Authors: Marjorie Bowen
‘You think me a fool,’ smiled Fitzgerald, amused; ‘one who will go and babble his secrets to the first he meets!’
‘No, not that. I believe you one who would find it very hard to dissimulate, to distrust — I must say, gentlemen,’ he added, flashing a look from one to the other of the Irishmen, ‘that I find it very difficult to believe that the English government are as asleep as you seem to think them. I have read your parliamentary reports in the French papers — Sir Laurence Ponsonby, Grattan, have all warned them — and Lord Moira — did he not open their eyes? — I cannot but believe you are more closely watched than you think, that you are even spied upon, What of the English Secret Service?’
At these words, spoken with such authority, a faint cloud did pass over the confident spirits of the Irishmen; each reflected rapidly on all the men whom he had met since he had joined the United Irishmen, all who assembled in those secret meetings at Oliver Bond’s and at the various taverns in Dublin, all those they had come upon elsewhere who had given correctly the sign and countersign…their recollections reassured them; they could have sworn there was not one of those who would play the traitor.
Lazare Hoche picked up his dusty cloak and worn gloves with another sigh.
‘Don’t be too confident,’ he urged. ‘The English aren’t fools. They must suspect men who have never concealed their opinions —’
‘Of course,’ interrupted Fitzgerald, ‘they do not suspect, they know, that we are what they call Jacobins, revolutionaries — but they have not the least suspicion that we have any organised plan of insurrection — of obtaining foreign help —’
‘Well,’ said the Frenchman, dubiously. ‘You are very fortunate and the English are very incompetent — I should have thought —’ He broke off. ‘Lord Clare, now, is he not vigilant?’
‘Yes — and does mischief enough. We only fear that the treatment of the people may madden them into rising before we are ready — but Clare hasn’t an inkling of what men like ourselves are about.’
‘I wonder,’ replied Hoche, still unconvinced by this staunch confidence. ‘William Pitt, now — a strong hand there, eh? I suppose he is as anxious for England as you are for Ireland. Has he not his spies, his informers?’
‘Not among us,’ said Fitzgerald, smiling.
‘You are confident. Well, perhaps you are right.’ Hoche, with the air of one who has said his say, turned to the door.
‘Mr. Tone sails with you?’ asked Fitzgerald. ‘I love that man,’ he added, enthusiastically. ‘Pray tell him so and how I regret I might not come to Paris to meet him.’
‘Yes,’ smiled Hoche. ‘Mr. Tone has that force and courage which makes the soul of any cause.’
Mr. O’Connor asked the Frenchman: ‘You are staying in Basle for the night? You would not immediately return to Paris without any rest?’
‘Immediately,’ replied Hoche. ‘I am not supposed to be here. No one will ever know of my visit, but I could not undertake this expedition without meeting you,’ and he offered his hand first to Fitzgerald, then to O’Connor, and Jackson. He smiled at all of them, gave a little nod and left the room as abruptly as he had entered.
‘Well,’ exclaimed Fitzgerald, half laughing, ‘he must be in earnest to come so long a way for so short a stay! He is a rough fellow, but I like him.’
‘I think,’ said O’Connor, ‘he will see that the expedition sails — if any man can.’
Major Jackson remarked: ‘He came to look at you, Fitzgerald, to take your measure.’
Lord Edward coloured. ‘I would he had found a better man to meet his scrutiny. It is indeed a case of one more experienced, more able than myself, but I hope,’ he added, with a grimace, ‘he thought us honest and not too imprudent. He rather insisted on his talk of traitors and dupes —’
‘I suppose he was right,’ replied O’Connor, ‘yet, somehow I had not thought of that so seriously. Supposing we were,’ he added, ‘all the while being watched by the government! Had, even, a spy in our midst — at all our meetings!’
‘Why, it is incredible,’ interrupted Fitzgerald. ‘All the men whom they suspect, like Tone, have been banished. If they had any doubt of us, we should not be at liberty.’
