KITTY DARCY.
“You have overdone it, Bertram.”
“Not a bit of it, father.”
“You must get away.”
“Can’t afford expensive luxuries.”
“Do you consider health a luxury?”
“A necessity.”
“And yet, for the sake of piling up a few hundred dollars, you fling, yes, actually fling, it from you as though you were tired of it.”
“I love my profession too much not to make some little concession to it.”
“Come, now, Bertram, this won’t do. You have overworked yourself, and off you must go. This is the right time to start.”
“Whither?”
“To Paris.”
“Paris! Why not say Timbuctoo?”
“I say Paris.”
“You are surely jesting.”
“I do not jest on so serious a subject as your health, my boy.”
“It can’t be done, father.”
“It must be done, Bertram. Your Uncle Kirwan starts on Wednesday, and with him you shall go. He hopes to be in time for the opening of the Exhibition.”
“My Uncle Kirwan goes on business.”
“His nephew shall go on pleasure. Why, what’s the matter with you? Half the young fellows in New York would be half-mad with delight to be in your place.” Doctor Bertram Martin laughs. The idea is ridiculous, absurd. He cannot, he dare not leave his patients. That delightful case of tetanus, that splendid fracture of the hip, that exquisite tumor yielding to a new treatment, that interesting consumption, that curious cardiac dropsy, that superb typhus!
Bertram Martin, although but twenty-four years of age, is regarded by the profession as the coming man. His work on aneurism is considered the ablest essay yet written upon the subject, and his reputation with the “knife” is second to none. He is highly cultured, earnest, a calm intelligence, with the fires of enthusiasm well banked up; but he is full of latent purpose, an energy that is ever on the spring, and of lava that eventually cools into solid success. He has a great future before him, and he feels it.
His father, in whose Turkey-rugged, book-lined office he reclines in a low chair—one of those delightful chairs that fondle and caress the weary occupant—is also a physician, and who, having amassed a considerable fortune, now that he has safely launched the good ship that bears his name, is about to enjoy a well-earned otium cum dignitate.
Bertram’s mother has noted the increasing pallor in the young physician’s face, the drag under the eye, the hard, dark lines, and the weariness of tone, that denote an active brain heated to a white heat, and has determined, coûte que coûte, that her eldest-born shall “drop both spade and plough for a revel amongst the daisies.”
“Exhibitions are played out, father,” exclaims Bertram. “The last and best was at Philadelphia, and no show on the earth could beat that.”
He is intensely American, regarding Europe as effete, old-world, used up.
“Paris is not played out.”
“I should much prefer seeing Paris at any other time.”
“That’s what everybody will say who can’t go. I may as well tell you, Bertram, that there’s a little conspiracy got up against you, and at the head of it is your mother.”
“Yes, Bertie,” exclaims Mrs. Martin, who enters, “we have undermined you. Your Uncle Kirwan starts on Wednesday by the Scythia, and here’s the ticket for your state-rooms,” handing him the article in question.
“Why, mother—”
“My darling child, you look dreadfully ill, and it is fretting my heart out. I spoke to Doctor Lynch, and he orders change of air and total cessation from work. You never opposed me in your young life; you are not going to commence now.”
“But—”
“But me no buts, Bertie.”
“This trip would take two months.”
“Three.”
“I should be out of the race in three months.”
“You’ll return fresh and vigorous, and to win.”
“This is sheer folly. I never felt better in my life.”
“Next Wednesday, Bertie.”
“I could not, even if I listened to this absurd proposal, be ready before two weeks.”
“Next Wednesday, Bertie.”
In vain does the young doctor expostulate, contesting the ground inch by inch. In vain does he plead for time. His pickets are driven in, the enemy is upon him in force, and, ere he can well realize the exact posture of affairs, his mother has obtained his solemn promise that he will leave for Europe by the Scythia upon the following Wednesday in company with his uncle, Walter Kirwan.
