CHAPTER VIII
After the concert came a day of reckoning; that is to say, a winding up of the financial part of the performance. The parish complacently expected a substantial sum for coal and blankets, tea and sugar. Boots? Certainly there would be boots; and they were badly wanted. The simple folk had made their calculation something after this fashion: three hundred shillings was fifteen pounds, anyhow; the room was free. Take an average of five shillings all round, was not that seventy-five pounds? The neighbourhood nodded, and grinned, and figuratively rubbed its hands. But unfortunately the neighbourhood had reckoned without Mrs. Doran and her little bills for carting, hiring, lighting, decorations, printing, and refreshments—the amount came to £57 11s. 6d.—and when she handed the small balance to the Rector and the Rev. Father Daly, their countenances expressed the blankest dismay. The lady was in her own house, entrenched in a business-like attitude behind her writing-table, as she tendered the cheque with an air of bold assurance, not unflavoured with patronage. For a moment there was an awful silence. Mr. West took the bit of paper, stared at it as if he could not credit his faculties, cleared his throat, and passed it on to the priest.
Father Daly became red in the face (he was a man of full habit and of somewhat impetuous temper). He spoke at last, in his deep rich brogue.
“Goodness preserve us, Mrs. Doran! what does this mean? What has become of all the money for our poor people?”
“Become?” she repeated. “Some was spent in their interest; the balance is in your hand—a cheque on the Munster Bank.”
“But surely to goodness——” he reiterated.
“There are my accounts,” she interrupted angrily. The lady was not prepared for this inquisition, and believed that the two men would thankfully accept her largesse and so depart.
“I certainly understood that the refreshments were provided gratis,” put in Mr. West, with unprecedented courage.
“Pray who said so? I’m sure I never did. See, it is merely stated,” snatching up a programme, “There will be refreshments.”
A pause. Yes; the fact was patent; the statement had involved no promise; the matter had been understood, taken for granted, but Mrs. Doran never permitted anything to be taken from her.
“Surely you don’t suppose for a moment,” she resumed, with rising temper, “that I was to feed three hundred people, out of my own pocket, now do you?” and she threw herself back in her chair, and contemplated her visitors with her hard black eyes.
“Well, yes, ma’am,” rejoined the priest, “I must declare that I was under that impression. After all, it was only once in a way.”
“What nonsense!” she exclaimed. “Why, I was the only person who gave anything. The room, the piano, my servants’ time, my own time and exertions, all the trouble. However”—and here she gave a sniff of definite resolve—“it will be a lesson to me not to put myself out another time.”
“Well, I suppose there is no more to be said!” exclaimed Mr. West, turning to his companion with an expression of despair.
“Except, perhaps, the little word thank you?” sneered Mrs. Doran, who was trembling with suppressed rage.
“Well, I don’t know about thanks,” observed the priest, turning squarely on the lady, “but I’ll just say the little word”; and he paused. “God forgive me if I am wrong, but I believe, woman, you have cheated the poor! Yes”—with uplifted hand—“you got up this concert for them, and have put the earnings into your own hungry pocket. I am not a fool. You need not tell me that a few gallons of tea, and soup, and a couple of tins of kerosene oil, would cost nearly sixty pounds! And see, now I’ll punish you.”
“What? You will punish me!” she screamed hysterically. “I’d like to see you attempt it.”
“Yes, I’ll publish an account of the grand concert, and its takings, and all your little bills”—here he stretched out his big hand and gathered them up—“in the Cork paper and the Irish Times. This I will do at my own expense, and so let the world know what you are made of. If the Colonel were alive, I would never do it, nor shame him, good, innocent man; but as for you, you avaricious cormorant, you have no shame whatever—you do not know the name. Come away, West; this is no place for the servants of God!” and before Mrs. Doran could recover her senses and speech she was alone.
When the amount of the balance became known, naturally there was a terrible outcry. “The old wan” had surpassed herself this time! The lady had beaten every record. Some people laughed, others were furious, and as for the poor, they said, “Arrah! what could ye expect from Mrs. Doran? When did she give away bite or sup? She only gives trouble. Faix, the ould wan has it in for her.”
