They arose to depart; and as both families lived in the beautiful village of Ballydhas, which we have already described to the reader, of course their walk home was such as lovers could wish.
Evening had arrived; the placid summer sun shone down with a mild flood of light upon Ballaghmore and the surrounding country. There was nothing in the evening whose external phenomena could depress any human heart. The ocean lay like a mirror, on which the beams of the sun glistened in magnificent shafts, in whatsoever position you looked upon it. Not a wave or a ripple broke the expansive sheet, that stretched away till it melted into the dipping sky; yet to the ear its mysterious and deep murmurs were audible, and the lonely eternal sobbing of the awful sea, struck upon the heart of the superstitious mother with a sense of fear and calamity. Felix and Alley went before them, and the conversation which we are about to detail, took place between herself and her youngest daughter.
“Susy, darlin',” said she, “you see the happy pair before us; but why is it, acushla, that my heart is sunk when I think of their marriage? Do you hear that say? There's not a wave on it, but still it's angry, if one can judge by its voice. Darlin' it's a bad sign, for the same say isn't always so. Sometimes it is as asy as a sleepin' baby, and sometimes, although its waves are quiet enough, it looks like a murderer asleep. Now it breathes heavily avourneen, as if all was not right. Susy, darlin', I'm afeard, I say, that it's a bad sign.”
“Mother dear,” replied Susy, “what makes you speak that way? Sure it wouldn't be the little-sup o' punch that Felix made you take that 'ud get into your head!”
“No, darlin'! Look at the pair before us; there they go, the pride, both o' them, God knows, of the whole parish; but still when I think of the bitterness of Felix's friends, Susy, I can't help being afeard. His brother Hugh is a dark man, and his sister Maura is against it. God pity them! It's a cruel world, acushla, when people like them can't do as they'd wish to do. But, Susy, you're a child, and knows nothing at all about it.”
Felix and Alley walked on, unconscious of me ominous forebodings which the superstition of the affectionate woman prompted her to utter. The arrangements for their marriage were on that night concluded, and the mother, after some feebly expressed misgivings, at which Felix and Alley laughed heartily, was induced, to consent that on the third Sunday following they should be joined in wedlock. Had Felix been disposed to conceal his marriage from Hugh and Maura, at least until the eve of its occurrence, the publishing of their banns in the chapel would have, of course, disclosed it. When his sister heard that the arrangements were completed, she poured forth a torrent of abuse against what she considered the folly and simplicity of a mere boy, who allowed himself to be caught in the snares of an artful girl, with nothing but a handsome face to recommend her. Felix received all this with good humor, and replied only in a strain of jocularity to every thing she said.
Hugh, on the other hand, contented himself with a single observation. “Felix,” said he, “I won't see you throw yourself away upon a girl that is no fit match for you. If you can't take care of yourself, I will. Once for all, I tell you that this marriage must not take place.”
As he uttered these words his dark brows were bent, and his eyes flashed with a gleam of that ungovernable passion for which he was so remarkable. Felix, at all times peaceable, and always willing to acknowledge his elder brother's natural right to exercise a due degree of authority over him, felt that this was stretching it too far. Still he made no reply, nor indeed did Hugh allow him time to retort, had he been so disposed. They separated without more words, each resolved to accomplish his avowed purpose.
The opposition of Hugh and Maura to his marriage, only strengthened Felix's resolution to make his beloved and misrepresented Alley Bawn, the rightful mistress of his hearth, as she already was of his affections. Nay, his love burned for her with a purer and tenderer flame, when he looked upon the artless girl, and thought of the cruel hearts that would make her a martyr to a spirit so worldly-minded and selfish. Their deep-rooted prejudice against her poverty, he delicately concealed from her, together with the length to which their opposition had gone. As for himself, he acted precisely as if the approaching marriage had their full sanction; he saw Alley every day, became still more deeply enamored, and heard his sister's indignant remonstrances without uttering a single syllable in reply.
At length the happy Sunday morning arrived, and never did a more glorious sun light up the beautiful valley of Ballydhas than that which shed down its smiling radiance from heaven upon their union. Felix's heart was full of that eager and trembling delight, which, where there is pure and disinterested love, always marks our emotions upon that blessed epoch in human life. Maura, contrary to her wont, was unusually silent during the whole morning; but Felix could perceive that she watched all his emotions with the eye of a lynx. When the hour of going to chapel approached, he deemed it time to dress, and, for that purpose, went to a large oaken tallboy that stood in the kitchen, in order to get out his clothes. It was locked, however, and his sister told him at once, that the key, which was in her possession, should not pass into his hands that day. “No,” she continued, “nor sorra the ring you'll put on the same girl with my consent. Aren't you a purty young omadhaun, you spiritless creature, to go to marry sich a niddy-nauddhy, when you know that the best fortunes in the glen would jump at you! Yes, faiks! to bring home that mane, useless creature, that hasn't a penny to the good! A purty farmer's wife she'll make, and purtily she'll fill my poor mother's shoes, God be good to her! A poor, unsignified, smooth-faced thing, that never did a dacent day's work out of doors, barring to shake up a cock of hay, or pull the growing of a peck of flax! Oh! thin, mother darlin', that's in glory this day! but it's a purty head of a house he's puttin' afther you; and myself, too, must knock under to the like of her, and see her put up in authority over my head. Let me alone, Felix; your laughing wont pass. The sorra kay you'll get from me to-day.”