CHAPTER XIV
It was a soft and exquisite autumn afternoon. A delicate blue haze lay over the hills; the dense, dark woods were steeped in breathless silence, and the only sound that caught the ear, was the rattle of a reaping machine. As Lord Mulgrave and Mr. Usher turned down the long, straight road leading to Foley’s Corner, the earl was livid, his expression was set; evidently he was struggling in the grip of some vehement emotion, and the name of this disturbing element was “suspense.” Would it be true? or false? Would it be Joseline’s daughter? or some raw, uncouth stranger? Was it the wild-goose chase his wife had predicted, or the pursuit and capture of happiness? Oh, these next ten minutes would mean so much to him; he almost felt, this self-contained man, as if he were treading on the very boundaries of life and death.
“Joseline’s daughter,” he was saying to himself. “Joseline’s daughter.”
Mr. Usher, instinctively aware that his companion was in a highly strung and nervous condition, like the wise little man he was, held his peace; yes, even when they came within full view of the slated house, with its commonplace white face half hidden by a veil of crimson roses.
“There she is!” he exclaimed abruptly.
Yes; standing at the farthest side from them, attended by a terrier, feeding a multitude of bold and presumptuous poultry, stood Mary herself.
“See, now! that’s all I have for ye,” she declared, as she tossed the last crumbs away, and a race ensued between a strong-limbed cochin and a dissipated-looking hen turkey. The bang of the gate caused her to turn her head, and she beheld, to her surprise, the “little grey man,” as she called him, and a fine, tall gentleman; and little did she guess how deeply he was agitated.
“Here I am again, Mary!” announced Mr. Usher, with an off-hand air. “I thought, as we were just passing, we would look in and bid you the time of the day!”
“And kindly welcome.” As she spoke she glanced up at the stranger; he was awfully white, and his eyes, as he looked into hers, seemed to pierce down to her very heart. “What ailed the poor gentleman?” she wondered; “was he taken bad?” Yes; he suddenly sat down on a bench outside the door, and, in a husky tone, asked for a “glass of water.”
He really seemed faint and come over, and Mary hastened into the house, and presently returned with a brimming tin porringer.
As he sipped it, the hand which held the porringer shook visibly, and Mr. Usher, in order to make a diversion, inquired—
“How is your mother to-day, Mary?”
Lord Mulgrave started violently.
“Deed then, your honour,” she replied, “she is in a way better. She is sitting up, and the pains are gone, but her head is bothersome.”
From within a shrill old voice called out querulously:
“What are you after? Who is it that’s talking to your ladyship?”
“There it is!” she ejaculated. “The head of the poor thing is not right. Maybe”—hesitating—“you’ll come inside? or will the other gentleman?”
“Thank you,” he interrupted, “yes—yes, if you will permit me, I should like to see your—Mrs. Foley.”
Mary instantly pushed back the half-door, and ushered in the visitors.
Old Katty was seated in a comfortable chair near the window. On her lap lay a peculiarly complacent white cat, whose loud purrings testified to its supreme satisfaction, although she had the fur half singed off one side, and was in appearance the very lowest of the lower order of the great tribe, with a thin, pointed head, and a disgracefully dirty face.
Mrs. Foley, on the other hand, presented the remains of remarkably good breeding and good looks—slender and erect, with well-cut features, wavy black hair, but slightly powdered with grey, and dark, deep-set, tragic eyes. She bore but scant resemblance to her half-sister—the sandy, mealy-skinned, peevish Mrs. Grogan—and had made the more successful match of the two sisters.
“Here’s two gentlemen, mother!” was Mary’s somewhat vague introduction.
Mrs. Foley slowly turned her great melancholy eyes, first on Mr. Usher and then on his companion. As she gazed she suddenly seized the arms of her chair, rose to her feet and cried, “God help me! ’tis the earl himself!” and she trembled violently from head to foot.
“Now, can’t ye sit down, mother,” protested Mary, “and don’t be exciting yourself. Sure, ’tis only a chance friend of the visitors from the ‘Glenveigh’ as has looked in.”
Mrs. Foley threw herself back in her chair, and, rocking to and fro, began to wail and sob.
“Oh, my sin has found me out. Wirrah, wirrah, asthue! My sin has found me out! You’ve come to put me in jail and take her away at last.”
“Katty Foley,” he replied, “I will do you no injury in any way, you may be certain of that”—and his voice was strong and encouraging. “But I implore you to tell me the truth.”
“Aye, your honour,” she moaned, “I will so, and sure, haven’t I been telling it this twelvemonth, and not a soul will believe me!”
“I will believe you, I promise you on my honour.”
“Ye may think I am mad, but it was only bad I was; yer lordship will remember when I was sent for to take the poor little motherless babe?”
He nodded his head gravely.
“Oh, it was a fair and lovely darlin’, and so fine and healthy; but my own little girl grew droopy and pined—I’ve had four, and I never reared one. It killed me to see them just fading off and my heart withering along with them. When my little Mary—God rest her!—died, quite sudden, I was nearly crazy, but that other little one was a consolation, and as I lay in the bed I made up my mind I’d keep her for my own. Oh, wasn’t I the wicked woman? I had no scruple. Oh, may the saints pity me! But the little live warm child just caught me by the heart”—her voice rose to a wail of agony; “how could I send her away, and sit again by the empty cradle?”
