A cluster of houses, too small to be called a village, and known as the "Cranagh," stood in a little nook of the bay; and here they lived. They were brothers; and the elder held some small appointment in the revenue, which maintained them as bachelors in this cheap country. In a low conversation that passed between them, it was agreed that they would detain me as their guest for that evening, and on the morrow accompany me to the magistrate's house, about five miles distant. I was not sorry to accept their hospitable offer. I longed for a few hours of rest and respite before embarking on another sea of troubles. The failure of the expedition, and the departure of the fleet, had overwhelmed me with grief, and I was in no mood to confront new perils.
If my new acquaintances could have read my inmost thoughts, their manner toward me could not have displayed more kindness or good-breeding. Not pressing me with questions on subjects where the greatest curiosity would have been permissible, they suffered me to tell only so much as I wished of our late plans; and as if purposely to withdraw my thoughts from the unhappy theme of our defeat, led me to talk of France, and her career in Europe.
It was not without surprise that I saw how conversant the newspapers had made them with European politics, nor how widely different did events appear, when viewed from afar off, and by the lights of another and different nationality Thus all that we were doing on the Continent to propagate liberal notions, and promote the spread of freedom, seemed to their eyes but the efforts of an ambitious power to crush abroad what they had annihilated at home, and extend their own influence in disseminating doctrines, all to revert, one day or other, to some grand despotism, whenever the man arose capable to exercise it. The elder would not even concede to us that we were fit for freedom.
"You are glorious fellows at destroying an old edifice," said he; "but sorry architects when comes the question of rebuilding; and as to liberty, your highest notion of it is an occasional anarchy. Like school-boys, you will bear any tyranny for ten years, to have ten days of a 'barring out' afterward."
I was not much flattered by these opinions; and what was worse, I could not get them out of my head all night afterward. Many things I had never doubted about now kept puzzling and confounding me, and I began, for the first time, to know the misery of the struggle between implicit obedience and conviction.
CHAPTER XXVIII
I went to bed at night in all apparent health; save from the flurry and excitement of an anxious mind, I was in no respect different from my usual mood; and yet when I awoke next morning, my head was distracted with a racking pain, cramps were in all my limbs, and I could not turn or even move without intense suffering. The long exposure to rain, while my mind was in a condition of extreme excitement, had brought on an attack of fever, and before evening set in, I was raving in wild delirium. Every scene I had passed through, each eventful incident of my life, came flashing in disjointed portions through my poor brain; and I raved away of France, of Germany, of the dreadful days of terror, and the fearful orgies of the "Revolution." Scenes of strife and struggle – the terrible conflicts of the streets – all rose before me; and the names of every blood-stained hero of France now mingled with the obscure titles of Irish insurrection.
What narratives of my early life I may have given – what stories I may have revealed of my strange career, I can not tell; but the interest my kind hosts took in me grew stronger every day. There was no care nor kindness they did not lavish on me. Taking alternate nights to sit up with me, they watched beside my bed, like brothers. All that affection could give they rendered me; and even from their narrow fortunes they paid a physician, who came from a distant town to visit me. When I was sufficiently recovered to leave my bed, and sit at the window, or stroll slowly in the garden, I became aware of the full extent to which their kindness had carried them, and in the precautions for secrecy, I saw the peril to which my presence exposed them. From an excess of delicacy toward me, they did not allude to the subject, nor show the slightest uneasiness about the matter; but day by day some little circumstance would occur, some slight and trivial fact reveal the state of anxiety they lived in.
They were averse, too, from all discussion of late events, and either answered my questions vaguely or with a certain reserve; and when I hinted at my hope of being soon able to appear before a magistrate and establish my claim as a French citizen, they replied that the moment was an unfavorable one; the lenity of the government had latterly been abused; their gracious intentions misstated and perverted; that, in fact, a reaction toward severity had occurred, and military law and courts-martial were summarily disposing of cases that a short time back would have received the mildest sentences of civil tribunals. It was clear, from all they said, that if the rebellion was suppressed, the insurrectionary feeling was not extinguished, and that England was the very reverse of tranquil on the subject of Ireland.
It was to no purpose that I repeated my personal indifference to all these measures of severity; that in my capacity as a Frenchman and an officer, I stood exempt from all the consequences they alluded to. Their reply was, that in times of trouble and alarm things were done which quieter periods would never have sanctioned, and that indiscreet and over-zealous men would venture on acts that neither law nor justice could substantiate. In fact, they gave me to believe, that such was the excitement of the moment, such the embittered vengeance of those whose families or fortunes had suffered by the rebellion, that no reprisals would be thought too heavy, nor any harshness too great, for those who aided the movement.
Whatever I might have said against the injustice of this proceeding, in my secret heart I had to confess that it was only what might have been expected, and coming from a country where it was enough to call a man an aristocrat and then cry "a la lanterne," I saw nothing unreasonable in it all.
My friends, advised me, therefore, instead of preferring any formal claim to immunity, to take the first occasion of escaping to America, whence I could not fail, later on, of returning to France. At first, the counsel only irritated me, but by degrees, as I came to think more calmly and seriously of the difficulties, I began to regard it in a different light; and at last I fully concurred in the wisdom of the advice, and resolved on adopting it.
To sit on the cliffs, and watch the ocean for hours, became now the practice of my life – to gaze from daybreak almost to the falling of night over the wide expanse of sea, straining my eyes at each sail, and conjecturing to what distant shore they were tending. The hopes which at first sustained, at last deserted me, as week after week passed over, and no prospect of escape appeared. The life of inactivity gradually depressed my spirits, and I fell into a low and moping condition, in which my hours rolled over without thought or notice. Still, I returned each day to my accustomed spot, a lofty peak of rock that stood over the sea, and from which the view extended for miles on every side. There, half hid in the wild heath, I used to lie for hours long, my eyes bent upon the sea, but my thoughts wandering away to a past that never was to be renewed, and a future I was never destined to experience.
Although late in the autumn, the season was mild and genial, and the sea calm and waveless, save along the shore, where, even in the stillest weather, the great breakers come tumbling in with a force, independent of storm, and listening to their booming thunder, I have dreamed away hour after hour unconsciously. It was one day, as I lay thus, that my attention was caught by the sight of three large vessels on the very verge of the horizon. Habit had now given me a certain acuteness, and I could perceive from their height and size that they were ships of war. For a while they seemed as if steering for the entrance of the "lough," but afterward they changed their course, and headed toward the west. At length they separated, and one of smaller size, and probably a frigate from her speed, shot forward beyond the rest, and, in less than half an hour, disappeared from view. The other two gradually sunk beneath the horizon, and not a sail was to be seen over the wide expanse. While speculating on what errand the squadron might be employed, I thought I could hear the deep and rolling sound of distant cannonading. My ear was too practiced in the thundering crash of the breakers along shore to confound the noises; and as I listened I fancied that I could distinguish the sound of single guns from the louder roar of a whole