A bright and joyous group was assembled at the Cunard wharf to see him off, and to bid him Godspeed across the waste of waters. Mr. Kirwan, a fine, handsome man of five-and-thirty, over six feet high, with a winning eye and a wooing voice, stood “one bumper at parting” in his state-room, which was decorated with a profusion of glorious flowers, the offerings of very near and very dear friends. One bouquet, composed exclusively of forget-me-nots and mignonette, caused any number of “Oh! my’s,” “How beautiful!” “Isn’t it lovely!” from pouting female lips.
“Who sent it to you, Bertram?” asked Mrs. Martin.
“It may not be for me, mother.”
“Oh! yes, it is; here is the card with your name upon it.”
“I have no idea.”
“No idea?”
“None in the world.”
A tall, lithe, graceful girl stands a little aside, trifling with the fringe of her parasol, as these questions are being put, her embarrassed looks and blushing cheeks denoting fierce and scarce controlled agitation.
“Did you send me this bouquet, Miss Reed?” asks Bertram in a low tone.
“I—I—that is—I hope you will—that they will—look pretty,” is the murmured response.
“Did Carrie Reed send those flowers to Bertram?” asks Mrs. Martin of her sister, Mrs. Kirwan, in freezing tones.
“Yes; I heard her admit it just now.”
“What a forward minx! I’ve a great mind to tell her so.”
How severe these mothers are when “my son” is approached by youth and beauty! The idea of marriage is a horror.
“And this is Liverpool!” exclaims Bertie, as the good ship steams up the Mersey. “I’m awfully sorry to have been asleep when we were at Queenstown; why didn’t you shake me up, uncle?”
“Because you want all the sleep you can get. You were nearly in for a dose of insomnia, and that would have pretty soon squared your account, my boy.”
“Pshaw! you all made me out worse than I really was.”
“Not a bit of it. You allowed a nice lot of sand to run out of your glass. But isn’t that a sight, Bertie? There are masts—a forest. There are docks—the docks of the world.”
“What docks we’ll have in twenty years at New York!”
“You don’t believe in anything outside of the stars and stripes.”
“Not much,” with a laugh; adding, “Shall we make any stay in Liverpool?”
Mr. Kirwan consults his watch.
“We shall only just catch that train due in London at 6.40. The Dover express starts at 7.35. This will decant us in Paris to-morrow morning at six. We shall have nice time for a big wash, a big breakfast, and then for the opening of the Exhibition.”
“This is close shaving.”
“That’s my principle. Narrow margins. They pay best all round.”
Mr. Kirwan’s calculations, based Upon professional experience, proved correct. A vague soup and an ill-dressed cutlet at Charing Cross, a thick omelette and a thin wine at Amiens, did duty for refreshment. In the sheen of dazzling early sunlight Bertram Martin first saw Paris, the bright, the joyous, the glittering, the beautiful. A dream of his life was about to be realized.
Mr. Kirwan having telegraphed for apartments, he with our hero was “skied” at the Hôtel du Louvre, and after a breakfast which would have done honor to a navvy had been disposed of by Bertie, who in New York would flirt with a slice of toast and coquette with a fresh egg, cigars were lighted and the two gentlemen set forth in the direction of the Champ de Mars.
“This is the best sight I have ever seen,” cried the young physician, as they strolled along the Rue de Rivoli. “Why, it’s nearly as bright as Broadway.”
“What a thorough Yank you are, Bertie! Come here, now; just take a look around you, and confess that you are fairly dumbfounded.”
They stood at the Place de la Concorde. The fountains were throwing feathery sprays high in air; the flowers were blooming in a myriad hues. Thousands of vehicles were flashing past, tens of thousands of pedestrians. The great tide of human life had set in towards the Trocadero. Regiments in gorgeous uniforms, headed by bands playing superbly, marched onwards, quaint costumes of every nationality under the sun flitted by—bizarre groups chatting and laughing and gesticulating!
Behind them the blackened walls of the Tuileries, in front the Champs Elysées and the Arc de Triomphe, on the left the Chamber of Deputies, on the right the glorious Madeleine.
“It is magnificent,” exclaimed Bertie at length, in a subdued tone of emotion.
“Nearly as bright as Broadway,” laughed Kirwan.
