the bare assertion might appear at first, the rumor was artfully associated with a strong array of threatening circumstances. Every trivial coldness or misunderstanding between Dalton and his brother-in-law, Godfrey, were now remembered and revived. All the harsh phrases by which old Peter used to speak of the other’s character and conduct – Dalton’s constant use of the expression, “What’s the use of his money; will he ever enjoy it?” – was now cited as but too significant of a dreadful purpose; and, in a word, the public, with a casuistry which we often see, was rather pleased to credit what it flattered its own ingenuity to combine and arrange. Dalton was well known to have been a passionate, headstrong man, violent in his resentments, although ready to forgive and forget injuries the moment after. This temper, and his departure for the Continent, from which he never returned, were all the substantial facts on which the whole superstructure was raised.

If Hipsley saw that the array of evidence was far from bringing guilt home to Dalton, he also perceived that the exposure alone would be a terrible blow to the suffering family. The very nature of the attack evinced a deep and hidden vengeance. To avert this dreadful infliction seemed, then, his first duty, and he endeavored by every means in his power to ascertain who was the great instigator of the proceeding, in which it was easy to see Meekins was but a subordinate. The name of Father Cahill had twice or thrice been mentioned by Grounsell, but with a vagueness of which little advantage could be taken. Still, even with so faint a clew, Hipsley was fain to be content, and after several days’ ineffectual search, he at last discovered that this priest, in company with another, was residing at the little inn of “The Rore.”

Having communicated his plan to the old General, who but half assented to the idea of negotiating with the enemy, Hipsley set out for “The Rore,” after a long day of fatiguing labor. “An inaccurate and insufficient indictment,” repeated the lawyer to himself; “the old and hackneyed resource to balk the prurient curiosity of the public, and cut off the scent when the gossiping pack are in full cry, – this is all that we have now left to us. We must go into court; the only thing is to leave it as soon as we are able.”

It was not till he was within half a mile of the little inn that Hipsley saw all the difficulty of what he was engaged in; for in what way or on what pretext was he to address Cahill in the matter, or by what right connect him with the proceedings? The hardihood by which he had often suggested to a witness what he wanted to elicit, stood his part now, and he boldly passed the threshold, and asked for Father Cahill. Mistaking him for the chief counsel on the other side, the landlord bowed obsequiously, and, without further parley, introduced him into the room where D’Esmonde and Cahill were then sitting.

“I see, gentlemen,” said Hipsley, bowing politely to each, “that I am not the person you expected; but may I be permitted to enjoy an advantage which good fortune has given me, and ask of you a few moments’ conversation? I am the counsel engaged by Mr. Dalton, in the case which on Tuesday next is to be brought to trial; and having learned from Mr. Grounsell that I might communicate with you in all freedom and candor, I have come to see if something cannot be done to rescue the honor of a family from the shame of publicity, and the obloquy that attends the exposure of a criminal court.”

D’Esmonde took up a book as Hipsley began this address, and affected to be too deeply engaged in his reading to pay the least attention to what went forward; while Cahill remained standing, as if to intimate to the stranger the propriety of a very brief interruption.

“You must have mistaken the person you are addressing, sir,” said the priest, calmly. “My name is Cahill.”

“Precisely, sir; and to the Reverend Mr. Cahill I desire to speak. It is about ten days or a fortnight since you called on Dr. Grounsell with a proposition for the settlement of this affair. I am not sufficiently conversant with the details of what passed to say on which side the obstacle stood, – whether he was indisposed to concede enough, or that you demanded too much. I only know that the negotiation was abortive, and it is now with the hope of resuming the discussion – ”

“Too late, sir, – too late,” said the priest, peremptorily, while a very slight but decisive motion of D’Esmonde’s brows gave him encouragement to be bold. “I did, it is true, take the step you allude to; a variety of considerations had their influence over me. I felt interested about the poor man Meekins, and was naturally anxious to screen from the consequences of shame a very old and honored family of the country – ” Here he hesitated, for a warning glance from the Abbé recalled him to caution.

“And you were about to allude to that more delicate part of the affair which relates to Mr. Godfrey’s son, sir?” interposed Hipsley, while by an unmistakable gesture he showed his consciousness of D’Esmonde’s presence.

“I find, sir,” said Cahill, coldly, “that we are gradually involving ourselves in the very discussion I have already declined to engage in. It is not here, nor by us, this cause must be determined. It would be hard to persuade me that you should even counsel an interference with the course of public justice.”

