“Of course it was Miss Martin; who else would be out at this time of the night?” said Mrs. Clinch.
“And without a servant!” exclaimed Miss Busk.
“Indeed, you may well make the remark, ma’am,” said Mrs. Cronan. “The young lady was brought up in a fashion that was n’t practised in my time!”
“Where could she have been down that end of the port, I wonder?” said Mrs. Clinch. “She came up from Garra Cliff.”
“Maybe she came round by the strand,” said the doctor; “if she did, I don’t think there ‘s one here would like to have followed her.”
“I would n’t be her horse!” said one; “nor her groom!” muttered another; and thus, gradually lashing themselves into a wild indignation, they opened, at last, a steady fire upon the young lady, – her habits, her manners, and her appearance all coming in for a share of criticism; and although a few modest amendments were put in favor of her horsemanship and her good looks, the motion was carried that no young lady ever took such liberties before, and that the meeting desired to record their strongest censure on the example thus extended to their own young people.
If young Nelligan ventured upon a timid question of what it was she had done, he was met by an eloquent chorus of half a dozen voices, recounting mountain excursions which no young lady had ever made before; distant spots visited, dangers incurred, storms encountered, perils braved, totally unbecoming to her in her rank of life, and showing that she had no personal respect, nor – as Miss Busk styled it – “a proper sense of the dignity of woman!”
“‘T was down at Mrs. Nelligan’s, ma’am, Miss Mary was,” said Mrs. Cronan’s maid, who had been despatched special to make inquiry on the subject.
“At my mother’s!” exclaimed Joseph, reddening, without knowing in the least why. And now a new diversion occurred, while all discussed every possible and impossible reason for this singular fact, since the family at the “Nest” maintained no intercourse whatever with their neighbors, not even seeming, by any act of their lives, to acknowledge their very existence.
Young Nelligan took the opportunity to make his escape during the debate; and as the society offers nothing very attractive to detain us, it will be as well if we follow him, while he hastened homeward along the dark and storm-lashed beach. He had about a mile to go, and, short as was this distance, it enabled him to think over what he had just heard, strange and odd as it seemed to his ears. Wholly given up, as he had been for years past, to the ambition of a college life, with but one goal before his eyes, one class of topics engrossing his thoughts, he had never even passingly reflected on the condition of parties, the feuds of opposing factions, and, stronger than either, the animosities that separated social ranks in Ireland. Confounding the occasional slights he had experienced by virtue of his class, with the jealousy caused by his successes, he had totally overlooked the disparagement men exhibited towards the son of the little country shopkeeper, and never knew of his disqualification for a society whose precincts he had not tried to pass. The littleness, the unpurpose-like vacuity, the intense vulgarity of his Oughterard friends had disgusted him, it is true; but he had yet to learn that the foolish jealousy of their wealthy neighbor was a trait still less amiable, and ruminating over these problems, – knottier far to him than many a complex formula or many a disputed reading of a Greek play, – he at last reached the solitary little cabin where his mother lived.
It is astonishing how difficult men of highly cultivated and actively practised minds find it to comprehend the little turnings and windings of commonplace life, the jealousies and the rivalries of small people. They search for motives where there are merely impulses, and look for reasons when there are simple passions.
It was only as he lifted the latch that he remembered how deficient he was in all the information his mother would expect from him. Of the fortunes of the whist-table he actually knew nothing; and had he been interrogated as to the “toilette” of the party, his answers would have betrayed a lamentable degree of ignorance. Fortunately for him, his mother did not display her habitual anxiety on these interesting themes. She neither asked after the Captain’s winnings, – he was the terror of the party, – nor whether Miss Busk astonished the company by another new gown. Poor Mrs. Nelligan was too brimful of another subject to admit of one particle of extraneous matter to occupy her. With a proud consciousness, however, of her own resources, she affected to have thoughts for other things, and asked Joe if he passed a pleasant day?
“Yes, very – middling – quite so – rather stupid, I thought,” replied he, in his usual half-connected manner, when unable to attach his mind to the question before him.