“Wait! Twenty years, and our up-town will be as gorgeous as this. We have the taste, we have the money, all we want is the time; that we have not.”
“And never will have. We rush too much. But come along; we must be at the Exhibition building early or our chances of getting in will be a little thin. We shall have, as we say in New York, to take a back seat, doctor.”
“I should prefer to stop here. What a sight this is! What contrasts; how vivid! Look at that grim sergent-de-ville, and beside him that piquante girl in the Normandy cap as high as his cocked hat, and earrings as long as his sword. See that ouvrier in the blouse; how cheerfully he smokes his cigar, carrying his two children! I do believe he would carry his wife into the bargain. How coquettishly she is attired, and how cheaply! See the artistic manner that two-dollar shawl is draped over her shoulder, and how that five-cent ribbon hangs. I’ll wager that these fellows coming along as if walking on air are of the Quartier Latin, the students’ quarter. They, poor fellows! have come to see the crowd. I suppose their united wealth at this moment will scarcely do more than omelette and beer them. What flashing equipages! How beautifully finished! We do want these liveries in Central Park. Imagine those yellows, and purples, and blues, and saffrons, and whites glancing amongst our green trees or up Fifth Avenue. What cavalry! How superbly those dragoons sit their horses—Centaurs every man of them. It must have been by sheer force of numbers that they bit the dust in the late war. What fountains! what flowers! what trees—four rows of them up to that magnificent arch—and what residences!” gushed Bertram Martin.
“These gilded pagodas, and Swiss chalets, and marble palaces, and fairy bowers are for open-air concerts. Wait till you see them lighted up, and I tell you what it is, Bertie, you’ll go into raptures. Why, no tale in the Arabian Nights equals them for glitter. And the music, my boy, sparkles like champagne,” cried Kirwan enthusiastically.
Arrived at the Champ de Mars, the crowd gradually filtered into the Exhibition building. At the turnstile Bertie was separated from his uncle, who made a rush for another entrance. Immediately in front of him was a young girl, lissome and lithe of figure, attired in a raiment of soft, filmy, cloudy, floating white. He could detect a delicate little ear, and a white neck from which the hair was scrupulously lifted and arranged—she had removed her hat—dark and lustrous, tight and trim, in a fashion exceedingly becoming to the beautiful, but trying to the more ordinary of womankind.
Have we not all at some time or another felt that something strange was going to happen to us? that steps were coming nearer and nearer? that a voice was calling to us at a great way off that would presently become more distinct?
A something urged Bertram Martin to see this girl’s face. Was it mere curiosity? No. The impulse was indefinable as a subtle perfume, indefinable as a sweet sound in music. A shapely head, and lustrous hair, and a lissome form—this was a very ordinary scaffolding whereon to build a romance, and, although the young doctor would have laughed anybody to scorn who would have taxed him with being romantic, there was no boy of half his age and quarter his experience more likely to make a fool of himself about a woman than Bertie Martin.
He had led his life amongst his books, his profession his mistress. Too much absorbed in the engrossing duties attendant upon the alleviation of the ills the flesh is heir to, he was in the world and yet not of it, beholding it as through a polished sheet of plate-glass. His mother, a woman of the highest culture, refinement, taste, and ability, had vainly urged upon him the necessity of taking part in the gayeties of a very extended and highly fashionable circle—vainly, indeed; for having on a few occasions attended “swell” receptions and upper-crust entertainments, he squarely pilloried himself in a cui bono? and from that hour the butterfly world knew him no more.
He is tall, lightly built, graceful. His eyes are dark gray, full of earnestness, and blazing with intelligence. His mouth is absolutely faultless, having at command a smile, a veritable ray of sunshine. His light-brown moustache and beard have never known the razor. He dresses well, and is a dandy in gloves and boots.
He must see that girl’s face, and he plunged forward despite the sacr-r-ré of an infuriated Frenchman and the full-flavored exclamation of a London cockney, into whose ribs he had plunged his right elbow. At this moment she turned her head a little to address a portly gentleman behind, who, with a flushed face and a general appearance of acute physical and mental suffering, through heat, crush, and excitement, had been urging her to push onwards.