“You are quite right, sir, in your estimate of me,” said Hipsley, bowing; “nor should I do so if I saw anything in this case but needless exposure and great cruelty towards those who must necessarily be guiltless, without one single good end obtained, except you could so deem the gratification of public scandal by the harrowing tale of family misfortune. Bear with me one moment more,” said he, as a gesture of impatience from Cahill showed that he wished an end of the interview. “I will concede what I have no right to concede, and what I am in a position to refute thoroughly, – the guilt of the party implicated; upon whom will the punishment fall? on the aged uncle, a brave and honored soldier, without the shadow of stain on his fair fame; on a young and beautiful girl, whose life has already compassed more real sorrow than old men like myself have ever known in all their career; and on a youth, now stretched upon his sick-bed, and for whom humanity would rather wish death itself than to come back into a world he must shrink from with shame.”

“‘Filius peccatoris exardebit in crimine patris,’ – the son of the sinful man shall burn out in his father’s shame! “ – said D’Esmonde, reading aloud from the volume in his hand.

Hipsley almost started at the solemnity with which these awful words were uttered, and stood for a few seconds gazing on the pale and thoughtful face which was still bent over the book.

“My mission has then failed!” said the lawyer, regretfully. “I am sorry it should be so.”

A cold bow was the only reply Cahill returned to this speech, and the other slowly withdrew, and took his way back to Kilkenny, the solemn and terrible denunciation still ringing in his ears as he went.

CHAPTER XXXIX. THE COURT-HOUSE OF KILKENNY

The character of crime in Ireland has preserved for some years back a most terrible consistency. The story of every murder is the same. The same secret vengeance; the same imputed wrong; the same dreadful sentence issued from a dark and bloody tribunal; the victim alone is changed, but all the rest is unaltered; and we read, over and over again, of the last agonies on the high-road and in the noonday, till, sated and wearied, we grow into a terrible indifference as to guilt, and talk of the “wild justice of the people” as though amongst the natural causes which shorten human life. If this be so, and to its truth we call to witness those who in every neighborhood have seen some fearful event – happening, as it were, at their very doors – deplored today, almost forgotten to-morrow; and while such is the case, the public mind is painfully sensitive as to the details of any guilt attended with new and unaccustomed agencies. In fact, with all the terrible catalogue before us,’ we should be far from inferring a great degree of guiltiness to a people in whom we see infinitely more of misguided energies and depraved passions than of that nature whose sordid incentives to crime constitute the bad of other countries. We are not, in this, the apologist for murder. God forbid that we should ever be supposed to palliate, by even a word, those brutal assassinations which make every man blush to call himself an Irishman! We would only be understood as saying that these crimes, dark, fearful, and frequent as they are, do not argue the same hopeless debasement of our population as the less organized guilt of other countries; and inasmuch as the vengeance even of the savage is a nobler instinct than the highwayman’s passion for gain, so we cherish a hope that the time is not distant when the peasant shall tear out of his heart the damnable delusion of vindication by blood, when he will learn a manly fortitude under calamity, a generous trust in those above him, and, better again, a freeman’s consciousness that the law will vindicate him against injury, and that we live in an age when the great are powerless to do wrong, unless when their inhumanity be screened behind the darker shadow of the murder that avenges it! Then, indeed, we have no sympathy for all the sufferings of want, or all the miseries of fever; then, we forget the dreary hovel, the famished children, the palsy of age, and the hopeless cry of starving infancy, – we have neither eyes nor ears but for the sights and sounds of murder!

We have said that amidst all the frequency of crime there is no country of Europe where any case of guilt accompanied by new agencies or attended by any unusual circumstances is sure to excite so great and widespread interest. The very fact of an accusation involving any one in rank above the starving cottier is looked upon as almost incredible, and far from feeling sensibility dulled by the ordinary recurrence of bloodshed, the crime becomes associated in our minds with but one class, and as originating in one theme.

We have gradually been led away by these thoughts from the remark which first suggested them, and now we turn again to the fact, that the city of Kilkenny became a scene of the most intense anxiety as the morning of that eventful trial dawned. Visitors poured in from the neighboring counties, and even from Dublin. The case had been widely commented on by the press; and although with every reserve as regarded the accused, a most painful impression against old Mr. Dalton had spread on all sides. Most of his own contemporaries had died; of the few who remained, they were very old men, fast sinking into imbecility, and only vaguely recollecting “Wild Peter” as one who would have stopped at nothing. The new generation, then, received the impressions of the man thus unjustly; nor were their opinions more lenient that they lived in an age which no longer tolerated the excesses of the one that preceded it. Gossip, too, had circulated its innumerable incidents on all the personages of this strange drama; and from the venerable Count Stephen down to the informer Meekins, every character was now before the world.