“Of, course, my dear, it’s very unlike what you ‘re used to up in Dublin, though I believe that Captain Bodkin, when he goes there, always dines with the Lord-Lieutenant; and Miss Busk, I know, is second cousin to Ram of Swainestown, and there is nothing better than that in Ireland. I say this between ourselves, for your father can’t bear me to talk of family or connections, though I am sure I was always brought up to think a great deal about good blood; and if my father was a Finnerty, my mother was a Moore of Crockbawn, and her family never looked at her for marrying my father.”
“Indeed!” said Joe, in a dreamy semi-consciousness.
“It’s true what I ‘m telling you. She often said it to me herself, and told me what a blessing it was, through all her troubles and trials in life; and she had her share of them, for my father was often in drink, and very cruel at times. ‘It supports me,’ she used to say, ‘to remember who I am, and the stock I came from, and to know that there ‘s not one belonging to me would speak to me, nor look at the same side of the road with me, after what I done; and, Matty,’ said she to me, ‘if ever it happens to you to marry a man beneath you in life, always bear in mind that, no matter how he treats you, you ‘re better than him.’ And, indeed, it’s a great support and comfort to one’s feelings, after all,” said she, with a deep sigh.
“I’m certain of it,” muttered Joe, who had not followed one word of the harangue.
“But mind that you never tell your father so. Indeed, I would n’t let on to him what happened this evening.”
“What was that?” asked the young man, roused by the increased anxiety of her manner.
“It was a visit I had, my dear,” replied the old lady, with a simpering consciousness that she had something to reveal, – “it was a visit I had paid me, and by an elegant young lady, too.”
“A young lady? Not Miss Cassidy, mother. I think she left yesterday morning.”
“No, indeed, my dear. Somebody very different from Miss Cassidy; and you might guess till you were tired before you ‘d think of Miss Martin.”
“Miss Martin!” echoed Joe.
“Exactly so. Miss Martin of Cro’ Martin; and the way it happened was this. I was sitting here alone in the room after my tea, – for I sent Biddy out to borrow the ‘Intelligence’ for me; and then comes a sharp knock to the door, and I called out, ‘Come in;’ but instead of doing so there was another rapping, louder than before, and I said, ‘Bother you, can’t you lift the latch?’ and then I heard something like a laugh, and so I went out; and you may guess the shame I felt as I saw a young lady fastening the bridle of her horse to the bar of the window. ‘Mrs. Nelli-gan, I believe,’ said she, with a smile and a look that warmed my heart to her at once; and as I courtesied very low, she went on. I forget, indeed, the words, – whether she said she was Miss Martin, or it was I that asked the question; but I know she came in with me to the room, and sat down where you are sitting now. ‘Coming back from Kyle’s Wood this morning,’ said she, ‘I overtook poor Billy with the post. He was obliged to go two miles out of his way to ford the river; and what with waiting for the mail, which was late in coming, and what with being wet through, he was completely knocked up; so I offered to take the bag for him, and send it over to-morrow by one of our people. But the poor fellow would n’t consent, because he was charged with something of consequence for you, – a small bottle of medicine. Of course I was only too happy to take this also, Mrs. Nelligan, and here it is.’ And with that she put it on the table, where you see it. I ‘m sure I never knew how to thank her enough for her good nature, but I said all that I could think of, and told her that my son was just come back from college, after getting the gold medal.”
“You did n’t speak of that, mother,” said he, blushing till his very forehead was crimson.
“Indeed, then, I did, Joe; and I ‘d like to know why I would n’t. Is it a shame or a disgrace to us! At any rate, she didn’t think so, for she said, ‘You must be very proud of him;’ and I told her so I was, and that he was as good as he was clever; and, moreover, that the newspapers said the time was coming when men like young Nelligan would soar their way up to honors and distinctions in spite of the oppressive aristocracy that so long had combined to degrade them.”
“Good Heavens! mother, you could n’t have made such a speech as that?” cried he, in a voice of downright misery.
