With the help of an ivory cutter lever, however, I did accomplish it, and saw indeed a beautiful place belonging, our giant guide told us, to Dean Mahon, well wooded and most striking in this desert.
It grew dark, and Sir Culling, very brave, walking beside the carriage, when we came to the next bad step, sank above his knees; how they dragged him out I could not see, and there were we in the carriage stuck fast in a slough, which, we were told, was the last but one before Ballinahinch Castle, when my eyes were blessed with a twinkling light in the distance—a boy with a lantern. And when, breathless, he panted up to the side of the carriage and thrust up lantern and note (we still in the slough), how glad I was to see him and it! and to hear him say, "Then Mr. Martin's very unaasy about yees—so he is."
"I am very glad of it—very glad indeed," said I. The note in a nice
lady's hand from Mrs. Martin greeted us with the assurance that Miss
Edgeworth and her English friends should be welcome at Ballinahinch
Castle.
Then from our mob another shout! another heave! another drag, and another lift by the spokes of the wheels. Oh! if they had broken!——but they did not, and we were absolutely out of this slough. I spare you the next and last, and then we wound round the Lake-road in the dark, on the edge of Ballinahinch lake on Mr. Martin's new road, as our dear giant told us, and I thought we should never get to the house, but at last we saw a chimney on fire, at least myriads of sparks and spouts of flame, but before we reached it, it abated, and we came to the door without seeing what manner of house or castle it might be, till the hall door opened and a butler—half an angel he appeared to us—appeared at the door. But then in the midst of our impatience I was to let down and buckle up these fairy boards—at last swinging and slipping it was accomplished, and out we got, but with my foot still on the step we all called out to tell the butler we were afraid some chimney was on fire. Without deigning even to look up at the chimney, he smiled and motioned us the way we should go. He was as we saw at first view, and found afterwards, the most imperturbable of men.
And now that we are safely housed, and housed in a castle too, I will leave you, my dear Pakenham, for the present.
March 12.
What became of the chimney on fire, I cannot tell—the Imperturbable was probably right in never minding it; he was used to its ways of burning out, and being no more thought of.
He showed us into a drawing-room, where we saw by firelight a lady alone—Mrs. Martin, tall and thin, in deep mourning. Though by that light, but dimly visible, and by our eyes dazed as they were just coming out of the dark, but imperfectly seen, yet we could not doubt at first sight that she was a lady in the highest sense of the word, perfectly a gentlewoman. And her whole manner of receiving us, and the ease of her motions, and of her conversation, in a few moments convinced me that she must at some time of her life have been accustomed to live in the best society—the best society in Ireland; for it was evident from her accent that she was a native—high-life Dublin tone of about forty years ago. The curls on her forehead, mixed with gray, prematurely gray, like your mother's, much older than the rest of her person.
She put us at ease at once, by beginning to talk to us, as if she was well acquainted with my family—and so she was from William, who had prepossessed her in our favour, yet she did not then allude to him, though I could not but understand what she meant to convey—I liked her.
Then came in, still by firelight, from a door at the farther end of the room, a young lady, elegantly dressed in deep mourning. "My daughter—Lady Culling Smith—Miss Edgeworth:" slight figure, head held up and thrown back. She had the resolution to come to the very middle of the room and make a deliberate and profound curtsey, which a dancing-master of Paris would have approved; seated herself upon the sofa, and seemed as if she never intended to speak. Mrs. Martin showed us up to our rooms, begging us not to dress unless we liked it before dinner; and we did not like it, for we were very much tired, and it was now between eight and nine o'clock. Bedchambers spacious. Dinner, we were told, was ready whenever we pleased, and, well pleased, down we went: found Mr. Martin in the drawing-room—a large Connemara gentleman, white, massive face; a stoop forward in his neck, the consequence of a shot in the Peninsular War.