Chapter Twenty.
Happily human beings are so constituted, that grief with few, especially with the young, lasts long. After a time, Lady Nora and her cousin recovered their usual spirits, and began to ride about the country as before. Their chief pleasure was to visit those they had long known, and to extend their search of others who might require relief. The surest means for those who are themselves in distress of obtaining comfort is to do good to their fellow-creatures. Several times they paid a visit to the old fishwife, Widow O’Neil. She seemed to have grown more hardy and wiry than ever. It was wonderful what exertions she could go through. She often had the assistance of her brother Shane, who was, however, advancing in life, and not so active as before, while she appeared to have retained all her strength and activity. They remarked, whenever they paid her a visit, the delight she took in speaking of her long-lost son. She never failed to tell them that she had seen him in her dreams. She knew, she declared, that he was thinking of her, and though she could not say why he was detained, he was, she felt certain, endeavouring to come back to her. Sometimes she thought he was a slave in some foreign land; sometimes that he had been cast away on some desert island, and had to live there, unable to make his escape, and sometimes that he was in prison. She said she knew he was in far distant lands, as that alone would have kept him from her. They could not help being struck by the deep, the intense love and confidence in him which the old woman always expressed for her son, though they naturally had considerable doubts whether, if he really was alive, he could feel the same for her.
“He was a handsome youth,” observed Lady Sophy to her cousin, “but there was a wild, daring look in his eye, and he was a lad who, when once away, and having obtained a better position in life than that which he enjoyed in his early days, would very likely cast off all thoughts of his poor mother, and would have no wish to return to her humble cottage.”
“Oh, no, no,” said Lady Nora, “I could not think that of him; of course I do not recollect him clearly, except from the sketch you made of him, but yet I am sure from the expression of his countenance that he must have been as true and honest as he was handsome. No, I would rather suppose that he has long since been killed. Just consider how many thousands of seamen have lost their lives within the last few years in the numberless battles in which our country has been engaged, and how likely it is that he was among them, and that is why no one has received any tidings of him.”
Such was the conversation which took place as they climbed up the hill to return to their horses. They had promised Widow O’Neil to visit her again in a day or two. She had undertaken to supply them with shells which her brother Shane had collected, and which they wished to send to a friend at a distance. When, however, the day arrived on which they were to pay their visit, the morning broke with a storm of rain and wind. The dark clouds chased each other over the sky, and the wind whistled round the towers of the castle.
“It will be impossible for us to ride to Widow O’Neil’s to-day,” observed Sophy when they met at breakfast. “I do not think Mr Finlayson will promise to accompany us; he would not like to face the bad weather.”
“Perhaps the rain will clear off, and then he will not mind the wind any more than we shall,” observed Sophy.
Mr Finlayson, who then entered the room, declared that should the weather clear, he was ready to mount the little cob which had been appropriated for his use, which was so steady, that occasionally the Earl had gone out shooting on its back, and so sure-footed, it had never been known to stumble.
“But, my dear Lady Nora, you must be more careful than you were once on a time, on a skittish young horse which nearly proved your death,” observed the old lawyer. “A day like this tries an animal; and unless your steed is as steady as a rock I cannot sanction your going out.”