The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Earl's promise, Vol. III (of 3),
by Mrs. Riddell
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Title: The Earl's promise, Vol. III (of 3)
A novel
Author: Mrs. Riddell
Release Date: May 13, 2023 [eBook #70757]
Language: English
Produced by: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from
images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EARL'S PROMISE, VOL. III
(OF 3) ***
THE EARL’S PROMISE.
A Novel.
BY
MRS. RIDDELL,
AUTHOR OF
“GEORGE GEITH,” “TOO MUCH ALONE,” “HOME, SWEET HOME,” ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. III.
LONDON:
TINSLEY BROTHERS, 8 CATHERINE STREET, STRAND.
1873.
[_All rights of Translation and Reproduction are Reserved._]
PRINTED BY TAYLOR AND CO.,
LITTLE QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS.
CONTENTS
OF
THE THIRD VOLUME.
CHAP. PAGE.
I. LEFT ALL ALONE 1
II. SAYING GOOD-BYE 21
III. BREAKING THE ICE 54
IV. GRACE TELLS HER STORY 72
V. ALMOST TOO LATE 98
VI. MR. BRADY’S EX-PROJECTS 120
VII. KINGSLOUGH IS PLACARDED 142
VIII. BAD NEWS 161
IX. GRACE VISITS MARYVILLE 187
X. A RAY OF LIGHT 214
XI. IN THE NIGHT-WATCHES 230
XII. TWO INTERVIEWS 260
XIII. CONCLUSION 307
THE EARL’S PROMISE.
CHAPTER I.
LEFT ALL ALONE.
Between them, Drs. Murney and Connelley devised some plan of treatment
designed to comfort Dr. Girvan, to provide the inmates of Bayview with
an ideal occupation, and to impress Grace with the conviction that
nothing which could be done to save her father was being left undone.
True to his determination, Dr. Girvan, spite of all entreaties to the
contrary, broke the news of Mr. Moffat’s danger to his daughter,
accusing himself, at the same time, with having been the cause of that
danger.
“Ye trusted me,” he said, in that homely Irish accent which is never so
sweet as when the speaker is in trouble and breathes a pathetic tone
with every word,—“Ye trusted me, and this is how I’ve recompensed ye;
and all because of my own hatred—God forgive me!—and my own conceit. Had
it been Dr. Murney or Connelley that said I was wrong, I’d have listened
to either of them; but as it is, my heart is breaking to think about you
and him.”
Into the old, honest face, puckered with emotion, into the eyes that had
looked at her with a kindly light in them so often, Grace gazed for a
minute. She was not so besotted with her own grief that she failed to
see the bitterer grief of another, that she could note unmoved the
anguish of repentance that had rendered this old man who made his
tremulous confession almost beside himself with remorse; and though
tears lay too high for her to trust herself to answer him verbally, she
took his hand in both of hers, with a pitying gesture, more eloquent
than any form of speech.
Had Doctor Girvan been the most consummate diplomatist, instead of an
honest, well-meaning, behind-the-age old man, he could not have hit on a
plan better calculated to retain Grace’s kindly feeling than that of a
free and open confession.
After all, it is never what a person tells of himself, but what others
say of him, that damages him materially. The frank plea of guilty takes
the worst of the sting out of many a social as well as legal crime.
It may not be the highest nature which is ready to confess to man, but
it is nevertheless the sort of nature man likes best; and whereas, had
Dr. Girvan failed to take the whole of the blame on his own shoulders,
she would have retained an exceeding bitter remembrance of his
determined rejection of Mr. Hanlon’s opinion, she never, as matters now
stood, thought in the future of her father’s life sacrificed as it was
to old tradition, without at the same time recalling the picture of an
aged man’s anguished face while he in the same breath entreated her
forgiveness and blamed himself for having caused her such misery.
Further, Drs. Murney and Connelley, shocked at so open a display of
professional insufficiency, lack of reticence, and disregard of medical
etiquette, deeming it best to make out as good a case for their
fellow-practitioner as his imbecile and indiscreet revelations left
possible, took immediate opportunity to efface as far as might be the
impression such a direful abuse of common discretion was calculated to
produce.
Between them they succeeded in sketching and filling in a very
creditable series of facts founded on fiction; that is to say, the
general conclusion at which they arrived was right, though the premises
on which those conclusions were founded were wrong.
The case, they assured her, was a most obscure one. How far Dr. Girvan
had been right in his course of treatment they could not tell, owing to
the length of time which elapsed between Mr. Moffat’s attack and their
own arrival; but there was no doubt he had medical precedent of the
highest authority for all he did, and if he erred, it was from no lack
of skill or prudence, but simply because nature had chosen to clothe the
complaint in a dress similar to that worn by a totally distinct disease;
Mr. Hanlon’s diagnosis of the case might not really have been one whit
more correct than Dr. Girvan’s; and finally they assured Miss Moffat
that everything which could be done had been done, and should be done.
“If skill and attention can save him,” said Dr. Murney, “he will be
spared to you.” And they left Grace, thinking they had glossed over the
little error in judgment very neatly.
Mr. Hanlon lingered behind them for a moment. He had all a young man’s
enthusiasm for truth being always presented as a nude figure, and his
public experiences of stating unpleasant facts without the slightest
atom of clothing veiling their deformity tended undoubtedly to encourage
this outspoken frankness on disagreeable topics.
For his life he could not see what good purpose the doctors proposed to
effect by mystifying Miss Moffat as to her father’s state.
“They are raising false hopes,” he thought, and so waited to hear what
remark Grace might have to make.
Doctor Murney’s last words, which Dr. Connelley ratified with an
approving smile, had been, “If skill and attention can save him, he will
be spared to you.”
“And what do you say, Mr. Hanlon?” she asked.
“You have heard what Dr. Murney’s opinion is,” he answered.
“Yes, and I think I know what it is worth. The promise contained in his
words will be kept to the ear and broken to the heart. Be frank with me,
Mr. Hanlon; it is so, is it not?”
“I do not like to answer you,” he said.
“But what is the use of deceiving me?” she asked.
“None,” was his answer.
“You believe, then, there is no hope?”
“I believe nothing can save him,” he said slowly. “But we will all do
our best, you may be sure of that, Miss Moffat.”
“Thank you,” she answered. The words were nothing, but the tone in which
she spoke them went straight to the surgeon’s heart.
“I wish that idiot Girvan had been dead and buried rather than he should
have meddled in the case,” thought the surgeon. “And yet, perhaps, it is
as well. A few years might have been added to this man’s life, but how
could he have found enjoyment in them, with the dread of THIS dogging
his path? Better as it is,” decided Mr. Hanlon philosophically. Like
many other social reformers, his ideas about the value of life were
extremely lax. The nation, the race, the world, posterity, these were
the objects he desired to benefit.
What did a few or many lives matter, providing the grand result were
obtained? What mattered it whether thousands died brokenhearted, if by
the travail of their souls millions yet unborn tasted the delights of
perfect equality of (this was a telling platform phrase, perhaps because
there is no country—unless, indeed, it may be Scotland, where there is
less uncovering, except amongst the beggars, than in Ireland)—“doffing
their hats to no man.”
Mr. Hanlon said, and doubtless thought he spoke the truth, he would
cheerfully lay down his life to emancipate Ireland.
There is a considerable difference, however, between abstract
propositions and actual practice. When the time came that Mr. Hanlon’s
chances of existence seemed jeopardized, he proved himself as solicitous
to extend his days as the veriest aristocrat might have been.
Nevertheless his theories on the subject being that as a man had to die
some time, it did not much matter when he died, he began after a time to
consider that perhaps it was quite as well Mr. Moffat should not
recover.
He had been a negative quantity ever since his arrival in Ireland. He
had not done any harm, but he had not done any good. He occupied the
place where a better man might stand, or which no man might
advantageously fail to occupy.
A woman with money, a willing heart, an open hand, was of ten times more
use in her generation than a man. Perhaps he had in his mind the old
saying, “When women reign—men rule.”
At any rate, he thought he could find a use for much of Miss Moffat’s
income, not a use so far as he personally was concerned; he was not
mercenary; good things he desired, but those it was beyond the power of
gold to purchase. No, he would relieve the poor, he would advance the
cause, he would drive the wedge destined to split up “the dynasty of
oppression,” and Grace’s money would help him to these ends.
She could not well now refuse to recognize him as a friend. His
knowledge of society was so slight, he had not the faintest idea two
such alien barks as his and hers might come nigh together, and have for
a few hours a common interest and then part, “like a dream on the wide
deep.” He railed against society; but of its ideas, customs, habits of
thought, modes of action, he was ignorant as a child.
Already he had sketched out a course of action for Grace and
himself—arranged the pecuniary part she was to play in the drama, and
the various modes in which her money would enable him better to enact
the character he had elected to fill.
His interest, professionally, in Mr. Moffat had departed. He could do
nothing for him—no one could do anything for him. He had even in the
course of his limited experience beheld nature achieve triumphs of
medical skill, which set science and all previous calculations utterly
at nought, but his conviction was, that in this case nature meant to let
matters take their course.
“She has been meddled with and thwarted,” he considered; “but for Doctor
Girvan perhaps she might have had a chance, at all events we should have
been left time in which to try our treatment. As matters are he is
doomed. A few hours more and the master of Bayview will be wiser than
the wisest man on earth. He will know more than any of us.”
Which really might be considered an almost reluctant admission on the
part of Mr. Hanlon’s mind, not because his theology was defective, but
because his self-conceit was so great, it actually touched his vanity to
think a man like Mr. Moffat would know more in the next world than he
knew in this.
“I have done all I could in the matter, that is certain,” he said as a
finish to his reflections; and Grace being in the sick room, he went
downstairs to join Drs. Murney and Connelley at breakfast.
Let death be ever so active in one place, life will be equally active in
another, and the fact that the master of the house could never again
welcome a guest nor issue a command did not in the smallest degree
affect the appetites of the men who had come so far to strive and save
him.
Doctor Girvan, indeed, saying it would choke him to “take bite or sup,”
had hurried home to secure a few hours’ quiet before the business of the
day began; but the night air and the long drive and ride, and the sharp
morning air which blew crisp and cold over Bayview, sharpened the relish
with which the two strange doctors looked on the well-laden table that
gladdened their eyes when they entered the dining-room after their
interview with Grace.
As for Mr. Hanlon, he was young; he dined early; he never supped; he did
not often treat himself to the luxury of sitting up all night—in a word,
breakfast was still breakfast to him, let who could not help it die, let
who would live.
“A most capital cut of beef!” remarked Dr. Murney, returning from the
sideboard with his plate replenished for the third time; “Connelley, let
me persuade you.”
“Remember I am not a sea-bird like you, and fish fresh out of the water
is a treat to me. Ah! poor Moffat, how particular he used to be about
the fish that came to his table!”
And the speaker shook his head and helped himself to another slice of
broiled salmon.
“That was a sad mistake of Girvan’s!” said Dr. Murney, looking round the
room, to make sure the respectable servant who had been told they “would
see to themselves” was nowhere within earshot.
“Never kept himself up with the times,” explained Dr. Connelley.
“But, gentlemen,” interrupted Mr. Hanlon, “if nature is always changing
her diseases with the times, how is a doctor to keep himself posted up
with regard to her latest ailment?”
“Nature does not change. Her diseases may be modified or extended by
circumstances,” said Dr. Murney, “but her laws are immutable. Science,
however, finds out that diseases once classed under the same head may be
separated; may be—must be; and a medical man ought to keep himself
abreast of science. For instance, no doubt hundreds and thousands of
persons suffering like Mr. Moffat have been treated up to quite recent
times for apoplexy, and died under that treatment.”
“Pleasant!” ejaculated Mr. Hanlon.
“Inevitable,” said Dr. Connelley, with philosophical composure. And
after all he was right; the knowledge of those days would be deemed
ignorance now.
“I will drive over to-morrow,” remarked Dr. Murney, who, having finished
his breakfast, was drawing on his gloves preparatory to that return
journey which was to be made once again in Mr. Moffat’s tax-cart, with
one of Mr. Moffat’s horses. “Although indeed—” the pause was as
significant as the words.
“And I will come too, if I can,” added Dr. Connelley; “but I am afraid—”
once again an ellipsis, which Mr. Hanlon filled up at his discretion.
“I suppose you will watch the case?” suggested Dr. Murney.
“With Girvan? yes. He and I had a quarrel last night, but I will not
desert the poor old fellow now.”
“Ah, well, you need not fear having to wait long for the end,” observed
Dr. Connelley. “It is a question of hours. He may be alive when we come
to-morrow—but I think myself he cannot last out the day.”
“He will go with the first or second ebb tide, I should say,” corrected
Dr. Murney; “most likely the second. Certainly I should say not the
third.”
There was one question Mr. Hanlon wanted to ask before they left.
“No doubt,” he began, “Miss Moffat will wish to send for the rector; if
she does, what am I to say?”
Dr. Murney took a pinch of snuff and looked at Dr. Connelley. Dr.
Connelley looked out of the window and made no sign.
“I think,” answered the former uneasily, “I should let her send for the
rector, and explain the position to him.”
“Precisely. But what is the position? He will never be conscious again.”
“In this world,” amended Dr. Connelley.
“In this world,” repeated Dr. Murney, taking off his hat as if he were
in a church.
There was a moment’s respectful silence. Then said Dr. Murney, as if he
conceived affairs which strictly speaking belonged to the clergy had
been encroached upon by him,—
“Of course, Mr. Hanlon, had Dr. Connelley and I considered there was the
remotest chance of a restoration to consciousness, we should at once
have advised Miss Moffat to send for her father’s attorney.”
With which utterance Dr. Murney took his leave.
“So it is,” thought Mr. Hanlon, after he had seen Dr. Connelley mounted
and answered his farewell wave of the hand; “So it is; the law first—God
after.”
Till the great assize is over, who may tell how these apparent
incongruities shall be settled; how the toil and trouble a man often
entails on those who are to come after is quite compatible with a quiet
death-bed and the rules of eternal justice!
To me it has always seemed that the person who, having time and
inclination to make his peace with Heaven, as the not inappropriate
phrase has it, makes that peace, and leaves mundane affairs to conduct
themselves, must have failed in his worldly trust, must have neglected
to put out at interest some of those talents with which he was
entrusted.
In my poor opinion the doctors were right, and Mr. Hanlon wrong. A man,
to all ordinary ways of thinking, ought not to be able to turn his eyes
with a steady gaze heavenward so long as there is anything on earth
demanding his attention, and yet it may be that when the supreme moment
has arrived, and this world is vanishing, and another opening, it may be
then, I say, that not merely do the most important projects of this life
dwarf into insignificance, but that a glimpse is caught of that perfect
faith which enables its possessor to leave the welfare of the nearest
and dearest to him in higher hands than those of man.
Upon no other supposition does it appear to me possible to account for
the supine selfishness with which those who have worldly goods to leave
sometimes fold their hands and remain tranquil, whilst five minutes
devoted to temporal matters might save miseries and heartburnings
untold.
Mr. Hanlon’s speech, however, was prompted quite as much by the spirit
of opposition as of religion. Had the other doctors suggested sending
for a clergyman, he would most probably have mentally sneered at “old
women who believed in the efficacy of a death-bed repentance.”
“Show me how a man lived, and I will tell you how he died,” was one of
his favourite quotations; and yet now, when he came face to face with a
death which allowed no instant of preparation, he could not help
admitting—he was not the advanced Republican of these times,
recollect—there must be something in the almost universal desire human
beings feel to be permitted to linger, if only for a few minutes, on the
shores of that mighty ocean which washes on the one side the fair land
of life, and on the other the hidden mysteries of eternity.
So far as Mr. Moffat’s temporal affairs were concerned, he had left
nothing to be settled in a hurry at the last hour of his existence. In
the methodical, self-contained life he had led there was no sign to
indicate the manner of death he should die. Probably he himself never
imagined for a moment he should be called upon to leave this world
except in the most orderly and usual manner.
Nevertheless his affairs were in perfect order. All the attorneys and
accountants in Ireland could not have put them in more intelligible
shape.
Concerning other matters, who could tell? Himself and his Maker alone
knew how far the peremptory summons found him ready to leave a world
which had always been a pleasant one to the owner of Bayview.
The clergyman was sent for and came, but it all turned out as Dr. Murney
had predicted.
The tide ebbed, and the tide flowed; when it ebbed again his soul set
forth on a longer and more awful voyage than mortal mariner ever
undertook.
Little more than thirty hours had passed since Grace walked slowly
homeward from the Lone Rock, and yet the whole current and colour of her
life was changed. The sunbeams danced merrily on the waters, the sea
rippled in once more upon the shore, the trees and shrubs shook out
their green foliage, and the air was almost heavy with the rich perfumes
of summer. In the distance the hills seemed almost to melt into the soft
blue of the sky. Everywhere there was beauty, and gladness, and
sunshine, but Grace saw nothing of the beauty, felt nothing of the
gladness. Over the house there brooded the shadow of mighty wings, for
the angel of death had paused in his flight; one whose voice had been so
suddenly stilled lay silent within; he who had been master there might
dwell in that pleasant abode—never more.
CHAPTER II.
SAYING GOOD-BYE.
The summer was gone and early autumn had come before Grace Moffat walked
beyond the precincts of Bayview. Sorrow not sickness had kept her
solitary. With the bitterness of her grief she could not endure friends
or strangers to meddle, and so all alone she bore the first brunt of her
trouble, all alone she formed her plans, rooted up the old projects and
fanciful aims of her past life, and, spite of her former convictions on
the subject of absenteeism, determined to leave Ireland, if not for
ever, at all events for a considerable period.
In truth, without sacrificing her liberty she could not well have
remained there.
Although in the eyes of Kingslough she was fast verging towards the sere
and yellow leaf period of life, she was not old enough to set Mrs.
Grundy at defiance and reside at Bayview without a duenna, and that was
an encumbrance Grace had no desire to burden herself with. Further, she
knew that every eligible man within reach would rush to offer her
consolation in the first instance, and his hand in the second; and that
mothers would outvie each other in offering to supply a father’s place
to so eligible a daughter-in-law as herself.
She was of course a much more desirable investment in the matrimonial
market than had been the case during her father’s lifetime. All he once
possessed was hers now unreservedly; and amongst men in search of rich
wives, the increased value of Miss Moffat’s hand might readily have been
computed by a rule-of-three sum.
All this Grace felt bitterly. Now when she wanted a friend as she had
never wanted one before, she found herself surrounded by those who all,
she suspected, held a second purpose concealed behind their kindly
advances.
Perhaps she wronged the impulses of many a warm heart by this idea, but
money was an article truly needed at that time amongst the Irish gentry.
Heiresses were scarce, encumbered estates numerous. So to speak, the
bulk of the old families were in a state of insolvency, and driven to
their wits’ ends to avert the final catastrophe which the famine only
precipitated, which it alone certainly never could have induced amongst
an aristocracy already tottering to the verge of ruin.
How were the heirs of impoverished estates covered with debt as with a
garment to mend their position except by marriage?
Every profession was overstocked; they could not go into trade. Even had
they possessed the requisite ability necessary to carry on a business
successfully, the prejudices of the country must have deterred them from
attempting to mend matters by a move in that direction.
A few went to India, where some succeeded and others died. Australia and
the West Indies absorbed most of the adventurous or speculative youth of
the period. In Australia they led a not disagreeable life, spite of
hardships they certainly never could have endured at home. In the West
Indies success resolved itself into a game at hazard with death. If
death won, why they died, and there was an end of it; if they won, they
won wealth as well.
For the male gentry who remained at home on the ancestral acres, there
were but two courses open. One to marry a girl without money, and so
hasten the advent of ruin; the other to marry a girl with money, and so
defer to another generation that bankruptcy which it was impossible
could be averted for ever.
In such a state of society the woman herself counted for very little.
Love matches were made, it is true, every day, and resulted in a good
deal of domestic unhappiness, pinching, saving, meanness, and an
infinite number of children; but in those cases where love and prudence
might have been supposed able to travel together, prudence turned love
out of court, and no heiress, let her be as good and beautiful as she
pleased, could make quite sure whether it were she who was being wooed,
or the comfortable thousands the care and affection of some
exceptionally fortunate ancestor had saved for her benefit.
Had she been deaf, humpbacked, lame, afflicted with a squint, eighty
years of age, an heiress need not have despaired of attracting suitors.
When sons were shy or indifferent, when they seemed inclined to balk, as
a hunting gentleman described their reluctance to go wooing, mothers
courted sometimes not unsuccessfully in their stead; and had Grace been
one of the blood royal, she could scarcely have had greater attention
showered upon her than was the case once the funeral was over and the
terms of her father’s will known.
But to visitors Grace sedulously denied herself; invitations she
steadily refused to accept, with the exception of one which she took
time to consider.
It came from Mrs. Hartley, and was couched in these words:—
“I have been thinking much about you and your position, and putting my
own selfish wishes on one side, really and truly believe the best thing
you can do is to come to me for a time. If you stay where you are you
will be driven to marry some one. The day must come when in utter
weariness of saying ‘No,’ you will say ‘Yes;’ not because you care much
for the suitor, or he is especially eligible, but because you feel one
husband is preferable to a host of lovers.
“We shall not bore each other; you shall go your way, and I shall
continue on mine.
“We will travel if you like; I shall not herald your arrival amongst my
friends in the character of an heiress, be sure of that. I have no pet
young man free of the house to whom I wish to see you married. Come and
try the experiment, at all events. If you still preserve your Utopian
ideas on the subject of Ireland’s regeneration, it may be as well for
you, before you begin the work, to see that the inhabitants of another
country really manage to keep their doorsteps white—and their children’s
hair combed without the intervention of philanthropists like yourself,
or demagogues like Mr. Hanlon. By the way, I hope you are not getting
entangled in that quarter.
“No doubt the young man is clever, and behaved well at the time of your
poor father’s attack; but still, these are no reasons why he should
marry your father’s daughter.
“_It would not do_, Grace. If by your marriage to such a man you were
able to ensure a meat dinner every day to all the tenant farmers in
Ireland, you would find even that desirable result dearly purchased at
the cost of so unsuitable an alliance. I do you the justice to feel
certain your heart is unaffected, but the circumstances have been
propitious for touching your fancy; and I know of old what a snare that
lively imagination you possess is capable of proving.
“Talking of imagination, what has become of the handsome hero of your
teens? What has he done? What is he doing? I see the young earl is dead;
and I understand that where the sapling fell it is to lie, as the means
of the family do not permit of a second grand funeral within so short a
time. Opinions here are divided as to the chances of Mr. Robert
Somerford succeeding to the title.
“Some persons say the new earl is privately married and has a family,
others that he will marry, others that he is and has always been single,
that he has one foot in the grave and will shortly have another in
likewise. It is a case in which I should decline to advise if you asked
my opinion.
“If you marry Robert Somerford he may be Earl of Glendare. If you wait
till he is Earl of Glendare, you may never be Countess of Glendare. And
indeed I shall not desire to see you raised to the peerage. I do not
think greatness would sit easily upon your shoulders. I believe you
would be far happier married to some honest, honourable man in our own
rank of life than you could be amongst the nobility. But there is no
honest, honourable young man in our own rank of life residing near here
whose cause I wish to plead, so you will be quite safe in coming to me.
Will you _think_ the matter over and come?”
Which letter Grace, after having thought the matter over, answered in
these words:—
“I will go to you. Amongst all the people I know, there is no one I
trust so fully, I believe in so implicitly as I do in you. I will let
Bayview furnished. I will set my affairs in order, and leave the dear
old place which has grown hateful to me—temporarily only, I hope—for I
should like, when I have advanced sufficiently in age, to wear caps, and
set the world’s opinions at defiance, to return to Ireland, and spend my
declining years and my income amongst mine ‘ain folk.’”
“Were I a stronger-minded woman, I suppose I should be able to conquer
my grief and defy public criticism by starting on what you would call a
career of philanthropy; but sorrow and the world, this little world of
Kingslough, are, I confess, too much for me. As you say, I believe I
should marry out of mere weariness of spirit.”
“My pensioners I shall leave to Mrs. Larkin, who will rejoice in seeing
the poor crowd round her door like robins in the winter.
“If anything were capable of making me laugh now, I should laugh at your
idea of there being the slightest tender feeling between me and Mr.
Hanlon. It is because by some nameless instinct I comprehend he never
could by any chance care for me that I have seen more of him since my
irreparable loss than has been perhaps, situated as I am, quite wise. I
do not mean that he has called here often, or that I have chanced to
meet him more than two or three times in my solitary walks by the
seashore; but still you know what all small places are, what this small
place is especially.
“Kingslough has talked, is talking—Kingslough says my head is turned,
and that I am bent on flinging myself and my money away on a man who,
some say—you remember Kingslough was always remarkable for its vehemence
of expression, ‘should be drummed out of the town’—and others think
worthy of being—do not faint at the phrase, it is not mine—‘strung up.’
“I have told you that I am positive Mr. Hanlon has no intention, even
for the weal of the nation, of ever asking me to marry him; and yet I
have an uneasy conviction he has some purpose to serve in cultivating
better relations between us, which purpose I cannot at present divine.
Moreover, I fear he has not given so direct a denial to those rumours
which have bracketed his name and mine in such an undesirable connection
as I think, were I a man, I should have done under similar
circumstances. Kingslough says positively I have lost my heart and my
senses—of the state of both you will be able to judge when we meet.
“Mr. Robert Somerford has at length given me the opportunity of refusing
the honour of allying myself to the house of Glendare. I am glad of
this, for I should scarcely have liked to leave Bayview whilst a chance
remained of his doing so. He is handsomer than ever—years only improve
his appearance; but were he beautiful as Adonis he could never be my
hero more.
“He was first sentimental and sympathetic, next pressing in his
entreaties, and sceptical as to the genuineness of my ‘No.’ Lastly he
was insolent and made as much of himself and his position as though he
had been nursed in the lap of royalty, and lived all his life on terms
of equality with kings and queens. Familiarity may in my case have bred
contempt, but I certainly never in the days when I admired him most
considered he was so much my superior as appears is the case.
“I was equal, however, to the emergency; my desolate position, and my
heavy mourning, the sorrow I have passed through, all combine to give me
a courage I lacked in former times.
“Whilst he was still exalting himself and depreciating me—reciting the
glories of the Glendares and contrasting the rank to which he could have
raised me with the level of obscurity in which my refusal doomed me to
remain for life, maundering on as one might have thought only an angry
ill-bred woman or a spoiled child could have maundered—I rose and rang
the bell.
“‘Perhaps you will go now, Mr. Somerford,’ I said, ruthlessly cutting
across a sentence in which he was drawing a picture of my future life
when married to a poor apothecary who had not even the recommendation of
being possessed of all his senses. ‘Perhaps you will go now, and spare
yourself the vexation of being asked to leave before a servant.’
“I never saw a man so taken by surprise. He got up, made me a low,
mocking bow, and quitted the room without uttering another word.
“Next time he asks any one to marry him, he says, he will take care the
lady is in his own rank of life.
“He had been gradually provoking me, so at that point I broke silence
and suggested the advisability of his ascertaining at the same time
whether her worldly means were as excellent as his own.
“You will blame me for this, of course; but if I had bitten back the
words they would have choked me.
“There was a time when I could have married him, and probably repented
doing so every hour of my after life. I told him this, and he pressed me
much to say when my feelings underwent so great a change.
“‘On that day,’ I answered, ‘when you forced me to remark,—We had made
you welcome at Bayview, and we now make you welcome to stay away.’
“It is only women with money, I fancy, who have to endure impertinence
at the hands of their suitors. I suppose the fact is a feeling of
tenderness for the beloved one mingles even with the bitterness of
losing her; but the wildest fancy cannot suppose any feeling of
tenderness towards a fortune that a man sees plainly can never be
possessed by him.
“Every obstacle to my accepting your invitation is now removed.
“Our servants seem determined to celebrate the event of their master’s
death with a series of weddings. He left them each a sum of money which,
though it would appear little to English people of the same rank, is
wealth to them, and a number of alliances have been arranged on the
strength of these legacies which would have amused you had you seen the
match-making in progress.
“On the whole, I am inclined to think that even in Ireland the
possession of a nest egg produces the same effect upon human beings as
it does upon a hen. A desire to lay another beside it becomes at once
irresistible. After that remark you will not be surprised to hear the
marriages in this establishment are chiefly remarkable for prudence.
Jane, the dairymaid, is going to invest her money in cows, and a husband
who owns a small cottage, the right of grazing over a large tract of
common land, and a cabbage-garden, in which he proposes to erect byres.
The cook, whom you may perhaps remember for the excellence of her
omelets and the warmth of her temper, clubs her legacy with that of the
coachman, and they intend to take a public-house five miles down the
coast, and add posting to the business. I will not weary you with
further matrimonial details.
“The youngest and prettiest of the establishment, my own little maid,
takes her money, supplemented by a gift from me, back to her sickly
mother.
“‘I shall be able to stay with her always now, Miss Grace,’ she said,
crying and laughing in the same breath. ‘I know enough, thanks be to
you, to teach a little school, and we’ll be happy as the day is long.’
“I have spoken to no one concerning my own plans; though of course every
one knows I am going to leave Bayview, no person suspects that I intend
to visit England.
“It has indeed been stated that I mean to spend the winter abroad with
Lady Glendare. Her ladyship sent me a very civil note, favoured by Mrs.
Dillwyn, saying how grieved she was to hear of my bereavement, speaking
of her own loss, and adding that, if I thought a thorough change would
prove beneficial to my health and spirits, she would be delighted if I
would visit her.
“Which was very kind, particularly from a member of a family famous for
the shortness of their memories of favours received.
“This, I conclude, gave rise to the first report, which has now,
however, been superseded by another. I am going to stay with Mr.
Hanlon’s mother, who is to come so far as Dublin to meet me!
“I mean to-day to bid good-bye to the Scotts; to-morrow, the next day,
and the next, I shall employ in paying farewell visits and in gratifying
the curiosity of my friends. Can you not fancy the entreaties with which
I shall be assailed to stay in my own country and amongst my own people?
My father’s solicitor is delighted with the proposal that he and his
family shall occupy Bayview for the autumn. He will endeavour to let it
from November next.
“I shall break my journey at Dublin, from which place I will write to
you again; but under any circumstances I hope to be talking to you face
to face within a fortnight from the present time.”
And having sealed and despatched this letter, Grace, as has been stated,
for the first time since her father’s death left behind her the grounds
of Bayview, and wended her way towards the Castle Farm.
With a feeling of sick surprise she paused when she reached the top of
the divisional road and looked at the fields to right and left. The
meadows were still uncut; acres of long rich grass had been laid by the
rain, trampled by the cattle. The potato blossoms had flowered and
faded; the potato apples were beginning to turn brown on the stems, but
not a spade had been put in to dig the roots out of the ground.
In the other lands lying around she saw hayricks; she beheld men busy at
work; she heard the voices of the women and children who were almost
playing at their labour, so rejoiced were all hearts to find the heavy
crop the upturned earth disclosed; but at the Castle Farm there was no
sign of toil or of gladness.
There was a dead stillness about the place which told Grace the
beginning of the end had begun. Spite of the rich grass thick with
clover, spite of the wealth lying buried in the broad ridges of the
potato fields, spite of the luxuriance of the ripening corn, she knew
ruin was sitting by the once hospitable hearth, stealthily biding its
time till it should turn husband and wife and children out of house and
home upon the world.
No active signs of grief—no outbreak of sorrow could have affected Grace
like the dumb testimony which gave evidence of the crisis that had come.
When before, in hay-time, had Amos and his boys and his men not been up
at the first streak of light, in order to get well on with their labour
before the sun gaining power—and the dews drying off the grass—made
mowing weary work?