The particulars of the great scene in the study were imparted to Barky and Ulick. Barky, who was, of course, on his mother’s side, swore a terrible vengeance on Father Daly, but his brother was overwhelmed with shame. He wrote to his banker’s, and he rode down to Mr. West and had a good square talk with him; and the result of the conversation was that Father Daly withdrew his threatened exposure when he received an anonymous contribution of sixty pounds. Well, he knew where the money came from—generous young Ulick was his father’s own son; and accordingly, the scandal respecting “refreshments” was quickly hushed up, and not suffered to spread, though in the immediate neighbourhood of the Castle “Mrs. Doran’s concert” is talked of to the present day!
* * * * *
The frost did not last long. Hunting was speedily resumed, and Ulick was in his element. He had three capital horses, and rode them in the first flight. As the meets were early, and at a distance, and it was dark when he jogged home, he had not much chance of prosecuting his acquaintance with Mary Foley; now and then he came across her; once he met her on Sunday, just outside the Castle gates, coming from mass, with her prayer-book neatly wrapped in a clean handkerchief, and accosted her.
“So you’ve been saying your prayers?” he began.
“Yes, yer honour”—a curtsey—“but there was a sermon too.”
“Was it a good one?”
“It was so, sir.”
“Tell me what is your idea of a good sermon, Mary?”
“Oh, well, one that makes yer blood creep. Father Dunne is a nice quiet man, but he never frightens ye, or puts the fear of death in ye, not like Father Daly. ’Twas him as preached to-day.”
“Yes. Tell me all about it?”
“Then, sir, I declare ye might have heard the people breathing! They were just paralysed!”
“Ah! And were you frightened?”
“I cannot say I was all out—just a bit disheartened with myself. I know I’m a black sinner.”
“I wish to God my soul was as white as yours, Mary!”
“O Lord, sir!” she ejaculated, aghast, “you must not say the like of these things to me, and—and——” Colouring up, and taking a firm hold of her resolution, she curtseyed herself off.
One afternoon, some weeks later, Ulick Doran overtook the pretty egg-girl on her way from market. Her mother was beginning to feel the distance long, unless she could get a lift, and Mary was alone.
The young man dismounted from his weary horse, and walked beside her with the bridle over his arm for three whole happy miles. The afternoon was clear; there was a slim young moon. A red coat is somewhat conspicuous, and the couple were passed by one or two of the neighbours, and descried from a distance by Father Daly himself! All the same, their conversation was absolutely harmless—it was even stupid (but they could subsequently recall each precious syllable); and yet, with every step they took, they fell deeper and deeper into love (but with a frightened consciousness, like—as R. L. Stevenson says—a pair of children venturing together into a dark room). Sixteen and twenty-three—how could they help it?
They were both sensible of an indescribable something that drew them irresistibly towards one another. He appealed to her, because he was just Mr. Ulick—and a gentleman. She to him by her strange magnetic personality; she was totally different to any girl he had ever seen—coarsely clad yet dainty, bold yet shy; as for her face, it recalled the exquisite miniature of some piquante beauty at the court of Louis XIV., and Ulick Doran was poignantly aware of her soft low voice, her sweet eyes, her hair, and her upturned, questioning gaze.
But Mary was Mary, a peasant’s daughter, and, being a girl of the people, his lips were locked. Nevertheless, he adored her.
By-and-by, with the spring weather, a little “talk” began to circulate. It was whispered that Mr. Ulick had given Mary Foley his red pup, and that more than once he had been seen walking out with her! The news came to the ears of Father Daly, who had indeed beheld the couple with his own two eyes, and promptly descended upon Mrs. Foley and Mary, and gave them an impressive, never-to-be-forgotten lecture. The gossip also reached Mrs. Doran, who was furious. She made no remark to her son, but she went to Foley’s corner, and enacted a great scene with Katty, having discovered that unhappy woman alone. The lady strode into the cottage, and began without any preamble, such as “How are you?” or “A fine day!” “Katty Foley, only you have a lease here, do you know that I’d throw you into the road!” Long residence in Ireland had infected the matron’s vocabulary.