She came to a pause, fighting for breath and overcome by the violence of her emotion.
“And how did you do it?” he inquired in a low voice.
“I kep’ my own baby well covered up, and the room within dark; and John telegraphed over, and there was a great stir, and a mighty gay little funeral; and no one knew—for young babies is so similar—that it was my own little girlie, I laid in the beautiful white and silver coffin under the flowers.”
“Tell me”—leaning forward as he spoke—“did no one ever suspect you?”
“Sorra a wan, but Mike over beyant at Lota. When he saw the child growing up he would come to the gate there and just stand and look over at her and then at me, in a way that put the fear of death in me. You see, he had worked for her ladyship; he saw the likeness; he saw her walking, living, talking image. Sure, don’t you see it, sir, yourself?”
“Yes, I do,” he asserted gravely.
“And what are you going to do with me and her?” she asked, in a broken voice.
“I intend to take her home,” he said quietly.
“Sir, if I’d suspicioned you’d have cared, I’d never have kep her from ye all these years. I surely believed ye thought yerself well shut of her. For you will remember as you were terribly bitter against her, and wouldn’t so much as lay an eye on her.”
“That is true, Katty; but if I had known, she would have been a wonderful comfort to me.”
As these two talked together, Mary herself listened in white-faced, petrified silence. Surely she was dreaming! Either that or going out of her mind! During a sudden pause in the conversation there was not a sound to be heard, but the distant reaping machine, and the immediate purring of the white cat.
“Mary,” said the earl, suddenly turning to her, and speaking in a husky voice, as he took her hand in his. “Do you understand that all your foster-mother tells us is true, and that you are my daughter?”
Here he looked hard at the little fingers which lay so limply in his grasp, and Mary, having thrown her apron over her head, burst into a violent storm of sobbings.
“Oh, no! Faix, I couldn’t face it! No, no, I’m not going out of this,” she stammered in gasps behind the apron. “Sure, sir, I was born and reared here; my life is here—not among grand folks.”
“They are your own folks, Mary,” he said gently.
“Well, anyhow”—and she flung down her screen, and flashed upon him a pair of challenging wet eyes—“I’m no lady, and I’m dog ignorant; so what can you do with me?”
“Love you, my dear,” he answered, in a low voice.
“Arrah, how could you? and you and me strangers—you a grand lord, and me just a common girl with no manners, and very foolish and unhandy in myself? I can’t even do a day’s washing; and the bread I bake turns out like leather! I’m no good whatever here, and sure I’d be a million times worse in a strange country!”
“You’re making an awful poor mouth about yourself, Mary asthore,” put in the high, complaining treble of Mrs. Grogan. “Why don’t ye up and tell his lordship how good ye are at learning—how ye were in the sixth book, and if there’d have been a seventh, you’d be in that too?—and that learning and reading and singing and dancing comes as easy to you as kiss me hand?”
“Sir,” said Mary, suddenly drawing herself up and confronting him—did she but know it, with the very face and form of her mother—“I’m no credit to ye. For God’s sake leave me here, where you found me. It will be better for both you and me. Think of the awful scandal and talk it will raise in this parish” (and what of the great Mulgrave connection?), “and my mother always so respected—when people thought it was only raving and wake in the head she was. Now, if it is true what she’s after telling us, they will be saying she’d a right to be jailed up in Tralee!”
“My dear girl,” he said, “since Mrs. Foley has declared before witnesses and a lawyer, that you are no relation to her, but a very near relation to me, do you suppose I will leave you among people to whom you have no ties whatever? No; I am much too thankful to have found a daughter.”
“O God! What ails Katty?” screamed Mrs. Grogan. “Glory! she’s come over, and she’s going off in a faint and a wakeness!”
This was true. The recent scene and excitement had been too much for the poor frail woman, and after a few weak gasps she fell back in her chair insensible.
Cold water was procured immediately, also whisky (Mr. Usher, who looked the last man in the world to carry a flask, produced one), and then he and his employer went out of the cottage, leaving the women to attend on the invalid.
As Lord Mulgrave’s eyes met those of his companion, he said—
“Yes, Usher, she is my child, and her mother’s daughter. Oh, what a blessing and happiness to come so suddenly, when I thought that life held no more—that nothing lay before me but the long, monotonous road that leads to the gate of death. Now I have something to——” He paused abruptly, and remembered himself. “You see how it is. The discovery of an unexpected treasure has been a shock, and I’m rambling, from sheer happiness. I will never forget, Usher, that I owe it chiefly to you.”
A frightened face now appeared at the half-door, and Mary said—
“Oh, sir, me mother is took awful bad in her breathing. Will ye go and send some one for Doctor Manns? I’ve no red ticket,—but we can pay him.”
The two visitors set off at once, and despatched a doctor post-haste from Glenveigh, with instructions that no exertions or expense were to be spared on behalf of Mrs. Foley.
The sick woman remained unconscious for twenty-four hours, and then rallied; but on the morning of the third day, when Lord Mulgrave walked over early in order to make his usual inquiries, he was met by Mary at the gate. Her eyes were red, and her face was sodden with crying.
“Oh, sir,” she began, “sure I see you can guess!” She sobbed aloud, and the tears poured down her pale cheeks. “She was took off in her sleep about sunrise. Me mother is dead!”