Her profile was simply lovely: one inch of forehead; a nose a trifle out of the regular line of beauty; eyelashes that swept her cheeks; a short upper lip with a tremulous curl in it, a rich red under one, and a chin worthy the chisel of Phidias. And yet, despite its classical contour, her face was Irish—yea, that delicious ensemble which Erin bestows upon her daughters, placing them above all in beauty, in archness, and in purity of expression.
“She is lovely,” murmured Bertie, gazing at her with all his eyes.
A rush came, a great pressure from behind, and the wave flung him beyond the turnstile.
“Well done, old fellow!” cried Kirwan, clapping him on the back.
“Where is she?” demanded the young physician, gazing round him on every side, as though his head were rotary.
“Just gone up this way with her son.”
“Who? What son?”
“Why, the Duchess of Lachaunay. That’s what caused the rush; her toilet is by Worth, and cost twenty thousand francs.”
“Hang the duchess!” groaned Bertie. “I have lost sight of the loveliest girl I ever laid eyes on.”
“Where was she?”
“There, right in front of me.”
“Never mind. Take heart of grace. We’ll pick her up by and by. Let’s get our seats or we’ll forfeit them.”
“You go, uncle. I’ll do as I am, I think I’ll walk about.”
Kirwan looked at his nephew with a merry glance.
“So badly hit as that, Bertie?”
“Pshaw!” cried the doctor, turning on his heel.
And they did not find her. Not a bit of it. Bertram walked, and stalked, and darted hither and thither, until Kirwan fairly let him have his own way, giving him a rendezvous at the hotel for seven o’clock.
What cared Bertram Martin for the gorgeous array of foreign princes, ambassadors, commissioners, presidents, ministers, deputations, senators, or deputies? What cared he for the address to Marshal MacMahon, or the one-hundred-and-one gun salute, or the military music, or the hoisting of flags, or the playing of fountains? What cared he for the procession, with all its glittering magnificence, or for all the treasures of the earth dug up by man and nurtured by art? He sought the four-leaved shamrock in the bright young girl whose beauty had flashed upon him as a revelation, and although he posted himself at the chief exit until he came to be regarded with suspicion by a grim sergent-de-ville, in the hope of obtaining another glimpse of her, he was doomed to disappointment, and he returned to the hotel, and to a petit dîner ordered for the occasion by his uncle, in the worst possible spirits.
“Did you find her, Bertie?”
“No.”
“If she’s French she won’t go to the Exhibition again for some time. She has done the opening, and will take it now, as the Crushed Tragedian says, ‘in sections.’ But come, Bertie, love or no love, try this Soupe à la Bonne Femme; it will ring up the curtain to a menu that even Delmonico never dreamt of in his wildest imaginings.”
For the two weeks that Bertie remained in Paris he sought the fair unknown—sought her in the Exposition, in the galleries of the Louvre, at Versailles, amongst the ruins of the palace of St. Cloud, in churches, on the boulevards, in cafés—everywhere. Once he thought he caught a glimpse of her passing along the Rue de Rome, and, plunging from the top of the omnibus at the imminent risk of breaking his neck, came up with a very pretty young girl who turned into the residence of the ex-Queen of Spain.
“It is a perfect infatuation,” wrote home Kirwan. “Bertie is crazed about some girl he saw on the opening day of the Exhibition. I can get no good of him. I scarcely ever see him, and when he is with me he is continually darting from me in pursuit of this will-o’-the-wisp, or craning his neck in search of her. And only to think of grave Doctor Bertram Martin being in this horrid state!”
It had been announced that the tour was to include London, the English lakes, Scotland, and Ireland. Bertie voted London a bore, the lakes a nuisance, the land of cakes nowhere, and declared in favor of a few days in Ireland. With a sigh, as though tearing up his heart by the roots, he took his departure from Paris.
“I shall never, never see her again,” he groaned, and was silent the whole way to Calais.
Kirwan fondly imagined that London would shake off this glamour, and did his uttermost to bring all the attractions of the modern Babylon into bold relief; but four days seemed so thoroughly to weary his nephew that it was resolved to start for Ireland without any further delay.