“Did n’t I, then? And did n’t she say, if there were any such oppression as could throw obstacles in the way of deserving merit, she heartily hoped it might prove powerless; and then she got up to wish me good-evening. I thought, at first, a little stiffly, – that is, more haughty in her manner than at first; but when I arose to see her out, and she saw I was lame, she pressed me down into my chair, and said, in such a kind voice, ‘You must n’t stir, my dear Mrs. Nelligan. I, who can find my road over half of the county, can surely discover my way to the door.’ ‘Am I ever like to have the happiness of seeing you again, miss?’ said I, as I held her hand in mine. ‘Certainly, if it would give you the very slightest pleasure,’ said she, pressing my hand most cordially; and with that we parted. Indeed, I scarce knew she was gone, when I heard the clattering of the horse over the shingle; for she was away in a gallop, dark as the night was. Maybe,” added the old lady, with a sigh, – “maybe, I ‘d have thought it was all a dream if it was n’t that I found that glove of hers on the floor; she dropped it, I suppose, going out.”
Young Nelligan took up the glove with a strange feeling of bashful reverence. It was as though he was touching a sacred relic; and he stood gazing on it steadfastly for some seconds.
“I ‘ll send it over to the house by Biddy, with my compliments, and to know how the family is, in the morning,” said Mrs. Nelligan, with the air of one who knew the value of conventional usages.
“And she ‘ll make some stupid blunder or other,” replied Joe, impatiently, “that will cover us all with shame. No, mother, I ‘d rather go with it myself than that.”
“To be sure, and why not?” said Mrs. Nelligan. “There ‘s no reason why you should be taking up old quarrels against the Martins; for my part, I never knew the country so pleasant as it used to be long ago, when we used to get leave to go picnicking on the grounds of Cro’ Martin, up to the Hermitage, as they called it; and now the gates are locked and barred like a jail, and nobody allowed in without a ticket.”
“Yes, I’ll go myself with it,” said Joe, who heard nothing of his mother’s remark, but was following out the tract of his own speculations. As little did he attend to the various suggestions she threw out for his guidance and direction, the several topics to which he might, and those to which he must not, on any account, allude.
“Not a word, for your life, Joe, about the right of pathway to Clune Abbey, and take care you say nothing about the mill-race at Glandaff, nor the shooting in Kyle’s Wood. And if by any chance there should be a talk about the tolls at Oughterard, say you never heard of them before. Make out, in fact,” said she, summing up, “as if you never heard of a county where there was so much good-will and kindness between the people; and sure it is n’t your fault if it’s not true!” And with this philosophic reflection Mrs. Nelligan wished her son good-night, and retired.
CHAPTER III. AN AUTUMN MORNING IN THE WEST
The Osprey’s Nest was, I have said, like a direct challenge hurled at the face of western gales and Atlantic storms. With what success, its aspect of dilapidation and decay but too plainly betrayed. The tangled seaweed that hung in dripping festoons over the porch, the sea-shells that rattled against the window-panes, seemed like an angry denunciation of the attempt to brave the elements by the mere appliances of ease and luxury.
It was better, however, in the inside, where, in a roomy apartment, most comfortably furnished, a lady and gentleman sat at breakfast. The table stood in a little projection of the room, admitting of a wide sea-view over the bay and the distant islands of Lettermullen, but as carefully excluded all prospect of the port, – a locality which held no high place in the esteem of the lady of the house, and which, by ignoring, she half fancied she had annihilated. Wild promontories of rocks, jutting out here and there, broke the coast line, and marked the shore with a foaming stream of white water, as the ever-restless sea dashed over them. The long booming swell of the great ocean bounded into many a rocky cavern, with a loud report like thunder, and issued forth again with a whole cataract of falling stones, that rattled like the crash of small-arms. It was unceasing, deafening clamor in the midst of death-like desolation.