That the Daltons had come hundreds of miles, and had offered immense sums of money to suppress the exposure, was among the commonest rumors of the time, and that the failure of this attempt was now the cause of the young man’s illness and probable death. Meekins’s character received many commentaries and explanations. Some alleged that he was animated by an old grudge against the family, never to be forgiven. Others said that it was to some incident of the war abroad that he owed his hatred to young Dalton; and, lastly, it was rumored that, having some connection with the conspiracy, he was anxious to wipe his conscience of the guilt before he took on him the orders of some lay society, whose vows he professed. All these mysterious and shadowy circumstances tended to heighten the interest of the coming event, and the city was crowded in every part by strangers, who not only filled the Court-house, but thronged the street in front, and even occupied the windows and roofs of the opposite houses.

From daylight the seats were taken in the galleries of the Court; the most distinguished of the neighboring gentry were all gathered there, while in the seats behind the bench were ranged several members of the peerage, who had travelled long distances to be present. To the left of the presiding judge sat Count Stephen, calm, stern, and motionless, as if on parade. If many of the ceremonials of the court and the general aspect of the assemblage were new and strange to his eyes, nothing in his bearing or manner bespoke surprise or astonishment. As little, too, did he seem aware of the gaze of that crowded assembly, who, until the interest of the trial called their attention away, never ceased to stare steadfastly at him.

At the corner of the gallery facing the jury-box D’Esmonde and Cahill were seated. The Abbé, dressed with peculiar care, and wearing the blue silk collar of an order over his white cravat, was recognized by the crowd beneath as a personage of rank and consideration, which, indeed, his exalted and handsome features appeared well to corroborate. He sustained the strong stare of the assemblage with a calm but haughty self-possession, like one well accustomed to the public eye, and who felt no shrinking from the gaze of a multitude. Already the rumor ran that he was an official high in the household of the Pope, and many strange conjectures were hazarded on the meaning of his presence at the trial.

To all the buzz of voices, and the swaying, surging motion of a vast crowd, there succeeded a dead silence and tranquillity, when the judges took their seats on the bench. The ordinary details were all gone through with accustomed formality, the jury sworn, and the indictment read aloud by the clerk of the crown, whose rapid enunciation and monotonous voice took nothing from the novelty of the statement that was yet to be made by counsel. At length Mr. Wallace rose, and now curiosity was excited to the utmost. In slow and measured phrase he began by bespeaking the patient and careful attention of the jury to the case before them. He told them that it was a rare event in the annals of criminal law to arraign one who was already gone before the greatest of all tribunals; but that such cases had occurred, and it was deemed of great importance, not alone to the cause of truth and justice, that these investigations should be made, but that a strong moral might be read, in the remarkable train of incidents by which these discoveries were elicited, and men were taught to see the hand of Providence in events which, to unthinking minds, had seemed purely accidental and fortuitous. After dwelling for some time on this theme, he went on to state the great difficulty and embarrassment of his own position, called upon as he was to arraign less the guilty man than his blameless and innocent descendants, and to ask for the penalties of the law on those who had not themselves transgressed it.

“I do not merely speak here,” said he, “of the open shame and disgrace the course of this trial will proclaim – I do not simply allude to the painful exposure you will be obliged to witness – I speak of the heavy condemnation with which the law of public opinion visits the family of a felon, making all contact with them a reproach, and denying them even its sympathy. These would be weighty considerations if the course of justice had not far higher and more important claims, not the least among which is the assertion to the world at large that guilt is never expiated without punishment, and that the law is inflexible in its denunciation of crime.”

He then entered upon a narrative of the case, beginning with an account of the Dalton family, and the marriage which connected them with the Godfreys. He described most minutely the traits of character which separated the two men and rendered them uncompanionable one to the other. Of Godfrey he spoke calmly and without exaggeration; but when his task concerned Peter Dalton, he drew the picture of a reckless, passionate, and unprincipled man, in the strongest colors, reminding the jury that it was all-important to carry with them through the case this view of his character, as explaining and even justifying many of the acts he was charged with. “You will,” said he, “perceive much to blame in him, but also much to pity, and even where you condemn deeply, you will deplore the unhappy combination of events which perverted what may have been a noble nature, and degraded by crime what was meant to have adorned virtue! From the evidence I shall produce before you will be seen the nature of the intimacy between these two men, so strikingly unlike in every trait of character, and although this be but the testimony of one who heard it himself from another, we shall find a strong corroboration of all in the consistency of the narrative and the occasional allusion to facts provable from other sources. We shall then show you how the inordinate demands of Dalton, stimulated by the necessity of his circumstances, led to a breach with his brother-in-law, and subsequently to his departure for the Continent; and, lastly, we mean to place before you the extraordinary revelation made to the witness Meekins, by his comrade William Noonan, who, while incriminating himself, exhibited Dalton as the contriver of the scheme by which the murder was effected.