A glorious evening found them pacing the deck of the mail steamer Connaught, en route from Holyhead to Kingstown. Before them lay the Dublin mountains, bathed in glorious greens, yellows, and purples. Away to the left stretched the Wicklow hills, guarded by the twin sugar-loaves and backed by lordly Djouce. To the right the Hill of Howth, the famous battlefield of Clontarf, and in the smoky distance the city of Dublin. Kingstown, its white terraces sloping to the sea; Dalkey, its villas peeping timidly forth from the fairest verdure-clad groves; Killiney, lying in the lap of a heather-caressed mountain; Bray, like a string of pearls on the ocean’s edge; the dark-blue waters of the bay, dotted here and there with snowy yachts, or with the russet brown of the Skerries fishing-smacks—what a coup-d’œil!
“It is glorious,” murmured Bertie, as, leaning on the railing of the bridge, he drained this cup of loveliness to the very dregs.
Arrived at Dublin, they put up at the Shelborne Hotel, in Stephen’s Green, whither they were borne from the dingy station at Westland Row on an outside car that jingled, rattled, creaked, and groaned at every revolution of its rickety wheels.
“What’s this fur?” demanded the tatterdemalion driver, got up in a cast-off suit of Con the Shaughraun, as he glanced from half a crown lying upon the palm of his horny hand to Kirwan and Bertie.
“What’s this fur at all, at all?”
“It’s your fare, my man,” said Kirwan.
“Me fare? An yez come from Amerikey?”
“Yes.”
“The cunthry that me sisther, and me aunt, an’ me cousin Tim, an’ me cousin Phil is always braggin about? Wisha, wisha, but it’s lies they’re tellin’ me, sorra a haporth else. The people over there must be regular naygurs afther all,” reluctantly preparing to pocket the coin.
“It will never do to let the American flag go by the board,” whispered Bertie. “Here, my man, here is half a crown for the stars, and here’s half a crown for the stripes.”
“An’ won’t yer honor stand somethin’ for the flagstaff?” with a grin of such unspeakable drollery that both the Americans burst into a fit of laughter.
Mr. Kirwan had been provided with a letter of introduction to a family residing in Merrion Square.
“Shall we look up the Darcys, Bertie?” he asked one morning shortly after their arrival.
“Cui bono?”
“The Joyces were so anxious about it. It would never do to go back to New York without calling, at all events.”
“At it, then. Let’s get it over, and on to Killarney.”
The Darcy mansion in Merrion Square was muffled in its summer wraps. The shutters were closed, the windows barricaded with newspapers, the knocker removed, while a profound air of dust and melancholy hung over it like a pall—this though the scarlet and white hawthorn, the lilac and laburnum, were shedding their delicious odors from the enclosure of the square opposite.
“The famly is out av town,” responded a very dilapidated-looking old woman to Kirwan’s query.
“Indeed! I shall leave a card.”
“Av ye plaze; but shure where’s the use? They’ll not get it this three months.”
“Where are they travelling?”
“In furrin parts.”
“I shall write a line.”
“Step in, sir, and welkim.”
This elderly damsel ushered them into an apartment from which the carpet had been removed, the curtains taken down, the gasalier and pictures muffled, and the furniture piled up and partly concealed by matting. Kirwan took out his letter of introduction, and, opening it, proceeded to write a line of regret upon missing Mr. Darcy. The young doctor moved about the room, amusing himself by listlessly gazing out through the half-opened shutter. Presently he approached a massive book-case, and endeavored to peer through the interstices afforded by the gaping of the brown paper that concealed the books.
Little did he imagine what an influence this simple action was destined to bear upon his near future! His wandering gaze suddenly merged into earnestness, then it became fascinated, then fixed.
“Come here!” he said to the attendant, his voice hoarse from suppressed emotion.
The woman came to his side.
“Do you see that carte de visite?”
“Cart o’ what?”
“That photograph there, lying on its side,” the words coming in hot gasps.
“Yes, sir.”
“Whose is it?”
“Misther Darcy’s, I suppose.”