When had the potatoes ever lain in the ground as they were lying now?
when had not all needful tasks been expedited and got well out of hand
before the time came for the ingathering of the corn?
Miss Moffat’s eyes filled with tears as she looked at the deserted
fields that had borne their increase only to point more forcibly the
ruin which was come to the Castle Farm.
If she had seen a sale going on in the place; had she beheld a crowd of
strangers in the yard, and heard a babel of tongues in the air; had the
horses and the cows and the busy fussing hens, and the fat well-to-do
pigs been taken away while she looked, the scene could scarcely have
struck her with the numb dread that for a time paralysed her steps.
Then it all came upon her. They had sown, but they might not reap; they
had planted, but they might not gather; on the land they had held so
long they were trespassers, and if they still remained in the old
homestead it was only because there is nothing more difficult than to
get rid of people who have determined to remain.
Amos Scott had so determined; but the law was closing him in slowly,
surely.
It was eating his substance first; while he had a pound in the
traditional stocking, or the ability to borrow a pound—while he had a
shoe to his foot and a shirt to his back, it refrained from cutting
short his torture, but once let the cruise fail, and the law would
scourge him with scorpions out of that once happy garden which never
again might seem like paradise to Amos or one of his family.
Out of the sunlight Grace passed into the house, where, by reason of the
glare from which she had come, she could at first scarcely distinguish
any object; but after a second or two she beheld Mrs. Scott, aged and
haggard, who, in her hands holding a coat of her husband’s she had been
engaged in patching, rose and bade her visitor welcome.
She was quite alone; a rare thing in that populous house. Inside as out
the same stillness prevailed, a stillness like unto the Egyptian
darkness, inasmuch as it could be felt.
The first words uttered were by Mrs. Scott, in sympathy for Miss
Moffat’s affliction; but Grace, though her burden seemed heavy, knew the
dead had no need of help or remembrance, and here face to face with her
was at least one human being who had.
“Tell me about yourselves,” she said, passing her handkerchief across
the large soft eyes that would encourage tears to shelter themselves
under the white lids and long lashes. “We cannot do anything more for
_him_. It was a great shock. I sometimes seem as if I were unable to
realize it even yet; but it is true, and I must learn to bear the
greatest trouble God sends one of his creatures.”
“The greatest, Miss?” said Mrs. Scott inquiringly; she was sympathetic
and respectful, but she could not quite fall in with this opinion.
She had her trouble, and if she heard that the trouble of another might
be greater, who shall blame her for being slow of belief.
There cannot be much doubt that the man who has broken his leg feels
sceptical when told that his next neighbour who has broken his ankle is
in worse case than he. As a matter of theory, people may sympathize with
the griefs of their fellow-creatures, but as a matter of fact the only
sorrows which are ever thoroughly understood are those a man has himself
to bear; and this is reasonable enough, remembering that after the lapse
of even a short time, a man finds it difficult to recall vividly the
anguish and the shame and the agony he may once have been obliged to
pass through.
Mrs. Scott’s pain was very present with her, however, on that beautiful
morning. She was in the midst of a trouble which might well have
exhausted a more patient woman. She had to sit still and see her
household gods broken one by one; she was forced, as she said herself,
to “bide quiet” whilst ruin stalked towards their home, drawing nearer
every hour. Death to her seemed naturally a less trial than this
lengthened torture, and she could not agree with her visitor when Miss
Moffat answered,—
“The greatest because it is hopeless.”
“Not making light of your trouble, Miss Grace, don’t you think it may be
just as hopeless a grief as death to feel yourself coming to want and
your children to beggary?”
“If there were no way to avert such misfortunes, perhaps not,” was the
reply; “but it is because we cannot avert death, because we can never
hope in this world to see those who are gone, that I say death is so
terrible a grief.”
“It is terrible,” Mrs. Scott agreed; “but I don’t feel as if it was as
hard a sorrow as to see everything going, and not be able to put out a
finger to save us from ruin. There are the potatoes undug in the ground,
and I dursn’t take up a root of them to boil for the dinner. We have had
to sell the cows, for we were “threatened” if we tried to graze them.
The boys have nothing to do, and the meadows are all laid; but they
warned Amos off when he went to mow. They poisoned our dog because he
flew at one of the bailiffs Brady sent; and they tell me now Brady is
going to get the grass in, and the potatoes up, and the corn cut when it
ripens, if he has to bring a regiment of soldiers to protect his men.”
At the idea of which imposing array Mrs. Scott dropped her work on her
knee, heaved a deep sigh, and remarked,—
“God alone knows what the end will be!”
“I will tell you what the end ought to be,” said Grace kindly. “You
ought to begin to pack up your belongings now, and leave the Castle Farm
as soon as ever you can get out of it.”
“Amos’ll never leave it alive,” she answered. “He is not a hard man to
talk to in a general way, but Brady has tried to head him, and it has
made him that dour, there is no reasoning with him.”
“Have you ever really tried to reason with him?” Miss Moffat inquired.
“Not at first. I’ll own it. I was as keen on as himself for fighting to
the last; but, oh! Miss Grace, when the trouble comes inside the door,
it is the woman feels it. She must hold up and have a bite for the men
folks to eat if her heart is just breaking; and I’m fairly tired of it.
I feel I’d be that glad to creep into any hole where we could be quiet,
I couldn’t tell you.”
“Where is Amos?” asked her visitor, after a pause.
“Gone to Glenwellan to see the lawyer; now we have sold Tom he has to
walk there and back every step of the way. He is spending his all in
law, Miss Grace. Shure the very money I got for the hens and the ducks
and the other cratures he made me give him, and me saving it for the
time when we’ll want it sorely.”
“What does Amos hope to do?” inquired Grace. “What does he expect the
lawyers can do for him?”
“That’s beyond me to tell. He wants his rights, and he says he’ll have
them.”
“What are his rights?”
“Oh, that’s easy telling; this place he paid the renewal of.”
“I am going away,—” began Grace, with apparent irrelevance.
“So I heard tell,” interpolated Mrs. Scott.
“And before I go I want to put this matter before you clearly, as I see
it; as others, wiser and more capable than I, see it also.”
“Yes, Miss,” said Mrs. Scott in a tone which implied that Grace might
talk and she herself might listen, but that her opinions would remain
the same.
And indeed is this not always the case? Is it not always when talking
and listening are signally useless that opinions alter?
“Supposing,” said Grace, a little fluttered by reason of her own
boldness, “I went to Dublin and said I must have a new piano.”
“Likely you will some day,” agreed Mrs. Scott, as her visitor paused for
a moment and hesitated.
“And suppose for the sake of argument,” went on Grace, “I decided to
spend a hundred pounds.”
“It would be a heap of money,” commented her auditor.
“Or fifty, or twenty,” said Miss Moffat, seeing her mistake; “say twenty
pounds; and that I chose a piano and told the man where to send it, and
paid him the money and took no receipt for it. After I leave, another
person sees the same piano, likes it, pays the money, and gets a
receipt. Shortly I begin to wonder why the instrument is not sent home,
and I write to the seller. I receive an answer saying he is dead, and
that no one knows anything about the matter except that the piano I
mention has been sold and delivered to Mr. So-and-so. Now such a case
would be undoubtedly a hard one for me, but I should never think of
throwing good money after bad in trying to put spilt milk back into a
basin; and yet this is what Amos persists in attempting. Do you
understand what I mean?”
“You speak very clever, Miss Grace,” was the reply.
“I am afraid I do not speak at all cleverly,” said her visitor. “I wish
any words of mine could persuade Amos and you how utterly useless it is
for you to continue the resistance he has begun.”
“Would you have him give up everything, then, Miss, and see us turned
out on the world—we who have always tried to keep decent and respectable
as you know, Miss Grace?”
“I do know,” was the answer, “but I see no help for it—if a thing has to
be done at last, it may as well and better be done at first.”
“I am thinking Amos will fight it to the end,” said Mrs. Scott calmly.
“But what folly it is!” exclaimed Miss Moffat.
“Like enough; I wouldn’t be so ill bred as to contradict you, Miss, even
if I could.”
“But it is impossible you can be happy or comfortable living in this
sort of way.”
“Happy, comfortable,” repeated the poor woman, then added with sudden
vehemence, “And who is it that has made us unhappy and uncomfortable,
but that villain Brady? It’ll come home to him though; sure as sure,
Miss Grace, it will. We may not live to see it, but the day will come
that others will mind what Brady done to us and say, ‘Serve him right,’
no matter what trouble is laid upon him.”
“But you do not wish any harm to happen to him?” suggested Grace, who,
having no personal feud with Mr. Brady, naturally felt shocked at Mrs.
Scott’s bitterness of expression.
“Don’t I?” retorted the woman. “It would be blessed news if one came in
now and said, ‘Brady is lying stiff and stark out in the field yonder.’”
“Hush, hush, hush!” entreated Grace, laying her hand on the lean
unlovely arm which had once been plump and comely. “Oh! I wish I could
talk to you as I want to talk. I wish I could say good things as other
people are able. I wish I could persuade you to bear your heavy burden
patiently, feeling certain God in His own good time will lighten it for
you. I cannot think there is any reality in religion if it does not
support us in trials like these, and you are a religious woman, dear
Mrs. Scott. I remember, as if it was yesterday, the Bible stories you
used to tell me when I was a bit of a thing wearing mourning for the
first time.”
Mrs. Scott’s face began to work, then her eyes filled with tears, then
one slowly trickled down her cheek, which she wiped away with the corner
of her checked apron, then with a catching sob, she said,—
“Ay, those were brave days, Miss Grace, brave, heartsome days. It was
easy to feel good and Christian-like then, and wish well to everybody;
but I can’t do it now, I cannot. When I’m sitting here all alone, texts
come into my head; but they are all what I used to call bad ones, about
vengeance, and hatred, and punishment. There are no others I can mind
now. That thief of the world has destroyed us body and soul, but it will
come to him. He will get his deserts yet.”
Grace rose, and walked into an inner room, where, on the top of a chest
of drawers, bright as beeswax could keep them, lay the family Bible,
with Scott’s spectacles, heirlooms like the book, reposing upon it.
Lifting the Bible she carried it out, placed it upon the dresser, and,
turning to the Gospels, read the last six verses of the fifth chapter of
St. Matthew softly and slowly. Then she closed the volume and took it
back again.
“It’s well for them that can do all that,” said Mrs. Scott, not
defiantly, but in simple good faith.
“Some day we shall all be able to feel it, and do it, please God,”
answered Grace, and, stooping over the back of Mrs. Scott’s chair, she
kissed the face of the humble friend who had once been like a mother to
her.
“Good-bye,” she said. “Let Reuben write to me, and get Amos away from
here, if you can, before worse comes of it.”
“What is this, Miss Grace?” asked Mrs. Scott, as her visitor laid a
small packet in her lap.
“It is what you will need,” said Grace, “when perhaps I am not near at
hand to come to for it.”
“Is it money?” inquired the woman.
“Yes; surely you do not mind taking it from me?”
“No, I wouldn’t mind. There aren’t many I could ask to help us, or that
I could take help from; but I am not that high in my turn I’d refuse it
from you. Take it with you though, Miss Grace. Don’t leave it here. I
could not keep it secret from the good man—we have never had anything
separate, and he’d either be angry with me for taking it, or else he’d
want it to spend on the law.”
“In that case I will not leave it,” said Grace emphatically; “only
remember this one thing,—whilst I am alive and have a pound, you need
never want. Bid me good-bye now, for I must go.”
“Good-bye,” answered Mrs. Scott, taking Grace’s hand in her own, after
carefully wiping the latter on her apron; “God send you safe to England
and back again!” and with this customary form of farewell, which,
familiar as it is to those resident in Ireland, always strikes solemnly
on the ear, Mrs. Scott suffered her visitor to depart, watching her
retreating figure till it was lost to sight, and then returning to her
seat and her occupation.
“And back again!” Grace repeated to herself, as she looked over the
glory of land and water—hill and wood lying calm and beautiful under a
flood of golden sunshine. “And back again! what will have happened, I
wonder, by the time I return?”
CHAPTER III.
BREAKING THE ICE.
Were I to say that at first Miss Moffat neither admired the country nor
liked the people of England, I should only be expressing the sentiments
of an entire nation in the person of a single individual; other people
may have met with Irish men and Irish women who took kindly to Saxon
soil on the first intention, but for my own part I have still to see the
recently imported Celt willing to admit there can be any good thing
found in the land.
It is very curious to consider how rapidly educated English tourists
take to Ireland—to the inhabitants, the brogue, the scenery, the
whisky—and then to contrast with this the length of time required to
acclimatize an Irish person of any rank to England and English ways.
Safely, I think, it may be asserted that there is nothing on this side
the channel, from the red-tiled roofs of picturesque old barns to the
glories of the Row, which finds favour in Hibernian eyes. They may like
England at last—many do—but they never like it at first.
To this rule Grace formed no exception. There was nothing she liked in
the foreign land to which she had voluntarily exiled herself. Amongst
her own country people, she even fancied Mrs. Hartley had changed, and
changed for the worse, from the decided, incisive widow, whose tongue
had been the terror and whose dress had been the envy of feminine
Kingslough.
She was more conventional and less amusing, the young lady considered;
but Mrs. Hartley’s latest surroundings presented no temptations to
unconventionality, and it would have been extremely difficult to prove
herself clever at the expense of the eminently dull and decorous people
amongst whom her lot was now cast.
The style in which her friend lived was also at first a trial to Grace.
The extreme simplicity of her own bringing up—the modesty of the Bayview
establishment—the unpretending fashion of receiving and visiting that at
one time obtained in Ireland rendered the rules and ceremonies of—to
quote Mrs. Hartley—“a more advanced civilization” irksome in the extreme
to a person who had from her childhood upwards been accustomed to an
exceptional freedom of action; whilst after the inoffensive familiarity
of Irish servants, the formality and decorum of Mrs. Hartley’s
highly-trained domestics seemed cold and heartless.
In a word, Miss Grace was more than slightly home-sick; in all
probability, had she possessed a home to go back to, she would have
received some early communication compelling her to return to Ireland.
All of this, or at least much of this, so shrewd a woman as Mrs. Hartley
could not fail to notice; she had expected the desire to manifest
itself, though not exactly so violently, and she was accordingly quite
prepared to let it run its course without much interference from her.
It was not in her nature, however, to refrain altogether from a little
raillery on the subject.
“The cakes and the ales of this gormandizing land will find favour in
your eyes some day, Grace,” she remarked. “I do not despair of hearing
you confess other forms of diet may be as appetizing as milk and
potatoes.”
“I can fancy many things more appetizing than potatoes as boiled in
England,” Miss Moffat would retort, not without some slight sign of
irritation. Her temper was not quite so sweet, Mrs. Hartley noticed, as
had been the case formerly.
“She will not make an amiable old maid,” considered her friend. “As she
gets on in life her wine will turn to vinegar; she is the kind of woman
who ought to have a husband and half-a-dozen children, to prevent her
growing morbid and disagreeable—like all other philanthropists, she has
had some serious disappointments, and I must say they have not improved
her. She ought to marry; but, like her, I confess I cannot imagine who
the happy man is to be. Beauty, wealth, amiability! she has the three
gifts men value most, and yet it seems to me that not a man suitable in
any solitary respect has ever yet asked her to be his wife—except John
Riley. I wonder what he would think of her now? Who could have imagined
she would ever have developed into so lovely a creature?”
There were two things by which Mrs. Hartley set great store—competence
and beauty.
Poor people and ugly people were to her as repellent as many diseases.
Genteel poverty was one of her abhorrences, plain faces another; and it
may therefore be imagined that when she found two most desirable
advantages combined in one human being, she gave way to exultation so
perfectly frank that it struck Grace with amazement.
“What a beautiful creature you are!” she said as, Grace seated beside
her in the carriage, they drove along the level English roads to Mrs.
Hartley’s house.
“I am not very beautiful now, I am afraid,” answered Miss Moffat;
“tired, burnt up with the sun and the wind, and smothered with dust, I
feel utterly ashamed of my appearance.”
“Ah! well you need not be, my dear. I always thought you would grow up
very pretty, but certainly I never expected to see you so pretty as you
are. What do the Kingslough oracles think of Gracie Moffat now?”
“The Kingslough oracles disapprove of my being personally presentable,”
Grace answered. “They likewise think it a pity that, if I were designed
to be good-looking, good looks were not conferred upon me in my youth.
Further, they consider that as I have plenty of money, I ought to be
plain; and, besides all this, they think I am not so particularly
good-looking after all.”
“The dear Kingslough! It is like a dream of old times to hear its
opinions summed up so concisely.”
“I wonder what Kingslough would think of your present state of
magnificence,” said Grace, a little mischievously. “If you were to drive
through Kingslough in this carriage, you would have the whole town out,
and furnish conversation for a month.”
Mrs. Hartley laughed, but her mirth was a little forced; she did not
like her splendour dimmed by the breath of ridicule, but she was too
much a woman of the world to show her annoyance.
“When we are in Turkey we do as the Turkeys do, to borrow a phrase from
one of your own countrymen,” she answered. “If any adverse wind stranded
me to-morrow in Ireland, I should at once purchase a jaunting-car and
advertise for a Protestant without incumbrance, able to drive and wait
at table.”
Miss Moffat remembered that when the speaker was stranded in Kingslough
she dispensed even with the jaunting-car; but Mrs. Hartley had so neatly
hit off the popular method of proceeding, that Grace, tired as she was,
and feeling rather lonely and miserable, thought that silence might be
wisdom, and refrained from reminding her friend of the dreary drives
they had taken in that particular style of conveyance which the young
lady detested.
“Besides,” went on Mrs. Hartley, as though guessing at her companion’s
thoughts. “I am now a much richer woman than I was in those days. Money
has come to me as it generally does to people who have it. Gold has a
way of attracting gold which is certainly very remarkable. I used to
think my income was as large as I should care to have it, but since more
has been added I find I can manage to spend it very comfortably.”
This scrap of conversation may be taken as samples of many which
followed. Mrs. Hartley and her guest talked, walked, drove, paid visits
together, but they did not at once fall into the old familiar relations
that had formerly been so pleasant.
In effect both were different persons from the young heiress and the
rich English widow of Grace’s genial spring-time; and even if they had
not so changed, it is a difficult matter to take up, after years of
separation, the thread of a friendship at the precise point where it was
dropped, and go on weaving the many-coloured web of intimate association
as though nothing had occurred to stop its progress.
Besides this, that which Grace styled “Mrs. Hartley’s magnificence” was
not a thing this country-bred maiden could accustom herself to in a
moment.
Hers was a model property; small, it is true, but maintained as Grace
had never seen any place maintained before, unless indeed it might be a
botanical garden. Not half so large as Bayview, a very doll’s house and
toy grounds in comparison with those of Woodbrook! but the order which
kept the lawns trimmed, the hedges clipped, the walks rolled, the house
from garret to cellar a marvel of comfort and luxury, was enough to make
a thoughtful and devoted Irishwoman like Grace ask herself a few very
awkward questions, and make her feel for the moment angry because she
could not avoid a sensation of shame at the contrast suggested.
“I wish I could ever hope to be so admirable a manager in all respects
as you are, Mrs. Hartley,” said Grace one day, after she had heard that
lady issue some rather peremptory commands to her head gardener.
“One cannot be a handsome young thing like you and a sharp old busybody
like myself,” replied Mrs. Hartley, not displeased, however, at the
compliment; “and then remember I was born and brought up in a country
where order is Heaven’s first law; in a land where it is the fashion to
keep the doorsteps white, it is natural that one should like to see
one’s own steps presentable. There is a great deal in habit. Although in
the abstract no doubt you admire English order and cleanliness, still I
have no doubt but that in your heart of hearts you think we are fussy
and over-particular.”
Miss Moffat laughed and coloured.
“To be quite frank,” she replied, “I like the result produced, but I do
not like the means by which it is produced. Perpetual hearthstoning and
rolling, and mowing and cutting and clipping produce marvellous effects,
I confess; but still I think the constant recurrence of such days of
small things must tend to dwarf the intellect and make life seem a very
poor affair.”
“Irish, my dear, very; but these are opinions about which there is no
use arguing. I should have considered begging in a town where I knew
every man, woman, and child, and where every man, woman, and child knew
me, a somewhat monotonous occupation; and I fail to see anything
calculated to enlarge the intellect in the acts of planting potatoes all
day and eating them for breakfast, dinner, and supper. Still there is a
certain amount of truth in what you say, or rather imply. The English
are not an imaginative people, and they do not consider it necessary to
idealize work. They labour for so much a day, and honestly say so. It is
in the nature of a quick, sympathetic nation to be desultory, and the
Irish are desultory till they come to England, when they suddenly
develope the most marvellous perseverance, and trot up and down ladders
with hods on their shoulders in a manner wonderful to behold.”
“Dear Mrs. Hartley, how I wish I could make you like the Irish!” said
Grace.
“I like you; is not that sufficient?” was the prompt reply.
“No, not half, nor quarter.”
“Ah! my love, you are like those unreasonable women who expect their
husbands to be fond, not merely of them but of the whole of their
relations, to the sixth and seventh cousins.”
It was a singular fact, and one Grace could not avoid remarking to
herself, that on paper she and Mrs. Hartley had been much more
confidential and friendly than they seemed ever likely to become while
they remained face to face. Doubtless this arose from the circumstance
that in their correspondence Mrs. Hartley still thought of Grace as the
young girl in whose fortunes she had once taken an almost motherly
interest, whilst Grace pictured Mrs. Hartley as the kindly, middle-aged
lady who had petted and ridiculed and been fond of her ever since she
attained to the dignity of long frocks and turned-up hair.
For Grace had never worn her hair in ringlets like Nettie; not all the
papers or irons on earth could have given her hair that curl which
Kingslough so much admired in Miss O’Hara; and after having had her
locks twisted up into some hundreds of little twists and screws, Grace
would appear an hour after her nurse had unfurled her curls with her
hair as straight as if no attempt had ever been made to dress it in the
approved fashion.
Thus it came to pass that as those were not the days in which children’s
tresses were allowed to float in the wind, or stream down to their
waists through the valley between their shoulders, Grace was condemned
to have her hair done up in two long plaits, which were sometimes worn
as pigtails, and sometimes doubled up like curtain-holders, being tied
together at the nape of the neck by ribbons brown or blue.
Considering that blue did not suit the child, and that a more hideous
style of dressing the hair never prevailed, it may be suggested that
Kingslough had some excuse for the opinion at which it then arrived
concerning little Miss Moffat’s looks.
Those days were gone, the days of plum-cake and delightful evenings,
with two people for a whole party, and Grace allowed to make the tea;
the days when Mrs. Hartley used to ask the girl to spend pleasant
afternoons with her, and took her drives and walks, and was very good to
her altogether.
Yes, they were gone, as the Grace of old was gone; the plain chrysalis
who was now so pretty a creature, the little, grave, silent orphan who,
wont to blush when any one spoke to her, could now speak for herself in
any place and in any company, but who could not talk confidentially to
Mrs. Hartley, perhaps for the reason that Mrs. Hartley now felt a
difficulty in asking questions she once would not have hesitated to put
by letter.
There was a break, not caused by disagreement, but by apparent lack of
sympathy between them, which both felt painfully, which each would have
given much to bridge over. I think this kind of reserve between staunch
friends is by no means so uncommon as many people imagine. It is more
difficult to get the heart to break silence than the tongue, and for
this reason the most fluent talkers are not those who speak of their
tenderest feelings.
How long this might have gone on it is hard to conjecture, had there not
one morning arrived a letter for Miss Moffat, directed in a man’s
handwriting. Mrs. Hartley noticed the fact. It was the first
communication from any gentleman, except her lawyer, Grace had received
since her arrival. Her friend knew this, because she opened the post-bag
and dealt out its contents.
The whole day after Grace was silent and thoughtful. Mrs. Hartley
noticed she looked in an abstracted manner out of the window, and that
occasionally she fixed her eyes on her with a sort of questioning and
anxious expression.
Towards evening Mrs. Hartley determined to break the ice. “That girl has
something on her mind,” she considered as she entered the drawing-room
five minutes before dinner, “I must find out what it is,” and she proved
herself as good as her words.
They had dined, dessert was on the table, Grace was toying with some
fruit on her plate, Mrs. Hartley had swallowed two of the three glasses
of port her doctor assured her she ought to take with as “much
regularity as if it were medicine.”
At this precise stage of the proceedings she had made up her mind to
speak, and with Mrs. Hartley, to make up her mind was to do.
“Grace,” she began, “there is something troubling you.”
“Yes, Mrs. Hartley, I have a very great trouble,” answered Grace calmly.
In an access of excitement Mrs. Hartley poured out and swallowed that
third glass of port.
“Let us go into the other room, where we can talk comfortably, my dear,”
she said, rising; and Grace, nothing loth, left her untouched fruit,
walked across the hall into the snug little drawing-room she had learned
to love so much, opening on one side to a conservatory, and on the other
to a lawn kept smooth and soft as velvet.
After all, spite of its shrubs, its trees, its long sea frontage, and
its acres of garden ground, there was room for much improvement at
Bayview.
“If ever I return to Ireland,” Grace had said to herself many and many a
time, “I will have that grass kept like these English lawns.”
And yet after all there is grass in the Emerald Isle smoother, shorter,
closer, and softer than any in England. Only in that case sheep have
been the mowers. I know an island in a lake where they fatten in six
weeks, and where it is perhaps unnecessary to say stand the ruins of an
old monastery.
CHAPTER IV.
GRACE TELLS HER STORY.
Grace’s experiences of drawing-rooms in her own country had been
considerable.
She had been acquainted from her childhood with immense apartments,
commanding sea and land views. She knew the orthodox style of furniture
which upholsterers sent in as a species of groundwork upon which
individual fancy subsequently painted the form of its own especial
idiosyncrasy. She had beheld acres of carpeting, hangings which were
miracles of heaviness and expense, chairs first covered with green, or
amber, or ponceau, or silver grey, to match the curtains, and then
wrapped up in holland, to preserve their beauty intact, ponderous loo
and sofa tables, everything as good as money could buy, and expected to
last accordingly; these were some of the necessaries without which no
drawing-room in a gentleman’s house could be considered orthodox; but
when all such things had been provided, it was admissible to add such
other elegances as personal taste might suggest.
Personal taste or family circumstances produced occasionally some very
curious devices in the way of ornamentation. Relics from Pompeii would
be the attraction of one home; carved temples, cedar-wood boxes, daggers
with richly-ornamented handles, spoke in another of some male relatives
who had crossed the sea, and brought back flotsam and jetsom with him.
Dogs, parrots, flowers, depicted in wool on canvas, testified in many
homes to the indefatigable industry of its female occupants; in rare
cases, rare because the materials were for those days costly, beadwork
in unlimited quantities charmed the beholder; occasionally old china,
which would now fetch fabulous prices in London, adorned the
chiffoniers, whatnots, and cabinets of persons who had none too much
money to spare, whilst in almost all cases where there were young
ladies, or even middle-aged, the open piano, the litter of music, often
a harp or a guitar, spoke of the love of that talent which is bestowed
so much more freely on Irish than English women.
All these rooms, and many others besides, Grace had been free of; rooms
with a certain stately dignity about them, rooms connected with which
she had many a pleasant childish and girlish memory, but a drawing-room
like Mrs. Hartley’s was as far beyond her imagination as that other
style of apartment generally and prudently unoccupied which obtains in
the suburbs of London, and in the houses of all highly respectable and
sober-minded middle class people throughout England generally.
Luxury in those days had not attained to the height to which it has
since sprung. It has been reserved for the reign of her present Majesty
to witness a more rapid transition from comparative simplicity of
living, lodging, dressing, spending, to the wildest extravagance of
expenditure in all ranks, than has ever occurred before at any era, or
in any nation; and for this reason the decorations and furniture which
seemed perfection to Grace Moffat, would no doubt appear extremely poor
and commonplace if catalogued for the benefit of the reader.
In the nature of almost every woman there is, I suspect, a latent,
cat-like love of things soft, bright, cosy, and there was something in
the whole aspect of Mrs. Hartley’s drawing-room which appealed to this
sense in Grace’s nature. She liked walking over the thick carpet; the
white sheepskin hearthrug on which generally reposed a King Charles that
hated Grace with a detestation she cordially reciprocated; the firelight
reflected from mirrors, sparkling against lustres; the lovely
water-colour drawings hanging on the walls; the delightful easy chairs;
the statuettes; the flowers piled up in banks between the long French
windows, and the conservatory filled with rare and beautiful plants; all
these things were pleasant as they were novel to the rich widow’s
visitor.
In Mrs. Hartley’s opinion, however, the very greatest ornament her room
had ever held was Grace Moffat, and the admiration she always
entertained for her guest was heightened as they entered the apartment
together, by the new interest now attaching to her, as the older lady
felt satisfied must be the case. Some misplaced affection, some love
entanglement which she had kept secret until she could endure to keep
silent no longer.
“Now sit down, dear, and tell me all about it; you prefer the low chair,
I know,” began Mrs. Hartley; but Grace answered,—
“I should like to sit on the rug close by you, if I may, and if Jet does
not object to my company.”
“He shall be taken away,” said Jet’s mistress, laying her hands on the
bell.
“No!” interposed Grace. “I will try to be amiable to him, if he will be
tolerant of me,” and she sat down; a pretty picture in the firelight,
her black dress disposing itself in graceful folds over the white rug,
her hands crossed idly in her lap, and her face upturned to Mrs.
Hartley, who, stooping, kissed it almost involuntarily.
“Now who is he?” asked the widow.
“There is no ‘he’ in my story,” Grace answered; “at least no ‘he’ in
your sense. I hope you will not be disappointed when I tell you my
trouble has nothing to do with love, but a very great deal to do with
money.”
“So far, my dear, I think money has been a trouble to you; when you are
as old as I am you will understand the trouble of having money is by no
means comparable to the trouble of being without it.”
“In this case my money has nothing to do with the story.”
“Then, for mercy’s sake, child, tell me what has to do with it.”
“I have,” Grace answered; “a secret has been confided to me that I do
not know how to deal with; a responsibility has been put upon me which
makes me wretched. I fully intended when I first came here to tell you
all about the matter, but—”
“But what?” asked Mrs. Hartley softly; “this is the light, and you are
in the mood for confession, let us get that little ‘but’ out of the way
now—for ever.”
“I will try,” said Grace boldly. “You are not really changed in the
least; you are the same true, dear friend you were in the old Kingslough
days when Nettie made such a mess of her life; but everything about you
is changed. The grandeur—don’t laugh at me—and the formality, and the
stateliness of your surroundings threw me back at first, and then I
fancy you thought I was changed, and so—”
“Yes; you need not try to finish; spite of your occasional little whiffs
of temper, you have changed, or rather developed, into one of the
sweetest and most lovable women I have ever known. And now you are
getting accustomed to what you call my grandeur, and English ways do not
seem so objectionable as they did at first, and we are going this
evening to break the ice once and for always; and you have a story to
tell, and I am in one of my best moods for listening.”
“My story is a very short one, but it will interest you, for it concerns
the Rileys.”
“Which of them?”
“All; father, mother, sisters, brother,” answered Grace. “The night my
father was taken ill I was told something which may affect them all most
seriously. It was my intention to consult him in the matter, but
after—after his death you may imagine I forgot for a time in my own
grief the possible griefs of other people. Before I left Ireland,
however, I received a note containing the words, ‘Have you forgotten
what I told you?’ To-day a second note is forwarded to me repeating the
same inquiry.”
“May I ask the name of the writer?”
“No; there is my difficulty. I am bound to silence as regards my
informant. But for that, I should have sent for General Riley and told
him all I had learned.”
“The Rileys and you have not been very intimate since you were sweet
seventeen?” said Mrs. Hartley interrogatively.