“Ah, for why, me lady?” rising stiffly as she spoke.
“Why? Because of your daughter’s brazen behaviour with my son, Mr. Ulick. It’s the scandal of the county.”
“Mary is a good girl,” responded Katty, in a tremulous voice. “God knows there’s no harm in her, whativer.”
“Is there not? She is going the right way about losing her character, walking the roads with a gentleman.”
“She never did no such thing! Once I’ll allow he overtook her; on another time she overtook him—it was a pure accident.”
“An accident on purpose!” said Mrs. Doran venomously. “She waylaid him. And I suppose he has not lent her books; that’s not his dog lying there?”
“Sure, Mr. Ulick gave him to me, because the house is so lonesome, me lady,” she answered, with submissive deprecation. “No one in the house since I buried poor John, so Mr. Ulick, he says, ‘Would you like a dog, Katty?’ and there he is.”
“There he is, indeed! Love me, love my dog. You could have got one anywhere; pups are as common as kittens. He gave that terrier to Mary—a prize one, that cost him three guineas.”
As Mrs. Foley could not combat this statement, her visitor resumed: “I’ve just come to say one word, and it is my last. If you encourage my son here, and he ever darkens your door, you never enter my gates, and I will make it very unpleasant for you, Mrs. Foley. Look after your daughter, forbid her to speak to him, or you will be sorry yet. You don’t suppose that he would marry her, do you?”
“God knows I never thought of such a thing, my lady; I’d never wish my girl to be looked down on. I would not let him put a ring on her; I have my pride.”
“Your pride!” cried Mrs. Doran. “Well, that is a good joke. Your pride!” she repeated hysterically, as she swept out of the kitchen, like a tornado in black petticoats.
Not long after this raid, the lady of the castle came suddenly on the culprit herself. It was a fine March afternoon, and, wearing her best merino frock and her Sunday shoes, Mary was on her way to drink a cup of tea with her friend Bridget Curran, and show her the elegant fine-drawn work she was after doing for Mrs. Hogan. Suddenly, at a corner, she found herself face to face with the person she most dreaded in the whole world, who deliberately halted, stared hard, and then burst out, “Where did you get that gold locket and chain? But I need not ask; you have a bold face to be going about the country, wearing my son’s presents”; and before the girl was aware Mrs. Doran suddenly stretched out her hand, broke the chain with a violent snap, and flung it and the little locket, into the middle of the road.
“What are ye doing, ma’am?” cried the girl, roused to passion.
“I’m tearing my son’s presents off you, you wicked, scheming little hussy!”
“’Tis none of your son’s presents,” rejoined Mary, with her face aflame. “I’m not that sort; I take nothing from a gentleman.”
“You took his dog!” retorted the other triumphantly.
“I did not,” replied Mary, quivering with antagonism; “and I bought the locket with my own money”; and she held up her head and surveyed Mrs. Doran with fierce, if unspoken defiance.
“You’re a liar! a liar! a liar!” screamed her enemy, now abandoning all self-control.
“I am not, and it’s as true as if I was to be judged, that I bought it with my egg money; and God knows it took me long enough to gather—six mortal years; but it came out of his mother’s meanness, and not out of Mr. Ulick’s purse.” And when she concluded, Mary stooped and picked up the battered little gewgaw, which had cost her three pounds.
“As for being a liar,” she resumed, “them’s queer sort of words for a lady to use—but then you are no lady.”
“If you don’t take care, I’ll box your ears!” screamed the matron. Father Daly had called her “shameless.” This chit of an egg-girl declared she was no “lady.” Was the world coming to an end? “Mind”—and she seized the girl’s arm in a grip of passion—“if ever you dare to speak to my son again, it will be worse for you.”
“I see ye have a poor opinion of Mr. Ulick, ma’am,” she answered, wrenching herself out of Mrs. Doran’s grasp.
“No, but of you, you double-faced schemer—you odious little red-haired flirt. You will come to a bad end!” and Mrs. Doran passed on, now breathless, and completely exhausted by the violence of her own emotions.
