“ ‘Ellen,’ she said again, a few days after, ‘Mrs. Brett tells me, Lady Jane Vivian called every day, and left cards.’
“Well, I was fairly bothered about the cards.
“ ‘Sure, Ma’am,’ I said, ‘what would make her leave the cards here, we’re no gamblers;’ this was when first I was own maid to my mistress—so she smiled again, and said how it was I did not understand that ladies left their names printed on pasteboard squares; and that was the same thing as a visit. Well! I had my own thought of what a cold, unnatural thing it was to send a square of pasteboard up to a poor sick lady, instead of comforting her, with a bright smile and kind words, and all sorts of cheerful discourse. But I supposed it was manners, and every people have their own; and then she asked for the cards. Now, the mistress of the house we lodged in, scrambled up every bit of them pasteboards with a title, and stuck them round the looking-glass, in her little, dingy back-parlor, for a nobility show. So I had to go and ask her to pick out all the Lady Jane Vivians, which she did, and gave them with a toss of her head, saying, ‘She did not want such a scrap of an ould maid’s title for the matter of that, she had lords and dukes! calling on her, before now.’ It was on the tip of my tongue to say, ‘Calling on your lodgers, you mean, ma’am,’ but I held my peace. Well! would you believe it? My own mistress was as proud of them five bits of pasteboard, as I’d be of five shillings! And she bade me bring her a fine chaney dish with a small tea-party painted on it, up in the air and down on the earth, beside a little railway, and little tufty houses one atop of the other, and bells at the corners—a fine ancient dish it is, like nothing on the earth or in the sea, which she says shows its imagination; well, she takes every one of the cards up in her poor, thin, trembling fingers, and then she rubs them clean and puts them right; the Misters and Mistresses, and the young Misses all down below, and the Sirs and Lords and Ladies on the top; mighty neat entirely to look at; and all the time, the darling! she was railing at the vanity of the lodging-house woman who wanted to show off the fine names, and never seemed to think that she was doing the same thing; to be sure, she had a right to them, and right is right; but the vanity, to my thinking, was all one. I had a deal more to tell you about that church—but one who knows said, it was fitter for me to hold my tongue; the reason is this, that it’s better for us, you understand, to keep on never heeding them, and not to put them in mind of what they are doing, and they will all walk, as easy as any thing, back to the fine, true, ould, ancient church of Rome: they call it High Church now, but if they’re let alone, one who knows says, they’ll soon be higher, on the highest pinnacle of St. Peter’s! so all we have to say, aunt dear, is just good luck to every poor traveler on the right road.
“Do you mind Mary Considine, who you used to call the blue-bell of the Shannon? She was the beauty of the place, I have heard, when she married her own first cousin, Ned Considine? don’t you also mind telling me how cruel hard she was to be pleased; and how, after she had married him, she said she intended taking a house, but changed her mind, and took Ned, and was greatly disappointed in taking him, for he was very deaf?
“Well, who should I chance to find out but this very Mr. and Mrs. Considine; and indeed it’s little remains of beauty she has now; the country, or rather the town life, does not agree any how with beauty, living as they do, at the back of ‘God speed,’ in a small court; though, as you will see by’n bye, they have lashings[[21]] of money: they’ve one son and a daughter. I met the young girl (she was born to them, I may say, in their old age, a last rose of their summer) at mass, and I think we knew each other by nature: my mistress gave me leave to run over and see her, and when she came to me took great delight in her smiling, innocent face, and the sweet voice I told her she had; and she sang some of the Irish melodies like an angel, if you can think of an angel singing any thing but holy psalms. And this young Mary is well brought up, quite above the common; reading and writing is nothing to her; and as to other accomplishments she’s wonderful; and can tell every fortune out of a book, except her own! Now, among the many prides her mother has gathered, the one that bothers Mary the most, is that she does not like any body to think she is Irish; she thinks she turns her tongue so purty on the English, and as my poor mistress says (for she heard her at it) with a brogue, a rale Cork brogue; not the same as our pretty, delicate Leinster accent; but (as the mistress says) ‘a brogue strong enough to carry St. Paul’s to St. Peter’s,’ and so I thought, particularly now, when it’s on the road. My mistress says it’s quite absurd to look at her courtesey; and when you talk to her of her country, to hear her cry out—‘Why then, how did you know I was Irish?’ The Irish divert my poor mistress a great deal. She encourages me to tell all about my country, and she has been more like a mother than a lady to Mary Considine.