Let me, however, turn once more to the scene within, and present the living elements to my reader. They were both past the prime of life. The lady might still be called handsome; her features were perfectly regular, and finely cut, bearing the impress of a proud and haughty spirit that never quailed beneath the conflict of a long life, and even yet showed a firm front to fortune. Her hair was white as snow; and as she wore it drawn back, after the fashion of a bygone time, it gave her the air of a fine lady of the old French Court, in all the pomp of powder and pomatum. Nor did her dress correct the impression, since the deep falls of lace that covered her hands, the lengthy stomacher, and trailing folds of her heavy brocade gown, all showed a lurking fondness for the distinctive toilette of that era. Lady Dorothea Martin had been a beauty and an earl’s daughter; two facts that not even the seclusion of the wild west could erase from her memory.
Mr. Martin himself was no unworthy “pendant” to this portrait. He was tall and stately, with a lofty forehead, and temples finely and well fashioned; while full, deep-set blue eyes of the very sternest determination, and a mouth, every line of which betrayed firmness, gave the character to a face that also could expand into the most genial good-fellowship, and become at times the symbol of a pleasant and convivial Irish gentleman. In his youth he had been a beau of the Court of Versailles. Scandal had even coupled his name with that of Marie Antoinette; and more truthful narratives connected him with some of the most extravagant adventures of that profligate and brilliant period. After a career of the wildest dissipation and excess, he had married, late in life, the daughter of the Earl of Exmere, one of the proudest and poorest names in the British Peerage. Two or three attempts to shine in the world of London, – not as successful as they were expected to have proved, – an effort at ascendancy in Irish political life, also a failure, coupled with disappointment on the score of an only brother, who had married beneath him, and was reputed to have “lost himself,” seemed to have disgusted Godfrey Martin with the world, and he had retired to his lonely mansion in the west, which now for eighteen years he had scarcely quitted for a single day.
His only son had joined a cavalry regiment in India a few years before the period our story opens, and which, I may now state, dates for about four or five and twenty years back; but his family included a niece, the only child of his brother, and whose mother had died in giving her birth.
Between Mr. Martin and Lady Dorothea, as they sat at breakfast, little conversation passed. He occupied himself with the newly arrived newspapers, and she perused a mass of letters which had just come by that morning’s post; certain scraps of the intelligence gleaned from either of these sources forming the only subjects of conversation between them.
“So they have resolved to have a new Parliament. I knew it would come to that; I always said so; and, as usual, the dissolution finds us unprepared.”
“Plantagenet’s regiment is ordered to Currachee, wherever that may be,” said Lady Dorothea, languidly.
“Call him Harry, and we shall save ourselves some trouble in discussing him,” replied he, pettishly. “At all events, he cannot possibly be here in time for the contest; and we must, I suppose, give our support to Kilmorris again.”
“Do you mean, after his conduct about the harbor, and the shameful way he sneaked out of the Port Martin project?”
“Find anything better, madam; there is the difficulty. Kilmorris is a gentleman, and no Radical; and, as times go, these are rather rare qualities.”
“Lady Sarah Upton’s match is off,” said Lady Dorothea, reading from a note beside her. “Sir Joseph insisted upon the uncontrolled possession of all her Staffordshire property.”
“And perfectly right.”
“Perfectly wrong to give it to him.”
“A fool if he married without it.”
“A mean creature she, to accept him on such terms.”
“The woman is eight-and-thirty, – if not more. I remember her at Tunbridge. Let me see, what year was it?”
“I detest dates, and abhor chronologies. Reach me the marmalade,” said Lady Dorothea, superciliously.
“What’s this balderdash here from the ‘Galway Indicator’? ‘The haughty and insolent, aye, and ignorant aristocracy will have to swallow a bitter draught erelong; and such petty despots as Martin of Cro’ Martin will learn that the day is gone by for their ascendancy in this county.’
“They tell me we have a law of libel in the land; and yet see how this scoundrel can dare to drag me by name before the world; and I ‘ll wager a thousand pounds I ‘d fail to get a verdict against him if I prosecuted him to-morrow,” said Martin, as he dashed the newspaper to the ground, and stamped his foot upon it. “We are constantly reading diatribes about absentee landlords, and the evils of neglected property; but I ask, what inducements are there held out to any gentleman to reside on his estate, if every petty scribbler of the press can thus attack and assail him with impunity?”