“No,” was the reply. “We of course are friendly if we happen to meet,
but Mrs. Riley’s disappointment at my refusing John was so great that
she ceased visiting Bayview entirely. I felt rather hurt that she never
called upon me after my loss. The General was ill; indeed his health has
been bad for a long time past, but I thought and think she and the girls
might have let bygones be bygones, and come and said, ‘We are sorry for
your trouble.’”
“It certainly would have been more graceful,” remarked Mrs. Hartley;
“but, then, one never associates the ideas of grace and Mrs. Riley
together. But to come to your story.”
“You know there is a mortgage on Woodbrook?”
“I knew there was one, and to know that, is to conclude there is one
still. I never heard of a mortgage being paid off in Ireland; such a
thing might have happened, but I do not think it likely.”
“The Woodbrook mortgage has not been paid at all events,” replied Grace;
“but, so far as I can gather, it has changed hands.”
“In whose hand is it now, then?”
“In Mr. Brady’s.”
“What! the man Nettie ran away with?”
“The same.”
“Where on earth did he get enough money to enable him to advance such a
sum?”
“I have not the faintest idea.”
“What could have induced him to do a thing of the kind?”
“Revenge. He means to turn the Rileys out of Woodbrook; at least so I am
informed.”
“Can you trust your informant?”
“Fully; there is, I think, not the slightest hope of”—Grace hesitated;
she could not say, “his being mistaken,” and she would not say, “her;”
so she altered the form of her sentence, and finished it by adding,
“there cannot be any mistake in the matter.”
Mrs. Hartley lay back in her chair and thought in silence.
She was quick enough to grasp the whole meaning of Grace’s
communication, and she understood sufficient of legal matters to
comprehend how to a certain extent the desire of Mr. Brady’s heart might
be compassed.
“What can be done?” Grace asked at length.
“I do not see that either of us can do anything,” was the reply.
“General Riley ought to be told by some one, and the question naturally
arises by whom? Shall I write to him, if you feel any hesitation about
reopening your acquaintance with the family?”
“I should not have any feeling of that kind to influence me in such a
case as this,” Grace answered; “but if I wrote to the General, it would
be certain in some way to reach Mr. Brady’s ears, and if it did—”
“Supposing it did?”
“By putting two and two together he might, he would, suspect from whom I
received my information.”
“And in that event disastrous results might ensue to your nameless
friend?”
“I believe so.”
“I think you had better tell me the name of your friend.”
“I cannot. I promised to keep it a secret. It fills me with such dread
and apprehension to fancy what might occur if Mr. Brady ever should
learn who betrayed him, that I feel tempted at times to let matters take
their course. Surely, the General is old enough to manage his affairs
without any assistance from me?”
“He may be old enough, but he is far from wise enough. If Mr. Brady has
really laid a trap for him, he will walk into it as innocently as a
child; and then, some fine day, we shall hear they have all to leave
Woodbrook; that the shock has killed the General; and that when John
returns there will not be an acre of land left of his inheritance.”
“I thought of writing an anonymous letter,” said Grace innocently; “but
then no one ever takes any notice of anonymous letters.”
“It is well you did not carry that plan into execution,” remarked Mrs.
Hartley. “I must think the matter over, Grace. It has come upon me
suddenly; in fact, I cannot realize such a complication. You are
positive,” she went on, “that you have not been deceived; that the he,
she, or it who told you the story did so in perfect good faith?”
“Yes, quite positive, the risk incurred alone would satisfy me of that,
even if other circumstances had failed to do so.”
“Do you know it strikes me you have taken the whole affair rather
coolly, young lady!” said Mrs. Hartley. “I think, even although you did
refuse John Riley, _he_ would not have permitted months to pass without
letting _you_ know your fortune was in danger, had the cases been
reversed.”
“I have felt something of what you express,” Grace replied, “and
suffered in consequence. Had John been in this country, I should have
told him at once—I should have felt safe with him—but I am afraid of
telling the General. I suppose I must be a great coward, but I never
dreaded anything so much as having it known the information came from
me. I could have trusted John’s discretion, I cannot trust that of the
General or Mrs. Riley or the girls.”
“Still we must not let them be utterly beggared without lifting a finger
to save them. Besides, your friend must wish them to know their danger,
or such a communication would never have been made; and if harm does
come of Mr. Brady hearing you are acquainted with his secrets, it seems
to me that you are in no way responsible for it.”
“Harm must not come, Mrs. Hartley,” said Grace earnestly. “If you can
think of any way in which we can let the General know without his
connecting either of us with the intelligence—well; but if not, the very
best thing that could be done would be for you to write to John and tell
him that he must come home.”
“And find Mr. Brady ‘in possession’ of the property!” finished Mrs.
Hartley. “I suspect there is no time to be lost about the matter, and
that, clever as we both are, we shall have to get the assistance of some
man in it. Poor John! it would indeed be hard to lose both wife and
lands.”
“I should have thought he might have found the former without much
difficulty ere this,” said Grace.
“Then, my dear, you judged Mr. John Riley, as usual, unfairly,” retorted
Mrs. Hartley.
Her visitor laughed. “I do so like to hear you defend him. You are
thoroughly in earnest on that subject.”
“Earnestness is a good quality,” said the widow. “It is one in which
some of your suitors have been rather deficient.”
“None of them, so far as their desire to get my money was concerned, I
assure you,” Miss Moffat answered, which might be considered as rather a
neat little tit in return for Mrs. Hartley’s tat.
For a long time after they had separated for the night the latter lady
lay awake, thinking over Grace’s story, and wondering who could have
told her. She recalled all the people she had known in Kingslough, she
puzzled her head to imagine who it might be so utterly in Mr. Brady’s
power as to dread the weight of his vengeance. She tried to remember if
Grace had let fall any word likely to give her a clue, but in vain.
“It must be that Hanlon or else Scott—I dare say it was Scott. But,
then, Mr. Brady and he could not be bitterer enemies than they are;
besides, the address on that letter was written by a person of
education. I feel no doubt it was Mr. Hanlon,” and then all at once the
truth flashed upon her, and she sat up in bed, saying almost out aloud,
“It was Nettie, the man’s own wife.” Even in the darkness Kingslough
seemed to rise before her eyes. Kingslough at high noon, with the sun
dancing on the sea and a group of pitying friends gathered round a
feeble old woman bewailing herself for Nettie, golden-haired Nettie, who
had gone out that morning all unsuspecting to meet her fate.
Next morning Mrs. Hartley appeared at breakfast, with signs of
sleeplessness around her eyes, and tokens of anxiety on her face.
“I have decided on the course we must take,” she said, when they were
alone; “but before I speak about it, I want to tell and ask you
something.
“I know now from whom you received your information; do not be
frightened, for the secret is safe with me, and it is well I do know,
for otherwise we might, with the best intentions, have secured a
_fiasco_. What I wish to ask is this, Is he aware she is acquainted with
this affair?”
“Mrs. Hartley,” said Grace quietly, “I must refuse to answer any
question in connection with the individual who brought this intelligence
to me. I wish it never had been brought. I am the last person in the
world on whom such a responsibility should have been thrown.”
“I agree with you to a certain extent. I think there are many persons in
the world who would have been of more use in such a crisis than
yourself. The worst of young heiresses, even if they have philanthropic
impulses and amiable dispositions, is that they are apt to get
slightly—”
“Selfish,” suggested one of the young heiresses referred to.
“No, I do not mean exactly that; in fact, I am not exactly certain that
I could express what I do mean. One thing, however, I must say, making
all allowance for the difficulty in which you have been placed,—I think,
Miss Grace, you ought to have made some move in the matter ere this; you
ought to have told me all about it before you had been twenty-four hours
in the same house with me. There, I have spoken out my mind and feel
better for it. Now are you going to be very angry with me?”
“No indeed,” Grace answered; “I like to be scolded, it seems as though
some one loved me enough to be interested in me,” and she caught Mrs.
Hartley’s hand and held it for a second. There were unshed tears in the
eyes of both. Perhaps the same thought occurred to each at the same
moment. They had wealth, and position, friends, acquaintances; they
possessed those things deemed valuable by most people; and yet they were
lonely creatures, the one in her youth, the other in her age.
“I shall write,” said Mrs. Hartley, after a pause, “to Lord Ardmorne, or
rather, I shall go to see him—he is in London now; he is so courteous a
nobleman, I dare say he would come to see me if I asked him.”
“That would be a far better arrangement,” remarked Grace. “Your servants
here could attach no importance to his visit, but his servants there
might.”
“Nonsense!” exclaimed Mrs. Hartley, but she gave way nevertheless, and
wrote a note forthwith in which she stated she desired to have Lord
Ardmorne’s advice and assistance, and stating she would send her
carriage to meet any train by which he might appoint to travel.
By return of post came his lordship’s answer. He should be only too
delighted, he said, if his advice or assistance could be of any service
to Mrs. Hartley, and he would leave London by such a train on such a
day.
“So far well,” said the widow; “now we must have a nice luncheon for the
dear old man, and you must look your very best. I suppose you are not
desirous of adding any other members of the nobility to your list of
suitors; but as penance for your sin of omission, you ought to make
yourself very charming.”
“I will try,” answered Grace, and she succeeded. Lord Ardmorne was
delighted with her.
When, in the pretty drawing-room, Mrs. Hartley repeated all Grace had
told her to him, the visitor looked exceedingly grave.
“This thing must not be,” he said; “we must save the General from ruin,
and keep the estate for the son—a fine, brave, honest fellow. I never
did a kindness to any young man whose subsequent career satisfied me so
completely. I never receive a letter from India in which his name is not
mentioned, and with approval.”
Grace felt her colour rise a little at this laudation of a man she had
never thought clever or remarkable in any way, and she turned her head
away, so that if Mrs. Hartley glanced towards her, she might build no
fancy from her face.
But Mrs. Hartley did no such thing. She was much too astute a woman to
let Grace imagine she was going to plead John Riley’s cause again. She
had made up her mind that Miss Moffat and her first lover should marry,
but she did not intend to let Grace see her game, or tell her for what
stakes she was playing. Mentally, she likened her own position to that
of the man who, driving pigs along the road to Cork, told all the people
he met that he was proceeding in a contrary direction for fear the
animals might immediately turn back.
She had guessed Grace’s little peculiarities with tolerable accuracy,
and she was determined not to risk damaging her favourite’s chance by
running counter to them.
From the tone of his letters, she knew no woman had as yet filled up
Grace’s place in John’s heart.
“I wonder if he would still love her if they met. She is beautiful now,
which she certainly was not then; but she is not quite the Grace he
knew—”
Was she not? Before another twelvemonth had passed, Mrs. Hartley knew of
what stuff Grace was made.
“I shall at once write to Mr. Riley, and tell him his presence is
urgently required in Ireland.”
“But what a pity it seems to do so, when he is getting on so well in
India!”
“If he finds affairs in Ireland are able to go on without him, he can
return to India; I will arrange all that.”
“But it would be dangerous to wait for his return before making any move
in the matter,” suggested Mrs. Hartley.
“I shall not wait for anything or person,” was the reply; “I shall
ascertain if the statement be true—no reflection intended, Miss Moffat,
on your sagacity; this can be done through the General’s lawyers.”
“And then?” suggested Mrs. Hartley.
“Then I shall begin to be perplexed. I do not suppose, if the interest
were regularly settled, there would be any necessity to pay off the
mortgage, but still I think it will have to be paid off, and if so,
where is the money to come from? It is not given to every one to command
capital as Mr. Brady seems able to do. I have been buying an estate
lately in one of the midland counties, and it has made me very
short—very short indeed. But bless me! to think of Brady aspiring to
Woodbrook! No matter at what sacrifice, that must be prevented. A place
I would gladly own myself.”
“All my money is invested,” said Mrs. Hartley. “I am afraid I could not
realize any considerable sum for a long time.”
“I have not the slightest idea where my money is,” added Miss Moffat;
“but if any of it is available, I should like to help.”
“Not to be thought of,” suggested Mrs. Hartley. “I am sure Lord Ardmorne
agrees with me, when I say the idea ought not to be entertained for a
moment.”
“I really am at a loss—” began the nobleman.
“If you are sensitive, Grace, you can leave us,” said Mrs. Hartley; “if
not, you can hear what I say. There was a time, my lord, when this young
lady’s fortune would have infused new blood into the Woodbrook estate,
when a very honourable and honest young gentleman who was very fond of
her asked her to be his wife. But she could not fancy him. It was a
pity, still such things will happen. Without further explanation, you
will see at once that if Miss Moffat stepped forward at this juncture to
offer assistance, her feelings and motives might be misconstrued. Her
views have undergone no change, but it might be imagined they had.”
Grace sat chafing in her place, whilst Mrs. Hartley delivered herself of
this long sentence, but she did not speak. Lord Ardmorne, after studying
the pattern of the carpet for a moment or two, looked up and said with a
twinkle in his kindly eyes,—
“Yes, I agree with you, though it does seem hard a young lady should be
unable to help a friend because his son was once her suitor. These
difficulties are boulders in the path of life, but still we must all
face them. If, however, I am not greatly mistaken in Miss Moffat, she is
one of those who are given—
“To do good by stealth,
And blush to find it fame,”
and, supposing money be urgently needed, I fancy she would lend it to me
and let me take the credit of helping the General and his family at this
crisis. You would trust me, Miss Moffat, to take as much care of your
pride as I should of your fortune?”
Said Grace—“My lord, I would trust you with my life,” and passed out
into the conservatory, thinking that if the Glendares had been made of
such stuff as this, it would have seemed a glorious lot to link her
fortune with that of Robert Somerford—even although the ways and doings
of the nobility are not as the ways and doings of the class from which
she sprung.
“A most charming girl!” exclaimed Lord Ardmorne, “and the case was, as
you implied, serious!”
“Yes; John Riley loved Grace Moffat, as a girl is only liked once in her
lifetime. That was why he went abroad, that is why he stays abroad, that
is probably the reason why he will remain single till he is middle-aged
and rich. You have seen the young lady who is ‘the woman’ of that man’s
life.”
“I fancy your story ought to end, however, Mrs. Hartley, with—they lived
happy ever after.”
But Mrs. Hartley shook her head. Not even to this new ally did she
intend to show her hand.
CHAPTER V.
ALMOST TOO LATE.
Lord Ardmorne was as good as his word, and better; thereby demonstrating
the truth of the frequent assertion, that those who promise little often
perform much; while those who promise much usually fail altogether in
performing.
Not in the least like the Somerfords was the Marquis of Ardmorne. He was
not handsome in person or gracious in manner, or fluent of speech, but
he was true; true in his prejudices, which were many; in his political
faith, which was becoming obnoxious even in England; in his religion,
that generally condemned all men—but was so in the habit of excepting
special persons and cases that the damnatory clauses were practically
rendered innocuous.
From what stock shall we say such a man sprang. He was not Scotch, or
Irish, or English; but he was something which we are accustomed—though
as I think, erroneously—to regard as a mixture of all three. He was what
the tenants called a hard landlord, and yet his rents were lower than
those of the Glendares.
Politically, the Glendares were on the right side to please the people.
He was on the wrong; and the “hard bit,” as the tenantry called it,
about Lord Ardmorne was that when a man took a farm from him he had the
choice of voting as his landlord wished, of thinking as his landlord
thought, or of having worldly matters made uncomfortable for him.
To ensure so desirable a state of affairs, Lord Ardmorne granted no
fresh leases; but let his lands at a proportionately low rental, so as
to be able to rid his farms of recalcitrant tenants as rapidly as might
be.
I do not defend the system. Of course amongst a people so highly
enlightened as our own—in a state of society which produces such
profound thinkers, and renders the views of even the lowest so clear and
so just, as that which recommends itself at present—it is most desirable
the freedom of action and of conscience should obtain, even if such
freedom of action and of conscience produce similar results to those
England and Ireland have both had to deplore during the last few years;
but still those who took Lord Ardmorne’s farms did so with a perfect
knowledge of consequences.
There was no secrecy about the matter. My lord having a certain set of
opinions, expected his tenants to acquiesce in those opinions; and they
were aware of the fact.
When by reason of death—the resignation of a member, or other causes—an
election took place, Lord Ardmorne expected his men to vote for his man.
If they refused to do so, my lord turned them out. They rented his land,
knowing well the full consequences of contumacy, and if they liked to
risk those consequences, it was scarcely fair to grumble (as they did)
when the marquis enforced his share of the bargain.
If an Irish farmer of that period could only live a struggling trader
for a year in the city of London, in this, he might well pray heaven to
deliver him from the men of our time, and to restore him even a hard
landlord like the marquis, who expected his tenantry to think as he
thought for the sake of an exceptionally low rental and various other
indulgences beside.
The Marquis of Ardmorne would have found scant favour at the hands of
those gentlemen of the press who, in the present day, are good enough to
instruct the nobility in their duties as landlords and landowners. He
was in no way romantic. He might have forgiven a tenant a year’s rent,
but he could not overlook his venturing to have an opinion of his own.
His manners were not genial; he could not, to reproduce an old Irish
phrase, have “charmed a bird off the bush,” even if he had tried to do
so. He was one of those who, it is sometimes stated, strive to stop
progress. His own party honestly thought they were only the breakwaters
that tended to keep the perilous waves of innovation from sweeping over
and destroying the land.
The Reform Bill he believed to have been the ruin of the country. Had he
lived to see the Irish Church Bill passed, he would have covered his
face and turned him to the wall, feeling death had lingered too long.
Tenant right stank in his nostrils. Liberty of conscience was a phrase
which sounded in his ears like the claptrap expression of a party who
were trying to lead the lower orders astray.
The peasantry he regarded as children who, not knowing what was best for
them, ought to do as they were told. There could be no mistake as to
what Lord Ardmorne considered the first duty of a tenant-farmer; and if
the tenant-farmer chanced to entertain a different opinion, why so much
the worse for him.
On the other hand, the Ardmorne tenantry enjoyed advantages unknown to
those who rented the Somerford lands. The marquis, it is true, did
little or nothing in the way of improvements; but he did not prevent the
farmers improving their holdings if they pleased to do so. Lime and
stone were supplied to them at almost nominal prices. The shore rights,
such as the Glendares had let and the lessee sublet again, were
practically free to those who, behaving themselves properly, were
suffered to cultivate his lordship’s lands and pay rent to his
lordship’s agent; and when crops failed or sickness laid low, and the
gale days came round, time would often be given to make up that rent for
which, as on the Glendare estates, the farmers and their wives, and
their sons and daughters, and men-servants and maidservants, worked from
morning till night from week’s beginning to week’s end, from the time
they were big enough to pick up stones and herd cows till they were
carried to their graves.
Nevertheless, the marquis was not liked as Th’ Airl had been. Though his
religious opinions were identical with their own; though he reverenced
the glorious, pious, and immortal memory of King William; though he had
nothing but contempt and hatred for that of James; though he was an
Orangeman, and thought “Protestant Boys” the most charming melody ever
composed; though his watchword, like theirs, was “No Surrender;” though
his feelings towards the Pope were identical with their own sentiments,
despite the fact that he uttered his commination services in Parliament
in more orthodox and gentlemanly fashion than they shouted out theirs in
the streets and highways,—still, his lordship failed to win the hearts
of his people.
He had always been a grave quiet man, with stern features and reserved
habits; a man with a story in his life which had perhaps made the
fulfilment of his age different from the promise of his youth; a man of
strong purposes and deep feelings; a man to like few, but to like those
few much; a man who would have thought himself no better than a thief,
if he had left impoverished acres and a diminished rent-roll to the next
heir, albeit that heir was neither son nor nephew, nor aught but a
distant relative who held a high position in India.
It was to this relative he had sent out John Riley, and the young man
might pecuniarily have done well for himself in his new appointment, had
he not commenced sending home all he could spare in order to enable his
family to live more comfortably.
He would have done them a greater kindness had he kept his money. To
persons who have always been short, the command of a little money is a
great snare as well as to those who have never had much experience in
spending; so at least it proved with Mrs. Riley.
She had been compelled to do without so many things during the previous
part of her life, that now when a few of them were within her reach she
tried to compass all; and the result proved that not only was the Indian
allowance spent, but the interest on the mortgage fell into arrear.
“When the girls are married, we can soon retrench,” Mrs. Riley observed,
but the girls failed to marry. If they had not done so when they lived
quietly and dressed plainly, and engaged themselves in those various
works of a domestic kind which recommend young ladies to men of a
prudent and economical turn of mind, they were certainly likely to
remain unwedded when, arrayed in gorgeous attire they were met at
parties and balls in Dublin, where it was their new custom to winter.
They never lacked partners, and they never were destitute of attendant
swains, who found Woodbrook a pleasant sort of house at which to stay
for a week or two in the summer and autumn; but although the hopes of
Mrs. Riley were often excited, they always ended in disappointment.
Visitors they had in abundance, but suitors none; till at length Lucy
captivated a curate, whose addition to the finances of the family proved
seventy pounds a year from his rector, twenty-five pounds a year from
private sources, and a baronet uncle.
“Who will be certain to present him with a good living,” said Mrs.
Riley; though on what foundation she erected this pleasing
superstructure was an inscrutable mystery to all her friends.
Things were in this state when Lord Ardmorne through his solicitors
ascertained, first, that if Mr. Brady did not actually hold the mortgage
he was intimately and pecuniarily associated with those who did, and
that it was in his power to pull the strings which prompted the
movements of the ostensible actors; second, that the interest was
running back; third, that the mortgage-deed contained some unusual and
stringent covenants; fourth, that the Woodbrook estates were not
returning the amount of money they had once done; and fifth, that owing
to failing health, the pressure of anxiety, and the more exciting life
he had in the interests of his daughters been leading, the General was
becoming daily less and less competent to act as his own agent and to
manage his own affairs.
Altogether the family prospects were in as deplorable a state as family
prospects could be, when Lord Ardmorne’s solicitor went to confer with
General Riley’s legal adviser and General Riley himself.
It was from the latter gentleman that information of the interest having
fallen behind was elicited.
Not being pressed for it, he, as frequently happens in such cases, had
not mentioned the matter to those who would have advised him to make any
sacrifice in order to keep so important an affair within manageable
limits.
Piteously he confessed his error, and asked, as people are in the habit
of asking when counsel is almost useless, what he was to do.
It had been agreed between Lord Ardmorne and the lawyers that, in
consideration of his broken health and other causes, the fact of Mr.
Brady having managed to thrust his fingers into the Riley pie should not
be mentioned to the General; that if a settlement of the matter could be
left until the son’s return, all explanations should be deferred till he
came back.
The first thing to be done was clearly to wipe off the arrears of
interest; but as not an acre of the Woodbrook estate was free, General
Riley’s solicitors said openly that they failed to see where the money
was to come from.
Lord Ardmorne, however, having taken up the affair, was not going to let
this difficulty stop him on the very threshold of his undertaking, and
instructed his lawyer to find the amount necessary.
He did not intend to be harsh to the General, but he did tell the old
man some very plain truths concerning the risk he had run of
jeopardizing his son’s inheritance; and he made a point of seeing Mrs.
Riley, then in Dublin, and explaining to her that the old life of paring
and pinching would have to be resumed if she did not wish Woodbrook to
pass into the hands of strangers.
“It is all that girl’s doing,” groaned the poor murmuring lady. “But for
her we should have been comfortable and happy years and years ago.”
Which remark set the marquis thinking. John was a fine fellow, and,
spite his encumbered acres, not an ineligible _parti_ even for Grace
Moffat; but he failed to see how the little romance he had planned could
be carried out if Mrs. Riley were to be one of the _dramatis personæ_.
The lapse of years had not improved the General’s wife. Lord Ardmorne
could imagine many more desirable things than a close relationship with
her, and he left the house thinking matters were complicating a little,
and that perhaps he should not be justified in dragging Miss Moffat into
the Riley entanglement.
“Perhaps the very best thing the young man could do would be to persuade
his father to sell the estate right out and go back to India. That,
however, will be a matter for future discussion and consideration.
Meantime, we can do nothing but clear off the arrears of interest.”
In this, however, his lordship proved to be mistaken. No sooner was the
interest settled than notice was served requiring the repayment of the
principal at the extremely short date mentioned in the deed.
Like most of his countrymen, Lord Ardmorne had a passion for acquiring
land. A townland for sale, an estate in the market, these things
affected him as the news that a rare picture is to be brought to the
hammer affects a collector, and Woodbrook was a property he would have
felt by no means loth to add to those he already possessed.
But the knowledge of this desire tied his tongue. In the General’s
extremity he could not advise him to let the encumbered acres be
purchased by some one willing and able to give enough for them to clear
off the mortgage and leave a margin beside.
Had he stepped in at this point and counselled the General to do that
which really seemed the only rational way of solving the difficulty, he
would not have cared to meet the man for whose return he had written.
“I fancy it will have to come to that in the end,” he said to his
solicitor in reply to a remark from that gentleman, that the sooner
Woodbrook passed into other hands the better it would be for every one,
the General included, “but we must leave it for the son to decide.”
“I do not exactly see how the decision is to be left for so long a
time,” remarked the lawyer. “There can be no question it is all a
planned affair, and how any man’s adviser could permit such a deed to be
signed baffles my comprehension.”
“Well, you must remember when a state of mortgage becomes chronic,” said
the marquis, “people are apt to overlook symptoms that would strike a
person to whom the disease is new. Besides which there was no choice as
I imagine in the matter. An old mortgage had to be paid off, and under
such circumstances it is not always easy for a man to dictate his own
terms.”
To which words of wisdom, coming from a nobleman, the lawyer listened
with deference and attention as in duty bound; but he held naturally to
his own opinion nevertheless.
Here, then, the Rileys had arrived at a point where two roads met, and
written on the finger-post in letters plain enough to those who could
read were the words—To Ruin.
Where the other road led was not so clearly indicated. It puzzled Lord
Ardmorne himself, though both long and clear-headed, to imagine what the
end of it all would be. He could turn them out of the direct route to
beggary, and he meant to do so, but whether the second path might not
merely prove a round-about-way to the same end he was not prepared to
assert.
After all there is nothing on earth so difficult as to manage another
man’s affairs for him, even if he be willing to let his neighbour
attempt the almost impossible feat.
But about the end, Lord Ardmorne did not mean to trouble himself till
John Riley’s return. When that event happened, he proposed to lay the
whole difficulty of the position before the younger man, and warn him
against attempting to drag an endless chain of debt through yet another
generation. Meantime arrangements must be made for paying off the
existing mortgage; and when he had done all he could in the matter—and
with a solvent nobleman and in Ireland that all was considerable,—Lord
Ardmorne found a pecuniary deficiency still existed that, although not
large in itself, was still sufficiently great to cause perplexity and
difficulty.
Up to this point he had decided not to permit Grace to moil or meddle in
the matter, now he decided to leave her to say whether she would help or
not.
“I will take care she is no loser,” he said to himself, “and also that
she does not appear in the transaction. I certainly will buy the place
if the father and son agree to sell; if not I must arrange differently,
that is all. So now to see Miss Moffat, and ascertain whether she is
still willing to assist in saving an old family from utter worldly
ruin.”
Very straightforwardly he put the state of the case before “the woman of
John Riley’s life,” told her what he had done, and the precise way in
which she could best help, that help being kept a secret between
herself, himself, and Mrs. Hartley; and if the subsequent conversation
were rendered less connected by reason of the widow’s comments on the
folly of Mrs. Riley and the childish weakness of her husband, her
remarks tended at least to make it more exciting.
“I should like to be of use to the General or his son,” Grace said with
a frankness which caused Mrs. Hartley to shake for the ultimate success
of her project; “indeed, I should like to serve any of them. It would be
a sad thing if for lack of a friendly hand Mrs. Riley and the girls had
to leave Woodbrook.”
“It is clearly Lord Ardmorne’s opinion that the sooner they leave
Woodbrook the better for all concerned,” observed Mrs. Hartley. “And in
that opinion I entirely agree. If all the poor Irish gentry were
compelled to sell their estates, and let people who have money and sense
purchase them, it would be a grand thing for the country.”
“English people seem to think there is a necessary connection between
money and sense. I must say I fail to see the link myself,” answered
Grace.
“I am inclined, however, to think the English capacity to make and to
keep money implies a considerable amount of sense,” interposed Lord
Ardmorne.
“It is not a pleasant sort of sense,” persisted Grace.
“Perhaps not, but it is useful, my dear,” said Mrs. Hartley. “For
instance, had your grandfather squandered the fortune he made instead of
leaving it to you, he might have been a more popular old gentleman, but
he could scarcely have proved himself so admirable a person in his
domestic relations as was the case.”
“I sometimes wish he had never left me a penny,” remarked Grace a little
bitterly.
“What a shame for you to make such a remark, Miss Moffat, at a time when
your fortune enables you to step forward to the rescue of your old
friends,” exclaimed Lord Ardmorne, with an affectation of playful
raillery which sat upon him about as gracefully as a cap and bells might
have done.
“Yes, it is a shame,” Grace answered quietly; “for about the first time
in my life I feel really thankful now that I am as rich as I am.”
“Many other opportunities for thankfulness from the same cause will
present themselves in the years to come, believe me,” said their
visitor.
“I only hope they may not have to leave Woodbrook,” exclaimed Miss
Moffat, a little irrelevantly to the conversation as it seemed.
“Then you ought not to hope anything of the kind,” rebuked Mrs. Hartley.
“You should hope that John may have enough resolution and sufficient
sense to free himself and his family from the incubus of debt, that must
have made existence a daily and hourly torture and humiliation to the
whole of them. As I said before, if a law were passed compelling the
owners of heavily mortgaged properties to sell them, there might be a
chance of Ireland’s regeneration. As matters stand there is none.”
If with prophetic eye Mrs. Hartley had been able to look forward a very
little way, how she would have longed for the Encumbered Estates Court,
and welcomed the changes every one predicted must be wrought by it.
In those days capital and civilization were the favourite panaceas the
English proposed for all Irish troubles. In these the same remedies are
indirectly suggested, but the English are now quite content to leave
their sister to find both for herself.
And no doubt the present course is the correct one. The curse of all
former administrations has been that instead of leaving Ireland’s
diseases to be cured by time and nature, each fresh political doctor has
thought it necessary to try his own new course of treatment on the
patient.
Fortunately the latest and rashest surgeon who has experimented on her
so far as to cut away the grievance most bitterly complained of, has
discovered there may be a tendency to hysteria in the constitution of a
nation as well as of a woman, and that it does not follow because a cry
is raised, “The pain is here,” that the arm or leg is to be hacked off
with impunity. One man has deprived Ireland of that which kings, nor
queens, nor parliament, nor statesman, can ever restore to her again.
Nevertheless, he may have done both England and Ireland good service,
for it will be some time before the former is tempted to try the result
of another such surgical operation, let the latter cry for knife and
caustic as loud and as long as she will.
CHAPTER VI.
MR. BRADY’S EX-PROJECTS.
When Mr. Brady found the Rileys had by accident or design checkmated
him, he was, as a young clerk who chanced to be favoured with many of
his inquiries about that period, remarked, “Neither to hold nor to
bind.”
To ruin the Rileys, to oust the proud beggars—so he styled them—out of
Woodbrook, to bring the old man to his level, and to humble the pride of
“that fellow out in India,” had been the dearest desires of his heart
for years previously.
In order to compass them he had not spared his time or his trouble; he
had not objected to wade through very dirty water, he had not grumbled
when asked to eat humble pie in quantity; he had not bemoaned himself
when compelled to cringe to people he longed to kick, or be civil to
those he hated; and now in a moment all he had saved, toiled, lived for
was snatched from his grasp.