“But about poor Mary. She was overjoyed that her father and mother took so to me, and, indeed, so was I, for the music of home is in Mary’s sweet voice; and it is the next best thing to being in my own land, to hear her sing ‘The Exile of Erin;’ and then, while the tears are wet on my cheek, she tunes up ‘Shielan-a-guira,’ with a heart and a half; her eyes are so beaming with light, that you wonder where the dark place is in them, and yet it’s all the time a light in darkness. I can’t discourse you now her features one by one, but altogether: the poor Irish never pass her in the street without a blessing, or the English without a stare—still I saw that Mary was far from happy. I have not much time to watch or inquire, but I could not sleep for thinking of her—Mrs. Considine’s mouth was full of the titles of the great quality she’d see in the Park, and she traveled about with a book she called a peerage, in her pocket, while poor Mary would show me the bits of flowers she’d pick out of the grass, or bring my mistress a bunch of violets from Covent Garden Market. As to her father, he hardly ever stirs out, except to watch that his son, who has a situation at Blackwall, does not spend his pence on an omnibus—he makes a fair god of his money; how the priest gets over it I don’t know, for he’s the greatest miser I ever heard of—a fair neager[[22]]—not like his countrymen.
“Well, aunt; at last poor little Mary let me into the very heart of her trouble. She was in love—in love with maybe you think some delicate dandy chap of an Englishman; for Mary is very little—a fairy of a thing, (God bless us!) that might pass for a real ‘fairy’ in her own country—as thin as a willow-wand, as straight as a bullrush, but small, you understand. I wanted her to tell me who it was, and she used to hide her face and cry, and then look up, blushing like a rose among the dew-drops. At last, she said she’d show him to me next evening; she was going to confession, and he would do the same, and meet her at the door. So away they went. There were three or four young men at the door, one with a sky-blue tie and a fine waistcoat. I was so sure that was him, that I never looked at any one else; but she passed on, tossing her head disdainfully at the blue tie.
“ ‘He’s not here,’ she whispered; and the little creature trembled on my arm. She soon made a clean breast, and I waited, as I had leave to do; the sky-blue tie waited also, but Mary was too quick for him, she darted round the corner, while he was admiring his own shadow, thrown by the full moon on the wall, and I after her.
“ ‘Come on,’ she said, almost breathlessly; ‘come on; that’s the man my father wants me to marry, but I’ll die first!’ We walked fast, but she took, as I thought, the wrong turning—I told her so, but she looked up in my face, and smiled. It was a narrow court, and at the far end, a smith’s forge. I heard the bang of the hammer, and saw the light, all in a glow, and a thousand sparkles like falling stars! Mary got under the shadow of the houses—she crept on, the hammer going, the fire glowing, the sparkles falling all the time, and the shadow as of a giant, forging the red bar, as if the hammer was a wand. Well, she avoided the door, but drew me on to a slit in the window, still keeping in the shadow—‘that’s him,’ she whispered. Aunt, dear, the sweetheart that mite of a little beauty had set her love on, was—just there and then—a rale giant! He looked strong enough to fling a thunderbolt, and active enough to make a play-fellow of the lightning. When he stopped, and threw back his hair, I thought I had never seen so noble a head, but his face looked pale in the flashing light. Mary never spoke but the one word, she never sighed, nor signed to him in any way, yet he wiped his brow, pulled down his sleeves, and came to the window.
“ ‘Mary, Mary,’ he whispered, and his voice was as soft as the coo of a wood-quest.[[23]] ‘Speak, Mary, I know you are there, it’s no use hiding from me, I know it as well as if my eyes were looking into yours, and as if you had told me so.’