CHAPTER XXVII

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THE WEB OF THE SPIDER.

I refused to wait to see the General, but rather made Lance take me home early.

"I won't forbid your telling him," I said, "since you think it will make him so happy, but I don't want it talked about for a few days, till I have grown used to it, and you come back."

So he consented, only saying how unlike we were, for he wanted everyone to know his new importance; and I did not know whether he jested or not.

I made him say good-bye to me on the doorstep of Brandon, and watched him climb into the dog-cart again, grumbling at my tyranny and want of hospitality. I could not trust myself to sit opposite him in the presence of Aline and the others without betraying my secret, over which I felt so exquisitely shy.

Dear Aline suspected nothing, but was quite satisfied with my explanation that Captain MacNeill had not come in because he wanted to be back in time to meet his father.

And now began for me the strangest, goldenest, most exquisite time of dreams. It might have been May in the world instead of January, and the sun shining instead of the rain incessantly falling. That was a terribly wet season--the wettest, said the old people, that the longest memory could recall.

There was distress in Brandon village, and all about the country. Rotting thatch was falling into the poor cabins and on to the reeking mud floors, so that in many cases the wretched fires of half-green twigs were extinguished and the bed whereon the sick or the old or the babies lay went travelling round the bare walls, seeking a sound spot where the rain would not find it. It was at such times of distress that we felt our poverty most keenly, though I think our good people knew as well as we did how great our will was to help them.

Yet even the trouble of others could not damp my joy in those days, or at least it shadowed my life on only one side of it, and the other lay incessantly turned to the sun.

But still I thought a good deal about Esther's trouble, which I seemed to understand better in the light of my own joy. Amid my thanksgivings for my own sweet happiness, I prayed hard for her that her trouble might be removed and her joy given back, if God saw well to do it.

We had not met since the great downpour began, and that was the very day Lance and his father set out for London. It was no weather for being out of doors, and we did not expect the little brown pony-chaise to come rattling up as before. The great sheets of leaden-gray water that fell incessantly would have been enough to sweep the little pony off his feet, and as the days passed we began to hear stories of floods covering the country, and bridges being swept away; and at last the boys ran in one morning with tidings that Brandon River was out, and was bringing down hay-ricks, turf-stacks, uprooted trees, and even little drowned mountain sheep on its tide.

But one morning at last the rain ceased, and we looked out on a watery world indeed, and a gray sky without a rift of blue. Still, the rain had ceased, and for that we were devoutly thankful.

I was meditating a rush out to get some fresh air, for it seemed likely enough that the rain would soon begin again, when my door was opened softly by Bride, the little new maid.

"If you please, Miss," she said mysteriously, "this was to be given into your very own hands. Little Johnny from the Inch Farm has come with it this minute."

I took the bit of paper from the little maid's hand in wonder, and she went out nodding and smiling, apparently well satisfied now her commission was safely executed.

The note was from Esther, and was written in pencil on a leaf evidently torn from a note-book.

_Come to me here, Hilda, at the Inch Farm, at once, and say nothing to anybody. I want you more than I ever did in my life before.--Esther._

I put on my frieze cape and a cap, to be equipped against the rain, and went out without meeting anybody.

The Inch Farm belonged to Michael O'Flaherty, the husband of Esther's friend Margaret, Harry De Lacy's foster-mother. I guessed that the urgent message had something to do with Esther's lover, and as I got over the ground as quickly as possible, I was praying silently that there might not be further grief and trouble for my poor sister.

The Inch Farm lies towards the river, into which a portion of the farm-land projects almost like an island. It is, however, connected with the mainland, except when water is very low in the river, by a rough causeway of stones. But fortunately the farmhouse itself lies high and dry where the fields ascend towards Brandon Mountain.

I made my way to the farmhouse by a muddy lane, and through a farm-yard full of quacking ducks and hissing geese, all casting weather-wise eyes to the horizon. At the kitchen door, which was nearer to me than the little green hall door, a donkey stood under his low-backed car. I gave a glance at it as I passed, and noticed with surprise that the cart was filled with rugs and blankets, and apparently a very comfortable featherbed.

As I entered the kitchen Mrs. O'Flaherty's smiling daughter Katie, a rosy-cheeked, black-eyed slip of sixteen, came to meet me.

"They're waiting for you, Miss," she said mysteriously, "'idin' in the parlour."