“Whose likeness is it?” clutching her by the wrist.
“I dunno, sir.”
“You don’t know! Is it one of the family?”
“I dunno, sir.”
“Is—is there a Miss Darcy? Has Mr. Darcy a daughter?” his impatience wrestling with a desire to throttle the caretaker.
“I heerd that he has wan.”
“Heard! Don’t you know it?”
“I do not, sir. I’m a sthranger. I come from Stoneybatther, beyant the wather, but I heerd that Misther Darcy has a daughter, and that she is married—”
“Married!” reeling as if he had been struck a heavy blow.
“What’s all this, Bertie?” asked Kirwan uneasily.
“That photo there.”
“Yes, I see it.”
“It’s the photo of the girl I saw at the opening of the Paris Exhibition.”
“And a pretty girl she is!” exclaimed Kirwan, indulging in a prolonged whistle as he gazed at it sideways like a bird.
“I must have it,” said Bertram, a dogged resolution in his tone.
“How is that to be done? You can’t steal it, Bertie.”
“It shall be done fairly and squarely if possible; if not, I shall smash the glass.”
“Tut! tut! man, you’re not thinking.”
The wound had been nearly healed, the memory of that girlish face was fast becoming a sweet treasure of a by-gone time, to be lingered over at fitful intervals, and always with rapture, when this unlooked-for freak of destiny caused the wound to bleed afresh, and memory to burst into rich and fragrant blossom.
During each of the three days that he remained in Dublin Bertram Martin visited the deserted mansion in Merrion Square, to gaze at that photograph, all so near and yet so far. Could he have but obtained a solitary clue to the whereabouts of the Darcys no earthly power would have prevented his following them; but clue there was none.
The train clanked into the station at Killarney in a mist as thick as a ladies’ tulle-illusion veil.
“If this sort of thing is going to last we sha’n’t see much of Kate Kearney,” laughed Kirwan.
“I wish I had never left New York,” said Bertie. “I did my very uttermost not to come, but you set your trap, all of you, and I go back—what?”
“You can run over again.”
“Never! Once back, my profession shall have all my energy, all my hope—my life.”
They put up at the Railway Hotel, and after dinner strolled out as far as Ross Castle. The mist had cleared away, and the view of Innisfallen sleeping in the moonlight, of the cluster of dreamy islands, the soft outlines of the Mangerton, the purple mountain and the Toomies bathed in liquid pearl, the twinkling lights along the shore, the mirrored waters of the lake shimmering in silver glory, sent a wave of delicious reverie over the hearts of the two men, as, seated in silence on a ruined wall of the ivy-covered keep, they gazed in solemn rapture upon a scene exquisite, soothing, sublime.
“I wish to heaven your aunt was here to see this,” said Kirwan, lighting a fresh cigar.
“I wish—” but Bertie did not utter another word.
The following morning was one in ten thousand—fresh, sunny, breezy, inspiriting, laden with the languor of summer, rippling with the coquetry of spring; a primrose light, a violet shade. Our two friends joined a party bound for the Gap of Dunloe. The ponies were sent on, and a boat ordered to meet them at the upper lake with luncheon. Bertie was unusually depressed, and, despite the vigorous efforts of his uncle to pull him together, he clung, as it were, to himself, avoiding all intercourse with his fellow-man, and especially his fellow-woman, a buxom, blithe, hearty English lady, who laughed with anybody and at everything, and whose whole trouble lay in a morbid terror lest any accident should happen to the bitter beer. After a two hours’ drive through lovely and matchless scenery the carriage arrived at the entrance to the Gap, and here the party dismounted.
“Where do we meet the ponies?” asked Kirwan.
“A little bit up the Gap, sir.”
“Any bitter beer up there?” laughed the English lady.
“Troth, thin, there’s not, but Kate Kearney’ll give ye a dhrop o’ the mountain dew, me lady,” replied the driver.