Mary had solemnly promised her mother and the priest that she would never speak again with Mr. Ulick, and somehow the little scandal (and it was a small one) was scotched and smothered. The girl kept out of her lover’s way with conscientious avoidance; once, indeed, she met him riding with a beautiful young lady on a grey horse, and he had nodded gaily to her; but when they were out of sight, the miserable girl had crept into a field close by, pulled her shawl over her head, and wept, oh! such hot, painful, jealous tears. Shortly afterwards Mr. Ulick went away to England, and his admiration for Mary Foley was forgotten; the little Foley girl now took her eggs to market town—she never went near the Castle. This stubborn defection was a disagreeable experience to Mrs. Doran, who drove a thriving trade with a considerable egg connection—friends to whom she offered the surplus of her hen-house, posting many boxes at a clear profit of sixpence a dozen. Mary’s supply was regular—such nice, large brown eggs! Unfortunately the recent scene on the road had actually cost poor Mrs. Doran several shillings a week!
It was noticed that Mary had grown rather white and “dawnchie” looking; some people said the poor angashore was losing her good looks, whilst others declared she was going into a decline, same as Kathleen Kelly when her boy died in America, and eagerly recommended a strong infusion of cat-nip tea.
One evening late, Katty was in bed; Mary still sat up working—what was the use of lying down, she asked herself, when she could not sleep? She was knitting close to the kitchen window, by the light of a fine April moon; outside it was nearly as bright as day. She intended to finish the stocking that night; she liked knitting, for she could both knit and—think.
All at once something interposed between the moon and herself—a face, a man’s face, was pressed against the window. Mary rose with a half-stifled scream, and then recognised, with a violent thrill and shock of joy, the well-cut features of Mr. Ulick.
“Mary!” he said, “Mary! Come quite close to the window, will you?”
“Whist,” she answered sharply. “I must not speak to you; I’ve promised my mother and the priest.” But she approached nearer to the window all the same.
“You may speak to me this once, Mary, for I’ve come to bid you good-bye. I am off to India to-morrow.”
“Is it to India?” she repeated mechanically.
“Yes, and I ran across the mountains just to try and catch a sight of you before I start, for the chances are——” He stopped, and his lips twitched.
“Yes?” she asked.
“That we shall never see one another again.”
“Oh, Mr. Ulick! Oh, Mr. Ulick!” She broke down, her thoughts filled with the terror of separation, and tears ran from her eyes. “Don’t say that. Don’t.”
“Yes. There is nothing half so sweet in life as love’s young dream, and it has been very sweet. Mary, although I’ve never said one word to you that I might not have addressed to your mother, I’m sure you have guessed. Now I came here to tell you the truth; I felt that before I went away, I must speak. I love you, Mary, and I know my own mind. I shall never forget you to my dying day. Yet we can never be anything to one another.”
Mary gazed at his face—white in the moonlight—and made a sudden shivering gesture, pierced with a sense of something tragic and irreparable. She moaned, “Oh, I wish I was dead, that I do.”
“Oh, no, don’t say that. You will have many happy years before you. Why, you are only sixteen. You will soon forget me, and it will be better for you.”
“If you can remember, so can I,” she answered proudly.
“It is hard lines, Mary. I wish I was just a labouring boy for your sake; but you know that unequal matches bring no luck. There is a barrier between us, like this pane of glass.”
“Yes, that’s true,” she murmured.
“Open the window, Mary,” he urged. “Just an inch.”
“Sure I can’t; it’s nailed fast! Are ye up at the Castle?”
“Up at the Castle they think I am in Queenstown. My mother was very rude to you, I’m afraid; she has a hot temper, poor woman, and she believes the Dorans are next door to royalty. She would like me to marry an earl’s daughter. I’ll never marry now, and I must go. God bless you. I wish I could shake you by the hand, but I won’t ask to come in——” He paused, and stared hard at her. “Mary, look here. Will you kiss me through the window? It won’t be a real kiss, you know, but it will be something for me to carry away, and a sign you cared for me—here, just on this little star.”
As she nodded quickly, he bent his head, removed his cap, and pressed his lips on the pane. Mary too leant forward, and deliberately laid hers on the self-same spot. Then he stepped back and looked at her with misty eyes that said farewell. Suddenly he, with a vehement and pathetic gesture, waved his hand, and vanished.