‘But Hoche put the idea into my head, I must confess. They might allow us to go on, give us a rope to hang ourselves, try to force us to give them an excuse to crush us finally. After all, a rebellion would give them fair means to send an expeditionary force from England, to put the Hessians on us like they did on the Colonists in America —’
‘It would be dangerous if they tried that,’ cried Fitzgerald warmly, ‘and too late. Once the French had landed we should be able to keep the English out.’
O’Connor asked reflectively, ‘What sort of a man is Campden? I always thought him a mediocre fellow.’
‘And so he is, I believe.’
‘Well, I don’t much like that,’ said O’Connor. ‘When one comes to think of it — why send a weak man if he is not to be just the catspaw to get Clare’s hot chestnuts out of the fire?’
‘Clare would not dare go very far and is, at bottom, just enough.’
‘You speak kindly of him, sir, because he has always been friendly with you, but by many he is deeply hated. The Sheares now —’
‘Ah,’ interrupted Fitzgerald, ‘I believe there was some purpose in that. John Sheares ran away with an heiress right under Fitzgibbon’s nose! And then there was some question of a duel over a newspaper article — all personal. No, I think that Clare, when it came to it, would prove himself humane enough.’ Then, with a slight impatience, for he was a man to whom any discussion soon became tedious: ‘I shall be glad to get away from Switzerland; the air is deadening.’
Lord Edward travelled with an eager heart towards Hamburg where Pamela waited for him.
Remembering Hoche’s earnest warnings, he sent Tony with his baggage by another route and travelled incognito, calling himself a young wine merchant.
The tedium of the journey through the long, dusty summer days was as intense as his ardour to be at the end of it. The letters from Pamela were passionate, though not without reproaches. She loathed Hamburg. She feared for his safety. She urged his return. She entreated him not to be lured to Paris. Both her health and her spirits were sunk since the birth of her second child. Her husband felt a deep remorse on the subject of Pamela, who should have had, according to his own first promises, all his life, and had instead but a part of it, who had been put aside for concerns for which she cared little…
‘But that must not be thought on — what did Hoche promise, what did the Directory engage for?
‘Seventeen sail of the line, thirteen frigates, with an equal number of transport. Forty-three sail in all, having on board an army of near fifteen thousand men — before the autumn. That’s what must be thought on, and we are ready for ’em — why, Leinster, dear fellow, will be surprised! Will he come over, I wonder, and Henry? I’m glad that Henry is in England, well, out of it all — and sweet, dear, anxious mother! I must be ready. There’ll be much to do. Hoche thought me too easy, too slight, I could see. But if one sets one’s teeth and does one’s best — I believe I can do it —
I
must
do
it
—’
*
During the last stage of this weary travelling, when he had passed the German frontiers without his faked passports causing the least surprise, Fitzgerald found himself with one companion in the public coach. His natural candour was relieved to see that this was a person before whom he need not be on his guard; he could not imagine a creature more inoffensive than this young woman dressed in a heavy suit of mourning. She kept her elbow on her knee, her chin in her palm, and gazed with a mournful vagueness at the autumn landscape as they made their laborious progress over ill-kept roads, between orchards brilliant with fruit, and fields bright with harvest.
Fitzgerald, who could not be long with any one without speaking and advancing some courtesy, soon offered the lady fruit from his travelling basket, a cushion for her feet, some information as to the places through which they passed, and at the first halt a drink of cool water, refreshing in the dust and heat.
The lady was timidly grateful. Her simple story was soon divulged; she was French, of noble birth, orphaned of both parents in the terrible days of ’93. She had lately lost her husband from cholera, and with him the pitiful remains of her small fortune. She was now on her way to Hamburg where a distant connection promised her shelter.
Fitzgerald was warmly drawn towards the bereaved exile. Forgetting his incognito he promised her the protection of Pamela when they reached Hamburg, for the lady had expressed a dread of her unknown relatives who had only offered grudgingly, she declared, the most meagre assistance.