When a man first conceives the plot of either a good or a bad project it
is, comparatively speaking, a small matter to find another has
forestalled him in its execution. Let him, however, have nursed, tended,
perfected the scheme, lain with it in his bosom at night, and taken it
for his companion by day, he finds it a cruel hardship to have the one
thing he fancied his own, the one good he asked in life, claimed by
another.
If the punishment of deliberate wrong-doing ever could enlist our
sympathies on behalf of the wrong-doer, I think it might be in a case
like this, when a man having spent his all to compass his object finds
at the last that it eludes his grasp; when having staked everything he
possesses on the success of some villanous trick in the game of life,
his intended victim, at a moment least expected, says “Checkmate” and
leaves him to curse the board whereon his best designs, his
longest-matured schemes, have been defeated.
On Mr. Brady the news of his enemy being at the last moment delivered
out of his hands, fell with such a shock that at first he could not
realize the depth of his own disappointment. Although the interest being
paid might have prepared him for the settlement of the principal, he
refused to believe his lawyers when they told him the whole amount had
by some means been raised.
To incredulity succeeded all the fury of a balked revenge, and in his
rage he accused both solicitors and capitalist with having conspired in
General Riley’s favour against himself. He declared it was through them
the owner of Woodbrook had heard of his own interest in the matter, to
which the former replied by ordering him out of their office, and the
latter remarked that if Mr. Brady did not put some restraint upon his
tongue all transactions must end between them.
“I am willing to make some allowance for you,” he went on, “as I dare
say the matter is as great a blow to you as it has proved a surprise to
me; but I will not have such language as you used just now addressed to
me by any man living; so you can take your choice, either try to be
civil, or else I will have done with you and your affairs at once and
for ever.”
Whereupon Mr. Brady muttered something intended for an apology, adding
in a louder tone,—
“If I only knew who has been meddling in my affairs I would make it
pleasant. He would think twice before thrusting himself into other
people’s business, I can tell him!”
“Well, when you find out who it is that has upset your plans, you can
tell him what you like so far as I am concerned; but, meantime, I will
not have you vent your temper on me. Remember that for the future, sir,
if you please.”
Whether it pleased him or not, Mr. Brady knew he must remember the hint,
and act upon it; and, therefore, set his face homeward full of anger and
mortification.
This was the first severe check his plans had ever received, and in
proportion to the magnitude of the venture appeared the shock of his
failure.
Independent altogether of his desire to beggar and humble a family he
hated, Mr. Brady had looked upon Woodbrook as the El Dorado whence he
should in the future dig fortune and position. He and his friend (who,
so far as disposition and character were concerned, might be considered
a not unworthy match-horse even to Mr. Brady), had long previously laid
their plans, not merely for the acquisition of Woodbrook, but also how
they intended to make that acquisition valuable to them.
It had been proposed by Mr. Brady’s coadjutor to give that gentleman a
share of the profits in consideration of his fertile brain having
devised the scheme, and of his unwearying industry being necessary to
carry it to success.
Mr. Brady’s idea, on the other hand, was by degrees to work the
capitalist out. He had not decided how the feat was to be performed, but
he was well aware that it would be an extremely good thing for him if he
could manage to get the whole power into his own hands.
In the first instance he would require assistance, and that to a large
extent, but he did not despair of finding himself ultimately the owner
of, at all events, a large portion of the property.
Money and revenge—these two desirable things he hoped to compass at a
single blow—and now the castle of his dreams, the fairy palace which he
had mentally erected from foundation to lofty pinnacle, was level with
the dust.
He had been beaten and by the Rileys. Whoever else might realize the
project he had been perfecting for years, Mr. Daniel Brady should reap
no advantage from it.
About the time when he first began to think of annexing Woodbrook,
“going to the salt water for the benefit of sea bathing” was becoming a
recognized necessity even amongst those who had never previously thought
of permitting their families such an indulgence.
From inland rural districts, as well as from the towns great and small,
people came trooping for that “month at the shore,” which it was
believed made weakly children strong, and kept healthy children strong
and robust.
Each summer Kingslough was crowded by visitors. Poor cottages—no matter
how small or poor, provided they were situated close on the bay—were
eagerly taken by those to whom economy was an object; and it must have
been plain even to a much less intelligent gentleman than Mr. Brady
that, if the accommodation in Kingslough and its neighbourhood had been
twice as great, willing guests might still be found to avail themselves
of it.
So far, however, no one had thought of building houses solely and simply
for the benefit of season residents, and it was by a plan of this kind
Mr. Brady hoped to make Woodbrook pay.
Part of the property stretched down to the sea. The water at that
distance from Kingslough was represented better for bathing than that
which washed the grey shore below Ballylough Abbey. The beach was of
finer sand, a headland stretched out into the sea sufficiently far to
suggest the idea of erecting a quay, at which steamers could anchor at
almost all conditions of the tide. The scenery was wilder and more
beautiful than that surrounding Kingslough. Already there was a talk of
a short sea route being inaugurated not merely between Scotland and
Ireland, but between England and Ireland; and Mr. Brady, though he did
not erect his castle on the strength of either English or Scotch money,
considered it quite on the cards that from the great manufacturing towns
in Lancashire, and even from Glasgow, people might come to spend the
summer at Glendare.
That was the name he proposed to confer on the new watering-place, not
because he was especially fond of the Glendares, but because he
considered the title one likely to recommend itself to natives and
foreigners alike. He had seen enough of English people to understand the
horror which seizes them at sight or sound of a long Irish name, such as
Ballinascraw, for instance; on the other hand, he knew the inhabitants
of the Green Isle still retained a preference for words indigenous to
the soil.
The fashion of wiping out old landmarks, by rechristening romantic spots
with prosaic British names, had not then begun, and he would indeed have
been considered an adventurous man—adventurous to madness—who founding a
settlement on the other side of the Channel, blew the trumpets and
assembled the people to hear the town christened Piccadilly, Kensington,
or Wandsworth, as is the case at present.
Mr. Brady therefore decided on Glendare, as a name likely to wear well
and find favour in the minds of the multitude. Lying idly on his oars,
looking with his bodily eyes at the land dotted with trees, sloping so
lovingly to the beach,—his mental sight beheld villas filling up the
landscape, snug cottages scattered along the shore, a town perhaps
climbing up the sides of the headland. The vision grew more real every
day. He had drawn his plans, he had decided from which quarry stone
should be carted; he had thought how much money he could himself afford
as a beginning, how much and at what rate he could raise to complete the
scheme; pleasure-boats in imagination he saw drawn up on the shore,
small gardens filled with flowers, lawns on which walked ladies gaily
dressed,—gentlemen rich enough to pay long rents for convenient,
comfortably furnished houses. There was not another property so suitable
for the purpose as Woodbrook in all that part of the country; and the
beauty of it was that, whilst those few acres by the sea could be so
admirably utilized, the domain itself might remain almost intact, the
farms still be left as they were, the former tenants still permitted to
pay rents to new owners.
And all the while unconscious of the evil-eye coveting his home, his
lands, his son’s inheritance, General Riley pursued his way, never
imagining beggary was coming to him as fast as the feet of misfortune
could bring it.
Lulled into a state of fancied security—suspecting no trick, thinking of
no worse trouble in the future than a day when the arrears would have to
be paid—the old man was, by reason of utter ignorance, and, it may be,
natural carelessness, drifting on rocks from which his ship could never
have been hindered breaking to pieces,—when he was saved as by a
miracle.
What would be the ultimate end it might have puzzled a wiser than the
General to say, but for a time, at least, Woodbrook was though not out
of debt, out of danger. Every one connected with the matter felt nothing
more could be done in the affair till John came home.
Meantime it oozed out, as indeed no one strove to prevent the story
doing, that Mr. Brady and his friend had laid a deliberate trap for the
General, and people began to say some very hard things about the master
of Maryville in consequence; all the sins of his youth and his manhood
were rehearsed, as sins will be on such occasions; all the wrong he had
done in his lifetime, all the right he had left undone, all his errors
of omission and commission, all his subterfuges and tricks, his faults
social and domestic, the grief he had caused to many an honest father
and mother; these things and others like them were disinterred from the
always open grave of the past, and discussed alike in mansion and
cottage in the town of Kingslough, and in other towns, besides in the
country districts throughout all that part.
After a fashion, he had, up to this time, been making way with his
fellows. His wife was not visited by any lady higher in rank than the
wife of the minister who preached at the barn-like little meeting-house
a couple of miles or so from Maryville, but men of a better class,
though of a bad way of living, did not object to be seen in Mr. Brady’s
company, and were willing to drink, smoke, make small bets and play
cards with him, not merely at various hotels and inns in Kingslough and
the other towns, but at his own house.
Now there came a change, nameless, perhaps, but certain. There was no
direct cut, no absolute incivility, no alteration in manner of which it
was possible to take notice, but his former acquaintances were always in
a hurry when he met them, always had an engagement, always had to meet
some one or go somewhere, and rarely now could find time to spend an
hour or two in the evening at Maryville.
After all it was not right, these men opined, to have tried to drive the
old General out of Woodbrook. The line must be drawn somewhere, and
Kingslough drew it at that point which Mr. Brady had tried to cross.
Kingslough considered he ought to have refrained from meddling with a
gentleman. Nothing could have revealed so certainly the taint in Mr.
Brady’s blood as an attempt of such a nature. The marquis went up at
once in public estimation. Many persons who had long been wishing to
change their political creed, since Radical notions had begun to make
Liberalism rather the creed of the vulgar, took that opportunity of
turning their coats.
“It was a very fine thing of Ardmorne to do,” said Kingslough,
Kilcurragh, Glenwellan, and the neighbouring districts. He had gone with
General Riley to the Bank of Ireland himself, it was stated; he had
found the extra money required beyond what the bank would advance. He
had written to request Mr. John Riley’s presence, and arranged that his
prospects should not suffer in consequence. In a time of trouble he had
proved more than a friend, and then it was so clever of him to have
found out that danger menaced the Rileys, and of what nature.
Of course, some one must have given him a clue, but he followed it up to
the last inch of thread. Then came the question, who could have hinted
the matter to him?
Conjecture, which it is never possible to balk, guessed every likely and
unlikely person in the county. Rumour, which is the readiest inventor of
fiction on earth, prepared a score of circumstantial tales on the
subject, and ran them through society with as much regularity as any
other serial writer might.
On the whole, public opinion inclined to the belief that Mr. Dillwyn was
the person who had opened Lord Ardmorne’s eyes. It was well known that
when the new earl succeeded to the title, Mr. Brady had taken a journey
in order to malign Mr. Dillwyn, and secure the agency for himself, and
so much unpleasantness had in consequence arisen that Mr. Somerford’s
stepfather actually did resign, offered on certain conditions to vacate
Rosemont, and expressed his opinion of Mr. Brady and the Glendares in
language as remarkable for its force as its plainness.
It was only at the earl’s earnest entreaty he continued to act until
another agent could be found.
“And that other agent will not be Mr. Daniel Brady in this earl’s time,”
said Mr. Dillwyn triumphantly, on his return from foreign travel—which
remark clearly proved that the feelings he entertained towards the owner
of Maryville were not strictly Christian in their nature.
Society at Kingslough had for so long a time been accustomed to
disagreements between the Glendares and their agents, that it had paid
comparatively little attention to this last dispute, except to marvel
whether Mr. Dillwyn would really go, and if so who would step into his
shoes. But now when every one was anxious to know who it was that
enlightened Lord Ardmorne, the passage between the agent and Mr. Brady
was remembered, and a certain significance attached to it.
In a word, though rumour invented and circulated fifty stories, this was
the one to which people, as a rule, inclined. Mr. Brady himself was
perhaps the only person who attached no importance to it. As at first,
he believed that either his own or his friend’s lawyer, or his friend
himself, had proved unfaithful; so at last he believed that one or other
of the persons with whom he was most closely connected by ties of
interest had—by imprudence or of _malice prepense_—betrayed his plans.
No one else, he was positive, had the faintest knowledge of them. By
intuition Mr. Dillwyn could not have guessed his tactics, and it
mattered little who it was that had finally carried the news to Lord
Ardmorne, when once the secret escaped from the custody of those who
ought to have held it secure.
To discover the person who originally betrayed it, suddenly became the
most paramount business of Mr. Brady’s life, and Nettie often wondered
to herself whether the best thing she could do might not be to run away
to the uttermost ends of the earth, taking the children with her.
“For if he ever finds it out he certainly will kill me,” thought the
wretched woman, and she thenceforth lived in a constant agony of fright.
After all, no matter how tired a person may be of the business of
existence, one would like to have a choice as to the mode of getting rid
of the toil and the sorrow; and perhaps the most repulsive way of having
the trouble ended seems that of being murdered.
There had been times when Nettie felt tempted to bring matters to a
conclusion for herself—and that method of shortening the weary day now
seemed luxurious by comparison with any termination which involved the
ceremony of _un mauvais quart d’heure_, with Mr. Brady as an essential
preliminary.
So far as affairs at the Castle Farm were concerned, General Riley’s
business took precedence of Amos Scott’s. Having quarrelled with his own
solicitors, Mr. Brady had to carry the Scott difficulty elsewhere. Out,
Mr. Brady was determined the farmer, his wife, and his children should
go; but short of pulling the house down about their ears, there seemed
no possibility of getting rid of them; and for all his braggart airs, he
was not prepared to take a step of that kind if he could avoid doing so.
That rough-and-ready method of ejectment, which found such favour in the
south and west, never recommended itself to the northern understanding.
The thing has been done, of course: the roofs have been stripped off;
the windows taken out; the doors torn from their hinges; in extreme
cases the very walls undermined, and the house razed with the ground;
but patient as the northern temperament is, I doubt if a landlord could
enjoy much ease of mind supposing he saw a man like Amos Scott sitting
by his naked hearth—with the heavens for his rooftree, and the wind and
the rain blowing and beating on his head.
Upon the whole, supposing imagination presented the picture of such a
reality, the landlord’s dreams—let right be on his side or wrong—would
be of coffins and of a violent exit into that other world where all the
vexed questions of this will—as we fondly hope—be settled to the
satisfaction of the poor, the oppressed, the brokenhearted.
Curious to say, although Mr. Brady was a bully he was not also a coward;
which seems as inconsistent a statement as to say a negro is not black.
Nevertheless, it is the truth. The man was not destitute of physical
courage. He had writhed mentally under the taunts hurled at him by the
Rileys; but he would not have feared a stand-up fight with the son—a
hand to hand struggle, with liberty given to each to kill if he were
able.
Nevertheless, Mr. Brady had gone almost as far with the Scotts as he
cared to do. He had dug their potatoes and sold them, cut the grass and
saved it, reaped the corn and carried it, sown the land with seed, that
was again hastening to fruition; but beyond this he hesitated to go. The
law must do the rest, he said; but spite of the fact of justice being on
his side, he found the law liked the task of turning Amos Scott out on
the world rather less than he did.
When a bailiff came to take possession of the household goods, gathered
together carefully, anxiously, in the first part of the Scott’s married
life, he was received by husband and wife, one armed with a blunderbuss
and the other with a pike, a relic of ninety-eight.
“Honest man,” said Amos, miscalling him in an access of civility,
“honest man, if ye want to sit down to rest ye’re kindly welcome; if ye
want bite or sup, we can give ye share of what we have ourselves, water
and a meal bannock; but if ye lay a finger on anything in this house and
claim for that devil Brady I’ll shoot ye dead. I’ve made up my mind to
slay the first who meddles with the inside of that half-door, so if
anything happens your blood will be upon your own head, not upon mine.”
The result of which speech was that the man neither stopped nor took
breath till he found himself in Kingslough again. There was a steady
light in Scott’s eye, and a suggestiveness about the way in which he
kept his finger on the trigger, ill-calculated to make visiting at the
Castle Farm pleasant to a person of the bailiff’s profession.
Afterwards Amos declared, “He only meant to fear the man;” but if this
were so his sport was sufficiently like earnest to carry conviction with
it.
Matters had arrived at this pass, in a word: people whispered Scott was
dangerous and that Mr. Brady went armed. Further, popular sympathy was
with Scott, and the very ballad singers had long slips of badly printed
doggrel reciting the doings of Mr. Daniel Brady from his youth upwards,
and enlarging upon the fact not only of his having “decoyed a lovely
maiden to a land beyond the seas,” but of his trying subsequently
“To cajole a gallant gentleman,
And leave his son so poor.”
Some kind friend managed that Nettie should be favoured with a sight of
one of these precious productions.
“If he kills me one day they will sing all about that through the
streets,” she thought with a shiver.
Blue eyes and golden hair, what a day’s work you wrought when in the
bright sunshine you went away with Daniel Brady, trusting the whole
future of your young life in his hands.
CHAPTER VII.
KINGSLOUGH IS PLACARDED.
Public opinion is treacherous and unmanageable as the sea. One hour a
man is sitting high and dry watching the waves encircle some far away
object; the next he beholds them hurrying in to engulf himself.
Once the tide sets against any person, it increases in volume and
strength every moment, but there are no precise means of knowing when it
will turn in this manner or of telling why it has done so.
Fast as they could flow the waters of popular dissatisfaction were
running against Mr. Brady.
At a local meeting held at Glenwellan, which he had the courage or the
hardihood to attend, he was hissed, whilst General Riley’s appearance
proved the signal for loud and prolonged applause.
Some who were sufficiently indifferent to both men to be able to observe
accurately, reported that Mr. Brady turned white to the lips at a
display of feeling so decided and so unexpected; and this is
sufficiently probable, since those who are the most ready to defy the
opinion of their fellows are the least willing to put up with the
consequences such defiance usually entails.
Be this as it may, Mr. Brady a few days later was not greatly surprised
when on offering to transfer his business to a more scrupulous firm of
solicitors than those to whom he had previously entrusted the conduct of
his difficulties, the proposal was courteously but firmly declined.
“I shall live it down,” thought Mr. Brady as he strode out of the
office, his hat crushed a little over his brows.
He had said the same thing before, and he had done it; but after all,
each year in a man’s age, each upward step he has climbed, render that
“living down” a more difficult business to perform.
It is impossible to go on having a leg broken and reset without becoming
slightly a cripple, and it is more impossible still that a character
shall go through a blackening process time after time and come out white
in the end.
Mr. Brady had set himself a harder task than he imagined when he talked
of living down the effects of his latest error, and if he did not know
this Nettie did; Nettie who, hearing all that was going on, having read
those ballads which found swift sale at the somewhat high price of one
halfpenny each, having seen the “dour” looks cast on her husband in the
barn-like meeting-house, ventured to ask him if he did not think it
would be better to sell all they possessed and remove to another part of
the country.
Whereupon, he turned with passionate fury, with the mad anger of a
brutal nature, addressing the only person who was completely hopelessly
in his power, and reproached her with having been the curse of his life,
the ruin of his prospects, the sole cause of every misfortune that had
befallen him.
“I wish to God I had never set eyes on you,” he said. “If I must be such
a fool as to marry, I ought to have married some one who would have been
a help instead of a burden, a woman capable of doing something besides
bringing a tribe of fretful, delicate children into the world.”
“You ought to have married a woman, Daniel Brady,” answered Nettie
calmly, “who the first blow you gave her would have had you up before
the magistrate and punished for it.”
“None of your insolence or it will be worse for you,” he interrupted.
“Who,” continued Nettie, shrinking a little with a physical terror which
had become habitual, “would have insisted on having things suitable for
herself and her children, and who, if you had not provided them would
have left you.”
“Perhaps you are thinking of doing something of the kind,” he suggested
with the demon which was in him looking threateningly out of his eyes.
“No,” she said wearily; “I do not care about anything for myself now, it
was only for the children’s sake I spoke; only to get them away from a
place where their father’s sins are sung through the streets, where—”
He did not let her finish the sentence. He struck her down where she
stood, and with a parting piece of advice to “keep a quieter tongue in
her head or it would be worse for her and her brats too,” left the room,
banging the door after him.
There was nothing in this so particularly new as to astonish Nettie. She
was not much hurt, but as she raised herself slowly to a sitting
position, she put her hand to her head with a gesture as of one
suffering some cruel pain.
“How long,” she murmured, “how long can I bear it? God grant me strength
to endure to the end. If mothers could foresee what ‘Deliver us from
evil’ may some day come to mean, they might hope their babies would
never live to learn a prayer.”
Mr. Brady’s mother it may reasonably be supposed had been tempted to
indulge in somewhat similar thoughts before death considerately removed
her from a contemplation of her son’s demerits; and certainly public
opinion had so rapidly discovered all the shortcomings of the owner of
Maryville that it was tacitly admitted (so far as human judgment could
understand), if he had never been born it would have been better for him
and all belonging to him.
One of the effects of this widely-spread prejudice against a man who,
determined to rise by his own efforts, had certainly spared no pains in
the attempt, was that from having his wrongs comparatively speaking
overlooked Amos Scott became at once a popular and distinguished
individual. Letters were sent to certain newspapers on the subject of
tenantright, in which Scott’s case was mentioned. Leaders were written
referring directly to the still unsettled dispute at the Castle Farm,
and indirectly to the attempt of one of the disputants to appropriate
the inheritance of a gentleman of whom the county was deservedly proud.
Mr. Brady threatened to proceed against the proprietor of one of the
Kilcurragh papers unless an apology were inserted, but the proprietor
inserted no apology, and no proceedings were instituted. A man who has a
whole county against him may well be excused for dreading the
cross-examination of an Irish barrister, and this man dreaded it with a
wholesome horror, and was discreet accordingly.
All this time Amos Scott was retailing his grievances to lawyer after
lawyer, walking many miles to “get speech” of gentlemen he thought might
take his part, and get him his rights as he called them.
He would be off early in the morning—a piece of oat-cake, or griddle
bread, in the pocket of his home-spun blue frieze coat, and he would
come home at night foot-sore and weary, having broken his fast with no
other food save that mentioned, washed down by a draught of water from
some way-side brook, too tired to eat, too sick at heart to sleep.
For all men were in the same story. Whether they expressed sorrow for
his misfortunes or told him by their manner his affairs were no concern
of theirs, the result proved identical. Nothing could be done in the
matter. No money—no influence—no lapse of time—no amount of trouble
could undo the evil brought by that promise which the Earl had forgotten
almost as soon as made.
Lawyers of course took a prosaic view of the affair, and simply assured
Scott there was no use in throwing good money after bad; that he had no
case, and they could not make one for him; whilst even those private
individuals who commiserated him most, could not refrain from expressing
wonderment at the utter simplicity which caused him to take no manner of
precaution for his own safety in the transaction.
“What would you have had me do, sir?” he asked one gentleman piteously.
“What more did I want than Th’ Airl’s word? Sure, if I had told him I’d
do a thing, that would have been as good as any bond, and me only a poor
man labouring with my hands to keep me and my wife and the family.
“Says Th’ Airl to me, says he,
“‘The land’s yours for three lives longer, and you can put in one of the
three for yourself.’
“So then I asked him, would I take the money on to the agent, and he
says,
“‘No, you may give it to me.’
“And I counted the notes into his own hand. I mind how the sun shone on
a ring he had on his finger while I was doing it. Then I asked him about
the writings, and he said, they couldn’t he signed till Henry the young
airl came of age, but that if Lady Jane died before he did so, he would
see me safe.
“He was riding off when he turned, and said,
“‘I suppose though, my good fellow, you are on the right side, because
if not, I must give you back your money, and let somebody that have the
renewal.’
“He said it joking like. He was always free and pleasant in his way Th’
Airl.”
A simple enough narrative, which no one who heard it doubted the truth
of for a moment. A narrative which was recited by many a stump orator of
the day, and stirred the hearts of thousands who were or who imagined
themselves to be labouring under injustice as great and as irremediable.
Simple as it was, however, no human being could persuade Amos Scott that
any of his listeners perfectly understood it. Had even one amongst the
number done so, he felt quite satisfied he should hear no more said
about his defiance being worse than useless.
“If I could only make yer honour comprehend it,” he said reproachfully,
though respectfully, to Lord Ardmorne’s agent, who spite of his having,
as he assured Amos over and over again, nothing whatever to do with the
Glendares or their tenants, had been seized upon by the farmer for help
and sympathy, “you would see it as I see it.”
“Mr. Scott,” answered the agent solemnly, “if I could only make you
comprehend it, you would see how hopeless your position is.”
When, however, did argument or assertion convince an obstinate,
uneducated man. If such a miracle were ever wrought by earthly means, it
was not in the case of the poor misguided farmer who wandered about the
country seeking help from this one and that, discoursing about his
wrongs in lonely cabins, telling his grievances to chance companions,
wasting his slender means in feeing such lawyers as would take his
money, and in providing food for such of his family as were still at
home.
David had returned Miss Moffat’s loan to that young lady with a
characteristic note, in which, after thanking her for her goodness and
telling her how troubled in his mind he was to hear of the master’s
death, he went on to say how grateful he should be in case she had no
need of the money if she would lend it to his next oldest brother, who
was mad to join him. And now two of the sons were in America, two of the
daughters in service, and Reuben ready to take a schoolmaster’s place
when the old people could spare him.
“But I can’t leave them yet, Miss Grace,” he wrote. “I am not much use
here, I know; but still I can speak a word to the father when he comes
home at night, and the mother is too heartsore to ask him ‘what luck?’
She is keen on now for us to start for America, but the father won’t
hear talk of it. David sent her home a pound two months ago, and another
last week; a man who went out from these parts twenty years since, and
who has never been in Ireland again till now, brought it, and some odds
and ends of presents, amongst other things a walking-stick that we often
say would have just pleased the master; it is so light, though so big;
it is made from the root of the vine, Mr. Moody says, and seems
wonderful handy for almost any purpose. He tells us America is the poor
man’s country, and it seems like it. He went away with as little as any
of us, and he has come home dressed like a gentleman, with gold studs in
his shirt, and a gold watch and chain, and not a word of Irish in his
tongue. It is just wonderful to hear how like a native-born American he
talks. He tried to persuade my father to leave what he calls the ‘rotten
old ship’ and make for ‘new diggins,’ but my father bid him not talk
about things he has no knowledge of, and the decent man went away,
offended like.”
But in this Reuben Scott chanced to be mistaken; Mr. Moody did not cease
visiting at the Castle Farm because he was offended with its owner. He
only did so as he chanced to remark to an acquaintance, because he never
had cared for society where “pistols and bowie knives were lying about,
and he guessed there would be one or the other at work before Scott
moved away from his clearing.”
Affairs had arrived at this pass when Mr. Brady, finding the law in his
own province slow to assist him, decided on going to Dublin and seeking
counsel there.
Not having confined to his own bosom the purport of this journey, the
Kingslough rabble got hold of it, and decided that an auspicious time
for giving public expression to their feelings had arrived.
A meeting therefore was convened to take place on the day of Mr. Brady’s
departure, when it was decided that gentleman should be hung in effigy,
and a scaffold for this laudable purpose was actually in course of
erection, when an extremely strong hint from the magistrates stopped its
further progress. Not to be defeated, however, within twenty-four hours
Kingslough and its neighbourhood was startled from its propriety by the
sight of monster bills, which occupied every available space where it
was possible to placard the announcement, stating that the body of Mr.
Daniel Brady would be removed from Somerford Street to its place of
interment on the following day, at four o’clock P.M., when the
attendance of friends would be esteemed a favour.
Now Somerford Street—not an inconsiderable thoroughfare in the early
days of Ballylough—had by a not infrequent turn of times’ wheel become
one of the lowest, dirtiest, most disreputable lanes in Kingslough—a
lane where vice and filth caroused in wretched fashion together; where
sin and misery waved their rags in defiance of law and decency; whence
respectability fled as from the plague; where shame, remorse,
repentance, hope, could not exist for an hour, save it might be—and
sometimes God be praised it was—for a few hours in the last extremity.
To condense the whole matter into a sentence, Somerford Street was as
bad a street as could have been found even in the Liberties of Dublin,
and its inhabitants were as little like men, women, and children, as
men, women, and children can ever be. It was a place which, even in its
own small way, need not have been afraid to hold up its head with very
much more notorious courts and lanes London is sufficiently blessed to
reckon within a certain area of Charing Cross at the present day; and it
was from this den, inhabited by vice and misery, that Mr. Brady’s
obsequies were announced to take place.
What did it mean? Kingslough asked itself in a dull, stupid,
inconsequent sort of way.
In a few hours more Kingslough knew, for over the first bills were
pasted a second series so scurrilous, so profane, that nowhere out of
the Isle of Saints could so scandalous a broadsheet have been produced.
They were not torn down. Decent people did not care to be mixed up in
such an affair; the authorities were averse to acting in the matter
without advice and consultation, and perhaps feared, as authorities in
great cities have since unwisely feared, to make mountains out of
molehills by premature interference.
So Kingslough read, and held up its hands, or gravely shook its head, or
passed on without sign, or smiled with grim approval of the atrocious
bill, or expressed its sympathy in drunken words full of significance,
and looks more significant still.
It was the early summer time. Once again the crops were springing and
ripening at the Castle Farm. Crops not sown this time by Amos or one
belonging to him; and it was light in that northern latitude so soon in
the morning, that to get out in the grey dawn almost involved sitting up
during the few hours of the short night.
Nevertheless, in the grey dawn some one was astir tearing down those
disgraceful placards. Slowly and calmly the sea came rippling in on the
shore, closely the blinds were drawn on the Parade and in the houses of
Glendare Terrace, in the east there was still not a glimpse of the
rising sun, whilst rapidly and nervously the flitting figure did its
work.
All at once a burly brute, who, having business far away at an early
hour had risen betimes, turned a corner suddenly, and caught sight of a
dark figure engaged in the work of destruction. With a whoop and a shout
he rushed forward; with a shriek the woman, for it was a woman, fled.
Swift as she was he gained upon her; she left the rough pavement and
sped like a greyhound along the more level road, all in vain. Panting,
sobbing, she heard the thud of his heavy shoes almost at her heels, felt
in imagination his hand on her shoulder, when suddenly turning the
corner of a street to try to escape him, she fell almost into the arms
of a third person, who, in less time than it takes me to write the
words, had planted a good serviceable blow between the eyes of her
pursuer, and sent him sprawling in the gutter.
“Mrs. Brady,” he said, turning to the apparition which had so suddenly
greeted his vision, “what in Heaven’s name has brought you here at this
time of night?”
“I—” she began in a broken husky voice, “I heard of it all and came,” at
which point she gave up trying to explain, and dropped down in a heap on
the nearest doorstep insensible.
“Here is a delightful complication,” thought Mr. Hanlon as he looked
first at the burly brute just gathering himself together, and skulking
off with a look of ineffable hate overspreading his countenance, and
then at Mrs. Brady, whose light figure he supported with one hand while
fumbling for his latch-key with the other.
Had the gift of second sight been vouchsafed to that clever surgeon and
mistaken orator, he would have fled from Kingslough within an hour more
swiftly than Lot did from the Cities of the Plain, to avoid being mixed
up with the evil to come.
CHAPTER VIII.
BAD NEWS.
Passing through Kingslough _en route_ from India to Woodbrook, Mr. John
Riley was so fortunate as to obtain a good view of the vagabond
procession that accompanied Mr. Brady’s effigy to its resting-place; and
perhaps that gentleman had never felt so little proud of his countrymen
as when—his driver compelled to draw the horse on one side and halt, in
order to allow the rabble to pass—he beheld a crowd composed of the very
scum of the population marching in irregular fashion to the noise made
by several cows’-horns, a fife, a drum, and a fiddle, the latter musical
instrument being played by a blind man seated in a rickety cart, to
which, with sundry broken leathern straps and stronger pieces of rope, a
half-starved donkey was harnessed.
