This charm is it which gives the whole vitality to home,—this mingling of the temperaments of youth and manhood and deep age, blending hopes of the future with memories of the past, and making of every heart a portion of one human biography, in which many are sharers. To the stranger, who came to see the house and its gorgeous decorations, all seemed suggestive of habitable enjoyment. The vast drawing-rooms appeared as if only waiting for a splendid company; the dark wainscoted dining-room, with its noble fireplace of gigantic dimensions, looked the very scene where hospitable conviviality might be enacted; the library, calm, quiet, and secluded, seemed a spot wherein a student might have passed a life long. Even in the views that presented themselves at the several windows, there was a certain appropriateness to the character of the room, and the same importunate question still arose to one's mind: Who is there to enjoy all this? What words of glad welcome echo through this vaulted hall, what happy daughter sings through these gilded chambers, where is the social pleasantry that circles the blazing fire of the ample hearth? Alas! all was sombre, splendid, and dreary. No, we are wrong!—not all! There was one corner of this great house where cheerfulness was the very type of comfort. It was a small and not lofty room, whose two windows projected beyond the walls, giving a wide view over the swelling landscape for miles of space. Here the furniture was of the most ordinary kind, but scrupulously neat and well kept. The chairs—there were but four of them—all with arms and deep cushions; the walnut table a perfect mirror of polish; the cloth curtains, that closed the windows and concealed the door, massive and heavy-folded,—all breathed of snugness; while the screen that surrounded the fire had other perfections than those of comfortable seclusion, containing a most strange collection of the caricatures of the time, and the period before the Union. It is but necessary to add that this was Mrs. Broon's apartment,—the snug chamber where old Catty enjoyed herself, after the fatigues and duties of the day. Here now she sat at tea, beside a cheerful fire, the hissing kettle on the hob harmonizing pleasantly with the happy purring of an enormous cat, who sat winking at the blaze; and while evidently inconvenienced by the heat, lacking energy to retreat from it. Catty had just obtained the newspaper,—as the master had gone to dinner,—and was really about to enjoy a comfortable evening. Far from devoid of social qualities, or a liking for companionship, she still lived almost entirely to herself, the other servants being chiefly English, whose habits and ways were all strange to her, and all whose associations were widely different from her own. Catty Broon had thus obtained a reputation for unsociability which she by no means deserved, but to which, it must be owned, she was totally indifferent. In fact, if they deemed her morose and disagreeable, she, in turn, held them still more cheaply, calling them a set of lazy devils that “were only in each other's way,” and “half of them not worth their salt.”
Catty had also survived her generation; all her friends of former years had either died or emigrated, and except two or three of the farm-servants, none of the “ould stock,” as she called them, were in existence. This brief explanation will show that Catty's comparative isolation was not entirely a matter of choice. If a sense of loneliness did now and then cross her mind, she never suffered it to dwell there, but chased away the unpleasant thought by some active duty; or if the season of that were over, by the amusing columns of the “Intelligence,”—a journal which realized to Mrs. Broon's conceptions the very highest order of literary merit.
Catty did not take much interest in politics; she had a vague, dreamy kind of notion that the game of party was a kind of disreputable gambling, and Parliament itself little better than a “Hell,” frequented by very indifferent company. Indeed, she often said it would be “well for us if there was no politics, and maybe then, there would be no taxes either.” The news she liked was the price of farming-stock at fairs and markets,—what Mr. Hynes got for his “top lot” of hoggets, and what Tom Healey paid for the “finest heifers ever seen on the fair-green.” These, and the accidents—a deeply interesting column—were her peculiar tastes; and her memory was stored with every casualty, by sea, fire, and violence, that had graced the “Intelligence” for forty years back; in truth they formed the stations of her chronology, and she would refer to events as having occurred the same year that Joe Ryan was hanged, or “the very Christmas that Hogan fired at Captain Crossley.” An inundation of great extent also figured in these memorabilia, and was constantly referred to, by her saying, “This or that happened the year after the Flood,” suggesting a rather startling impression as to her longevity.
On the evening we now refer to, the newspaper was more than commonly adorned with these incidents. Public news having failed, private calamities were invoked to supply the place. Catty was, therefore, fortunate. There was something, too, not altogether unpleasant in the whistling storm that raged without, and the heavy plashing of the rain as it beat upon the window-panes. Without imputing to her, as would be most unjust, the slightest touch of ill-nature, she felt a heightened sense of her own snugness as she drew closer to the bright hearth, while she read of “a dreadful gale in the Bay of Biscay.”
It was just in the most exciting portion of the description that her door was rudely opened, and the heavy curtain dashed aside with a daring hand; and Catty, startled by the sudden interruption, called angrily out,—
“Who's there?—who are ye at all?”
“Can't you guess, Catty?” cried out a pleasant voice. “Don't you know that there's only one in this house here who 'd dare to enter in such a fashion?”
“Oh, Miss Mary, is it you? And, blessed Virgin, what a state ye 're in!” cried she, as she gazed at the young girl, who, throwing away her riding-hat, wrung out the rain from her long and silky hair, while she laughed merrily at old Catty's dismayed countenance.
“Why, where in the world were you—what happened you, darling?” said Catty, as she assisted her to remove the dripping costume.
“I was at the Wood, Catty, and up to the quarries, and round by Cronebawn, and then, seeing a storm gathering, I thought I 'd turn homeward, but one of Kit Sullivan's children—my little godchild, you know—detained me to hear him recite some verses he had learned for my birthday; and, what with one thing and another, it was pitch dark when I reached the 'New Cut,' and then, to my annoyance, I found the bridge had just been carried away—there, Catty, now for a pair of your own comfortable slippers—and, as I was saying to you, there was no bridge!”