I have no means of knowing if such were the case here: I can but surmise from other circumstances the causes which were in operation. It is enough, however, if I state that long before Gabriac had passed the limit of admiration for Polly, she had conceived for him a strong sentiment of love; and while he was merely exerting those qualities which are amongst the common gifts of his class and his country, she was becoming impressed with the notion of his vast superiority to all of those she had ever met in society. It must be taken into account that his manner towards her evinced a degree of respect and devotion which, though not overpassing the usual observance of good manners in France, contrasted very favorably with the kind of notice bestowed by country gentlemen upon “the Grinder's daughter.” Those terrible traditions of exorbitant interest, those fatal compacts with usury, that had made Fagan's name so dreadfully notorious in Ireland, were all unknown to Gabriac. He only saw in Polly a very handsome girl, of a far more than common amount of intelligence, and with a spirit daringly ambitious. As the favored friend and companion of his cousin, he took it for granted that the peculiar customs of Ireland admitted such intimacies between those socially unequal, and that there was nothing strange or unusual in seeing her where she was. He therefore paid her every attention he would have bestowed on the most high-born damsel of his own court; he exhibited that deference which his own language denominated homage; and, in fact, long before he had touched her affections, he had flattered her pride and self-love by a courtesy to which she had never, in all her intercourse with the world, been habituated.
Perhaps my reader needs not one-half of the explanation to surmise why two young people—both good-looking, both attractive, and both idle—should, in the solitude of a country cottage, fall in love with each other. That they did so, at all events,—she first, and he afterwards,—is, however, the fact; and now, by the simple-hearted arrangement of my poor mother,—whose thoughts had never taken in such a casualty,—were they to set off together as fellow-travellers for Dublin. So far, indeed, from even suspecting such a possibility, it was only a few days previously that she had been deploring to Polly her cousin's fickleness in breaking off his proposed marriage in France, on the mere ground that his absence must necessarily have weakened the ties that bound him to his betrothed What secret hopes the revelation may have suggested to Polly's mind is matter that I cannot even speculate on.
It was with a heavy heart my poor mother saw them drive from the door, and came back to sit down in solitude beside the cradle of her baby. It was a dark and rainy day of winter; the beating of the waves against the rocky shore, and the wailing winds, made sad chorus together; and without, as well as within, all was cheerless and depressing. Dark and gloomy as was the landscape, it was to the full as bright as the scene within her own heart; for now that she began to arrange facts and circumstances together, and to draw inferences from them, she saw that nothing but ruin lay before her. The very expressions of Fagan's letter, so opposite to the almost submissive courtesy of former times, showed her that he no longer hesitated to declare her the dependent on his bounty. “And yet,” cried she, aloud, “are these the boasted laws of England? Is the widow left to starve?—is the orphan left houseless, except some formality or other be gone through? To whom descends the heritage of the father, while the son is still living?” From these thoughts, which no ingenuity of hers could pierce, she turned to others not less depressing. What had become of all those who once called themselves her husband's friends? She, it is true, had herself lived estranged and retired from the world; but Walter was everywhere,—all knew him, all professed to love him. Bitter as ingratitude will ever seem, all its poignancy is nothing compared to the smart it inflicts when practised towards those who have gone from us forever; we feel then as though treachery had been added to the wrong. “Oh!” cried she, in her anguish, “how have they repaid him whose heart and hand were ever open to them!” A flood of recollections, long dammed up by the habits of her daily life, and the little cares by which she was environed, now swept through her mind, and from her infancy and her childhood, in all its luxurious splendor, to her present destitution, each passage of her existence seemed revealed before her. The solitude of the lonely cottage suggesting such utter desolation, and the wild and storm-lashed scene without adding its influence to her depression, she sat for some time still and unmoved, like one entranced; and then, springing to her feet, she rushed out into the beating rain, glad to exchange the conflict of the storm for that more terrible war that waged within her.
Like one flying from some terrific enemy, she ran with all her speed towards the shore. The sea was now breaking over the rocks with tremendous force, and sending vast clouds of spray high into the air, while whole sheets of foam were wildly tossed about by the wind. Through these she struggled on; now stumbling or falling, as her tender feet yielded to the sharp rocks, till she reached a little promontory over the sea, on which the waves struck with all their force; and there, with streaming hair and dripping garments, she sat braving the hurricane, and, in a wild paroxysm of imagined heroism, daring fortune to her worst.
Physical ills are as nothing to those that make the heart their dwelling-place; and to her there seemed an unspeakable relief in the thundering crash of the storm, as compared with the desolate silence of her lonely house.
The whole of that day saw her on the self-same spot; and there was she discovered at nightfall by some fishermen, propped up in a crevice of the rock, but cold, and scarcely conscious. They all knew her well, and with the tenderest care they carried her to her cottage. Even before they reached it, her mind began to wander, and wild and incoherent words dropped from her. That same night she was seized with fever; the benevolent but simple people about her knew not what to do; the nearest medical aid was many miles off; and when it did arrive, on the following morning, the malady had already attacked the brain.
The same sad, short series of events so many have witnessed, so many have stood by, with breaking hearts, now occurred. To wild delirium, with all its terrible excesses, succeeded the almost more dreadful stupor; and to that again the brief lucid moment of fast-ebbing life; and then came the sleep that knows no waking—and my mother was at rest!