There they came, the lowest of the low, accompanied by women who looked
as though they had lost every attribute of their sex, and were indeed
only human because of their utter abject misery. On they came, most of
them women, ragged, bonnetless, shoeless, and stockingless, clad in dirt
as in a garment; their masses of unkempt, uncared-for hair, twisted into
loose untidy coils at the back of their heads; a terrible sight to one
who had almost forgotten such a sight was to be seen. Nor were the men
one whit better, shambling along in old shoes never made for them, with
torn coats or jackets, with trousers from which every trace of the
original cloth had vanished, with hats and caps of every conceivable
form, battered, rimless, napless, or ragged, with tufts of hair in some
instances shooting like rank grass through holes in the crown, with
faces always wild, reckless, haggard, now lit up with an almost demoniac
excitement. On they came, cheering, cursing, singing, shouting, followed
pell-mell by all the rosy-cheeked, fair-haired, bare-legged,
bare-footed, dirty-faced children in the town, who danced after the
procession right merrily. Some there were better clothed than those
composing the mass of the crowd: men with sedate faces and unmended
coats and sound shoes, who looked as though they gave their presence as
a solemn duty, but who were careful to keep on the sidepaths, and allow
the unwashed multitude in the roadway as wide a berth as possible.
In the middle of the people, borne on the shoulders of four stalwart
ruffians, was the so-called corpse; a door torn from its hinges serving
the purpose of a bier, and a piece of sacking answering for a pall.
A hideous spectacle altogether; but then as now there was no particular
reason why the innocent diversions of the masses should be interfered
with.
“What are they doing—what does it mean—what is it all about?” asked Mr.
Riley of his driver.
“Don’t keep your face turned their way,” answered the man in a hurried
whisper. “If they even[1] who you are they’ll be wantin’ to chair you.
It’s burying Brady’s effigy all this is about. Come, now, keep your
distance all of you,” he continued, addressing some irrepressible
beggars, who, seeing a stranger, at once appealed to him for help, and
with scant ceremony he began using his whip to right and left, and so
kept the most importunate at bay till the procession had passed.
Footnote 1:
Guess.
“What has Mr. Brady been doing now?” asked Mr. Riley with some
curiosity, as they drove on once more.
“Nothin’ much fresh, yer honour; but they’ve taken a hathred to him, and
wanted to hang him, but the magistrates wouldn’t let them put up a
gallows, so now they’re goin’ to bury him on the seashore. He’s away to
Dublin to get all the law money can buy against Amos Scott, and that has
stirred them up a bit.”
Meantime the crowd surged on to the beach, which the receding tide had
left bare, and across the shore still wet and glistening, through pools
of water, over slippery bunches of seaweed, the bearers went, stumbling
and staggering, whilst the band playing more lugubrious airs than ever
led the way, and the men and the women and the children followed
hooting, laughing, screaming.
Arrived at the extremest distance from high-water mark it was possible
to reach, a hole was dug and the body tossed in. The most voluble member
of the assemblage then mounted the donkey-cart, and with a sheet wrapped
round him to imitate a surplice, proceeded to deliver a travesty of the
Burial Service over the grave. In language as deficient of ordinary
decency as it was full of horrible profanity, he recounted the history
of Daniel Brady from his cradle to his grave, and narrated to an
admiring audience the way of life chosen by this man whose loss they had
to deplore. A few there were among the bystanders possessed of courage
enough to cry “Shame!” at passages more than usually ribald and impious,
but their voices were drowned by shrieks of laughter, by cheers and
exclamations of appreciation.
When the merriment had reached its height, however, a man came picking
his steps over the shore, and making his way a little into the crowd,
shouted, “Silence!” in a tone that rang high above the clamour, and
seemed to wander out like the dying sound of a clarion’s note over the
quiet sea.
“We can’t have any more of this,” he said. “Robert Sweeney take off that
rag and get out of the cart. McIlwrath, I am astonished to see a
respectable man like you countenancing such disgraceful proceedings. Be
off home all of you. I shall not allow you to stay here another minute.”
“You’ll let us cover the poor fellow up snug, or the tide ’ll be taking
him a dance?” entreated one man with a squint and short of an arm.
“Be quick about it then,” was the answer, and the sand was shovelled in,
and then trodden down by heavy boots, each bystander who wore such
articles giving the grave a hearty kick, even the women left the prints
of their feet on the surface; and then Mr. Sweeney having laconically
disposed of both body and soul in a sentence it is unnecessary to
transcribe, but which restored thorough good humour amongst the cowed
and sullen assemblage,—the people straggled off, leaving the
constabulary officer alone.
“It was better to let them finish their work,” he said to himself as he
paced slowly by the water’s edge, looking after the retreating rabble,
“or we should have had the thing tossing in and out with every tide.
After all, Mr. Brady,” he went on, “if straws do show how the wind
blows, I should not particularly care to stand in your shoes to-day.”
Of the scene which greeted his arrival in Kingslough, Mr. Riley wrote a
vivid description to his old friend Mrs. Hartley; nothing could have
pleased that lady better. She felt delighted that his first letter from
Woodbrook should be one she could show Miss Moffat.
Handing it over to that young lady, she said, “Here is an Irish sketch
drawn by a native. It is certainly not complimentary to your favourites.
Read the letter, it will amuse you.”
But as Grace read, her face betokened anything rather than amusement;
and when she finished, she folded it up and remarked,—
“I think Mr. Riley’s taste in writing that letter open to question.”
“You should try and excuse his want of appreciation, Grace; remember he
has laboured under the disadvantage of living many years in another
country and amongst other people.”
“It is of very little consequence whether I excuse him or not, I
imagine,” replied Miss Moffat. She had not yet seen this man returned
from foreign parts. Mrs. Hartley had been visited by him in London, and
reported that he was much changed in every respect.
In what way this change exhibited itself, Grace did not care to inquire.
That he had not come home to be at her beck and call, she perfectly
understood from Mrs. Hartley’s manner of saying,—
“He begged me to give his kind regards to Miss Moffat if she had not
quite forgotten an old acquaintance.”
From that day it was a noticeable thing, Miss Moffat never spoke of him
as John.
The old familiar name, retained almost unconsciously through years, was
laid aside and Mr. Riley took its place. Of course, he could know
nothing of what she had done for him and his. How she had offered her
money to save Woodbrook. How she had looked forward to seeing him once
again with a mingled feeling of pleasure and pain, and it was right,
quite right, he should look upon and think of her almost as a stranger.
“A lover never can be a friend,” she thought a little bitterly. “He
never is able to forget having been refused,” which is not perhaps so
unnatural as Grace seemed inclined to imagine.
And now came this letter; ah! the John she remembered never would have
written such an one—never could, she might have conceded.
His proclivities had always of course been towards Toryism, but he was
not hard against the people; he knew their faults, but he loved their
virtues; and now the first day he returned he could write an account of
what he saw, and turn the very sins of the Irish into ridicule.
Further, he never once mentioned Nettie, although it was her husband’s
effigy he beheld borne along by the populace, and he said little about
Woodbrook and the state in which he found affairs; of Lucy’s marriage
the only mention he made was a remark to the effect that, following the
traditions of the family, she having no fortune had cast her lot with a
husband who had no fortune either.
Altogether Grace felt far from satisfied. Mr. Riley recently returned
from India, and John—dear old John of the happy days at Bayview—were two
very different persons. On the whole Miss Moffat felt grateful to Lord
Ardmorne for arranging the Woodbrook mortgage without any great amount
of help from her.
“It might have made it very awkward,” she considered. “He might have
fancied it necessary to be civil to me in consequence.”
And this as matters stood, Mr. John Riley evidently did not imagine
necessary.
At the end of his letter, he begged to send his kind regards to Miss
Moffat. That was all. No sentence about Bayview, no reference to the
places both of them knew so well. To Miss Moffat it was rather a new
feeling that of being left out in the cold, and she did not like it.
Mr. Riley’s letter, however, supplied her with food for reflection
besides that enumerated.
Hitherto Grace had merely known vaguely that Mr. Brady was an
undesirable acquaintance, a man fond of driving hard bargains, of
overreaching his neighbours if he could; a man of whom his wife stood in
dread, of whom the world had nothing to tell which redounded to his
credit, but now all these sins and shortcomings were italicized in her
mind, and a dread of some great evil befalling Nettie in consequence of
the information she had given began to haunt her night and day.
She was totally in the power of this man whom the people vilified; whose
effigy they had carried through the streets, and buried with every act
of contumely they could devise. She was, though in her own country,
friendless, penniless, helpless.
She had dared much in order to save those who, though her own relatives,
formerly discarded her; and this very courage and forgetfulness of
wrongs in a great extremity helped to recommend Nettie more tenderly
than ever to her old friend.
What could she do to make matters better for her? Even in the solitude
of her own chamber, Grace blushed and winced to think all she could
offer any one was money; but still believing the day might come when
Nettie would need it, she sat down and wrote her a long touching letter,
saying how hurt she felt to hear of some recent events just come to her
knowledge; how she dreaded lest evil might arise out of past
circumstances, to which she need not refer more particularly; how she
begged and implored her if evil did arise to come at once to England and
the writer. In a postscript Grace added that, lest she should at any
time want money on a sudden emergency, she enclosed sufficient to meet
whatever exigency might arise.
This letter she enclosed in one to Mr. Hanlon, begging him to give it
into the hands of the person to whom it was addressed.
As she did so, Grace could not help smiling, and yet sighing at the
memory of her Pharisaism when first Nettie devised this mode of
communication.
“Ah! I did not know so much then as I do now,” thought Miss Moffat,
speaking mentally, as is the habit of young ladies of small experience
and limited worldly knowledge, as if she were about seventy years of
age.
To this letter, after some delay, came an answer.
Nettie returned the money. She dared not keep it, she said, or she would
have done so. She should never have a moment’s peace were it in the
house, lest it might be discovered. Earnestly, though in few words, she
thanked Grace for all her kindness; but “do not write to me again,” she
added, “it is too great a risk to run. If ever you are able to help me,
I will let you know. I never can doubt you or forget the pleasant days
that may come again no more for ever. If I never see you in this world
again, remember Gracie I love you far, far, more at last than I did at
the first. I did not think I could cry, no matter what came or went; and
yet still as I write good-bye, the words are blotted with tears.”
The days went on, and Mrs. Hartley and Grace were planning an autumn
tour, with a half-formed intention of lengthening their foreign travel
by going on to Rome and wintering in the Eternal City.
To Grace the idea was very pleasant. To Mrs. Hartley the prospect, much
as she valued English luxuries and prized home comforts, not
disagreeable.
“I should not go unless you were with me,” she said, however, to her
visitor; and Grace pressed her hand in reply.
The two women were exactly suited to each other. Mrs. Hartley’s
unvarying cheerfulness; her sound common sense; her abundant worldly
knowledge; her stores of information;—these things were very good for a
young woman like Grace, who was naturally somewhat dreamy and
imaginative, and whose experiences of society, of men and women, and
manners and morals, were, notwithstanding her feeling that she had been
living and learning through centuries, had hitherto been limited to an
extremely small circle.
On the other hand, Grace was the very person with whom to live happily.
There were no wills and musts in her nature; she had no ways of her own
that she insisted upon other people travelling; she was amiable,
generous, frank, and gentle-mannered, and, to crown all her other
excellences, she was, as Mrs. Hartley said, as good as a picture to look
at.
To women whose day, if they ever had one, is over, who have ceased to
compete for those prizes of love and admiration which all women are
anxious to secure, even though they may not put themselves forward in
the struggle, there is something extremely pleasant in the contemplation
of a pretty face, and Grace’s face was grateful to Mrs. Hartley’s
critical eyes.
“I wonder what John would think of her now,” she often asked herself.
“Would he fear to make a second attempt to win her, or dare I hope all
may come right in the end. She is the wife for him, he is the husband
for her, if they both can only be induced to think so. I must contrive
to get him to join us somehow abroad,” which was indeed the secret
reason for Mrs. Hartley’s advocacy of the foreign tour and her
hesitation on the subject of Rome.
“Rome is a long way off,” she argued, “but we shall see what we shall
see; time enough to settle about where we shall winter when the autumn
comes.”
Things as regards Grace were in this tranquil state, when one afternoon,
while Mrs. Hartley was out on a visiting expedition, from which her
guest had begged to be excused, Miss Moffat, seated in a low chair by
the window of her own especial sanctum, a small morning room which had
been fitted up for and appropriated to her use, took the ‘Times’ that
chanced to be lying close to her hand.
It was a warm day, one of those glorious summer afternoons so frequent
in England, which are trying nevertheless to those born and bred in a
colder climate, and Grace, tired and languid, let her eyes wander over
the sheet, reading nothing in particular, but culling a paragraph here
and another there with a sort of lazy and unexcited interest.
Suddenly, however, something met her sight which riveted her attention;
she grasped the paper more firmly, she sat upright instead of leaning
back; she pushed her hair away from her face as though it oppressed her,
and then read the passage which had caught her notice once again more
carefully. This was what it contained,—
“A shocking murder is reported as having taken place in the north of
Ireland, hitherto comparatively free from the charge of agrarian
outrage. The victim is a Mr. Brady, a gentleman of some property, and
connected by marriage with several families of ancient lineage and high
standing. The unfortunate gentleman was discovered about a mile from his
own house quite dead, though still warm. A dispute about some land is
supposed to have urged on his murderer. A man named Scott has been taken
into custody; a stick with which the fatal blow was dealt, and known to
have belonged to Scott, having been found near the spot. The unfortunate
gentleman had not yet reached the prime of life. He leaves a widow and
several children to deplore his untimely fate.”
There are truths so terrible that the mind at first absolutely refuses
to accept them, and like one in a dream with a stunned surprise, Grace
Moffat read and re-read the paragraph, unable to realize its meaning.
Then suddenly the full horror of its statement broke upon her. It had
come, then, this trouble, the prevision of which she now understood she
had felt that morning when she and Mr. Hanlon walked over to the Castle
Farm. It had come at a moment when she was least prepared for it, when
her thoughts were far distant from Ireland; when, much as she loved her
own country, she was becoming reconciled to the ways and manners of
another country; when she was learning to like English people, and
beginning, as the young always can do, to find an interest in the hopes,
fears, and projects of those with whom she was thrown.
How the next half-hour was passed Grace never precisely knew. The
servants, glad in that orderly household of an excitement of any kind,
prepared and retailed many versions of how Marrables—Mrs. Hartley’s
highly respectable butler, who had a presence like a bishop and a face
solemn and important as that of a parish clerk—hearing the bell ring
violently hurried to the morning room, where he found Miss Moffat
standing in the middle of the apartment looking like death itself; how
surprised out of his dignified deportment for once, he said before he
was spoken to,—
“Gracious! Miss, what has happened, and what is the matter?”
To which she replied,—“Get me something; I have had a great shock.” He
fetched her wine and the housemaid water, and the lady’s maid
smelling-salts and eau-de-cologne and a fan; whilst the butler suggested
the propriety of sending at once for a doctor.
“No,” said Miss Moffat authoritatively, “I shall be better soon;” and
she sat down and leaned back and shut her eyes, the trio regarding her
with interest, not unmixed with awe the while.
Then almost directly she opened her eyes, and looking at them one after
the other, remarked,—
“It is not true, is it?”
“No, Miss,” answered Marrables promptly; his acquaintance with illness
was slight, but he had always heard sick people ought to be humoured.
“Ah! I forgot,” said Miss Moffat wearily. “Pour me out some wine and
water, Marrables, I will take it now; and Taylor,” turning to Mrs.
Hartley’s maid, “I wish you would pack up some dresses and linen for me;
I must go to Ireland to-night.”
“Yes, Miss.”
“And directly Mrs. Hartley returns let me know.”
“Mrs. Hartley is here now,” exclaimed Marrables, and went out to meet
his mistress, followed reluctantly by his fellow-servants.
Into the room came Mrs. Hartley dressed in all her bravery, with a face
expressive of the utmost anxiety.
“What is all this, Grace, that Marrables has been frightening me with?
Why, child, what has happened? You look as if you had seen a ghost.”
For answer, Grace picked up the ‘Times’ and handed it to her friend,
pointing out the paragraph she wished her to read. Marrables saw her do
it, and it was not long before he had read the passage also.
“What are you thinking of doing?” asked Mrs. Hartley, drawing her out
into the open air, and holding a parasol over her.
“I shall go to Ireland to-night,” Grace answered.
“For what purpose?”
“Chiefly to be with Nettie, partly to see if anything can be done for
Amos.”
“You think he is guilty.”
“I do not see that there can be any doubt of that. He must have been
mad; but I suppose whether mad or not he will have to suffer for it all
the same.”
Mrs. Hartley paused. She took in the position at once; she knew Grace’s
temperament, and she felt certain she would never rest content to remain
inactive at such a juncture.
“Money can do a great deal,” she remarked at last, “and influence more;
and in any case I know it will be a comfort hereafter for you to think
both were brought to bear on this case. Yes, my love, I will not say a
word to dissuade you from your intention; I would offer to go with you
myself if I thought I could be of any real assistance. Marrables shall
accompany you as far as Dublin—there Mr. Nicholson can see to you. And,
Grace, do not fret about the matter more than you can possibly avoid. A
loophole may be found for Scott to creep through, and as for Nettie, I
fancy she will be far happier as a widow than ever she was as a wife.”
“Oh! do not say that,” Grace entreated. “It was almost the first idea
which occurred to me, and I hated myself for it.”
“Well, we will not say anything about it then,” agreed Mrs. Hartley,
“although if he has left her comfortably off—” but here Miss Moffat
stopped her ears and refused to listen. She was recovering from the
first effect of the blow, but she could not bear to hear the tragedy
discussed in this matter-of-fact, cool, business-like style.
Young people are occasionally somewhat unreasonable. It jarred against
Grace’s sensibilities to hear some two hours later the dinner-bell ring
just as though Mr. Brady were not lying at Maryville stiff and cold, and
Amos Scott not in Kilcurragh Gaol charged with his murder. Perhaps Mrs.
Hartley guessed something of this, for she said,—
“Now, Grace, unless you eat I shall not allow you to go. Fasting may be
all very well in its way, and I dare say it is, but it is not well when
a young lady has a long journey before her, and the prospect of a
considerable amount of work to follow.”
Hearing which remark Mr. Marrables, who waited upon the ladies with his
accustomed dignity, took especial care to fortify his system with a
thorough good meal, and to provide against any casualties in the way of
starvation by packing up a goodly supply of edibles, and laying the
cellar likewise under contribution to a moderate though judicious
extent.
After all, if the English are unimpulsive, they are useful; if they are
undemonstrative, they are not heartless. Grace was forced to admit both
these facts when she discovered everything she could possibly require
packed up without a question being asked on the subject; when she found
her travelling-dress laid out for her to don before dinner that she
might not be obliged to hurry from table; when she saw the carriage
brought round to a second, and beheld Marrables, after he had shut her
and Mrs. Hartley within, mount on the box beside the coachman with no
more fuss than if he were merely going to attend his mistress to the
station; when she heard Mrs. Hartley, who, as a rule, did not like
shortening her meals, remark,—
“Now, my dear, I think it is time we were putting on our bonnets,” and
go off to prepare for a twelve miles’ drive as if it were in the
ordinary course of things for an elderly lady to consider her own ease
so little.
These things all impressed Grace sensibly, as did one other little
trifle. At the last moment it was discovered that by some oversight Miss
Moffat’s warm shawl had been left behind.
“Fetch my cloak out of the brougham,” said Mrs. Hartley immediately,
and, spite of her guest’s remonstrances, she insisted on Grace taking it
with her.
“Such magnificence!” exclaimed Miss Moffat, looking at the fur lining
and the satin outside.
“Nonsense; it is old and worn, and shabby, but it will keep you warm.
Good-bye now, my child—come back to me safe and sound—God bless you!”
And the train was off.
CHAPTER IX.
GRACE VISITS MARYVILLE.
With much the same feeling as a Gipsy, who has been compelled to live
for a time amongst the house-dwellers, returns to the camp on the
common, to the savoury supper furnished gratuitously from his nearest
neighbour’s farmyard, to the bed on the green-sward, with heaven for a
canopy and ferns for his pillow, so Grace, after a not disagreeable or
uninstructive sojourn in the foreign land of England, beheld once more
the fair shores and heard the familiar accents of her own country.
Home, after all, is home be it ever so homely; and the tones and the
voices familiar to childhood sound sweet after absence, let those tones
and voices lack refinement though they may.
Grace had outgrown her prejudice against the English as affected. She
had learned that their accent was as genuine and natural as the rougher
tongue of her native land; but still just as a Londoner, coming south
from the Land o’ Cakes, thanks God when he reaches Carlisle to hear
again something approaching a civilized language, so her heart warmed at
sound of the familiar intonation. She was home again; she was amongst
her own country people; she was no longer lost in the great country of
England; she was a person of importance once more; she had ceased to be
a princess in disguise,—back in the old familiar places, she was Miss
Moffat of Bayview again.
From the moment she set foot in Dublin, she recognized that fact; and
once for all I may as well state, it was pleasant to her. She had been
but one of many in England; she was a person of importance in Ireland.
She had learned much near the head-quarters of civilisation, but she had
not learned to be indifferent to the prestige given by wealth and rank
and being well known by repute even beyond her county.
These weaknesses, which add so much to happiness, but which usually
develope themselves later in life, were with Grace an integral part of
her nature. She was of the soil; she was Irish and she loved everything
Irish. There might be things in the country she could wish improved, but
still the place was home to her. And Grace’s heart swelled and her eyes
filled with tears as she heard the brogue floating around her, and those
persuasive tones which in Dublin always seem addressed only to one
person, and that the listener, fell upon her ear.
Dirty, picturesque, polite, plausible, unsuccessful, they were her
countrymen and countrywomen; and for a moment, Grace, in the excitement
of her return, forgot the errand which had brought her back, and said to
Mr. Nicholson in an access of enthusiasm,—
“How delightful all this is after England!”
“It is very kind of you to say so, Miss Moffat,” he replied. “For my
part, I think London is the only place worth living in on earth.”
“Oh! fie,” exclaimed Grace, “and you an Irishman!”
“It is precisely because I am an Irishman that I say so,” was the reply.
“I have met with many English people who believe they should like always
to reside in Dublin.”
“I never have,” and Grace sighed when she thought of Mrs. Hartley’s
openly expressed opinions.
Ere long, however, her enthusiasm toned down. She had not reached Mr.
Nicholson’s house before her thoughts were busy with the matter which
had brought her to Ireland. Across the breakfast-table she talked to her
companion about Amos Scott, and how it would fare with him.
“I fear badly,” said that gentleman, who had heard all about the farmer
during the time he spent at Bayview, and read the reports that followed
after the murder, in the papers. “Everything seems against him. His
animus was no secret, and his stick was found beside the dead man.”
“Poor Amos,” ejaculated Grace. “His wrongs have driven him mad.”
“Neither wrongs nor madness will reconcile a north of Ireland jury to
knocking a man over in the dark,” said Mr. Nicholson sententiously. “His
chance might have been better in the south or west.”
“What do you think they will do to him?” asked Miss Moffat anxiously.
Mr. Nicholson paused for a moment, then he said,—
“I am afraid it will go against him, and if it does, unless he have
powerful friends—”
“Oh!” she cried, “there is not one in all that part of the country but
would speak for him. Every one knows how sorely he has been tried. Every
one’s sympathy must be with him—”
“Surely, Miss Moffat, your sympathies are not with him?” interposed Mr.
Nicholson gravely. “Let Mr. Brady be what he might, his right to the
land was undoubted. A man is not to be murdered because he asks for his
own.”
Having made which remark much in the interest of the servant, who, as is
usual in Ireland, had both ears laid back to listen to the conversation
of his betters, the lawyer relapsed into silence, leaving Grace to
cogitate at her leisure over the plain truth contained in his sentence.
Her sympathies were with Amos Scott, but her common sense told her a man
ought to be able to insist on having his own without paying for his
temerity by his life.
Once again she was at sea, as every person is sooner or later who
embarks on the study of Irish difficulties. “There was something rotten
in the state of Denmark” she had long known. Dimly she was beginning to
comprehend part of the rottenness lay in public feeling, popular
prejudice, in that crass ignorance born of Romish supremacy, and nursed
by self-asserting Dissent, till it might have puzzled a wiser than
Solomon to say whether Catholic or Protestant were the most
intractable—whether the senseless obedience of the south to its priests
were worse than the bigoted intolerance of the north to every created
being which differed in opinion from itself.
Every great virtue throws a shadow—the loftier the virtue the longer the
shadow. Grace understood, who better?—the virtues of her hardworking,
uncomplaining, patient, stubborn northern compatriots; but the dark
shadows she had seen likewise; she was beginning to understand that the
natives of no land are perfect, that God has conferred no more special
patent of immunity from the taint of original sin on the poor than on
the rich.
Though an enthusiastic, Grace was a thoughtful woman—a conjunction in
one so quietly brought up, not merely possible, but probable, and the
problem of humanity, which sooner or later troubles every one brought
into contact with it, began to perplex her the first hour she again set
foot in Ireland.
The same trouble which beset her is vexing English philanthropists at
the present day. Even in happy England there is a cancer; who shall
adventure to cut it out? there is a worm at the root; who shall dare
turn up the ground, and show where it is? There are doctors who would
palliate—there are men who would destroy the upper branches—who would
prune and cut and lop and top the trees; but there are none, unless,
indeed, it may be a few brave souls, who have wisdom enough and courage
sufficient to turn round and tell the lower classes,—“The disease is in
yourselves. We cannot cure it unless you will consent to help
yourselves. You may lop and top for ever—you may cut down an ancient
aristocracy, and try to dignify a mushroom nobility of your own
creation, but your labour will be for nought, and your trouble loss
utterly without gain, for wherever the evil may have begun it is with
you it now lies. The rank and file of the social army are utterly
demoralised. Each man wants to command. No man is willing to obey. The
spirit of discontent is abroad. Work has become distasteful; in that
state of life in which God has placed him no human being seems satisfied
to stay.”
In one respect the fault of the Irish has always been that of resting
satisfied too easily, and this idea was an integral part of Grace’s
faith. At the same time she, being at once clear-sighted and critical,
could not avoid seeing her country people were satisfied easily, or
indeed at all, only when the satisfaction was given in the way that
pleased them; that is to say, a dinner of fish, under certain
conditions, was not objectionable, but a dinner, even off a stalled ox,
unless it happened to be served exactly as they thought well, or in the
place they saw fit to eat it, would not have met with their approval.
Had she not herself offered to Amos Scott the choice of farms as
fertile, homesteads as substantial as that he could hope to hold no
longer; and had he not refused her kindness almost with scorn. He said
he would have the familiar acres or none. He would have the home
rendered dear by the mere passage of time, by the events which had taken
place within its walls, or else a dry ditch and the stars of heaven
shining down on him and his. He would law and law and law until his last
shilling was gone, in feeing men who could never put his wrong right on
this earth; he would fight every inch of the ground only to be beaten at
last; he said all this—what had come of it?
That he was lying in gaol, waiting his trial for murder; that, likely as
not, he would walk out some morning on the scaffold—his grey hair
floating in the wind—to end years of suffering, to expiate years of
folly with his life.
Her sympathies were with him. How would it fare with the wrong-doers, if
no one had compassion for those who err? If she could help him, if she
could save him, she would. To Mrs. Hartley she had said, and said as she
believed truly, she must return to Ireland chiefly for Nettie’s sake.
Now she was in Ireland, Grace could not conceal from herself the fact
that she had come home as much in the interests of the accused as in
those of Mr. Brady’s widow.
“Poor Amos,” she thought, “the gentry will be all against him. They will
forget what he suffered. They will remember only his sin.”
Notwithstanding Mrs. Nicholson’s entreaties, Grace made no longer stay
in Dublin than it was possible to avoid. She longed to be in the north.
It seemed to her she was needed there, and Mr. Nicholson, having been so
fortunate as to find an acquaintance who was proceeding as far as
Kilcurragh, put the heiress in his charge, and, it may as well be
confessed with some misgivings as to how Grace would comport herself in
so critical a position, saw her off.
“If you want my help,” he said, and he felt quite certain she would, “I
will come at an hour’s notice.”
Very gratefully she gave him her hand, and thanked him with one of her
rare and wonderful smiles.
“A woman, if she had been portionless, to have driven a man to
distraction,” considered Mr. Nicholson, and he was right. An heiress is
never so truly a woman as other women. Gold clothes her as with a
garment, and it is a somewhat stiff robe in which to take her walks
abroad.
Decidedly Grace would have been a more charming, even though a much less
useful woman, had her face alone been her fortune.
As matters stood, however, she made friends so successfully with the
elderly gentleman who was her travelling companion, that by the time
they arrived at their journey’s end, he was sufficiently interested in
Amos Scott to assist her in finding his solicitor, who chanced to be a
gentleman famous for making the best of bad cases—for getting off
notorious vagabonds, for taking advantage of legal quibbles, and saving
men’s money and lives by the splitting of a legal straw.
“We are all friends here, I suppose,” he said looking doubtfully at
Grace’s companion, whilst he stripped the feathers off a pen. “I may
speak confidentially?”
“Most decidedly,” Grace answered.
“I can do nothing for him,” he remarked. “He will not trust me.”
“How do you mean?” she asked.
“He says he is innocent. What can any human being do in the face of such
an assertion?”
For a minute or two Grace sat silent. The idea was as new to her as
obnoxious to Scott’s lawyer. Hitherto it had never occurred to her that
he would deny his guilt; but now—something—not born of reason or
conviction, but a subtle instinct, prompted her to answer.
“If Amos Scott says he is innocent, you may believe him. I have known
him since I was a child. At such a juncture he would not tell a lie.”
The lawyer smiled.
“Believe me, Miss Moffat,” he said, “the prospect of a halter has a
wonderfully deterrent influence on the candour of most people.”
“Perhaps,” she replied; “but he would tell me the truth.”
“Will you see him?” asked the other eagerly.
“Yes, certainly.”
“And report the result of your interview to me?” he continued.
Only for an instant she hesitated, then she replied,—
“Word for word as far as I can recollect; what he says you shall hear.”
“Then I may save him,” he continued.
“If money—” began Grace, but he stopped her.
“I am not indifferent to money,” was the reply, “but I never work for it
alone. A thousand pounds paid down could never quicken my intellect as
much as a perfect knowledge of a case. With Scott I am utterly at sea.
He will not confide in me, and I do not know what to do for him. And the
Assizes are close at hand, that is the worst of it.”
“I shall see you again before the week is out,” said Grace. “Meantime—”
and she laid some notes on the table, which the lawyer folded up and
handed to her once again.
“Money could do no more than I have tried to accomplish,” he remarked.
“When it is all over pay me if you will.”
“Upon the whole, Miss Moffat,” criticized her travelling companion, “it
seems to me the rogues have the best of it in this life. No honest man
could find a lawyer like that,” which is no doubt true. Perhaps it is
part of the Eternal Justice to leave one world in which the rogues and
the thieves and the plausible soft-spoken vagabonds have the best of it.
Spite of all the clergy tell us I am afraid, notwithstanding the hard
lines many ragamuffins meet with, the paradise of sinners is earth.
Straight from Kilcurragh to Maryville drove Grace. Her travelling
companion saw her and her slender luggage safely bestowed on the outside
car, by which vehicle she elected to travel, and then made his farewell.
“Good-bye, Miss Moffat,” he said; “I shall watch the progress of the
case with interest and anxiety.”
“He will tell the truth to me,” she answered. And strong in this faith,
she started on the long drive which lay before her.
Anxious to avoid Kingslough, and for a short time, at least, all contact
with its inhabitants, she told the man to take a road lying a little
inland which would, she knew, bring her out near the gates of Maryville.
