A Girl of High Adventure

by L. T. Meade

Malachi's horses were almost the only available assets at Desmondstown; for The Desmond, although fierce, even ferocious at times, was good-natured to his tenants and strictly forbade any evictions on his estates. He gave his sons the scantiest of all possible educations with the exception of Fergus, who was his heir. Fergus, by scraping and toiling, he managed to send first of all to a fairly good school and then to Trinity College, Dublin. Fergus he also supplied with suitable clothes, but he never thought of his earning any money. It never occurred to him that any of his sons should work. Debts abounded all over the place and Desmondstown was in reality mortgaged very nearly up to the hilt.

The gardens had gone to ruin, the ancient avenue was more like a field path than anything else. All the gardeners had been dismissed. Only the stablemen and grooms and the garden boy remained outside the house, and within there were the cook, Biddy Magee, and the housemaid, Grace Connor, and Peter, the old butler. These were typical Irish people, untidy, not too clean, but, as The Desmond said, all that he could possibly afford.

Bit by bit, and by slow degrees, the lovely china, the Chippendale furniture, the coats of mail, which were supposed to decorate the old hall, disappeared in order that there might be food and wine for The Desmond and his tribe. There was also a quantity of valuable silver, the most famous in the county, which followed the same fate. The carpets were worn to shreds, the curtains hung in tatters from the windows—everything was in a hopeless state of confusion. In fact, a more dilapidated home than Desmondstown could scarcely be found anywhere, even in that region of dilapidated homes, the county of Kerry.

Nevertheless, the Misses Desmond held their heads high, and their brothers, with the exception of Fergus, were highly popular in the neighbourhood. Fergus was grave and dark, like his father before him. Now and then he even felt a degree of sorrow at the rapid decay of the old place. But to work—to have it even said that the man who would one day be The Desmond should work—was beyond his wildest dreams. He led a rather melancholy life therefore, taking little or no notice of his sisters, but often walking out with his old father, who was becoming glad of the support of his stalwart arm.

Now it was a custom at Desmondstown, as indeed it was the custom in every house in that part of Ireland, to let letters go their own way, bedad! Letters meant bills, and the best way to treat bills was not to answer them. Accordingly the long and careful letter which the Rev. John Mansfield wrote with regard to little Margot reached her grandfather, it is true, all in good time. But it only just reached him, for after staring for a minute at the handwriting he thrust it unopened into his pocket and forgot all about it.

Little Margot, whatever she went through with Uncle Jack, lived at least in a fairly neat home, where her much dreaded aunt, Priscilla Mansfield, kept everything in apple-pie order. She had no fear but that the letter had travelled on before her, and that she would find her uncles and aunts, who were so very young, and her grandfather and grandmother, who were equally old, all waiting on the tip-toe of expectation for the little colleen.

When Margot parted with Phinias, she felt just a trifle lonely, but very soon this feeling passed and she was only conscious of the sensation that she was at last in very earnest going home, but the avenue was long and weedy. A good many broken branches of trees were scattered about and, walk as fast as she might, she could not get a peep of the old house. As a matter of fact, the old avenue was quite two miles in length and the child was already very tired.

There was a broken stump of a tree which offered a fairly comfortable resting place. She sat down on it and burst into tears. Her tears were bitter. This was by no means the Desmondstown of her dreams. In the midst of her sobs, however, she heard the low-pitched voices of women who were certainly no longer young. She wondered if some of the servants were about and if she might address them, but the next instant, before she could make up her mind how to act, the low voices ended off into peals of laughter, and two women appeared, dressed from head to foot in very coarse white piqué, one holding the sash of the other, while behind them came a grey-haired and decidedly ugly clergyman, who held the sash of the last and oldest sister. He gave her some infantile pats from time to time with a morsel of briar which he carried and desired her "to hould herself stiddy, and to kape it up."

"Oh, oh, but me heart 'ull break—Bridget, me heart 'ull break. Did I iver hear the like of the way this man goes on! Mr. Flannigan, you belong to the Church of Ireland, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself, beating a poor young colleen like me."

"Hold up, Norah, don't let him get any nearer. Oh, by the powers! whoever is that little pixie seated on the log!"