“Is that Mary I see yonder?” asked Lady Dorothea, languidly, as she lifted her double eye-glass, and then suffered it to fall from her fingers.
“So it is, by Jove!” cried Martin, springing up, and approaching the window. “I wish she ‘d not venture out in that small boat in this treacherous season. What a swell there is, too! The wind is from the sea.”
“She’s coming in, I fancy,” drawled out Lady Dorothea.
“How is she to do it, though?” exclaimed he, hurriedly; “the sea is breaking clear over the piers of the harbor. I can only see one man in the boat. What rashness! what folly! There, look, they’re standing out to sea again!” And now, throwing open the window, Martin stepped out on the rocks, over which the white foam flashed by like snow. “What are they at, Peter? What are they trying to do?” cried he to an old fisherman, who, with the coil of a net he was just mending on his arm, had now come down to the shore to watch the boat.
“They ‘re doing right, your honor,” said he, touching his cap respectfully. “‘Tis Loony my Lady has in the boat, and there’s no better man in trouble! He’s just going to beat out a bit, and then he ‘ll run in under the shelter of the blue rocks. Faix, she ‘s a fine boat, then, for her size, – look at her now!”
But Martin had covered his eyes with his hand, while his lips murmured and moved rapidly.
“May I never, but they ‘re letting out the reef!” screamed the old man in terror.
“More sail, and in such a sea!” cried Martin, in a voice of horror.
“Aye, and right, too,” said the fisherman, after a pause; “she ‘s rising lighter over the sea, and steers better, besides. It’s Miss Mary has the tiller,” added the old fellow, with a smile. “I ‘ll lay a shilling she ‘s singing this minute.”
“You think so,” said Martin, glad to catch at this gleam of confidence.
“I know it well, your honor. I remember one day, off Lettermullen, it was worse than this. Hurrah!” screamed he out suddenly; “she took in a great sea that time!”
“Get out a boat, Peter, at once; what are we standing here for?” cried Martin, angrily. “Man a boat this instant.”
“Sure no boat could get out to sea with this wind, sir,” remonstrated the old man, mildly; “she’d never leave the surf if she had forty men at her!”
“Then what’s to be done?”
“Just let them alone; themselves two know as well what to do as any pair in Ireland, and are as cool besides. There, now, she ‘s putting her about, as I said, and she ‘ll run for the creek.” The frail boat, a mere speck upon the dark green ocean, seemed now to fly, as with a slackened sheet she darted over the water. Her course was bent for a little cove concealed from view by a rugged promontory of rock, up which the old fisherman now clambered with the alacrity of a younger man. Martin tried to follow; but overcome by emotion, he was unable, and sat down upon a ledge of rock, burying his face within his hands.
By this time the whole fishing population of the little village had gathered on the beach around the cove, to watch the boat as she came in; numbers had gone out to meet her, and stood up to their waists in the white and boiling surf, ready to seize upon the skiff and run her high and dry upon the sand. Even they were obliged to be lashed together by a rope, lest the receding waves should carry them out to sea, or the “under tow” suck them beneath the surface. As the boat came within speaking distance, a wild shout arose from the shore to “down sail” and suffer her to come in on her way alone; but with all the canvas spread, they came flying along, scarce seeming more than to tip the waves as they skipped over them, while a shower of spray appeared to cover them as the sea broke upon the stern. Instead of rendering aid, the utmost the fishermen could do was to clear a path amongst them for the skiff to pass, as with lightning speed she flitted by and drove her bow high up on the hard beach.
A wild, glad cheer of joy and welcome burst from the hearty fishermen as they crowded about the young girl, who stepped out of the boat with a heavy bundle in her arms. Her hair hung in great masses over her neck and shoulders, her cheeks were flushed, and her dark eyes gleamed with all the excitement of peril and triumph.