‘Ah, Monsieur, so you have a wife waiting for you at Hamburg!’
‘Yes, we shall stay there a few days and then return to Ireland. While we are in Hamburg we are at your service. My wife is French also.’
‘But you are English.’
‘No, Madame, I am Irish.’
‘Ah,’ she turned her face, childishly bewildered, towards him; she was very fair and her pale blue eyes were sad, ‘but on the passport you showed at the frontier you were described as an English wine merchant!’
Fitzgerald, completely at his ease, laughed good-humouredly. ‘Ah, well, Madame, there may be reasons why one travels under an assumed name. Times are difficult.’
‘Ah, yes,’ she replied vaguely, as if the matter had no interest for her at all. ‘Difficult indeed! Irish, you say? It is very sad in Ireland now, is it not?’
‘For many people, yes, Madame. It is an unhappy country.’
‘It is because of this unhappiness that you travel in disguise? You try to do something to help the Irish?’
‘I did not actually say I travelled in disguise, Madame.’
‘But the name on your passport is false and you are so clearly not a wine merchant. Ah, you need not be afraid of speaking before me. I know nothing of public affairs.’
Fitzgerald felt a pang of vexation at having so soon betrayed to the first stranger he met that his journey was secret or mysterious; he recalled Hoche’s warning, yet even as he did so, felt a certain shame in even a shadow of suspicion for this forlorn creature, who, moreover, betrayed no further curiosity as to his journey or errand.
They continued to converse during the last stage of the journey to Hamburg, and if, in the course of this idle talk he betrayed any of his political opinions, he was sure that he did so in a way that was entirely general and prudent.
Nor could he forbear pressing his offer of hospitality, urging that the lady, who seemed indeed little more than a child in years, should stay with himself and Pamela, until she had recovered from the discomforts of the voyage, instead of immediately going to her unknown relative.
But when the coach reached Hamburg, and while Fitzgerald was looking to his hired servant and giving him directions about his baggage, the lady disappeared. When the young Irishman returned with the intention of escorting her to Pamela’s lodgings, he found only an empty place in the coach. He supposed that, sensitive of accepting favours from strangers, she had preferred rather to face her unknown relative, and when he reflected on the matter he found that he had not her address, or even her name, so that the matter was at an end. He dismissed it from his mind with a little regret, but nothing could long cloud his happiness when he was going to meet Pamela.
As he was eagerly mounting the steps of the fine house in the suburb where Pamela was lodged, a lady, in a full suit of mourning, was seated in an inn near the docks, and writing to her employer and lover:
‘I had a piece of extraordinary luck to-day. I travelled the last stage to Hamburg with the Duke of Leinster’s brother. My appearance and this suit of sables proved most useful. He accepted without question the first tale I told him. He was trying to be prudent, but it was not difficult, even though I assumed an entire lack of interest in politics, to draw from him his opinions and something of his affairs. Indeed, he gave me several good clues which I will send you later. He has been abroad on traitorous business. I should think he met some French general, probably Hoche, at Basle (for he was not himself allowed into France owing to the Bourbon commotion), and probably concerted plans for a descent on Ireland.
‘He is charming, but something of a fool who wears his heart on his sleeve; quite the wrong man for such work. I hope soon to have other occasions to be useful to you.’
*
‘You have left me too long,’ cried Pamela. ‘I have grown half sick with apprehension.’
‘But what could have happened to me, my dear, my love?‘
‘It is useless speaking like that now! But you are returned — yet it seems only like a dream — not the waiting, but your return — Oh, Edward, do you know that to me all our love and our being together seems like a dream? Something that I try to snatch at but cannot grasp.’
These words of hers stirred in him a faint, and as he sensed, prophetic alarm. He had also felt that menace of brevity in his relationship with Pamela. Their happiness had been like a lonely, lovely flower without root or bud or fruit, bringing with it great joy, but fading soon.
‘Why do we feel like that? — and in this moment, when we are together again!’