Mary Foley spent the remainder of that unhappy night rocking to and fro and sobbing in a chair. Her heart was broken, she told herself—broken, broken, broken! What was the good of living at all, when she could never again lay an eye on Mr. Ulick, and Mr. Ulick loved her! Struggling through the eclipse of grief, that truth shone like a fixed star.
Meanwhile a light, active figure might be seen, running or walking by turns along a short cut which led to a junction over the hills nine miles away. Ulick Doran had to catch a mail train at one o’clock. If he missed it, he would forfeit his passage in the trooper lying at Queenstown, and be reported absent without leave.
He had dallied too long with his love, and now it became a race for his commission, and his career. In the still cool night he fancied he heard the train approaching miles away, the faint, muffled rumble becoming more and more distinct. He ran the last mile downhill at extraordinary speed, and dashed into the junction just as the signal was lowered, and the night mail to Cork came thundering over the points.
“It had been a narrow shave, and he had only just done it,” Ulick said to himself, as he sat in a corner of an empty smoking carriage. When the express moved on, he seemed every now and then to see Mary Foley’s beautiful wistful face gazing at him from the other side of the glass.
But no; it was a mirage—a mere mocking fancy! All that was visible through the clear pane, was the flying landscape, the high full moon, and the melancholy dark mountains of his native land.
END OF PART I
PART II
CHAPTER IX
A brisk little gentleman, with a sharp profile and a slight stoop, was walking along a road in the south of Kerry. He had a somewhat lost, undecided air as he halted now and then, and vaguely stared about him. He was, in fact, a total stranger to the locality, being a certain Mr. Bence Usher, head of a well-known firm of London solicitors, who was spending his vacation for the first time in Ireland, and Ireland’s beauty had decoyed him far astray; the active, enterprising tourist was a good five miles from his hotel and his dinner—he was exploring alone, for Emily Usher, his housekeeper and sister, preferred to sit in the shady garden at the “Glenveigh Arms,” in company with the hotel tortoise and a new novel. As he moved onwards, sheer above him rose the purple Reeks; low on the right hand glittered a silver lake, of which each bend in the way, or break among the trees, revealed an enchanting vista of wooded islands, bays, or promontories. By degrees the prospect became lost to sight, and at length a high, dilapidated wall screened it completely—a wall bulging out dangerously here and there, but held together with ropes of ancient ivy. An equally dilapidated entrance presently came into view, and perched on one of the tumbledown gate piers sat an old man in his Sunday clothes, smoking a short black dhudeen. This he removed from his mouth in order to say, “A fine evening, yer honour”—for the southern-born peasant is always gracious, and never meets a stranger without some civil salute.
“Can you tell me whereabouts I am?” inquired the Englishman, in his thin, polite voice.
“And to be sure I can! An’ why wouldn’t I?” he returned, with unexpected emphasis. “This place,” indicating a grass-grown avenue which wound away vaguely among the trees, “is called Lota, but sure, ’tis in ruins. An empty house hereabouts falls to pieces in ten years’ time. ’Tis the soft climate as does it.”
“How far am I from the ‘Glenveigh Hotel’?”
“Faix, it depends on the road ye go—by wan way it’s in or about six miles, and the other it’s three—though it’s all the same distance. Ye understand me?”
“I cannot say that I exactly apprehend you, but if you would put me on the shortest route, I shall be greatly obliged——”
“Then the shortest root, as ye call it, is through here, and I’ll put ye on it in a brace of shakes an’ kindly welcome.”
“Thank you, I should be glad of your guidance,” replied the stranger, as he proceeded to clamber over the broken stile.
Meanwhile, Mike Mahon, having knocked the ashes out of his pipe, deliberately descended from his roost, and led the way between an overgrowth of trees and shrubs, down a back avenue into a yard, entirely surrounded by large roofless outhouses.
“Now, did ye ever see the like of that?” he demanded, with a dramatic wave of his horny hand.
No. His companion never had, and he shook his head in solemn commiseration. Rank grass a foot high covered the stones, the pump was a wreck, the stables lairs of nettles and old iron.