She opened the door, and I passed into that close-smelling _sanctum, sanctorum_, of an Irish farmhouse, the best parlour. I did not give a glance at its glories. It was like fifty others I knew--trellised wall-paper, stiff white muslin curtains, flowery carpet and horse-hair furniture, and a curious country smell of damp and closed windows.

As I entered, Esther jumped up from the sofa and ran to meet me. She wore her out-of-door apparel, and was evidently making a vain effort to take some of Mrs. O'Flaherty's seed-cake and sherry. That comfortable woman herself sat (in her bonnet and with a great air of importance) about a yard from the table and her own portion of wine and cake.

"Oh, Hilda darling, I'm so glad you've come!" said Esther, hugging me impulsively. "Now, Maggie, you'll be satisfied," she said, turning to Mrs. O'Flaherty.

"You know I didn't want to cross you," said the latter, "and with one of the family to bear you out I've nothing to say."

"But what is it all about?" I asked.

Mrs. O'Flaherty adjusted her bonnet-strings, and was evidently about to answer me at great length when Esther interposed.

"The long and the short of it is," she said, with an excited little laugh, "is--that we have discovered that Sir Rupert has Harry imprisoned in that horrible place, and we're going to kidnap him. There!" she said, lifting her finger, "you can tell Miss Hilda everything about it as we go along, Maggie. We had better start now while the day is young and the rain holds off."

I heard everything as we trudged along in front of the donkey-cart, while the rear was brought up by Michael O'Flaherty and his big son Larry.

It seemed that Mrs. O'Flaherty's youngest, Tim, had heard so much of Castle Angry in the days of his mother's sojourn there, that the place had acquired a fatal fascination for him.

"Flyin' kites he'll be," said his mother, "agin' the walls o' that unlucky ould house, an' prospectin' for _pinkeens_ an' _dalgalukers_ (_i.e._ minnows and newts) in that stinkin' moat, till I'm expectin' him to come home to me in quarters. Shoutin' out at night he does be with the terror of the drames that does be on him, that Sir Rupert has him, or Yalla Gaskin, that's worse, or them brutes o' dogs,--though I wouldn't liken them that can't sin to wicked men. But 'tis the nature of boys that the very fear draws him. He owns up to it himself; 'Often,' he says, 'when I comes to the ould wood I do be diggin' me finger-nails in the threes to hould me, but I goes on all the same.'

"'Yerra, my boy,' says I, 'maybe 'tis your father's belt will be houldin' ye.' But he minds that no more thin Sir Rupert or the dogs, an' 'tis a long time the same belt's promised him, for O'Flaherty's soft-hearted, an' never could bring himself to batin' the childher.

"Well, glory be to Them above for that same parvarsity of the boy, for the day before yesterday him an' the Widdy Byrne's innocent son, that had no more sinse but to follow him, was paddlin' in the moat, enjoyin' themselves all the more because they expected every minit 'ud be their last, when Johnny was struck on the poll by a nate lump of a stone. 'Murder!' says he, 'they're stonin' me!' for he had no more thought but that it was Gaskin's tricks. Then no more stones came, an' when he had felt his poll to make sure there wasn't a crack in it, he seen the stone that had hit him starin' him in the face, an' a bit of paper wrapped around it.

[Illustration: "HE SEEN THE STONE THAT HAD HIT HIM, AN' A BIT OF PAPER WRAPPED AROUND IT."]

"Johnny's no scholar, for he's always mitchin' from school, but he had the sinse to put the thing in his pocket an' bring it home to me, though I'd promised him a lambastin' he'd never forgit the first time he went near Castle Angry.

"You might have knocked me down with a straw when I saw the bit of a letter was addressed to meself. An' there it was from my beautiful lamb that I'd nursed, saying that he was too ill to get out o' that unlucky ould house by himself, an' had no one to help him but his Maggie. An' if I'd come to-day he'd be able to open the door to us, for Sir Rupert an' Gaskin were to be off on some divilmint. 'Bring a carriage for me,' says he, 'for I'm a-past walking.'"

The good woman paused for breath, and her husband took up the tale with a broad grin.

"I sez to her that it was a case of housebreakin', an' 'ud bring us widin the law. 'If you're afeard, Mike O'Flaherty,' she sez, 'say so, an' I goes alone.' 'Is it me to be afeard of anything, woman,' says I, 'an' I after marryin' you?"

He looked at his partner's comely face with a jovial pride, pleasant to witness.