‘I don’t know.’ Pamela rested her tired head on his shoulder. ‘Perhaps because I have known so much unhappiness; but with you it has been different. All your days you have been secure. Do you, too, feel as if this — could not last?’
He would not confess as much, but caressed her in silence; the fatigue of his journey was on him, the exhaustion of long days of excitement and movement.
‘We will return to Ireland, Pamela — go home —’
‘Ah, to Ireland! But not to Kildare Lodge, not to the country and tranquillity.’
‘I’ll not deceive you, Pamela. We must go to Dublin. Shall I tell you any more?’ he asked anxiously. ‘I want to give you my whole confidence, dearest, yet I would not burden you.’
‘I want to know everything,’ cried Pamela, ‘everything. I know you have been scheming. I can guess what your schemes are. The only consolation I can have, the only way I can learn to endure, is to know everything.’
‘Like the Roman wife,’ he murmured with a tender smile. ‘But I won’t tell you now, Pamela, in the very first moment of our meeting. Let’s have the children in and play together a little and be happy.’
‘Have you the heart to play, Edward? I confess I have not.’
‘You must not take so sad a view of all, Pamela, or I shall have no heart to go on and do what I must do. And why should we not be confident? All goes very well!’
She shook her head without answering, as if she discounted all his hopes. Beyond the wide, high window the sky darkened over the sea; Pamela felt herself now, as always, an exile; nowhere that she went could she feel at home… Belle Chase, the Palais Royal, Dublin — only for a little while, in the cottage at Kildare, had she felt herself safe, in her proper place.
‘What are you going to do that is dangerous, Edward? You see, I cannot be light-hearted and talk of trifles.’
He answered gravely, accepting her mood:
‘I saw Hoche at Basle. He spoke to me very plainly. He seemed rather to doubt if I was the man for this enterprise.’
‘And I do not think you are, my dear, my dear. I think you are too candid and open. Do you know, sitting here alone thinking so much of it all, I have wondered, Edward, if you should go on — nay, for the sake of others as much as for your own,’ she added, seeing he was about to protest. ‘I know how your loyalty is sworn and your conscience engaged, but, Edward — are you of use to this cause? Come, did General Hoche ask you as much?’
‘Nay, he was not quite so unflattering as that, Pamela,’ laughed Fitzgerald; ‘and I told him that poor as my best was it was all we had. There is no one of more experience nor more authority. The other gentlemen are all lawyers, or doctors, or merchants.’
‘Well, another thing I thought — you being so trusting, so confident, so open-hearted, is it not possible that you are — betrayed?’ This word fell menacingly between them, waking in her mind the echoes of a thousand terrors, of sleepless, lonely nights, and in his the memory of Hoche’s doubts and cautions…
‘Hoche said as much,’ he admitted, downcast.
‘It is very usual in conspiracies,’ cried Pamela. ‘Think, Edward, is there no one whom you might doubt? The government has been so quiet for so long it makes me suspect that perhaps they allow you to go very far, that they may crush you once and for all. Do you not think,’ she continued rapidly, ‘that the English would be glad for an excuse to send an armed force to Ireland and put the people down for ever? Ah, I know nothing of the ins-and-outs of politics. It is but a woman’s idea —’
It had been Hoche’s idea too, and Fitzgerald was silent with an inner dismay, but he instantly comforted himself.
‘The case is peculiar, Pamela. I doubt if it has parallel in history, but we are not a handful of fanatic conspirators, or bigots. We are a nation, yes, a whole nation, Pamela. All sober, respectable, honest opinion in Ireland is with us. It is not likely, then — nay, it is scarcely possible that we should harbour amongst us a traitor. Why,’ he exclaimed, warming to the matter as he spoke, ‘what could the English Government offer that would induce anybody to betray us?’
‘Money,’ sighed Pamela, with a wan smile. ‘Place, titles, safety, why, everything that men value — that such men value.’