Bertie strode on before. There was a something exhilarating in speeding up the craggy pass, in bounding from rock to rock like a mountain deer, in plunging through the purple heather, and in leaping saucy brooklets flashing their glittering waters in the glorious sunlight. In vain did Kate Kearney assail him with blarney, blandishments, and bog oak, with “a dhrop o’ the craythur” under the thin disguise of goat’s milk. In vain did arbutus-wood venders, and mendicants, and wild-flower girls trudge by his side and cling to his heels. He distanced them all, leaving them standing at different places in the middle of the road, baffled and worsted in the encounter. Up against the sky line stood the ponies. Up against a sheer wall of dull gray rock covered with ferns, and mosses, and lichens leant a wooden shanty, and for this shanty Bertram Martin made.
A party had ascended before him; they were from the Victoria Hotel—two gentlemen and two ladies. One gentleman was seated on a granite boulder as Bertie reached this coigne of vantage.
“Glorious day, sir,” exclaimed the tweed-covered excursionist.
“Superb,” replied Bertie, flinging himself on the purple heather to await the arrival of Kirwan.
“You’re from the other side of the pond. Have a cigar,” flinging over his case in a right royal manner.
Bertie selected a weed.
“Have a light,” shying a silver fusee-box which the doctor dexterously caught.
“From New York?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know any people of the name of Joyce?”
“Daniel Blake Joyce, of Gramercy Park?” asked Bertie.
“Yes.”
“I know him and his family intimately.”
The tweed-arrayed stranger jumped to his feet.
“I call this jolly. My name is O’Hara.”
“Not Tim O’Hara?”
“Yes, Tim.”
“Why, my dear sir,” cried Bertie, “I’ve heard the Joyces speak of you fifty times.”
“This is first-class. Have a card. You’ll come and stop with me a week, a month—six. I live in the County Wicklow.”
“I most seriously wish I could,” said the physician, exchanging cards, “but I leave by the Asia on Friday.”
“Not a bit of it. Hi, Dick! Dick! I say,” calling to a fat, jovial-faced, red-nosed elderly gentleman who had just emerged from the shanty. “Here’s a friend of Dan Joyce’s, of New York, who says he’s going to leave by the Asia on Friday. Will that fit?”
“I should say not,” said the other, approaching.
Where had Bertram Martin seen that face?
“Any friend of Dan Joyce’s is our friend, and shame be upon us if we let you leave Ireland without at least giving us the opportunity of having a gossip and a bottle over Dan.”
Where had Bertram Martin seen that face?
In a few words, even while this perplexing thought was whirling through his brain, Bertie informed the new-comer—for O’Hara had disappeared into the shanty in search of the ladies with his news—of his doings since he landed at Liverpool.
“At what time were you in Paris?” asked the stranger.
“On the opening day of the Exhibition,” replied the doctor with a deep sigh, as his thoughts flew back to the lovely girl he was destined never, oh! never, to behold again.
“I was in Paris on that day,” said the stranger.
Bertie seized him by the wrist.
“You were? I have it all now. Now I know where I saw you,” speaking with fearful rapidity. “It was at the entrance C——. There was a fearful crush. You were not alone. You were with a young lady. Who is that girl? Where is she?” And he stopped, a world of excited earnestness in his eyes.
“That young lady is my daughter.”
“Where is she?”
“She is here.”
“Here?” a mad throb at his heart.
At this moment O’Hara emerged from the shanty, accompanied by two ladies, one of them, young and fresh and lovely, hanging fondly on his arm.
Bertie saw it all now. One wild glance told him that she was as far from him as the fleecy cloud sailing above his head—that she was the wife of Tim O’Hara.
“I don’t think, Dick, that I introduced you to my young friend, Dr. Martin. Doctor, this is Dick Darcy, one of the gayest fellows in all Ireland. Get your legs under his mahogany in Merrion Square and——”
“I have been in your house in Merrion Square. I have a letter of introduction to you from Mr. Joyce,” burst in Bertie.
“And you shall be again, my young friend,” wringing his hand warmly. “Mary,” to the elder lady, “this is Dr. Martin, a friend of Dan Joyce’s. Doctor, this is my wife. And this,” turning to the girl, “is my daughter.”