"Maggie wanted me not to come," said Esther, "but I said I must. I should go wild not knowing what was happening."

"'Twas common prudence, Miss," said Mrs. O'Flaherty. "What 'ud people say if they heard that Miss Brandon was housebreakin' and kidnappin' at Castle Angry?"

"That was very sensible of you, Mrs. O'Flaherty," I said.

"You'll be guided by your own sister now, Miss Essie," said the good woman, nodding severely at Esther.

"I only satisfied Maggie's scruples by promising that you would come to give the sanction of the family, by your presence, to my unconventional act."

I looked at Esther with amazement. Her eyes were shining and her cheeks vividly flushed. Her hair was crisp about her brow, crisper for the damp air, which was deliciously sweet. She walked with a swinging step, so that I had some trouble in keeping up with her. Was this the languid Esther of the last three months, about whom I had often a dark unexpressed fear lest she should be going the way that Pierce went?

"I am glad you let her come, Mrs. O'Flaherty," I said soberly. "It is hard to sit at home doing nothing."

Esther looked at me gratefully, and then put a caressing arm about me.

"All very well, Miss," said Mrs. O'Flaherty gloomily. "But how will it be if Sir Rupert meets us with a blunderbuss?"

"Oh, he won't do that!" said I, laughing, though in my heart I wasn't at all sure. "But if he did, what would you do, Maggie?"

"Stan' her ground," answered her husband for her. "She's a great Trojan, Miss, let alone that the foster-son's more to her than her own flesh and blood."

Our way lay through by-roads and coppices, and we met no one to wonder at our strange little procession. Presently the donkey-cart had to part company from us, and to meet us again after a detour, because the road was under water, and we could only pass by taking to the fields. This left Esther and me together, for Mrs. O'Flaherty trudged the lanes with her husband and her son.

"It's an odd way of doing it, Essie," said I.

"It is, Hilda, but the only way."

"I'd rather have driven up in a carriage in broad daylight and taken him away," said I.

"Supposing Sir Rupert had shut the gates in our faces?"

"There would be ways of making him open them."

"And a pretty bit of scandal for the county, where there is already too much scandal about my Harry's grandfather."

"I wish the General had been here," I said uneasily.

"He could not have helped, Hilda. Don't you see that the thing is best done quietly?"

"Does your godmother know?"

"She knows I am with you this morning. That is all."

"She would approve?"

"Surely. Do you know her and doubt? I only did not tell her because she is helpless and could not be with us. I shall go to her straight and tell her as soon as my Harry is safe under his foster-mother's wing at the Inch Farm."

"He will be safe there?"

"Safer than anywhere in the world,--except with me."

"And afterwards, Esther?"

"I will marry him as soon as ever it can be arranged. My godmother will help me, and I think Mr. Benson would make things smooth for us."

"What if you find your Harry very ill?"

She trembled, and for a moment a shadow fell upon her radiant face. Then it lifted again.

"I look to find him ill. When he is so helpless that he has had to remain in the clutches of those miscreants for very weakness, he must be ill indeed. But there is the more reason for hastening our marriage. Happiness will make him well."

"I think you are right, Esther. But how will it be if Lady O'Brien and Aline take the prudent view, and think you should wait till he is stronger?"

"They will not," she said patiently; "but if they did I should still know I was right. If he were stronger I could wait for years."

"You will be poor, Essie."

"Very," she said with a happy smile. "Or at least Harry says that the three hundred a year he has from his mother will mean poverty."

"And Sir Rupert, they say, has untold gold laid up in Castle Angry," I said regretfully.

"Brandon money," said Esther, "the fruits of fraud and treachery. We would not touch a penny of it."

"You won't get the chance, my dear," said I. "But what do you think Sir Rupert meant by keeping Harry hidden away in Castle Angry?"

"God knows," she answered with a little shudder.

"He lied about him when he said he had gone away. Do you think he meant to keep him apart from you as long as he could?"

"Perhaps," she answered.

"Or, Esther, do you think he thought he would die? Why, he might as well have murdered him as kept him wasting away for want of care and treatment. Besides, before he grew so ill they must have detained him by force."

Her hands closed and unclosed themselves spasmodically.

"We will not talk about it," she said. "At least not now. Let God judge him."

We were now at the entrance to the starved and ragged wood which grew on the lower slopes of Angry Mountain.

"Let us wait here," she said, "for Maggie and the cart."

And now that we were approaching the place of evil omen I saw that she had grown pale.

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