It was a lovely evening, the sea lay like a mirror under the clear blue
sky, the woods in the distance stood dark and green, mellowed by flushes
of sunlight, that stole over them warm and bright; up and down the
hillsides crept waving shadows and patches of golden light; the white
cabins, nestling among fields where the wheat was already in the ear,
looked as if they had every one been freshly whitewashed. Over the calm
home landscape Grace gazed, tears dropping down in her heart the while;
whilst her eyes gathered the peace and the loveliness of the familiar
scene, her thoughts were concentrated on a grave in Kingslough
churchyard. Life seemed to have begun for her in earnest at her father’s
death. Strangers dwelt under the remembered rooftree. To no hearth could
she now creep close feeling it all her own. For others welcomes might
sound, for others smiles might be wreathed, eyes brighten, tones grow
softer, but for her with neither kith nor kin who cared that she was
returning a lonely woman to comfort one almost as desolate as herself?
By the time she reached Maryville the sun had set, and the gloom of the
dark avenue seemed to fall heavily upon her as they drove over the soft
gravel, still wet from heavy rain which had fallen in the morning.
There was not a soul stirring about the place. At the lodge no one
appeared, and the driver had to open the gates for himself. As they
neared the house, it seemed like a building deserted.
Not a dog’s bark broke the stillness, not a sound came through the
evening air to prove that life was near at hand.
The man laid that day in his grave was no quieter than the place of
which he had so lately been master. Through the hall the noise of
Grace’s knock echoed drearily. No city of the dead was ever more silent
than Maryville on the first occasion that Miss Moffat set foot within
its precincts.
Standing looking over the deserted lawn, Grace after a few moments heard
the sound of footsteps coming apparently from some remote distance in
the house. Across a stone passage, then along a wide corridor, then over
the hall paved with black and white marble came that steady heavy tread.
Next instant the door was opened sufficiently to admit of a head being
thrust out to see who the intruder might be; a head, covered with
luxuriant black hair, belonging to a woman from whose appearance Grace
instinctively recoiled.
At sight of the visitor this woman opened the door a little wider,
affording Miss Moffat a full view of a female of about seven or eight
and twenty, tall, erect, bold.
Evidently she had been crying, but the traces of tears failed to soften
the hard defiance of her dark eyes, or the tone in which she asked Grace
what she was “pleased to want?”
“Is Mrs. Brady within?” inquired the visitor.
“She is,” was the reply, uttered in an accent and with a manner as
uncompromising as a north wind.
“Can I see her?”
“It is not likely you can. Maybe you are a stranger, and have not heard
what has happened.”
“It is because I have heard,” Grace answered, “that I am here. Be so
good as to tell Mrs. Brady—”
“Who is it, Susan?” called out a weak, querulous voice at this juncture.
“No matter who it is, tell them I am in trouble and can see no
one—remember that—no one!”
“Not even Grace,” answered her old friend. “Oh, Nettie! I have travelled
all the way from England to be with you. Let me come in and speak to
you: let me stay—”
Before she had finished her sentence Mrs. Brady had crossed the hall and
flung the door wide open.
“Grace! Grace!” she cried.
That was all. In a wordless agony she clung about the new-comer. She
twined her arms around her, she laid her head on her shoulder, but she
never cried nor sobbed. The years fraught with agony inconceivable,
seemed to have taken the power of weeping from her.
“This is the first time she has come out of her room since—” began she
of the black hair in explanation, but Mrs. Brady stopped her.
“Don’t!” she said in that faint irritable voice, which spoke volumes to
Grace of the sufferings she had endured. “I cannot bear to talk,” she
went on addressing her friend. “If you stay, if you really want to stay,
you must never speak to me of it or him. Will you promise?”
“I never will unless you wish me to do so,” Grace answered readily,
scarcely realizing how difficult she might find it to keep her word.
“Where will I put the portmantle?” inquired the car-driver, breaking
across the conversation with an abruptness which one at least of the
trio felt to be a relief.
It was almost dark inside the house—so dark that Grace, unable to see
the contents of her purse, stepped out into the twilight to pay the man.
“Can I get a drop of water for my horse, Miss?” he asked as she counted
the money into his hands, and turning she repeated the question to the
servant who stood in the doorway.
“Not here,” answered the woman. “The men are gone, and the dogs are
loose. There is a stream crosses the road less than a mile up it; the
beast can drink his fill there.”
Never before—never in the whole of her life had Grace heard so
inhospitable a sentence uttered. Involuntarily it caused her to double
the amount of the man’s own gratuity, and to say to him in a low voice,—
“They are in great distress of mind here; perhaps you know.”
“Yes, Miss, I know,” was the reply; but Grace felt there was no sympathy
in his tone, and she turned to re-enter the house with a conviction that
even the circumstances of Mr. Brady’s death had failed to awaken popular
sympathy in his behalf.
“Where is Mrs. Brady?” she asked, peering through the twilight in search
of Nettie, who was, however, nowhere visible.
“She’s gone back to her room; if you want her, you’ll have to go there
after her. She has never come down till to-night. She has not been to
say quite right in her head ever since.”
“Perhaps she would rather be alone?”
“I don’t think it will make any differ one way or the other,” was the
somewhat contemptuous answer which decided Grace on at once making her
way to Nettie.
“Which is her room?” she inquired.
“Right opposite you when you get to the head of the stairs;” and thus
directed, Grace without ceremony crossed the hall, ascended the
staircase, and joined her friend.
She found Nettie pacing the apartment with slow, measured steps. Up and
down, down and up, she marched like some animal on a chain, hopelessly,
helplessly, wearily. Suddenly she stopped in this exercise.
“You ought not to stay here, Grace. I am no company for anybody now.”
“If I had wanted company I should have stayed where I was,” Grace
answered. “I came here to see if I could not be of use to you, and I
shall remain till I am quite satisfied I cannot be of any!”
“No one can help me,” said Nettie deliberately. Then finding Grace kept
silence, she went on hurriedly to ask,—
“What are you thinking of?”
“I was thinking, dear—” the words came softly through the darkness—“that
God in His own good time will help you.”
“He cannot,” was the reply, spoken sharply and quickly.
“We shall see,” and Grace sat down by one of the windows, while Nettie
resumed her purposeless walk, backwards and forwards, forwards and
backwards enough to drive a bystander to madness.
After a time the door opened.
“I have made you some tea, mem. Will you come down or will I bring it up
to you?”
Nettie never answered. Neither by sign nor token did she give evidence
of having heard a word.
“I will come down,” said Grace after a moment’s pause, sufficient to
permit Mrs. Brady to reply if she would. “Should you not like a light,
Nettie?” she asked with a natural hesitation about making such a
suggestion in another person’s house.
“I hate light,” was the answer.
“How long has she been like that?” whispered Miss Moffat as the door
closed between her and the blue-eyed, golden-haired Nettie of the
long-ago past.
“Ever since that night; except cold water, she has not had bite or sup
in her lips for the last five days.”
“Where are the children?”
“I asked some of the neighbours to take them till—till—it was all over.”
There was an instant’s break in her voice. Next minute it was cold and
hard and ringing as ever.
In the small ante-room where Mr. Brady had received the Rileys, Grace
found tea prepared, and she sat down to it with what appetite she might.
She had been delicately nurtured, and the cup of coarse blue delft, the
dark brown sugar, the battered tray, the black-handled knife, the smoked
teapot, repelled her the moment she set eyes on the repast.
But she forced herself to eat. She had come to be useful, and she was
determined to let no fastidious niceties cumber her at first starting.
Her greatest trial was the woman, who after a grudging fashion strove to
make her welcome. Grace’s experience had never previously brought her
even mentally in contact with a person of the kind, but her instinct
told her there was something wrong about dark eyes and darker hair; that
if everything were right she and Nettie ought not to be under the same
roof, with a person against whom every nerve seemed to be at war, whose
very presence was a trial, whose interest in the late master of
Maryville had evidently been very close and very great. By the light of
the solitary candle with which her banquet-table was illumined, Grace,
quick as is the nature of her sex, took in the personal appearance and
attire of the solitary domestic Maryville seemed to boast.
Not an ill-looking woman; but hard, bold, bad—bad decidedly—one with
whom wickedness had not prospered. Grace looked at her poor brown-stuff
gown, scanty and ill-fitting, but covering a magnificent figure; at the
poor attempt at mourning made in a little black neckerchief drawn round
her throat and pinned in front of the half-high dress; at her hands red
and hard with work, to grasp, dimly it might be but sufficiently, the
fact sin had not paid this creature high wages for the loss of all women
hold dear.
The man was dead. She had wanted to ask many questions, but with this
idea before her and others looming behind, Grace could ask no question
of her companion, who, comprehending that without a word of explanation
the other knew her position, hardened herself and decided she would make
this stranger’s stay unpleasant if she could.
Understanding this in a vague uncertain fashion, Grace said,—
“I suppose you do not know who I am. Mrs. Brady and I are old friends,
and I have come from England to be with her in this affliction. I used
to live near Kingslough; my father was Mr. Moffat of Bay view.”
“I have heard tell of you both,” was the reply sullenly spoken. “You’ll
have come over to help Amos Scott as well as to see Mrs. Brady, I’m
thinking.”
To which speech Miss Moffat deemed it prudent to make no reply.
CHAPTER X.
A RAY OF LIGHT.
Not all Grace’s persuasions could induce Mrs. Brady on the following
morning to touch any breakfast. By special request Miss Moffat had been
permitted to pass the night in a dressing-room opening into Nettie’s
apartment, and until overpowered by weariness she fell into a broken
sleep, she heard the widow tossing from side to side, moaning now and
then, at intervals breathing many sighs, but weeping never.
With her own hands Miss Moffat made her a tiny morsel of toast, and took
that and a cup of tea to her bedside; but Nettie refused to eat, not
querulously or with any effusion of manner, but with a settled
determination difficult to hope to sway.
Nevertheless, her friend thought she would try. “Dear Nettie,” she said,
“you ought to eat.”
“I cannot; it would choke me,” was the reply.
“I am afraid you will bring on an illness.”
“Oh! if I could only die,” and she buried her face in the pillow.
Grace went downstairs again.
As has been already stated her knowledge of mortal, physical, or deep
mental sickness was not large; and if her knowledge of the latter had
been, she might well have felt puzzled how to deal with Nettie.
After her breakfast she sat down for a few minutes to think, and whilst
she was deep in meditation Susan entered.
“The mistress would take nothing, then,” she remarked, looking at the
tray Grace had carried all unavailingly to Mrs. Brady.
“No.”
“I thought you wouldn’t get her to eat. I have tried her hard enough, I
can tell you. You don’t seem to have been hungry yourself,” she went on,
glancing at the dish of bacon swimming in grease and the new-laid eggs
that, poached in fat, floated in company with the unsavoury-looking
slices.
“I was not,” answered Miss Moffat.
“It is not a heartsome place to come to, you’re thinking, likely,”
suggested the woman.
“I was thinking what I could do for Mrs. Brady,” Grace replied. “She
ought to have something. Is there any wine in the house?”
“There is whisky,” was the answer.
Grace groaned mentally. “I wonder if she would take a little milk,” she
said audibly.
“You can try. Will I bring you some?”
There was a secret triumph in the tone, as though she suspected the
attempt would prove futile. And she was right. Nettie would have nothing
but water. Of that she drank incessantly.
“I am parched,” she said in answer to Grace’s remonstrances. “My lips
are so dry they bleed;” and as she removed her handkerchief from them,
Grace saw it was stained with crimson spots.
What would Grace not have given for Mrs. Hartley’s counsel? Good women,
and kind and true, lived at Kingslough, but somehow she felt at that
juncture Mrs. Hartley’s hard worldly sense would prove more useful than
all the well-meant sympathy amiable but incompetent people could offer.
Besides, Nettie herself would have none of Kingslough, either in the way
of pity or help.
All the morning Maryville was besieged with callers, notes, cards, and
inquiries.
“They can come now,” said Nettie bitterly, as she watched car and
carriage and messenger depart unsatisfied. “They think I can go back and
take the old up where I left off that morning. They do not know; how
should they?”
Dinner-time arrived. With a bang, Susan set down on one side of the
table at the other side of which Grace sat writing, a dish of potatoes
piled high and another of herrings floating in a fresh sea of grease.
“Maybe it’s not good enough for you,” said the woman, with a sneer, “but
it’s all there is in the house.”
“You mistake,” said Grace; “it is quite good enough for me, but I do not
think it is anything like good enough for Mrs. Brady.” And she took her
place at table whilst Susan flounced out of the room only to turn back
and inquire whether she would “be plazed to drink water or milk.”
Had she followed Mrs. Hartley’s instructions Grace would have said
water. As it was, the national partiality for milk common to the Irish
ladies at that period, and which perhaps with the moist climate had
share in their lovely complexions, extinguished all English lights, and
so she chose the latter, thereby mollifying Susan, who thought “she
might not be so stuck-up after all, maybe.”
Of potatoes and milk Grace made her meal with relish, it must be
confessed, and spite of her sorrow. The potatoes were capital, the milk
rich. The herrings she could not fancy, the lake of slowly congealing
fat in which they reposed effectually warned her from them. While she
ate she thought, “Let Susan be what she would, or perhaps would not,
she, Miss Moffat, could not put that wrong right if she kept her at
arms’ length for ever. On the whole, had she not better try to
conciliate this woman, who, spite of her position, seemed friendly to
Nettie? Perhaps,” thought Grace, “because she knows if this door closes
behind her, none other would open to receive her.”
There were not many women who dared even think of adopting a
conciliatory policy under such circumstances; but in many ways Grace’s
position was exceptional.
After all, what is the good of virtue if it be not sufficiently certain
of its own standing to walk just once and away on the same side of the
road with vice, and refrain from drawing its skirts decorously around
it?
Grace’s virtue, at all events, was made of sufficiently strong stuff to
risk all the results of such a companionship. She hated the sin she felt
had been done, as probably those to whom the nature of sin is almost a
mystery alone are able—with an abhorrence, a detestation, a contempt, a
loathing, akin to the feelings with which a man who had bathed from his
earliest youth might look upon a disease produced by filth, and the lack
of all ordinary physical cleanliness; but—black tangled hair, unkempt,
unbraided, bold eyes, insolence, brazen defiance notwithstanding—she was
sorry for the sinner.
Where vice flaunts past dressed in the latest fashion, driving a lovely
pair of ponies, assuming the most recent fashionable manner whether that
manner be modest or forward, we may call it picturesque, and forget, if
we choose, the ghastly death’s head lurking beneath the rouge and paint
and powder plastered on the face of Sin’s last successful child; but
when we come to see some of Sin’s despised daughters, some of those who
have been cut off by their unjust parent with less even than the
traditional shilling, I think the observer must be less than man or
woman—more fiend than either can prove on occasion—who shall fail to
consider for what inconceivably small wages the devil gets immortal
souls to work his ends.
If _his_ employés would strike, what an involuntary lock-out from Hell
here and Hell hereafter the world should witness!
“Susan,” began Miss Moffat, as the handmaiden having piled plate and
vegetable dish on the top of the herrings, was about to remove the
dinner appointments on the extemporised tray,—“do not you think Mrs.
Brady ought to see a doctor?”
“I think it’s time she saw somebody,” agreed Susan.
“Would not it be well to send one of the men with a note to Mr. Hanlon,
asking him to call?”
“It’s no use,” answered Susan shaking her head. “Mr. Hanlon he came up
the day of the inquest; he had to come, and after the crowner was gone
he wanted to see mistress. In course, I asked him to step in here and
told her, and you’d have thought she’d have taken my head off. I was
glad enough to get out of the room. I would not like to be the one who
should tell her Mr. Hanlon was here again.”
“Why, I thought she always liked him,” said Grace fairly puzzled.
“I can’t say for that, it was hard to tell who Mrs. Brady liked or did
not like—she is a mighty secret woman in her ways, but the master hated
him and forbid him the house. Most like she minds all that.”
“Poor Nettie, how fond she must have been of him after all!” murmured
Grace, speaking her thoughts out loud.
“Fond of the master, is it you mean!” asked Susan. “Fond of him; that
she wasn’t, that she could not be, I’ll take my Bible oath. Why, Miss—”
and in her energy she banged the herrings and superstructure on the
table again—“he treated her worse nor a slave. If it had not been for
the children, she’d have gone over and over and over again. I have seen
it in her face when she has been sitting beside the fire, thinking,
thinking; or when maybe she has left the room after giving him one look.
He’s gone and there’s no need for us to send the bad word after him; but
no black negro ever had a worse time of it than the woman that’s now a
widow; and whatever she is fretting about—and if I was you Miss, I would
not trouble my head concerning that matter—it is not her murdered
husband.”
“I am afraid you are not fond of Mrs. Brady,” suggested Grace. Perhaps
the exact speech the unities might have suggested at such a crisis would
not have been composed of the same or even similar words, but certainly
an astute lawyer or a clever worldly woman would have put just the same
question.
“An’ saving your presence, Miss, who could be fond of her?” inquired
Susan. “She’s secret as the grave. He might beat or starve or blackguard
her as he liked, and she answered never a word. Never to one did she
come for pity or help. I have heard them say Miss, old women, not like
me, that over and over again they wanted to talk with her about her
trouble, and she put them back. She was that proud Miss, flesh and blood
could not thole her.”
“Proud,” Grace repeated, and she looked at the room, she glanced at the
table.
“Ay, just proud,” was the answer; “folks are often as proud of the
things they want to have as of those they have got, and if they can’t
get all they want they turn sulky, just—just as she did,” finished
Susan, and without leaving Grace time for a reply, she took up the
herring-dish and its belongings and disappeared.
When an hour afterwards she returned to claim the table-cloth, Miss
Moffat had vanished.
Over the fields she was gone to visit Mrs. Scott. Now making her way
across a meadow where, as is the Irish fashion, the hay had been
gathered into about twenty small stacks, hay ropes binding the grass
together; now treading lightly between potatoe rigs, now skirting a
field of oats or barley, she came at length by a different route to any
she had heretofore traversed to the homestead of the Castle Farm.
Straight into the kitchen Grace walked. Upstairs she heard the sound of
movement and voices, and upstairs after knocking vainly on the dresser
she proceeded.
A stifled shriek was the first sound which greeted her, the next was,—
“Miss Grace, go down again into the open air. And may God Himself
preserve you from all evil. We have got the faver.”
Sound of dread in Ireland! If there be a cowardly spot in the nature of
Irish men and women even at the present day, it is their blind,
unreasoning dread of infection.
Reared amongst those who held this horror, Grace at sound of Mrs.
Scott’s news involuntarily drew back. Next instant she stood by Reuben’s
bedside.
The lad was dying. Even her inexperience grasped that; and falling on
her knees and burying her face in the coverlet, she wept tears she had
been longing to shed ever since she entered Maryville.
“Miss Grace,” it was the mother who spoke and touched her, “ye can’t
save him. Why should ye kill yourself?”
“And you?” asked Grace, looking at mother and friend.
“We are in the hands of God,” was the reply.
“So am I,” said Miss Moffat, and took the lad’s white fingers in her
own.
“Who is attending him,” she asked.
“Mr. Hanlon—who but him? He had a right to do all he could for us; and
I’ll say that, in his benefit, he has done it.
“Why was it his right?” asked Grace, ignoring all the rest of the
sentence save that which jarred on her ear.
“Because him, and men like him, made the good man what—what— There, God
help us, Miss Grace! Go away or you’ll be hearing me raving worse than
my poor lad did when first he lay bad, and likely be taken yourself.”
“I am not afraid,” said Grace, but she moved towards the door as she
spoke. “Mrs. Scott, I shall see Amos to-morrow I hope; what am I to tell
him?”
“Tell him what you’ve seen, Miss Grace.”
“And what else?” asked her visitor.
“I don’t just understand. Oh! yes, I do. Downstairs if you please, Miss.
I’ll follow you.”
In the sunlight Grace waited for her to come down, and involuntarily as
she looked at the flood of golden light in which the landscape was
steeped, she could not help thinking that as the rain falleth on the
just and the unjust, so the sun shines on the happy and the miserable.
Whilst she was vainly trying to solve this great problem of nature’s
lack of sympathy, Mrs. Scott joined her, keeping at a respectful
distance.
“I know what you mean, Miss Grace,” began the woman, who had grown old
suddenly; “but, between you and me and him, it’s no use talking of
innocency if the other thing be guiltiness. He did it, and if I had been
in his place, I’d ha’ done it myself.”
These people—neither the man nor the woman—nor men nor women like them,
were likely to take refuge in falsehood, and conviction entered Grace’s
heart at that moment. If Amos had sinned, he would have told how it all
came about ere now. Had his been the hands that struck his enemy down,
he would have waited for no warrant but given himself up, and with
obstinate honesty endured the consequences of his guilt.
Or it might be that in the natural terror induced by the accomplishment
of such a deed, and the horror of the consequences certain to ensue, he
would have fled. Either the sturdy endurance or the frantic fear would
not have been out of keeping with the hard, stubborn, straightforward
nature—but resolutely to maintain his innocence even to his own
lawyer—to offer no explanation as to whether the blow was dealt in cold
blood or after bitter altercation—Grace could not reconcile such a line
of conduct with anything she could remember of Scott, and out of the
fulness of her heart she spoke, “As certainly as you stand there I
believe Amos never killed that man.”
“Do you think you’ll make a jury believe that, Miss Grace?” asked Mrs.
Scott, holding a blue-checked apron to her face, down which tears were
coursing. “Well, well—one trouble is almost driven out by another—when
Reuben’s gone, there’ll be no one to think about but the master.”
In this she chanced to be mistaken, however. When Reuben was gone, she
herself lay fighting for dear life with the fever which had passed by
her husband; leaving him, so most people said, for a worse fate than
death by the visitation of God.
CHAPTER XI.
IN THE NIGHT-WATCHES.
Before Miss Moffat had nearly reached Maryville, Susan met her.
“It went out of my head, Miss,” she began, “to tell you they had the
fever at the farm. You have been there most like.”
“Yes; and seen the lad who appears to be dying.”
“What will we do now,” asked Susan in an access of despair, “the
children have come home?”
“Well, what of that?”
“What of that!” repeated the woman, scornfully, “like as not you’ll have
brought the fever home in your clothes with you.”
Grace stopped. It was a serious loss to her as a woman that she had
never been with illness, and knew little or nothing about it, and now
unwittingly she had run the risk of doing a very terrible
wrong,—bringing infection into another person’s house, amongst another
person’s children.
“Oh! I am so sorry,” she exclaimed, unheeding the contemptuous
inflection of Susan’s voice; “what can we do; what ought I to do?”
“You had better take off your outside things, and give them to me to
hang up in the air,” was the reply uttered in a mollified tone. “I will
bring down your wrapper; and then if you throw your other clothes into
water, maybe no harm will come of it. But don’t go talking to the
mistress till you’ve changed.”
“I will not,” promised Miss Moffat, and she tried to keep her word, for
when Mrs. Brady called to her querulously, Grace answered,—
“Wait for a few minutes, I will be with you directly.”
“I want you now.”
“I cannot come. I have been to the Castle Farm, and Reuben is ill with
fever; and I must get rid of all possible chance of carrying infection
before I see any one.”
“I do not care about infection,” answered Nettie.
“Well, if you do not I do,” retorted Grace, and she essayed to bolt her
door; but as is not uncommon, even now in Ireland, all means of secure
fastening were either broken or inoperative. “Dear Nettie,” she went on,
“do not come near me; for the sake of the children, if not for your own,
keep away.”
But Mrs. Brady resolutely had her will.
“Who did you see at the Castle Farm?” she asked.
“Mrs. Scott and Reuben. Nettie do be persuaded, and go away. If you or
any of the children caught this fever, I should never forgive myself.”
“We will not catch fever any one of us,” answered Mrs. Brady. “I want to
hear about the Scotts. What does Mrs. Scott say? You know what I mean.”
“About Amos?” Grace suggested; “what can she say. Do not let us talk of
it, Nettie.”
“I must talk of it. Are you not going to see him, Grace?”
“Yes; but I did not intend to tell you.”
“Why not? I want you to go. I want to hear every word he speaks to you.”
“Nettie, you are ill,” said Miss Moffat, noticing the flush on her
friend’s thin cheeks, the brightness of her eyes, and the parched
dryness of her lips; “is there nothing you could fancy, dear; nothing I
could get that might tempt you to eat?”
Mrs. Brady shook her head; then said with a faint smile,—
“I will try to eat something if you promise to tell me word for word all
Amos says to you.”
“How can I do so, you being what you are?” Grace replied.
“I am the most miserable wretch on earth,” Nettie exclaimed. “My heart
is breaking, Grace, and you will not do the simplest thing to try and
ease it.”
“Nettie dear, how can you ask me?” pleaded Miss Moffat. “I do not love
you less because I refuse to betray any confidence the unhappy man may
put in me.”
“Do you think I want him hung?” inquired Nettie. “Do you think I should
not be glad to hear he had got off safe? I tell you, if laying down my
own life could procure his acquittal, I would cheerfully do it.”
“You certainly must be insane,” said Grace, with the quiet force of
conviction; “however, to humour you I promise this, that I will repeat
as much as I can of our conversation, although I should have thought
this the very last subject on which you would have wished to hear me
speak.”
“Should you?” exclaimed Nettie. “Well, that only shows how mistaken even
clever people may be sometimes. Hush! Here comes that woman!” and Mrs.
Brady slipped back into her own room, closing the door softly behind
her.
Faithful to her promise Nettie did try to swallow something, but the
attempt proved almost a total failure.
“It chokes me, dear,” she said almost humbly to her friend. “I wish—I
wish I could have something to quiet me a little. Don’t you think,” she
added wistfully, “that old Dr. Girvan, who has seen so many people in
trouble, might think of something that would do me good?”
“He shall try,” answered Grace; and she sent a messenger for him.
“When the old man arrived he shook his head, called Nettie ‘poor girl’;
felt her pulse, said the shock had been too much for her; advised that
she should leave Maryville as soon as possible; expressed his intention
of sending her a soothing mixture, and went away believing he understood
Mrs. Brady’s case.
“Ah!” said Nettie after he had gone, “if these doctors when they listen
to our hearts’ throbbing could only tell what is really passing in them,
how we should dread their coming!”
“Dear, do try to keep yourself quiet,” expostulated Grace, and Nettie
obediently kept silence.
Another restless night, as Grace heard; so restless that Grace rose and
taking the child Nettie had insisted on having to sleep with her away,
put the little creature into her own bed, and kept watch by Mrs. Brady
till the next morning.
“Grace,” said the widow turning her face towards her friend, and
stroking the hand that held hers so tenderly, “you are too good to me by
far; but some day I do not think you will be sorry to remember all you
have done for me.”
“Darling, I am only too thankful to be able to do anything,” was the
reply, and Grace pillowed the once beautiful face upon her arm; and
whilst Nettie slept fitfully, looked at the lines trouble had graven on
the forehead she could remember, as if it were only a day previously,
white and smooth and unmarked by even a trace of care.
Without much trouble Amos Scott’s solicitor had been able to obtain
permission for Miss Moffat to see her old friend. In Kilcurragh it was
talked of as a nine days’ wonder that a young lady of fortune and
position should so far demean herself as to pay a visit to a common
murderer; for according to general procedure the public had already
tried and condemned the suspected man.
If people were not very much concerned about Mr. Brady’s death, they
were at least very greatly infuriated against Amos Scott.
“No man’s life,” they said, “would be safe if the farmer was allowed to
get off,—if those who considered themselves injured were suffered to
take the law into their own hands and revenge themselves as they
pleased.” With much more to the same effect, which Miss Moffat did not
hear, and which would not have greatly affected her had she heard.
Never before had Grace felt so much shocked at the change a short time
is capable of effecting as when she beheld Amos Scott.
He was worn almost to skin and bone; and there was a sad, weary,
despairing look in his face that might well touch the heart of a woman
who had known him in his prime of health and hope and prosperity.
There was a gentleness in his manner she had never perceived before. It
seemed almost as though he had already passed through the gates of death
and dropped the rude garments that concealed his finer and higher nature
at the portals.
“Miss Grace; Miss Grace, why did you ever come to a place like this,”
were his first words. “If the master had been alive he would not have
suffered it.”
“Very probably not,” she answered. “He would have come for me in that
case; now I am alone, I have no one.”
“Why did you demean yourself for the likes of me?” he asked.
“I am not demeaning myself,” she replied, “and I came to see you
because, guilty or innocent, I cannot forget the past.”
“I am not guilty, Miss Grace.”
“On your solemn word, Amos.”
“If I was standing before my Maker, face to face, as I believe I soon
shall,” he said rising, and lifting his hand reverently above his head,
“I am not guilty in deed of the black villain’s death. I do not go so
far as to say,” he went on, dropping his hand and resuming his seat,
like one too weak to remain long standing, “I never wished him dead. I
have often; and even now I can hardly feel sorry that he has been struck
down. I have been a murderer in my heart, Miss Grace; I don’t deny it.
Many and many a night when I have been tramping home through the wet and
the mud—empty of food and sick with sorrow,—I have thought if I could
just hear he had taken the fever, or broken his neck, or been upset and
drowned, I could have made myself content to leave the old place—and
Ireland,—and go away to the country I said I never could thole to be
banished to. But now,” he added after an expressive pause, “I shall
never have the chance; I shall never go anywhere but from here to the
Court, and from the Court back here; and from here to—”
He covered his face. A man may be brave enough, and yet weak as a child
when he tries to speak of an ordeal such as this.
For a minute Grace did not speak; she could not for the tears she was
trying to restrain. Then she said, “Amos!” and he lifted his head.
“Yes, Miss Grace.”
“Before God you are innocent?”
“I have said so once, Miss; there is no need in my saying so twice; for
if you don’t believe me at my first telling, you won’t believe me at my
second.”
“I beg your pardon,” she said gently, “I did believe you the first time.
I ought not to have tried to make assurance doubly sure. More than that,
before I ever came here I felt you were innocent, and if it is possible
for me to save you, I will do it.”
“Miss Grace,” he answered, “you mean kindly, but you may be doing me a
deadly hurt. I have been facing certain death since I came here, and its
bitterness is almost past. If you drag me back, even for a bit, I must
go through it all again.”
It was a homely way of expressing the cruelty of raising false hopes;
but Grace understood his meaning perfectly.
“I am rich,” she faltered, feeling the error she had committed.
“Money won’t do it,” he answered.
“I have many friends possessed of influence.”
“Influence can’t save me. There is only one thing could help me, Miss
Grace; and I need not trouble you with talking about that, because I
know no more than the child still unborn who killed the man. I have sat
here and gone over, and over, and over the story, and can make neither
head nor tail of it. All I am sure of is, I had no act or part in the
murder; and how my stick came to be where they say it was found is
beyond me, for I lost it the night before; and I never was near the
divisional road at all.”
“What does Mr. D’Almarez say?” asked Miss Moffat.
“He says nothing, except ‘tell me the truth,’ as if a man in my strait
would be likely to tell his attorney a lie.”
“And what does he think about your having lost your stick?”
“He just thinks I never lost it, because when he asked me about the
places I had been the day before, I couldn’t mind. I have been that
perplexed, Miss, since Lady Jane died, my memory won’t serve me as it
used.”
“But surely, Amos, with trying, you might recollect.”
“I have minded a good many. I was at Rosemont to try to get speech of
Mr. Robert; and at the office; and at the Glendare Arms, where a
stranger man, seeing I was in trouble, treated me to a glass, bad luck
to it! for I had not broken my fast, and the liquor got into my head;
and I said things about Brady they’re going to bring up again me at the
trial; and then I stopped at a heap of places besides, but I can’t mind
just where, except that at the last I called at Hanlon’s surgery for
some stuff for the lad. I didn’t forget that, because he went on at me
for having had too much, and made me mad because he wouldn’t believe me
I had only had one glass to overcome me—me—who could once have taken off
half-a-dozen without winking.”