“This place has not been occupied for a long time, I take it.”
“There hasn’t been a fire in the chimney, a soul inside its doors, for twenty-one years. Ah, when the ould master, General Macarthy, lived here, there wasn’t as much as a straw astray, no, nor a leaf itself. He was a great soldier, who had lived mostly in the Indies, and was a wonderful man for flowers.”
Then they passed through a gap in a wall, and came on traces of the front avenue winding out of a forest of trees. There were trees on all sides, and on a sort of wide plateau stood the house. At the first glance its appearance administered a shock. The house was but a cottage. From the dimensions of the yard, the entrance, the imposing stretch of lawns and timber, one had naturally expected to see a mansion, or at least the ruins of a mansion. The grounds sloped gradually to the water’s edge, which was almost entirely hidden by a dense growth of shrubberies, and scattered over the wilderness to the left were marvellously luxuriant flowering plants, pampas grass, arbutus, rhododendrons, giant fuchsias, and at a little distance, a high and hoary garden wall, through its gates a vista of a wild jungle of high bushes and aged fruit-trees gone mad.
The little spare lawyer absorbed each item of the scene with his quick, professional eye, and then turned to his guide with an air of mute interrogation.
“Yes, ’tis a mortial pity,” he exclaimed, “for ’twas once the loveliest spot in the wide world.”
The stranger made no reply, but gazed at the lake and the woods, and mentally admitted that the situation and view were not to be surpassed.
“And so you say it has been empty this twenty-one years,” he remarked at last.
“Yes, sir, ’tis twenty-one years last September since they left it. I worked here, man and boy, for the General, and the garden over there was just a wonder. When he died, it was let for a short term, and after that it went to rack and ruin as ye see.”
“And does no one ever come near it?”
“Only the caretaker, once a week,” he replied. “It is rented to graziers for dry heifers, and that’s all. Oh, ’tis a mortial pity.”
Mr. Usher turned about as he concluded, and looked into the empty shell of a dwelling. It had originally been a glorified cottage with four spacious rooms and a wide hall; kitchen and servants’ quarters were at the back. The roof was intact; remnants of rich carving, and scraps of expensive wall-paper, still streaked the walls—and bore the signatures of half the country! In the drawing-room was a boat, whilst the dining-room served as a byre for the dry heifers.
“Of course when a house is left empty for years ’tis a sore temptation,” resumed the Irishman, in an apologetic key. “The poor people around has made away with the grates and doors and window-sashes. Faix, the old General spared no money on it, and if he was to see it now, he’d haunt the place.”
“It looks as if it had a history, or a law-suit,” remarked Mr. Usher, as he settled himself on a low window-sill, and produced his pipe.
“Well, then, no, yer honour, God be praised, it has not either wan or the other; but I could tell you—if yer in no hurry—a mighty queer tale of a child that was born there.”
“Oh, I’m in no hurry. It is not more than four o’clock,” said Mr. Usher, “and I’d like to hear the story,” offering his tobacco-pouch as he spoke.
“Well, then, hear it you shall, and so here goes!” rejoined the other, stuffing, as he spoke, a generous supply of tobacco into the bowl of his pipe, and thrusting it down with a horny thumb.
“’Tis more nor twenty years ago, when there were no gentlemen’s lodges round the lake, nor no railroad or telegraphs, nor tourists, but terrible long journeys and great hardships on cars, and the best of shooting and fishing; now we have a power of quality coming to and fro, and admiring all this”—waving his hand,—“and bringing good money into the country. God knows it’s badly wanted; but when I was a young gossoon, a stranger hereabouts was as much of a curiosity as an elephant; so it made a notorious stir when this very place was took by the Earl of Mulgrave and his Countess.”
Mr. Usher started, and hastily pulled his pipe out of his mouth. “Mulgrave,” he repeated, “Mulgrave, did you say?”
“Yes, Mulgrave, sir. I learnt off the name by thinking of graves. They was not too long married, and come on a spree like, and without hardly any servants.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” assented Mr. Usher, “but how did they discover it?”