“Here, Margaret,” said she to a young woman, who, pale with terror and with face streaming in tears, rushed towards her, – “here ‘s your little fellow, all safe and sound; I ‘d not have put back but for his sake.” And with this she placed in his mother’s arms a little boy of about three years of age, sound asleep. “He must wait for better weather if he wants to see his grandmother. And,” added she, laughing, “I scarcely think you ‘ll catch me going to sea again with so precious a cargo. Poor little man!” and she patted his ruddy cheeks; “he behaved so well, like a stout fisherman’s son as he is, – never showed fear for a moment.”
A murmur of delighted hearts ran through the crowd; some thinking of the child, but many more in warm admiration of the brave and beautiful young girl before them. “Loony,” said she to her boatman, “when you ‘ve got the tackle to rights, come up to the house for your breakfast.” And with that, and a few words of grateful recognition as she passed, she clambered up the rock and hastened homeward.
As for her uncle, no sooner had he heard of her safe arrival on shore than he hurried back, anxious to reach the house before her. For a considerable time back Martin had schooled himself into an apparent indifference about his niece’s perils. Lady Dorothea had probably given the initiative to this feeling by constantly asserting that the young lady would incur few risks when they ceased to create alarm.
It was a somewhat ungracious theory, and excited in Martin’s mind, when he first heard it, a sensation the very reverse of agreeable. Without accepting its truth, however, it made a deep impression upon him, and at last, by way of policy, he resolved to feign a degree of callous indifference very foreign to his nature; and, by dint of mere habit, he at length acquired a semblance of calm under circumstances that sorely tested his powers of self-control.
“Has the heroine arrived safe on shore?” asked Lady Dorothea in her own languid drawl. And Martin almost started at the question, and seemed for a moment as if the indignation it excited could not be repressed; then smiling superciliously at the impassive air of her features, he said, —
“Yes, and by rare good luck, too! The sea is a terrific one this morning!”
“Is it ever anything else in this heavenly climate?” said she, sighing. “I have counted two fine days since the 8th of June; and, indeed, it rained a little on one of them.”
Martin winced impatiently under the remark, but never lifted his eyes from the newspaper.
“I had hoped your niece was making arrangements for our return to Cro’ Martin,” said she, querulously, “instead of planning marine excursions. I told her yesterday, or the day before, – I forget which; but who could remember time in such a place? – that I was bored to death here. The observation seems to amuse you, Mr. Martin; but it is a simple fact.”
“And you are bored to death at Cro’ Martin, too, if I mistake not?” said he, with a very significant dryness.
“I should think I was, sir; and nothing very astonishing in the confession, besides.”
“And Dublin, madam?”
“Don’t speak of it. If one must endure prison discipline, at least let us have a cell to ourselves. Good-morning, Miss Martin. I hope you enjoyed your party on the water?”
This speech was addressed to Mary, who now entered the room dressed in a plain morning costume, and in her quiet, almost demure look resembling in nothing the dripping and dishevelled figure that sprung from the boat.
“Good-morning, aunt,” said she, gayly. “Good-morning, uncle,” kissing, as she spoke, his cheek, and patting him fondly on the shoulder. “I saw you out on the rocks as we were coming in.”
“Pooh, pooh!” said he, in affected indifference. “I knew there was no danger – ”
“Yes, but there was, though,” said she, quickly. “If we had n’t set all sail on her, she ‘d have been pooped to a certainty; and I can tell you I was in a rare fright, too.”
“Oh, indeed; you confess to such an ignoble emotion?” said Lady Dorothea, with a sneer.
“That I do, aunt, for I had poor Madge Lennan’s little boy on my lap all the time; and if it came to a swim, I don’t see how he was to be saved.”
“You ‘d not have left him to his fate, I suppose?” said Lady Dorothea.
“I scarcely know what I should have done. I sincerely hope it would have been my best; but in a moment like that, within sight of home, too – ” Her eyes met her uncle’s as she said this; he had raised them from his newspaper, and bent them fully on her. There was that in their expression which appealed so strongly to her heart that instead of finishing her speech she sprung towards him and threw her arms around his neck.
“Quite a scene; and I detest scenes,” said Lady Dorothen, as she arose and swept out of the room contemptuously; but they neither heard the remark nor noticed her departure.