“And on the day of the ——, on the day when Mr. Brady was killed?” Grace
persisted.
“Well, Miss, I was that beat from the day before, I did not stir out
till evening; and I would not have gone then, but the wife she would
have me go to Kingslough and tell the doctor the boy was worse. So I
went there and he was out, and I left my message; and in the ordinary
way I should have come straight home, but I thought I would go round by
Mark Lennon’s, and tell his daughter we had a letter from him she’s
promised to; but before I got there I turned that bad and weak, I
thought to make my home as fast as I could, and so came across the
fields and the Red Stream; and they make that a charge against me too,
Miss Grace, because, as you know, the colour of the clay there is the
same as the colour of the clay in the water alongside the divisional
where Brady was found.”
In spirit, Grace groaned. She believed the man was speaking truly, but
what jury on earth would believe it also! There was not a point in his
favour. Every statement he made told against him. He could not say where
he lost his stick. He could not say where he had been to lose it. He
could not account for his time after he left Kingslough on the night of
the murder. As to the place where he got the mud found on his clothes,
there was only his own word, and of what value is the word of an accused
man. Even his own wife imagined him guilty. No one in the world, save
Grace Moffat, imagined it within the bounds of possibility that, though
circumstantial and internal evidence were all against him, he might yet
be innocent; and it was just on the board that had she lived in Ireland
for the previous twelve months, and seen his animus to Mr. Brady growing
day by day, she might have believed him guilty too.
“All I can say,” she remarked, as she rose to leave, “is this; you shall
have the best counsel money can procure.”
“Thank you kindly, Miss,” he answered, “but, as I said before, money
can’t do it, and man can’t do it, let him be the best ever stepped in
shoe leather; and if God does not do it, and in these later days, as our
minister used to say, he has not seen fit to work visible miracles, I
must suffer, Miss Grace; that is all. I have made my mind up to that now
_he_ is dead, as I never could to giving up the farm while he was
living.”
“Amos,” said Miss Moffat, “do not let what your minister said impress
you too much. God does still work miracles, or what seem miracles to us;
and if he sees fit he will clear you from this.”
“And if He does not see fit, Miss Grace, I must just thole what He
sends; that is all. You can say that to the wife if you have a chance.
Do you happen to know, Miss, how it is with Reuben?”
For a moment Grace faltered; then she said,—
“Whatever else you are spared to see in this world I am afraid—” she
paused, and he calmly finished the sentence.
“I won’t see him. Well then, Miss, it may be we shall meet all the
sooner, Reuben and me, when he will know that wrongfully
blood-guiltiness was laid to my charge.”
Mr. D’Almarez made no secret of his chagrin at the result of this
interview, and it taxed his politeness sorely to listen to Miss Moffat’s
account of it with even ordinary patience.
He had hoped that to her Scott would speak openly. He had expected to
obtain some information which might bring the crime under the head of
accident rather than design, and enable him to fight for a verdict of
manslaughter instead of murder. It was known to every one in the county
that Mr. Brady had not treated the man well; and if Scott could only be
got to state what actually passed on the last occasion he and his enemy
ever met, the lawyer felt something might be done, supposing the blow
had been struck without premeditation, and that high and passionate
words had preceded it.
If a jury could be argued or coaxed into believing Scott did not leave
his home with the deliberate intention of murdering Mr. Brady, the man’s
chance was by no means hopeless; and there was this in his favour, that
the owner of Maryville had actually on the day of the murder started to
go to Dublin, although for some unexplained reason he failed to continue
his journey, so that it was unlikely Scott could have expected to meet
him near the Castle Farm.
On the other hand, it was against the accused that he knew Mr. Brady
intended to eject him from the house—that he had publicly stated, “Brady
should never come into it alive,” and that he expressed his intention of
sticking to the old place even if it was pulled down about his ears.
Still, considering what Mr. Brady had been, and the amount of fancied or
real injury he inflicted on Amos, considering that the one man had
always been a dishonest reprobate, and the other a hardworking decent,
well-conducted fellow, who never cheated a neighbour of a halfpenny;
that he had a son down in fever, and children clamouring for bread; that
he might well be nearly distraught with want of food, and mental
anguish; considering what a picture a clever barrister might fill in
from these outlines, Mr. D’Almarez did not despair of doing something
for Scott, if only he could be induced to confess. And now it seemed he
did not intend to confess; and the lawyer, chafing with irritation, had
to sit and listen to a woman’s maunderings about innocence and Scott’s
religious utterances and other matters of the same kind, all of which
Mr. D’Almarez mentally summed up in one word, “Rubbish!”
“It is all very well, Miss Moffat” he said, when she finished, “for
Scott to talk goody twaddle—excuse the expression—to a lady or a parson;
but that sort of thing will not go down with a judge or a jury. He
mistakes his position; the period has not yet arrived for that kind of
conversation. Time enough for religious exercises when he has done with
lawyers and been turned over to the chaplain. You must pardon my plain
speaking. The only hope there is of saving Scott lies with himself, and
if he will persist in trying to hoodwink me and playing at this foolish
game of hide-and-seek with his own attorney, I am afraid there is not a
chance of saving him.”
“But, Mr. D’Almarez,” pleaded Grace, “suppose the man has nothing to
tell, suppose he is not guilty, suppose he has really tried to make his
peace with God, expecting nothing from man, and that every word he said
to me to-day were true, the natural expression of a broken and a
contrite heart, in which not a hope, so far as this world is concerned,
still lingers?”
The lawyer smiled. It was very right and proper, of course, for a lady
to talk in this strain, but it was a style of conversation for which he
himself did not much care, and very possibly had Miss Moffat been older
and uglier and poorer, he might not have listened to it even with the
amount of politeness he evinced.
“I cannot suppose an impossibility,” he answered. “Your own kindness of
disposition and Scott’s solemn assertions have, you must allow me to
say, blinded your judgment. If you exercise it you will understand that
it is a simple impossibility for Scott to be innocent. He may be
innocent of intentional murder, and that is the only point we can try to
make in his favour, but his hands are not clean in the matter as he
tries to make us believe.
“Remember the hatred he entertained for Mr. Brady, recollect all he had
suffered through him, recall the expressions he was habitually in the
practice of using concerning him, the threats he uttered not farther
back than the day before the murder, and then pass on to the murder
itself. Mr. Brady is found dead in a lonely road leading straight to the
Castle Farm. He has been killed by a blow, and that blow it is not
disputed must have been dealt by a stick, and that stick one belonging
to Scott, which is found at a little distance as if flung away in a
panic. According to Scott’s own account he was not in the divisional
road at all that night, and yet it was the most direct route back from
Mr. Hanlon’s, where he admits he called. He says he started to go round
by Lennon’s, but he never went there. He says he lost his stick on the
previous day, but he does not know where or how, and he cannot even
remember the places at which he stopped, or whether he missed his stick
before his return home, or whether he ever missed it till it was found
after the murder.
“Further, admitting he did lose it, there is no particular reason why he
should not have found it again. Nor does the evidence against him stop
even at this point. It is certain his clothes were wet, and stained with
clay of a reddish colour. The banks and bed of the stream running beside
the divisional road are, as you know, of that description. Depend upon
it, Miss Moffat, Scott is throwing away his best chance by persisting in
silence. Nothing in my opinion really can serve him except opening his
mouth.”
“I admit the truth and reason of all you say,” she replied, “but faith
is sometimes stronger than reason, and I have faith Scott is not
guilty.”
“Unfortunately a jury have to decide on facts, not faith,” said Mr.
D’Almarez rising to take his leave. “Of course, I shall do all in my
power for him, and if he is found guilty, we must try to prevent his
being hung; but I really think if he would only have placed full
confidence in me, we might have got him off with only a sentence of
manslaughter. Perhaps he may still think better of it.”
“No,” Grace answered, “I do not think he will—I hope he cannot. If after
what he said to me to-day he were to confess that he did cause Mr.
Brady’s death, I should never be able to believe any one again.”
“Ah! Miss Moffat, you do not know how great the temptation is to tell a
falsehood if one is afraid of telling the truth. I do not quarrel with
his statements on the ground of morality, but only on that of common
sense; but then that is lawyer’s way of looking at such things. It is
not to be expected that a lady should take the same view. I trust it may
all turn out better than I anticipate.”
Miss Moffat drove back to Maryville in a very sad and perplexed state of
mind; she had seen none of her friends at Kilcurragh, except that one at
whose house her interview with Mr. D’Almarez took place, and she had no
desire to see them. Amos Scott’s position would, she knew, be the
prominent topic of interest, and she did not possess sufficient moral
courage to desire to combat popular opinion single-handed.
The more she thought about the matter the more conclusive seemed the
lawyer’s statements.
Notwithstanding her own determined advocacy, she felt that away from
Amos her belief in his innocency was not strong enough to enable her to
discard the extremely ugly doubts raised in her mind by Mr. D’Almarez’s
statement of the case.
Scott might believe that his sole chance of escape lay in reiteration of
his innocence, and if this were so, Miss Moffat felt she could forgive
his falsehood. What she could not forgive, however, was his religious
hypocrisy supposing his statement untrue, and with feminine impetuosity
she rushed to this conclusion—
“If Amos be guilty he is the worst man in the world.”
As there had been nothing in the conversation of a confidential nature,
Grace repeated it to Mrs. Brady, merely omitting Scott’s remarks about
the dead man.
In silence Nettie listened to the end, then she asked,—
“Are you sure he said he could not remember where he left that stick?”
“Yes; he cannot even recollect where he went the day he lost it.”
“That seems strange, does not it?”
“I think not, if you consider what he has gone through. He looks starved
and ill, and bewildered. Oh! Nettie, the Scotts must have suffered
terribly.”
“I suppose so,” said Mrs. Brady absently, as she sat looking out of the
window with sad, weary, wistful eyes; and finding she showed no desire
to continue the subject, her friend let it drop. Suddenly, however,
Nettie rose, threw her clasped hands above her head, and, with a sigh
which was almost a groan, hurriedly left the room.
Miss Moffat had become too much accustomed to these demonstrations of
restlessness or grief, or whatever else the cause might be, to attach
much importance to them, but still she thought it better to follow
Nettie whom she found in her own room sobbing as if her heart would
break.
Grace softly closed the door, and left her.
“Let her cry, poor thing,” she thought. “It will do her good. After all,
no matter what he may have been, he was her husband.”
For the first time since her return to Ireland Grace that night slept
soundly; slept a sleep unbroken by dreams; undisturbed by the
perplexities that troubled her waking moments.
How long she had been in bed she could not tell, but at length from this
depth of unconsciousness she was slowly aroused by little fingers that
spread themselves over her face and hair, by a childish voice crying,—
“Oh! lady, please waken, please, please do.”
Thus entreated, the “lady,” for by this name Nettie’s more especial
favourite had elected to call Miss Moffat, struggled back to a due
remembrance of where she was.
“What is it?” she asked between sleeping and waking.
“Mam-ma, oh! Mam-ma she frightens Minnie,” explained the little one.
With an effort Grace roused herself fully.
“Minnie darling, is that you?” she asked, taking the child in her arms.
“What has frightened you?”
“Mam-ma,” repeated the shrill treble. “She talks so funnily—”
In an instant Grace had on her slippers and dressing-gown.
“I will go to your mam-ma, dear,” she said; “but you must be very good
and stay quietly here and go to sleep.”
Then she laid the little creature’s head on her own pillow, folded the
sheet under her chin, gave her a parting kiss, and went into the next
room closing the door behind her.
Dawn was just breaking, and without striking a light, Grace walked over
to where Mrs. Brady lay, moaning and tossing, muttering words too
indistinct to catch.
“Nettie,” and her friend shook her vigorously; “Nettie,”—but no sign of
recognition came. “Nettie dear, do speak to me,”—not a word of reply was
uttered.
For a moment Miss Moffat stood helpless, then she went to that part of
the house where she supposed Susan slept.
“I am so sorry to disturb you,” she said, after awaking the woman, with
that courtesy which was a part of her nature when addressing those below
her in rank, “but I fear Mrs. Brady is very ill. Do you think you could
go to the house of one of the men and send him for Dr. Girvan?”
“What is the matter with her?” asked the woman brusquely.
“I cannot tell; she is moaning and restless and does not seem to know me
in the least.”
“It’s the fever, God help us,” said Susan. “I’ll waste no time, but go
for the doctor myself.”
“What! in the middle of the night?” exclaimed Grace.
“Ay, just as soon as if it was in the middle of the day,” she answered,
and proved as good as her word.
It was a long walk and a lonely to Kingslough, but Susan accomplished
it, and brought back Doctor Girvan by the time the sun was rising.
Miss Moffat went down to speak to him, and asked Susan to stay with her
mistress for a few minutes while she did so. Then the doctor said he
would see the patient; and as Grace walked up and down the once
neglected garden trifling away the time, he went into Mrs. Brady’s room,
the servant crossing him on the threshold.
He remained there a quarter of an hour or more, and when she met him
Miss Moffat saw he looked ill at ease.
“Do you think there is anything serious the matter with her?” she asked
anxiously.
“I cannot tell—yet,” he replied. “You have been with her all night?” he
said interrogatively.
“Yes, since I first knew she was ill.”
“No one must go into the room but yourself and me.”
“Why not?”
“You will know time enough. Amos Scott never murdered her husband at
all.”
“Then who did?”
“If you listen she will tell you.”
And Doctor Girvan, looking grey and old and haggard in the morning
light, drove away so utterly amazed and horror-stricken at Mrs. Brady’s
ravings that he forgot, if the fever were infectious, Miss Moffat stood
a very fair chance of catching it herself.
CHAPTER XII.
TWO INTERVIEWS.
It was a heavy oppressive afternoon—over Maryville a storm was
brooding—the leaden sky seemed almost to touch the tops of the dark
trees that hemmed in the house and grounds so closely that they might
well have been likened to prison walls; not a sound within or without
broke the stillness; in the fields the cattle lay panting with the heat;
in the woods the birds kept silence, listening perhaps for the first
roll of thunder, following swift after the leaping lightning.
It was a day to take the spirit out of any one, and Grace Moffat, as she
sat alone in the large drawing-room, still insufficiently furnished,
though some attempt had been made to fill its emptiness, felt miserable
and depressed to a degree of utter wretchedness.
She had made up her mind what she ought to do, but she still hesitated
and shivered at the idea of doing it. Nettie had been seriously ill for
two days, and there could be no question that, although her malady had
been at first merely inflammation of the brain, her disease was now
complicated with the fever raging at the Castle Farm.
But Grace did not care for that—a new horror had cast out the old. If
she had only been able to shake off the last task set for her, she would
cheerfully have run the risk of contracting a dozen fevers; she had
entreated Doctor Girvan to take it out of her hands, but he shook his
head.
“Leave it till she gets better; there is time enough,” he said, but
Grace knew there was not time enough—that what she had to do ought to be
done at once.
Sometimes she thought of writing to Lord Ardmorne and requesting his
advice and assistance in the matter; but having learnt all she knew
through the delirious utterances of an unconscious woman, she felt
herself charged with the weight of a fearful secret, which she was bound
in love and honour to bear alone.
As for her tending Nettie without assistance, Dr. Girvan’s medical sense
had told him any such proceeding was impracticable, quite as soon as
Grace’s common sense had told her the same thing.
Without going through the ceremony of consulting him, Miss Moffat had
despatched a messenger for her own little maid, mentioned once before in
these pages.
“I want you to help me nurse Mrs. Brady, who is ill with FEVER,” she
wrote. “If you are afraid, do not come.”
Back with the messenger, bundle in hand, came Nancy, trim and pretty as
ever, radiant with delight at seeing her former mistress once more.
“What did your mother say, Nancy?” asked Grace, looking at the bright
young face not without a certain feeling of remorse for having brought
it to a house where death might be lurking for its owner.
“Say, Miss—nothing, to be sure; wasn’t I coming to you!”
Miss Moffat walked to the window and back again, thinking in what form
of words to tell the girl what she wanted with her.
“Nancy,” she began, “if it had been only to nurse Mrs. Brady I required
help, I would never have asked you to help me. Plenty of women older and
more experienced than you could have been found for such a duty, but
what I really require is a person whom I can trust to keep silence. I
want you to promise me that to no human being now or hereafter—unless I
give you leave—you will ever mention a word of what you may hear in Mrs.
Brady’s room.”
“I’ll be true to you, Miss Grace, what you bid me I will do; it’s my
right and my pleasure too.”
Nancy had not been ten minutes installed in the sick room before Susan
asked to speak a word with Miss Moffat.
“Now that you’re getting your own servants here, Miss,” she began,
“you’ll likely not be wanting me any longer, and I just want to say I’ll
go without any telling, if you like.”
“I am not getting my own servants here,” said Miss Moffat, bewildered at
the sudden turn affairs had taken. “I do not want to meddle with the
arrangements of any other person’s house; but I cannot nurse Mrs. Brady
alone, you must know that, and I want to have some one with me I can
trust.”
“You might have trusted me, Miss,” said the woman, with a smouldering
fire in her dark eyes. “The Lord knows you might. Even though you have
done this thing and brought a stranger to this sorrowful house, man nor
woman shouldn’t wring from me what I know, nor—” she added after a
pause, devoted possibly to conjuring up an effective finish to her
sentence, “wild horses shouldn’t tear it. I never did like the mistress,
for all her pretty face and quiet ways; but I came nearer liking her the
other morning than ever I did before, when I found out how the trouble
had been eating in like rust, when I heard her letting out everything
she would have bitten her tongue off before she would have spoken in her
right mind. It was her silence always beat me; but I’d have nursed her
better than that slip of a thing can do, and I’d have died, Miss, before
I let on she had been talking of anything beyond the common.”
Miss Moffat stood silent for a moment, then she said,—
“I think open speaking is always a good thing. So far as I am concerned
I should be quite willing to trust you. I have been so sure of your good
faith, I never asked whether Mrs. Brady had been talking strangely after
I left her and went down to Doctor Girvan, but—I do not want to hurt
your feelings—how was it possible for me to let you nurse her? Do not
imagine I am setting myself up as a judge of you or anybody else; all I
ask is, if you had been in her place should you have liked such an
arrangement yourself?”
The woman did not answer direct, but she broke forth,—
“Do you want me to leave? I was fond of the children. I did my best by
them, I am doing all I know how now.”
“No,” Miss Moffat replied; “I do not want you to leave; at present, I
may tell you, it would inconvenience me beyond expression if you were to
do so. When Mrs. Brady is better, no doubt she will wish you to go. I
say this frankly, but when that day comes, if you want a chance for the
future, if you want to wipe out the past and try to make a better thing
of the rest of your life, I will help you.”
This time the answer came quick and sharp. “If there were more ladies
like you, there would be fewer women like me,” said the poor sinful
creature; her assurance vanquished, her insolence gone,—and, throwing
her apron over her head, she went along the stone passage leading to the
kitchen, sobbing—sobbing every step of the way.
Which evidence of contrition touched Miss Moffat beyond expression, and
gave her much hope concerning Susan’s future. She had learned many
things during the previous twelve months, but she had still to be taught
that repentance for past errors is not by any means a guarantee for
future good behaviour; that the tears wept over a crime committed and
irrevocable, dry up almost as soon as shed, and form no lake of
bitterness across which humanity finds almost insuperable difficulty in
steering to another sin.
Nevertheless, to be done with the subject, it may as well be here stated
that Miss Moffat’s generosity and Susan’s impressibility between them
bore good fruits.
The woman sinned no more. To the end of her life she was perhaps
scarcely a desirable person to know, but she married respectably a man
who was acquainted with her antecedents, and the pair migrated to a
strange country, where their children and their children are working
their way to name and fortune.
So goes the world—the busy, busy world we live in. How would the Puritan
Fathers have looked upon the man who should marry a woman notable for
antecedents such as these?
Still Grace sat looking out at the funereal trees, at the garden full of
flowers,—the common sweet-scented perennial flowers,—which made many an
otherwise poor home so rich in colour and perfume before the present
bedding-out system was invented by ingenious and enterprising
nurserymen,—still she cast an occasional glance at the threatening sky;
her thoughts divided the while between the murdered man who lay in a
quiet little burying ground amongst the hills,—his day ended while it
was still high noon, his power for evil over, his ability to vex and
distress gone,—and the person who had dealt the blow which silenced the
beating of that wicked heart, ended all its schemes, plots, hopes,
purposes for ever.
As yet she had not written to Mr. D’Almarez; she had done nothing but
think what had best be attempted in the matter—what it was possible to
perform.
As to allowing things to remain as they were till Nettie got better, she
put that idea aside as out of the question. To Doctor Girvan it appeared
the only course to pursue; but then he shrank from responsibility. He
was old, broken, feeble, and possessed of little moral courage; all his
life long his _rôle_ had been to know nothing, and pass from house to
house leaving the secrets of each behind him, and why should he mix
himself up with trouble and mischief now; or allow Miss Moffat to mix
herself up in such an affair, if he could avoid doing so?
Grace, on the contrary, blamed herself for having permitted her own
fears and disinclination to take so serious a responsibility on her own
shoulders to influence her for such a length of time.
“If I can keep my own share in the transaction secret,” she thought, “I
should like to do so; but if not, and that unpleasant consequences
ensue, I shall face them bravely as I am able. I wonder whether I could
be punished. I wish I dare ask Mr. D’Almarez. Shall I write and put the
question to Mr. Nicholson? No. I must wait no longer, whatever comes of
it; no more time ought to be lost.”
At this moment some one knocked gently on the panel of the drawing-room
door, and thinking it could only be Susan or Mary, Miss Moffat said,
“Come in,” without turning her eyes from the window.
Next moment, however, some indescribable feeling impelled her to look
round, and there standing in the open doorway, like a picture in a
frame, was a tall bearded man who appeared as much astonished to see her
as she was at sight of him.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, “but I expected to find Mrs. Brady here. I
asked for her and the servant pointed to this door.”
“Mrs. Brady is dangerously ill,” Grace replied; “with fever,” she added,
seeing the stranger advance into the room; then a second’s doubt and
hesitation, and she exclaimed, holding out her hand,—
“Why, it must be John Riley!”
“And you,” he said, after an almost imperceptible pause, “must be Miss
Moffat, though I should scarcely have known you.”
“I have had little rest and much anxiety since I returned to Ireland,”
she answered, as if apologizing for the change in her appearance.
He smiled gravely; it was not the right time, and he was not the right
person, to tell her she had altered almost beyond his recognition,
merely because she was now the most beautiful woman he had ever met.
“I thought you were in England,” he said, putting aside the difficulty
by changing the subject.
“So I was,” she replied, “until very lately. I came over here directly I
heard about Mr. Brady, and I am glad I did come, for Mrs. Brady is very
lonely and very ill. And that reminds me you ought not to stay here.”
“Why not?”
“For fear of infection.”
“I have lived in a climate where fever is so common people forget to
fear it,” he said.
“But Mrs. Riley and your sisters have not,” she suggested.
“I am not staying at Woodbrook,” he answered. “I am at Lakemount, and
the long ride back there will rid me of infection if I catch any here.”
Not at Woodbrook! Time was when Grace would have asked him the why and
the wherefore of such an extraordinary proceeding, but she could not do
this now. Neither could he tell her what a grievous disappointment his
return home had proved; how terrible that life of shortness, meanness,
discontent, complaining, had seemed to him after the wider and nobler
career his Indian experience had opened to him. He had done for his
family all a man could, and his family were dissatisfied with his
efforts. Not merely were affairs no better than when he went away, but
they were infinitely worse. The amount of the mortgage was increased,
the land was deteriorated in value, the houses and cottages were
dilapidated, and in many cases almost falling to ruin, whilst Woodbrook
itself gave evidence at every turn, of neglect; shortness of money; lack
of spirit to improve; lack of will to make the best of a bad position;
lack of faith that time and patience and energy might work wonders in
the way of repairing even the shattered fortunes of the Riley family.
Naturally, when absent, a man forgets the failings of those belonging to
him, if indeed he ever knew them; and perhaps there is no greater trial
than for a person to return to the home of his youth to find it and the
people it contains different from the ideal, experience of the world has
been gradually working up for him.
But these were things of which John Riley could not speak to any one.
Right glad had he been to accept Lord Ardmorne’s invitation, and leave
Woodbrook for Lakemount.
“Deserting his own flesh and blood,” said Mrs. Riley.
“It does not seem to me that his own flesh and blood made things very
pleasant for him,” observed the General, his old spirit roused at the
implied blame to his son.
Mr. John Riley’s visit to Maryville was prolonged perforce; for he had
not been seated many minutes before a flash of lightning, followed by a
loud sullen peal of thunder, announced that the storm so long threatened
had come.
During the time he remained he spoke of little, except Nettie; her
position and her future prospects. He had been informed there was no
will, and that, consequently, the eldest son taking the freehold
property, Mrs. Brady’s share of her late husband’s estate would probably
be small.
“But, of course, all the children being young, she will have an
allowance for their support,” finished Mr. Riley.
“Money,” thought Grace, “money again.”
Had any one put the question, however, to Miss Moffat, how people are in
this world to live without money, she might have been slightly puzzled
to tell them.
“If there is any way in which I can be of assistance to Mrs. Brady, I
should regard it as a great kindness if you would let me know,” said Mr.
Riley, when at length he rose to go.
In her friend’s name Grace thanked him, and then he went on,—
“You have warned me against this fever, Miss Moffat; but are you not
running a terrible risk yourself in the matter?”
“No,” she answered; “I shall not take it.”
“How can you be certain of that?” he asked.
“I have a perfect conviction on the subject,” she said. “It is not
intended I should have fever at present.”
“Are you a fatalist?” inquired Mr. Riley.
“On some points, yes,” she replied, and then he went; and Grace from an
upper window watched him ride slowly away down the avenue, till the
gloomy trees, dripping wet from the late storm, hid him from her sight.
For one second after she first recognized him, she had felt tempted to
show her burden to this man who had once loved her, and ask him to take
its weight and its responsibility. Only for one second. The formal Miss
Moffat with which he addressed her cast the half-formed resolution to
the winds.
How could she tell anything of the weary days, months, years, in which
he had been schooling himself to forget the old familiar name, and think
and speak of her only as Miss Moffat?
How could she, who had never loved him, understand the shock, the
surprise, the misery, the pleasure, that sudden meeting had proved to
him! How was it possible for her to comprehend anything save that he was
changed, that the John Riley of her childish and girlish recollection
was gone as utterly as the years which were past!
Dimly and yet certainly, watching his figure as it slowly disappeared,
Grace grasped the truth, that when she refused him that evening, while
the scent of summer flowers was around them, and the sea rippled in on
the shore, she killed the John she had known so long—been associated
with so intimately.
That John was dead and buried; and the John Riley, with the bronzed face
and erect figure and bushy beard, who had answered her greeting so
formally, was another man.
Over this interview, however, Grace had not much time to think. Another
was impending that occupied her mind to the exclusion of almost every
other topic.
“Shall I put it off?” she thought; “the lanes will be wet and the grass
soaking.” And then she put the temptation from her.
“It must be done. Supposing I were to catch this fever, who would there
be to see justice done; to save them both, if possible?”
If possible; she shivered at the suggestion contained in the words.
She went to her room, in a different part of the house from where Nettie
lay; and putting on her travelling-dress, an old bonnet and coarse shawl
she had found belonging to Mrs. Brady, looked in the glass to see if in
the dusk might hope to pass through Kingslough unrecognized.
“With a thick veil I think I shall be safe,” she said; and then she took
off the shawl, carrying it over her arm, and put a thick lace fall in
her pocket, and taking the key of a side-door with her, passed through
one of the drawing-room windows into the gardens, and so made her way
unobserved out of the grounds of Maryville.
Once in the fields of the Castle Farm she knew every inch of the
country, and this knowledge enabled her to reach, by unfrequented roads
and by-paths, that part of the shore lying beneath the hill on which
Ballylough Abbey stood.
There on a great piece of rock she sat down to rest, and wait till the
twilight deepened and darkened.
When it was fairly dusk she resumed her walk, still along the beach,
never entering Kingslough till she reached the further end of the town,
whence through narrow lanes and back streets she arrived at Mr. Hanlon’s
surgery.
Her hand trembled so much at first that she could not pull the bell. At
last she heard it tinkle, and to her great relief the door was opened by
Mr. Hanlon in person.
“I wish to speak to you, if you please,” she said, in a voice so low and
quivering, that the poor attempt she made to disguise it was
unnecessary.
“Certainly; come in.”
“In private,” she suggested.
“You have come to tell me some great secret, I suppose,” he remarked
jocularly; desiring, apparently, to put his timid patient at her ease.
“Go in there,” he added, pointing to a parlour beyond the surgery, where
he had no doubt been reading, for a lamp stood on the table, and a book
lay open near it. “Now what is it?” he went on, placing a chair for his
visitor, and taking one himself.
She did not speak, but turned her head in the direction of the door of
communication which he had left ajar.
“If you wish it, by all means,” he said, answering that look, and he
rose and not only shut but locked it.
“Now, what have you to tell me,” he asked.
She put back her veil and looked him straight in the face.
As she did so, he shrank as though he had received a blow, and every
particle of colour left him.
“Miss Moffat!” he exclaimed. “You in Ireland?”
“Yes; at Maryville,” was her reply. “Now, you know why I am here.”
“Wait a minute,” he said, and unlocking the door passed out into his
surgery. He was not a man addicted to stimulants. Even in these days he
would have been accounted abstemious, and for those times when
temperance had scarcely established itself as a virtue, he was reckoned,
amongst wild young fellows who knew no better, and old ones who ought to
have known better, a milksop who was “afraid to take his liquor because
he could not carry it.”
Now, however, he unlocked a cupboard, and pouring himself out half a
tumbler of raw spirit, swallowed it at a gulp; then he went back and
said,—
“No, Miss Moffat, I do not know why you are here; though I can guess why
you might have sent some one else.”
“Who else might I have sent?” she inquired.
“Why there is only one thing now to do, is there?” he retorted.
“What is that?”
“Give me up as I have lacked courage to give myself up,” he said
desperately.
“Then you do not deny it?” she said.
“Deny it! Why should I deny it? Have not I known it must come to this
some time? Have I ever ceased cursing my own vacillation in not going
straight away to the inspector here, and telling him the whole story?
People might have believed me then; but they will never believe me now.”
There was a moment’s silence which he broke by asking,—
“How did you get to know about this, Miss Moffat?”
“Mrs. Brady is too ill to keep many secrets,” was the reply.
“Ill! what is the matter with her?” he hurriedly inquired.
“Fever.”
“Who is attending her?”
“Doctor Girvan.”
“The old dotard will kill her,” he exclaimed.
“He will do no such thing,” answered Grace sharply. “Doctor Girvan will
no more kill Mrs. Brady than you have killed Reuben Scott. If she dies,
it can only be because God willed she was to do so, not because she has
lacked attention. Nevertheless,” added Grace reflectively, “I should
have had further advice, only I feared—”
“Do not let that consideration influence you any longer,” he said, “I
shall give myself up in the morning.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because there is nothing else to do,” he answered with a bitter laugh.
“Because the game is played out, and I may as well throw down the cards
as have them taken out of my hands.”
“Shall I tell you what you ought to do?” asked Miss Moffat.
“If you will be so good.”
She took no notice of the mocking defiance of his tone, the recklessness
of his manner with which he tried to cover the abject despair that was
mastering him; but went on, gathering courage as she proceeded,—
“You ought to leave Kingslough at once. Scott can be saved without you;
and Mrs. Brady’s name should be kept out of this miserable affair
altogether.”
“She is innocent,” he said. “Tell me any form of words of I can employ,
sufficiently strong to assure you of that, and I will use them.”