Bertie took her courteously-proffered hand, and held it for one instant in his. He looked down, down into those Irish gray eyes, where truth and innocence and purity lay like gems beneath crystal waters; he gazed with a wild rapture upon the beauteous face that had haunted him day and night in its rosy radiance, and then with a muttered exclamation was about to turn away when O’Hara exclaimed:
“Miss Darcy looks as if she had seen you before.”
“Miss Darcy?” cried Bertie.
“Yes; you wouldn’t have her Mrs. Darcy, would you?”
Oh! the weight lifted off his heart. Oh! how gloriously shone out the sun, how blue was the sky, how radiant the flowers, how sweet the song of the mountain thrush, how delightful everything. The great black shadow which had hung over him like a pall had passed away before the dayshine of her presence, and, borne on that sunlight, came the message to his heart that Kitty Darcy was to be wooed, and—possibly to be won.
Kirwan’s pleasure knew no bounds as he clasped the hand of Dick Darcy.
“What a sorry opinion you would have had of the old country if you had only known its hospitality through the medium of a hotel, Mr. Kirwan!” laughed Darcy as the party mounted their shaggy mountain ponies.
Of course Bertie rode beside Miss Darcy, and descanted not as eloquently as he could have wished upon the glorious bits of scenery that revealed themselves at every turn in the Gap. He spoke glowingly of home, of the lordly Hudson, the dreamy Catskills, the White Mountains, and the Yosemite.
“Oh! isn’t that gloriously gloomy,” cried Miss Darcy, as they emerged from the granite-walled Gap to the ridge overlooking the Black Valley to the right, stretching away in gray sadness, locked in the embraces of mountains standing in ebon relief against the blue yet lustreless sky.
“Not unlike my own reflections for the last six weeks,” laughed the doctor; “they were gloriously gloomy.”
“See the sunshine over the upper lake.”
“I accept the omen.”
“And the Eagle’s Nest, how superbly it towers over the water! What greens!—from white to russet. How charmingly the foliage of the arbutus seems to suit this lovely scenery!”
And what a scene in its brilliance, its repose, its poetry! Verdure-clad mountains dreaming in the haze of summer, lifting themselves to the blue vault of heaven, the tender green mixing with the cerulean, as a spring leaf with the forget-me-not; mirror-like lakes reflecting every crag, every tree, every bud with that fidelity only known to nature’s mirrors; the path winding tortuously down to the lake, now disappearing in a patch of wood, now meandering through a waving meadow as yet uninvaded by the ruthless scythe. Away stretched the lakes, away the old Weir Bridge—away in shimmering loveliness all too lovely to describe, all too lovely save to gaze and gaze upon, until heart and soul absorbed it in a thirsty greed.
Three days spent in Kitty Darcy’s society—three days in wandering through the ruins of Muckross Abbey, that home of silent prayer, that “congealed Pater Noster,” by the low, dulcet murmur of O’Sullivan’s Cascade, amid the leafy dells of “Sweet Innisfallen,” up the steep ascent of Mangerton, on the fern-caressed road to the police barracks, stopping at the exquisite little chapel perched like an eerie up in its wooded nest and uttering an Ave, always by Kitty’s side, always inhaling the subtle perfume of her presence—three centuries compressed into three days.
The Darcys were en route to a fishing-lodge at Valentia, out where the cable flashes into the wide Atlantic, and the day arrived when farewell—a word that must be, and hath been, a sound that makes us linger—must be said.
“Are you going by the Asia on Friday, uncle?” asked Bertie.
“Why, of course.”
“I am not.”
“No!”
“I go on to Carrick-na-cushla with the Darcys.”
“I thought as much, Bertie. What shall I tell them in New York?”
“That I shall bring home a young, lovely, pure, and charming wife, if I can. I have two letters for you, one for my mother and one for my father. If things turn out—all right, I’ll return; if—” here he paused with a writhe—“all wrong, you won’t hear of me for some time.”
Dr. Bertram Martin’s three months’ vacation is not yet over. It threatens to lengthen into six, possibly into nine months; and when he returns he will not return alone. His uncle Kirwan has had a sad time of it ever since; and Dr. Martin’s fair patients are inconsolable.