Edward shook his head; before his mind passed the faces of his colleagues as he had seen them gathered round the table in Oliver Bond’s house; all, surely, honest faces.
‘If,’ he argued, ‘any of these men had wanted those prizes, Pamela, they would have remained faithful to the government, then they might have obtained them without any difficulty. Most of them have posts, talents and fortunes — for instance, where might I not have been if I had pushed my brother’s influence? Aide-de-camp to the Duke of York, perhaps!’
Pamela sighed again at his constant misunderstanding; here was a man whom one could not make see the evil, the trickery, the self-seeking that there was in the world.
‘I do not talk of yourself, Edward, nor of men like yourself, but there are those who might find it easier to succeed this way. Oh, I don’t know, I mustn’t poison your mind against your friends, and I have been so uneasy with you so far away.’
Her voice broke. He gathered her into his arms, and she wept on his shoulder. Outside the sombre sea darkened into the stormy clouds; the heat was ending in a storm. She had a terrible sensation of hopelessness, like a foretaste of doom.
Tony brought in refreshments, wine and coffee and chocolate. He had arrived a few days before his master whom he regarded with looks of anxious love.
Fitzgerald did not speak to the servant, but still keeping his arm round his wife, held out his free hand which the Negro eagerly kissed. He closed his eyes, conscious of Pamela’s warm weight against his shoulder; her fatigue seemed one with his own uneasiness. He thought with envy of Lazare Hoche. ‘That is the kind of man to be, enthusiastic yet practical, bold yet prudent, but one cannot alter one’s nature. I shall never be like that.’ And all those old thoughts of those hot summer days in France flowed into his exhausted mind. ‘There was a river there, the Garonne, and I cannot rightly distinguish it from the Curragh, which we see from Kildare — Kildare, shall I ever go back there again? Those flowers that I did not want any one else to handle, the garden, so neatly planned. I dare say many of the shrubs have perished by now. Perhaps the time is not so far ahead when the whole place will be desolate and no one will even know who lived there.’
Pamela looked at him. ‘What,’ she asked steadily, as if she discussed an affair of no importance, ‘is your part to be in this rising?’
‘Hush, do not speak so plainly even here, my love,’ Fitzgerald said quickly.
‘You promised me your confidence. Come, this is a good moment. Then we shall not speak of it again.’
‘I am their leader, Pamela. I am to organise a rising in Leinster, then a march on Dublin. I am to attack the Castle; the Militia will come over. I shall have under me men like O’Connor and the Sheares, Major Jackson, Bond, and many more, all faithful, accomplished, devoted. Do not fear for me. I shall have good advisers.’
Pamela gave a low cry. He said passionately:
‘Oh, my love, your terror seems an ill-omen! Wish me luck at least!’
Pamela shook her head, refusing his appeal.
‘You know that you had all my wishes, once and for all, the first time I met you! Aye, all my wishes and all my hopes for all my life! And all my fears too. I’ve no one but you, Edward, as I told you, in Dublin…if anything should happen to you I am finished.’
‘We can’t fail, it isn’t possible for us to fail! You must not think of that, Pamela, but of what it will mean when we have succeeded —’
She stared at him intently, almost with that concentration that people turn on a beloved face they do not think to see again.
He knew she was given to moods, and discounted her melancholy; but he was disappointed. He had looked forward to a joyous reception after their separation; with therefore a certain heaviness, yet always with his charming loving deference to her least wish, he begged that she might have the children in…he had some toys for the little boy, wooden bears and chamois from Basle…
She bid Tony fetch them and the maid, then half to herself, and in deep distress, she muttered:
‘They will lead a strange life, poor children, moving here and there, and I feel they will be disinherited!’
His ready flush answered her; he was indeed a little stung. Uneasiness as to his children’s future had once or twice troubled him; disinherited, certainly, if he failed. As the door opened and the nurse came in, he said, with great sweetness:
‘No, Pamela, it is their heritage that I endeavour to return to them. That they may be more certain and proud in the name of Irish than ever I could be.’