Instinctively Grace drew back from the subject. “I am very certain she
is innocent,” she replied. “I require no assurance on that point from
any one.”
“I beg your pardon and hers,” he answered; more humbly than he had yet
spoken. “You are quite right, Miss Moffat,” he continued, after a
moment’s pause. “If I stay here I may not be able to save my own life.
If I go I shall spare her—perhaps.”
“There is no perhaps in it. The greatest kindness you can do Mrs. Brady
is to leave here at once.”
“Leave, to be brought back,” he said. “Fly, to make my return all the
worse?”
“There is no occasion for you to be brought back,” she urged. “There is
plenty of time for you to make your way to some country where you may be
safe for the rest of your life.”
“There is no time,” he said; “once Scott’s innocence is declared, the
law will be on my track like a bloodhound.”
“I have thought it all over,” she persisted, “Scott’s trial can, I am
persuaded, be put off. Up to the present time, it may be supposed, no
one knows anything of this except yourself and Mrs. Brady. Mrs. Brady is
too ill to give evidence. Weeks must elapse before she can be
questioned. Make use of those weeks. Go away as if for a visit, and stay
away.”
He put his elbows on the table and covered his face with his hands, and,
as in some nightmare, the whole of his life passed in review before him.
It had opened with such fair prospects; and behold, this was the end! He
had hoped to win wealth, women’s smiles, golden opinions from his
fellows; and the end, was a choice of two alternatives:—to remain, and,
if he escaped the gallows, be sentenced to transportation, most probably
for life; or to escape, and lead a fugitive existence, under an assumed
name, for the rest of his days.
He thought of the sacrifices his father had made for him; he thought of
the castles his mother had built with her son’s fame, or her son’s
talent, or her son’s greatness for the foundation-stone of each; he
thought of how proud he had felt of his own gifts; of how certain he had
been of achieving success; and now he let his hands drop and looked at
Miss Moffat with a face so white, so haggard, so aged, so hopeless, that
Grace was forced to turn her eyes away. She could not bear to look upon
a wreck so sudden and so complete.
“You ought not to be staying here,” he said, in a choking voice and with
an evident effort. “You came by the shore, I suppose? You would not
mind, perhaps, if I asked leave to walk part of the way back with you. I
mean, you would not feel—afraid.”
“Afraid!” she only spoke that one word, but it was enough. He could feel
there were tears and sorrow, and compassion and regret in her tone;
tears, sorrow, compassion, and regret for him.
“If you will walk slowly along the beach I will follow you,” he said.
“I—I want to tell you how it all happened.”
She bowed her head in acquiescence, drew the veil over her face once
more, and passed out silently into the night.
She had not walked more than halfway to Ballylough Head before he was at
her side.
Without waiting for him to speak, she said,—
“I do not know, Mr. Hanlon, whether you have a sister.”
Under the circumstances it seemed to him a curious question, but he
answered,—
“I have.”
“Before you tell me anything, I want to know if I may, without giving
you offence, speak to you as your sister if she were here might, and
would?”
“If one of my sisters were speaking to me now,” he replied, “she would
not, I am very sure, find much to say that was pleasant. They have built
their hopes on me, and now—but go on, Miss Moffat, say anything you
like, no matter how true it may be, I will try to bear it.”
“You mistake me a little, I think,” she said; “all I meant was that if a
sister found her brother in a sore strait as you are now, she would
speak to him with no more reserve than I am about to do. Ever since I
knew of this matter I have been thinking how it will be best for you to
get away; what it will be best for you to do when you have got away. I
suppose I am right in imagining you might find a difficulty in finding
the means at once for a long journey.”
“I have done very well at Kingslough,” he replied, “and if I could only
sell my practice, and I had an offer for it not long since, I should
have no difficulty in going to the uttermost ends of the earth.”
“Yes, but by the time you had sold your practice it might be too late.
If you can get any friend to take your place while you go away
apparently for a holiday, you had better leave everything just as it is
at this moment. Woman’s wit is quick, Mr. Hanlon, if it be not very
profound, and my wit tells me every hour you lose in quitting Kingslough
may prove nearer—nearer—that which we all want to avert. I have very
little money here, but I can send you a letter which will enable you to
get all you may require. You are not offended I hope?” she went on
hurriedly; “I know you cannot escape without sufficient money to do so,
and it will be the happiest day of my life when I hear you have got
safely out of the country.”
All the manhood which was in him rebelled against having to accept such
help as this; and for a moment he bared his head and let the cool night
wind play upon his temples to relieve the pain which seemed tearing his
brain to pieces. Never had Theophilus Hanlon seemed such a poor creature
to himself before; no,—not even when he fled from the side of the man he
had murdered; never had he been thoroughly humbled in his own estimation
previously. If she had loved him; if he could only for one moment have
flattered himself she cared for him more than for the most ordinary
acquaintance, the stab might not have pierced so deep.
As it was, he felt the wound was bleeding internally, and that it would
continue to bleed at intervals throughout all the years to come.
“I have offended you,” she said. “Pardon my want of tact. I did not mean
to hurt your feelings.”
“Hurt my feelings!” he repeated; in the interval during which he
remained silent he had tested the truth of each word she said, and
admitted, reluctantly it might be, but still certainly, that without
such help as she offered, liberty and he might shake hands and part for
ever. “Hurt my feelings! When a man has done what I have done, when he
has failed to do what I have failed to do, he may reasonably be supposed
to have no feelings left to hurt. And yet, Miss Moffat,” he went on, “I
will be frank with you; just for a moment your offer cut me. It is so
hard—oh! my God,” he broke out in a passion of agony, “what had I ever
done that such a trouble should come upon me!”
“Hush!” said Grace. It seemed to her excited fancy as if in the
darkness, his voice must travel more swiftly than in the light, to the
Throne of Him whose justice and righteousness he questioned. “What have
any of us done that trouble should not come? But in our eyes it does
appear hard,” she went on. “If you like—if it will not pain you—tell me
how it all came about.”
“I do not know how it began,” he answered. “I supposed no one ever does.
I could no more tell you how it was I came to care for Mrs. Brady than I
could tell you how the grass grows, or the sea ebbs and flows. One
thing, however, I do know, she never cared for me; never in that way. If
she had, I should not be talking to you here now; if she had we would
have been far away from Ireland long ago. I did not intend to tell her
about it,” he continued, “but one day it slipped out; and then she
turned round and laughed in my face, such a mocking, despairing,
forsaken sort of laugh, it rung in my ears for many a week after.
“‘Keep that for the next young girl you meet, Mr. Hanlon,’ she said,
‘who knows no better. I have heard it all before. Do you suppose I
should ever have left my home, poor as it was, and my friends, few as
they were, if he had not first thrown that glamour over me? A woman
cannot be deceived twice; and there is no vow you or anybody else could
swear, no temptation you could hold out, that could make me trust my
future a second time in a man’s hands.’
“She loved her children as I never knew a woman love them before, though
she was afraid to show her affection, lest he should find means of
punishing her through it; and because I was kind to them, she had a
feeling for me—gratitude, friendship, trust—I do not know what to call
it—which would have prevented her from making any open breach between
us, even if she had dared to tell her husband of the words I had spoken.
“But she did not dare to tell him. It was cowardly, I make no doubt, not
to leave a woman so placed; but except for me she was friendless,
helpless, in the hands of a demon, and I could not keep from trying to
know how things were with her.
“They grew worse and worse. After his attempt to get General Riley’s
estate failed, the life he led his wife baffles description, and yet she
tried to hide what she suffered from every one, even from me. She wanted
him to leave the country; she thought if she could separate him from his
bad associates, it might be better for the children at any rate, if not
for her. I have seen her wringing her hands about the stories which were
told and the ballads that were written and sung; and she used to say she
hoped it would be all gone and past, all forgotten and put out of men’s
minds before the children grew up.
“‘For if not,’ she asked, ‘what is to become of them?’
“Then I prayed of her again to leave him. I offered to get her and the
children away safely by some means if she would let me arrange it all,
and take them where he could never find them.
“That time she did not laugh. She began to tremble all over, and said,—
“‘If you were a woman and made me the same offer, I would go this hour;
but if I did what you want me, how could I ever look my boys in the face
when they grew to be men—how should I teach my girls to be better than
their mother had been. I would rather kill myself than do it. Never ask
me such a thing again.’
“I went out of the house ashamed, Miss Moffat. I vowed to myself I never
would ask her again, and I kept as much away as I could from Maryville,
until after that morning when she stole into Kingslough, and, half
distracted, tried to tear down the bills with which, as you have no
doubt heard, the town was placarded. A man saw and pursued her. I
happened to be returning from a bad case which had detained me all
night, and she ran right up against me. There was only one thing to do,
and I did it. I knocked the fellow down, and as she had fainted carried
her into my surgery. When she was better I walked home with her, and
from that time began the mischief which has ended as you know.
“So far as I could gather, the man I knocked down bore malice, and took
occasion, when he was less than ordinarily sober, to jeer Mr. Brady
about there being an understanding between me and his wife. Mr. Brady
forbade me to set foot inside Maryville, and I obeyed him until _that_
night. Do I weary you?”
“No,” Grace answered. “I want to hear all you have to tell me. Some day
she may be glad to have a person near her who knows the whole story.”
“The evening before, Scott had been with me. He came in the worse for
drink, and talked excitedly of the Glendares and Mr. Brady and his own
wrongs. He said when Robert Somerford came to be earl, if he ever did,
he would not have an acre to call his own; that it had come home to the
Glendares as it would come home to Mr. Brady; and then he went on in a
maundering sort of way to speak—forgive my mentioning the matter, but it
is connected with that which followed—of what a blessing it was you had
never after all taken up, as he styled it, with Mr. Somerford. ‘Ay, it
was a good and honest gentleman the first that asked her, if Miss Grace
could have fancied him. There never was a Riley, Tories though they are,
would have broken his promise, and brought a poor man to beggary, as Th’
Airl has done by me.’
“‘But,’ he went on, ‘Brady did not get Woodbrook from his wife’s
cousins, and it’s like, clever as he thinks himself, he won’t have the
Castle Farm neither.’
“As the man spoke, it flashed through my mind that it was Mrs. Brady who
had revealed her husband’s designs on Woodbrook. I lay awake the whole
night thinking about it, and then I understood dimly, but certainly,
that when she wished to meet you, it was to tell you of his plans, when
she wrote to you it was to entrust you to frustrate them.”
“You are right,” Grace remarked as he stopped for a moment, living,
perhaps, the misery of that anxious night over again once more.
“What I suffered thinking about her and her position after that no one
can conceive. I knew the man’s nature. I had seen him mentally
unclothed, and I was certain all she had endured previously at his hands
would be nothing as compared with what would follow if once a suspicion
of the truth entered his mind. I felt I must see her once again, and
warn her of the danger that menaced. Whatever they might have been
before, my feelings then were unselfish. You believe me, Miss Moffat?”
“I do, but pray go on.”
“I knew he intended to go to Dublin the next day, and I saw him take the
coach at Kilcurragh, where I made it my business to be. When I returned
home, Scott had been round to say Reuben was worse, and so, putting some
medicine for the lad in my pocket and Scott’s stick, which he had left
in my room the previous evening, in my hand, I started for the Castle
Farm, taking Maryville on my way. I did not want any one at the latter
place to know of my visit. Mr. Brady had put the last insult on his
wife, and—”
“I know,” Grace interrupted, “we need not talk of that—”
“After making sure there was no one about, I went into the
flower-garden, and concealing myself behind some shrubs, looked into the
room where she generally sat. You know it, the small apartment adjoining
the drawing-room. She was there alone; and when I tapped at the window,
seeing who it was she came and undid the fastening for me.
“‘I must speak to you,’ I said. ‘Will you come out, or is it safe for me
to speak to you here?’
“‘Quite safe,’ she answered, moving the candle so that no one from the
outside could see me where I sat. ‘Now, what is the matter?’
“In a few words I told her what I suspected. She said I had guessed
rightly.
“‘Are you not afraid,’ I asked, ‘of what may happen if Mr. Brady ever
guesses it also?’
“‘No,’ she said; ‘I do not intend to wait for that.’
“‘Do you mean that at last—’ I began, scarcely able to believe the
evidence of my senses, and in that very moment, when as it seemed all I
had wished for was within my grasp, feeling a dull sick wish we had
never met, that I had never loved, never tempted her.
“‘No, Mr. Hanlon,’ she answered; there was a composure and a peace about
her I had never seen before; the hard restraint which usually
characterized her was gone, and as she stood with the light streaming on
her face, there was a hope which never previously shown in them
gladdening her eyes. ‘No, Mr. Hanlon, I do not mean that, and some day
you will be thankful for it. What I mean is this, John Riley has come
home. He is in Ireland; I could trust my life in his hands. He will
protect me; he will enable me to get free from my husband, and to keep
my children all to myself. If you still wish to serve me, you can see
him and repeat what I say; you can tell him all—all you have seen in
this house, all you know I have gone through, and bid him find some way
of helping me as I found a way of helping him and his.’
“We talked for a little time longer, and then I left her. As I was going
she noticed what a heavy stick I carried, and asked with a smile such as
had never lighted up her face in my knowledge of it, whether I was
afraid of being stopped that I walked about with such a shillelagh.
“I said it belonged to Amos Scott, who had left it at my place the
previous night, and that I was going to take it to the Castle Farm.
“‘They have fever there,’ she remarked.
“‘Yes, and a very bad fever too,’ I said. ‘Every word we spoke that
night is printed on my heart.’
“‘Poor people, how they have suffered!’ she murmured, in a sort of
whisper. ‘Ah! they have felt what it is to be in his power as well as
I.’”
“As I had come through the gardens, I returned by them. It was a quiet
beautiful night, and not a sound, not even the flight of a night-bird
broke the stillness.
“I went by the fields to Scott’s house, and had got as far as the gate
leading into the orchard, when I heard some one shout ‘Halloa!’ and a
minute after a man came up panting to where I stood.
“It was Brady.
“‘I want to have five minutes’ talk with you, sir,’ he began, when he
had recovered his breath a little, ‘but not here. Walk on with me a bit
down the road, where we shall be out of the way of eaves-dropping.’
“He had been so lately engaged in the same business that the word came
naturally to him.
“To cut a long tale short, Miss Moffat, his journey to Dublin had been
all a blind. He wanted, he said, to know if the stories he was told of
what went on in his absence were true, and he had returned to learn more
than he bargained for.
“He went on for a time more like a madman than anything else; but at
last calmed down a little, and said if I would promise him not to
deliver Mrs. Brady’s message he would overlook her ‘Judasism’—so he
styled her attempt to save her friends from ruin.
“This I flatly refused. I told him she had asked me to help her; and,
heaven helping me, I would—”
The speaker stopped suddenly—he had been overwrought; he had been like a
horse going across country till now; and now there came a double ditch,
he remembered he ought not to have forgotten.
“Miss Moffat,” he slowly recommenced, “after that came something I
hesitate to tell you.”
“Tell me,” she said. “It does not matter that I am young instead of old.
If it can help Nettie, it cannot hurt me.”
“He bade me take her if she would. He said I had his full leave, and
free to rid him of a wife who had been his curse from the day he brought
her home—whom he hated—whom he might some day, and that soon, be tempted
to kill.”
“Yes!” gasped Grace.
“And I said I would rid her of him that hour and that minute; for that I
loved, and honoured, and respected her too much to make her name a
bye-word and a reproach, and that I would take her straight away from
Maryville to her own kith and kin at Woodbrook, where there were two men
who would know how to protect a woman’s fair fame from a ruffian like
himself.”
“Yes!” said Grace again breathlessly. The end was at hand.
“I turned to go back to Maryville. I swear to you, Miss Moffat, I should
never have quitted the house, leaving her at his mercy, for I knew what
she had to expect; but he barred my passage.”
“‘You villain,’ he said, ‘you shall never stir from here alive.’
“He put his hand in his pocket—I knew he went armed—and so I shortened
the stick I held, turning it, and struck him over the head with the
heavy end.
“I did not try to kill the man, God is my witness of the fact. In my
examination I stated the simple truth. A man who meant to do mischief
with such a blow could scarcely have dealt it. He dropped down on the
instant, and then a horror seized me. I flung away the stick and knelt
down beside him, and felt his pulse, and laid his cheek to mine.
“He was dead, and I had killed him. I heard footsteps coming and fled,
thinking every moment some one was pursuing me. I have felt the same
thing ever since. To-night you, Miss Moffat, have realized the
ideal—that is, the end of the story I had to tell,” he said in a low
suppressed voice.
But Grace had something still to ask. “Mr. Hanlon,” she began, “what did
you mean to do about Amos Scott?”
“I meant to let him stand his trial, and if they found him
guilty—confess.”
“You are sure of that?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Then I think not, Mr. Hanlon,” she said. “As the temptation mastered
you so far, it would have mastered you further; and we may all feel very
thankful that through Mrs. Brady’s illness, you have been saved from so
fearful an ordeal.”
The words might be cruel, but the tone in which they were uttered took
all bitterness out of them. It conveyed less a reproach for his cowardly
selfishness than a feeling of gratitude that Scott’s torture was
well-nigh over, without it being necessary for Mr. Hanlon to criminate
himself, or Nettie to denounce him. That she would have done so
eventually, Grace could not doubt; but whether before or after the trial
was another question. In any event it was well neither of them had been
called upon to save Scott by such extreme measures.
By this time Miss Moffat and her companion had reached the plantations
which divided the grounds of Maryville from the Castle Farm.
“Do not come any further,” she said pausing. “I would rather you did
not.”
He attempted no remonstrance, but stood silent before her.
“By eight o’clock to-morrow morning,” she said, “the letter I spoke of
shall be in your hands.”
He did not speak; he made no sign for a moment, then suddenly he broke
out wildly,—
“I cannot go; it is useless. You ask more from me than I am able to do.”
Utterly astounded; utterly at a loss as to what he meant she remained
mute, till suddenly comprehension came to her.
“Surely,” she exclaimed, “you cannot be so mad as to imagine Mrs. Brady
would ever voluntarily look upon your face again!”
“Forgive me,” he entreated humbly. “I was no more to blame for that
outbreak than the patient who shrinks under the surgeon’s knife. I know
what I have to do, and I will do it. May God bless you for helping me
upon my weary way.”
He was turning to go without further leave-taking, when she held out her
hand.
“Miss Moffat, you forget,” he said.
“No, I do not forget,” she answered. “Take it as a sign that the old has
ended and the new begun.”
Stooping down, he pressed his lips upon it; then without uttering a word
strode back along the path he had come.
She stood till she could distinguish his figure no longer, and watched
him through the darkness drifting out of her life.
When she reached Maryville, she found Dr. Girvan waiting for her.
“I have come to tell you, Miss Moffat,” he began, “that I am ashamed of
myself, and whatever may come of it, good or harm, I will go to him, we
both know about, and say just whatever you bid me.”
“Thank you a thousand times over,” she answered. “But I have been to him
to-night, and he will leave Kingslough to-morrow.”
“God be praised,” exclaimed the doctor devoutly.
The opportunity was irresistible to Grace.
“I hope you are not premature in your thanksgiving,” she said. “His
successor may prove as great a thorn in your side as he has done.”
“Ah! how can ye!” expostulated the old man, shaking his head
reproachfully at her as he left the room.
CHAPTER XIII.
CONCLUSION.
It was September—the loveliest month of all the year in Ireland. On the
hillsides the ripe corn stood gathered into golden sheaves. In the
meadows—whence the small stacks had just been carried, to make the great
ricks that caused many an humble farmyard to look full and
wealthy—cattle browsed the rich pasture in a very ecstasy of content.
Clear and distinct the summits of the distant mountains could be seen
rising to meet the blue cloudless sky. Almost without a ripple, the
Atlantic washed gently into sheltered bays, over sandy and pebbly
shores. With as easy a flight as that of the sea-birds, the white-sailed
vessels in the offing cleft their homeward or outward way; whilst, on
the hill-tops, the purple heather and the yellow gorse mingled their
colours together, and wild thyme gave forth its perfume in solitudes
where there was no passer-by to inhale its fragrance.
On the top of a slight eminence, from which the ground, clad in a robe
of emerald green, sloped down to the water’s edge, stood a
lonely-looking house, which commanded a view—so its admirers said—of the
Atlantic straight away to Newfoundland,—two thousand miles of ocean
without a strip of earth; two thousand miles of water resting quiet and
silent, waiting for the stormy weather, when the billows should rise up
mountains high, lashing themselves like a lion in his fury, and rushing
white crested to devour their prey.
This house had been taken by Mrs. Hartley for the autumn, and to it, by
slow stages, Mrs. Brady and Grace Moffat were brought to regain health
and strength; the former with pale face, and hair cut close like a
boy’s; the latter weak as a child, after the mental excitement and
bodily fatigue she had gone through.
By the time Mrs. Brady was pronounced out of danger, she had begun to
droop; walking about Maryville—so Doctor Girvan said—like one more dead
than alive, till Mrs. Hartley came and put a stop to her exertions.
It was marvellous to see the change that energetic lady wrought in the
aspect of affairs. Before a fortnight was over she had discovered the
house I have mentioned, which the gentleman who owned was glad to let,
“in order to have the furniture taken care of,” was his way of putting
it; she had despatched Marrables, a cook, and her maid to have all in
readiness for the arrival of the invalids; she had disposed of Nettie’s
children by sending them to a lady of limited income, who was
“thankful,” so she said, “to have it in her power to do anything to
oblige dear Mrs. Hartley and, finally, she had established herself and
party at that precise part of the coast where Doctor Murney stated the
air would be most bracing for Miss Moffat.
“Of course,” said Mrs. Hartley to Nettie, “it does not matter to you
where we go, provided we leave Maryville.”
“No,” Mrs. Brady answered; and that morning they drove down the gloomy
avenue, and away from the gates of that house which had proved so
wretched to her. She waved her hand back towards it with a gesture of
farewell.
“Good-bye, Maryville,” she said; “I may see you in my dreams, but never
again with my waking eyes, I trust.”
They had been but a few days in their new abode. Nettie, seated near one
of the windows, was looking out over the sea; Mrs. Hartley was reading
the ‘Times;’ Jet, apparently under the impression there was a fire in
the grate, monopolized the hearthrug; and Grace was lying on a sofa,
wondering when she should be strong enough to bathe, and walk, and climb
to the top of one particular headland she could not lift her eyes
without seeing.
“I think I should get well at once if I could only lie for a few hours
amongst the heather, watching the bees as they hum in and out amongst
the thyme,” she said at last.
“We will get some of the fishermen to carry you up to the top of the
highest hill we can find, in a creel,” suggested Mrs. Brady.
“I wish we could hear of a quiet pony she could ride,” said Mrs.
Hartley, in whose eyes the excursion proposed by Nettie did not find
favour.
“I don’t think a quiet pony was an animal Gracie ever much appreciated,”
retorted Mrs. Brady.
“I am very certain it will be a considerable time before she is strong
enough to manage an unquiet one,” answered Mrs. Hartley.
“You have never told me,” said Miss Moffat, turning towards the last
speaker, “how you heard I was ill.”
“I heard you were ill,” said Mrs. Hartley, taking off her eye-glasses
and looking over the ‘Times’ at her questioner, “from John Riley. He
said if I did not soon come over to Maryville I should hear shortly you
were dead. I should have mentioned that fact before, but thought you
were probably getting as much tired of hearing Mr. Riley’s name
mentioned as I was myself.”
“I never intend to speak of John again,” remarked Nettie. “I thought,
Mrs. Hartley, you were his friend; but I am sorry to find I was
mistaken.”
“My dear,” said Mrs. Hartley calmly, “I hope I am Mr. Riley’s friend,
but still I can imagine many things more interesting and amusing than to
hear his virtues recited every hour in the twenty-four.”
“But you do not know all, or half! Neither of you know how good he has
been to me,” exclaimed Nettie.
“If we do not we must be exceedingly dull of apprehension,” replied Mrs.
Hartley—at which Grace laughed, and remarked if they did not know, it
was certainly not for want of being told.
“I never expected anything better from you,” said Mrs. Brady, turning
quickly towards her; “you never did appreciate John, and it seems as if
you never would.”
“Well, do not let us lose our tempers about him,” entreated Mrs.
Hartley, “more particularly as he is coming here next week.”
“Is he coming?” asked Grace.
“Yes, to give us what I earnestly hope may prove the conclusion of the
Scott romance. It seems to me that since I set foot in Ireland I have
heard of nothing but the Scotts, the Glendares, the Rileys, the Hanlons,
and the Bradys; interesting people all of them, no doubt, but I confess
I like an occasional change of person and incident.”
“So do I,” said Grace. “Much as I like the Scotts, I shall be very glad
when I hear they all are on their way to America.”
“As if they could not have gone there as well at first as at last,”
observed Mrs. Hartley.
“I was willing for them to stay on at the Castle Farm, but Amos would
not hear of it,” explained Mrs. Brady.
“The moment, in fact, he saw he could go the way he wished without
opposition, all desire to do so ceased,” remarked Mrs. Hartley.
“Still, I think it very natural he should wish to leave Ireland,” said
Grace.
“Yes, but would not it have been equally natural for him to wish the
same thing eighteen months ago?”
“I cannot see it exactly,” said Scott’s apologist; and disdaining
further argument, Mrs. Hartley resumed her perusal of the ‘Times.’
From the foregoing conversation it will be inferred, and rightly, that
influence had been at work in the Scott and Hanlon affair. The former
was already at liberty, the latter beyond the reach of justice; at
least, so far away that justice might be excused for not finding him.
Nettie had made her statement, but this was so managed that those parts
of the story which might have compromised her were kept in the
background, and as no one wished to bring Mr. Hanlon to trial, it was
extremely unlikely they would ever be elicited in Court.
To the wretched parents at Hanlon’s-Town John Riley had broken the news
himself. He had taken all care and trouble off Nettie, and she clung to
him in her distress as a child might have done.
To him, nothing in Ireland seemed so unreal as the sight of Nettie in
her widow’s cap and black gown trimmed heavily with crape to express her
mourning for the worst man and the worst husband, as Mr. Riley believed,
who ever existed.
About Nettie herself, however, there was no pretence.
“I cannot say I am sorry,” she confessed; “I cannot feel sorry. I wish I
could, for oh! John, with all my heart and soul I loved him when I was a
girl.”
“Poor Nettie! poor little woman! I never repented but once making him
marry you,” he answered, stroking her thin face, “and that has been ever
since.”
“You did it for the best,” she answered, “and in the worst of my trouble
I never doubted that.”
Why was it, Grace Moffat asked herself, that when she saw the cousins
talking confidentially together—saw John carry Nettie in her first
convalescence from room to room, her head resting on his shoulder, her
arm thrown around his neck in her helpless weakness—a pain went through
her heart such as had never struck it before?
“Am I jealous?” she thought, with an uneasy laugh, “jealous of John!
Absurd! Am I jealous of seeing another woman prove more attractive than
myself? Yes, my dear Grace, that is what is the matter. You are growing
old, and have got lean and ugly, and you cannot hear that your friend
should, notwithstanding the troubles she has passed through, keep her
good looks whilst you are losing yours. That is the secret of all this
dissatisfaction. Time was when you would have laughed such an idea to
scorn, in the days
“When I was young,
And had suitors, a full score.”
Meanwhile Mrs. Hartley looked on, but said nothing; not to Nettie, not
to John, not to Grace did she speak on the subject.
Only to Lord Ardmorne did she open her mind.
“I think if we have patience, my lord,” she remarked uttering her
oracle, “we shall see what we shall see.”
At which his lordship smiled with a gravity befitting his station and
his political opinions, and said, he “earnestly hoped so.”
John Riley came as Mrs. Hartley said he would. He had seen the Scotts
off. He went to Liverpool for the purpose. Amos was disturbed in his
mind because at the last minute Mr. Moody had informed him there were no
long-handled spades to be had in America, and he wished he had taken
half-a-dozen out with him.
Mrs. Scott bade Mr. Riley say, if it cost twenty pounds, she would send
the first cheese she made in the new country to Miss Grace. They had
only one regret—that they could not take Reuben’s grave with them.
“When I promised to put up a headstone and have the grass well kept,”
added Mr. Riley, “they began to cry; but they were tears of happiness,
so Mrs. Scott assured me.”
Before Mr. Riley left, the quiet pony Mrs. Hartley had wished for was
found; and Grace, taken by many devious paths to the top of a very high
hill, where a throne was made for her amongst the purple heather, and
the bees, as if to do her honour, never ceased humming in and out
amongst the fragrant thyme.
But it was not there or then, with Nettie flitting round and about them,
that John Riley spoke.
He waited till the leaves on the trees encircling Woodbrook had put on
their October tints—till Grace was almost strong again—till it had been
decided Nettie and her children were to go to England with Mrs. Hartley,
and inhabit a cottage portly Mr. Marrables was despatched to inspect and
of which he condescended to approve,—waited till the purple had faded
from the heather and the Atlantic was beginning its winter wail of woe;
then as they walked together by the sea, he said,—
“Lord Ardmorne has shown me how to save Woodbrook. It will require
years—energy and hard work—but it may be done. When Mr. Brady found he
could not oust out my father, he wrote to Lord Ardmorne who would, he
concluded, purchase the estate, offering to tell him, for a share in the
profits, how its value might be doubled.
“To this his lordship wrote, declining all communication with him on any
subject whatsoever.
“Since Mr. Brady’s death, it has been ascertained what his scheme was,
and Lord Ardmorne proposes I should take Woodbrook into my own hands,
paying my father a certain sum sufficient to enable him, my mother, and
the girls, to live comfortably, and myself carry out Mr. Brady’s design.
He has also offered me the agency of all his Irish estates, as Mr.
Walshe has been given over by the doctors.”
“And you will accept the agency and do as he so kindly suggests, of
course?” said Grace, wondering why he paused so abruptly.
“It is not of course,” he answered; “for the decision rests with you.”
“With me,” she repeated; “what can I have to do with the matter?”
“Everything,” he said. “Grace, once before you refused me, and I went to
India; if you refuse me again, I cannot stay in Ireland. With you I
could accomplish what I have said—without you success would be
worthless. If you say stay, I stay. If you say go, I go; and when once
my father dies there will never be a Riley at Woodbrook again.”
She hesitated and turned her head away, then with eyes still averted put
out her hand timidly and shyly.
“Am I to stay?” he asked, taking it in both of his.
And she whispered “Yes.”
“I have heard such a wonderful piece of news” said Mrs. Hartley, as John
Riley and Grace entered the house together.
“What is it?” asked the former, thinking it could not be one-half so
wonderful as the piece of news he had to tell; but with which, to do the
lady’s discrimination justice, Mrs. Hartley was already _au fait_.
“Cecil, Earl of Glendare is really married, and Mr. Robert Somerford’s
chances of succeeding to the title are—_nil_. He is so disgusted at the
turn affairs have taken that he has threatened to enlist if his mother
and Mr. Dillwyn do not make some suitable provision for him.”
“He ought to have gone to work and made a suitable provision for himself
years ago,” remarked Grace, running upstairs to take off her bonnet.
“She has promised to marry you?” said Mrs. Hartley.
“She has, indeed!”
It was quite true, and yet he felt scarcely able to realize to himself
that the waves which once sung so sad a requiem to the hopes of his
early manhood, had now murmured an accompaniment to the sweetest melody
he ever heard proceed from human lips.
“Yes.” That was the beginning and middle and end of the song; but it
never ceased to gladden him through all the years that followed. And
when John Riley forgets the sweet music he heard where the Atlantic
washes that northern shore—the music which has made his life one long
continuous harmony—he will have forgotten every sound of earth.
THE END.
PRINTED BY TAYLOR AND CO.,
LITTLE QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
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