“I don’t rightly know,” he replied, “but they were highly delighted, I can tell ye—his lordship with the sport; for in those days ye couldn’t put down yer foot on the mountain without standing on a bird. The woodcock was just dying of old age; and as for the fish, they were waiting on ye.”
“More than they do now!” grunted Mr. Usher.
“Himself liked the sport, and her ladyship the place. It was soon after the old master dying, and was just pure fairyland. The fuchsia hedges were a sight, the palms a wonder, the magnolia-trees the size of a cabin; and as for passion-flowers, the house was smothered between them and roses, and the carnations scented half the lake!” He paused to draw breath after this burst of eloquence, struck a match, and then resumed: “Ye may see the terrace here. I keep it still weeded. ’Twas here the old master took his stroll; ’twas here she used to walk.” He heaved a profound sigh, then proceeded in a brisker key.
“Yes; his lordship and her ladyship was well content, though maybe it was a bit lonesome for her. Many an evening I’ve seen her pacing up and down this same terrace, watching for the boat. Oh, she was a picture, I declare! like an angel on the chapel window.”
“Then you remember her?”
“Ah, who wouldn’t? Bedad I do! If I was to shut me eyes, I could see her standing there still; her hair (and she had crowds of it, enough to stuff a pillow) was dark red, like a copper beech; a small lily face, set on a long, white throat, a pair of wonderful dark eyes, and wee hands, like a child’s; just a blaze of stones; her voice was as sweet as a song, and when she smiled, ochone! ochone! it gave yer heart a squeeze. I never saw anything like it before.”
“Or since,” suggested Mr. Usher.
“Oh, then, bedad, sir, I won’t give in to that! I’ve seen the very comrade of it, an’ I’ll tell ye no lie! Well, her ladyship was mad on flowers, and she used to come and talk to me when I was weeding and working, asking questions about the country folk, and their matches and queer ways, and the old master—God rest him; and she said how sad it was to see his beautiful place let to strangers. ‘It’s a paradise,’ says she—‘the loveliest spot I’ve ever seen. You ought to be proud of your country, Mike Mahon!’ I told her I was so—and prouder again that it was plaisin’ to her.”
“Now that was a fine piece of blarney,” exclaimed his companion.
“’Twas not, sorr. ’Twas her due!” he retorted with vehemence. “Well, one night there was a terrible whirra loo—her ladyship had a baby unexpected! No doctor, nor nurse, nor clothes ready. Old ‘Betty the brag’ was called in, for the French maid was no good at all, only for screeching. Well, the baby was a girl, and a cruel disappointment, as a boy was wanted; however, av coorse she had to be reared all the same, and there was no means of feeding the crature, till Betty bethought her of Katty Foley. She had a young infant. Katty was about forty, a big, strong major of a woman. She’d been terribly unlucky, and had lost four children—some was born dead, some had just breath in them. People gave out it was a fairy blast. Howsomever, she had a living child at long last, four weeks old, and she took on the other poor little crawneen, and it throve elegantly. Well, when everything was going fair and aisy, her ladyship all of a sudden took and died. Just went out like a candle, and wid no more warning nor a snow-flake. And oh, but she made the beautiful corpse!”
“Why, you did not see her, surely?” said Mr. Usher, in a key of startled protest.
“No; but I heard tell the like was never beheld. Just the same as a dead angel! And I tell ye more: his lordship was all as wan as a mad man, and out of himself wid grief. The windows used to be open—it was summer—and I weeding and working hard by, and I heard him calling on her, and crying to her to come back—to come back. I declare to ye, sir, it was enough to melt the rock of Cashel; but sure, she was gone.” Here he gave a profound sigh. “They took her to England along with a great train of black mourners, and left the place just as it stood, and the child wid Katty. She had a bit of a farm and cows, and a nice decent slated house of her own; and his lordship would not so much as look at the baby, and was terribly bitter against it. Bedad, there seemed a sort of blight on the family, for in about two months’ time the child pined off and died, and was packed in a grand little white coffin, and sent away to the family burying-ground, and laid alongside the mother.”
“And so that was an end of the whole affair?”
“It was, sor. His lordship sent Katty fifty pounds to bank for her little Mary, and a long while after news came as he had married again—a widow lady. Little Mary throve well. Begorra, she was a rale beauty, and just the core of John Foley’s heart, and the apple of his eye. She was that clever and quick, wid such taking ways, but awful dainty about her food, and wid a terribly high sperrit. Learning was no trouble to her, and she has grown up a lovely girl, and it isn’t alone the golden sovereigns she has to her fortune, that makes all the boys crazy to marry her, ’tis her pretty face, and quare manners—not bold at all, but imperious and commanding. She could marry any wan she pleased; there is a strong farmer from this side of Kenmare, crazy about her, and I know a police-sergeant that is clean out of his mind.”
“And which is she going to take?” inquired Mr. Usher, who had finished his pipe, and stowed it carefully in its case, and began to think this story was rather long-winded, and that he would now cut it short, in favour of the short cut home.
“Neither wan or the other,” was the solemn response, “and she won’t have no match drawn down for her; she’s all for pickin’ and choosin’, the same as a lady. They do say she favours a car-driver at the Glenveigh Hotel, Pat Maguire, my own cousin’s son, a good-looking boy, as wild for fun and dancin’ as herself. He has sorra a penny or a penny’s worth but his two bare hands, a beautiful voice, and a concertina; but she is as hard to catch as a sunbeam, and all for play and joking. She’ll spend half her time standing at the gate at Foley’s corner, colloguing and laughing wid the neighbours, or running off fishing, or picking flowers, and she’s at every dance and wake in the barony. Oh, she’s a rare one to sing, aye, and to talk, and has always a word with the men, and a pick and a bit out of them; and yet no one could ever say that Mary Foley was bould, though they do give out she’s a terror for spending.”
Mr. Usher had heard more than enough of this little peasant and her attractions. He was beginning to feel a bit chilly, and he rose stiffly from the window-ledge, stamped down his trousers, yawned and said—
“Well, thank you, my good fellow, I’ve enjoyed my smoke and chat here, and your interesting story, but——”
“Story!” echoed Mike Mahon, hastily rising to his feet. “Sure, I haven’t told it to you yit.”
Mr. Usher turned about, and contemplated the speaker with an air of dignified surprise.
“Faix, it’s a true word, sor! All the talk I’m after pointing out was only the fringe, or the outside. I’m coming to the kernel now, and if your honour will just hold on a few minutes I’ll maybe surprise ye!”
“Oh, no doubt you will do that; but you see, I must be getting on now. Another time, perhaps, my good man, another time.”
“No, sir, but now. Since you’ve been so kind as to give me your company and the best of tobacco, I’d like just to finish off my bit of history like. I cannot tell what’s got at me this blessed day, but it drives me to speak, and to talk. Maybe it’s the place itself that edges me on! I ax yer pardon for making so free as to bother ye wid an old man’s chat.”
“As for that,” responded Mr. Usher, “I’m an idle man at present. At home all my time means money, and I forget that here I have no occasion to hurry myself. The day is long, and besides—this is rather a curious coincidence, but I’ve heard part of your tale before. The name of Mulgrave is familiar, and I am interested in seeing the spot where the first Lady Mulgrave died. It is extraordinary that I should, in the course of a casual afternoon ramble, come upon it just by accident.”
“Do ye think it was an accident, sir? I’d call it a queer chance. Anyhow, ’tis many a Sunday afternoon I put in here, and you’re one of the few visitors I’ve seen. If ye like, I’ll be setting ye on your road home, for I can walk and talk, and I would not be wishful to be a torment and a hindrance to yer honour; but when I’ve put the story off me mind, ye, being English and a gentleman, well up in years and experience, might give me your opinion and advice.”
“It is my rule to charge for both,” rejoined Mr. Usher, with a grim smile. “That is how I make my living. I’m a lawyer.”
“God help us!” ejaculated Mike under his breath, and then, in a louder key, “Meaning no offence, but ye don’t look like one. I’d take ye for a blooded gentleman!”
“Thank you. And now perhaps you will take me out of this delightful wilderness, and put me on the road to Glenveigh. If you will tell me your story, you shall have my best advice gratis—that means, without a fee.”