Though the majority of those who were in the habit of hunting with the Kelly’s Court hounds had been at the breakfast, here were still a considerable number of horsemen waiting on the lawn in front of the house, when Frank and his friends sallied forth. The dogs were collected round the huntsman, behaving themselves, for the most part, with admirable propriety; an occasional yelp from a young hound would now and then prove that the whipper had his eye on them, and would not allow rambling; but the old dogs sat demurely on their haunches, waiting the well-known signal for action. There they sat, as grave as so many senators, with their large heads raised, their heavy lips hanging from each side of their jaws, and their deep, strong chests expanded so as to show fully their bone, muscle, and breeding.
Among the men who had arrived on the lawn during, breakfast were two who certainly had not come together, and who had not spoken since they had been there. They were Martin Kelly and Barry Lynch. Martin was dressed just as usual, except that he had on a pair of spurs, but Barry was armed cap-a-pie. Some time before his father’s death he had supplied himself with all the fashionable requisites for the field not because he was fond of hunting, for he was not but in order to prove himself as much a gentleman as other people. He had been out twice this year, but had felt very miserable, for no one spoke to him, and he had gone home, on both occasions, early in the day; but he had now made up his mind that he would show himself to his old schoolfellow in his new character as an independent country gentleman; and what was more, he was determined that Lord Ballindine should not cut him.
He very soon had an opportunity for effecting his purpose, for the moment that Frank got on his horse, he unintentionally rode close up to him.
‘How d’ye do, my lord? I hope I see your lordship well?’ said Barry, with a clumsy attempt at ease and familiarity. ‘I’m glad to find your lordship in the field before the season’s over.’
‘Good morning, Mr Lynch,’ said Frank, and was turning away from him, when, remembering that he must have come from Dunmore, he asked, ‘did you see Martin Kelly anywhere?’
‘Can’t say I did, my lord,’ said Barry, and he turned away completely silenced, and out of countenance.
Martin had been talking to the huntsman, and criticizing the hounds. He knew every dog’s name, character, and capabilities, and also every horse in Lord Ballindine’s stable, and was consequently held in great respect by Mick Keogh and his crew.
And now the business began. ‘Mick,’ said the lord, ‘we’ll take them down to the young plantation, and bring them back through the firs and so into the gorse. If the lad’s lying there, we must hit him that way.’
‘That’s thrue for yer honer, my lord;’ and he started off with his obedient family.
‘You’re wrong, Ballindine,’ said the Parson; ‘for you’ll drive him up into the big plantation, and you’ll be all day before you make him break; and ten to one they’ll chop him in the cover.’
‘Would you put them into the gorse at once then?’
‘Take ’em gently through the firs; maybe he’s lying out and down into the gorse, and then, if he’s there, he must go away, and into a tip-top country too miles upon miles of pasture right away to Ballintubber,’
‘That’s thrue, too, my lord: let his Rivirence alone for understandhing a fox,’ said Mick, with a wink.
The Parson’s behests were obeyed. The hounds followed Mick into the plantation, and were followed by two or three of the more eager of the party, who did not object to receiving wet boughs in their laces, or who delighted in riding for half an hour with their heads bowed close down over their saddle-bows. The rest remained with the whipper, outside.
‘Stay a moment here, Martin,’ said Lord Ballindine. They can’t get away without our seeing them, and I want to speak a few words to you.’
‘And I want particularly to spake to your lordship,’ said Martin; ‘and there’s no fear of the fox! I never knew a fox lie in those firs yet.’
‘Nor I either, but you see the Parson would have his way. I suppose, if the priest were out, and he told you to run the dogs through the gooseberry-bushes, you’d do it?’
‘I’m blessed if I would, my lord! Every man to his trade. Not but what Mr Armstrong knows pretty well what he’s about.’
‘Well but, Martin, I’ll tell you what I want of you. I want a little money, without bothering those fellows up in Dublin; and I believe you could let me have it; at any rate, you and your mother together. Those fellows at Guinness’s are stiff about it, and I want three hundred pounds, without absolutely telling them that they must give it me I’d give you my bill for the amount at twelve months, and, allow you six per cent.; but then I want it immediately. Can you let me have it?’
‘Why, my lord,’ said Martin, after pausing awhile and looking very contemplative during the time, ‘I certainly have the money; that is, I and mother together; but ’
‘Oh, if you’ve any doubt about it or if it puts you out, don’t do it.’
‘Divil a doubt on ‘arth, my lord; but I’ll tell you I was just going to ask your lordship’s advice about laying out the same sum in another way, and I don’t think I could raise twice that much.’
‘Very well, Martin; if you’ve anything better to do with your money, I’m sure I’d be sorry to take it from you.’
‘That’s jist it, my lord. I don’t think I can do betther but I want your advice about it.’
‘My advice whether you ought to lend me three hundred pounds or not! Why, Martin, you’re a fool. I wouldn’t ask you to lend it me, if I thought you oughtn’t to lend it.’
‘Oh I’m certain sure of that, my lord; but there’s an offer made me, that I’d like to have your lordship’s mind about. It’s not much to my liking, though; and I think it’ll be betther for me to be giving you the money,’ and then Martin told his landlord the offer which had been made to him by Daly, on the part of Barry Lynch. ‘You see, my lord,’ he concluded by saying, ‘it’d be a great thing to be shut of Barry entirely out of the counthry, and to have poor Anty’s mind at ase about it, should she iver live to get betther; but thin, I don’t like to have dailings with the divil, or any one so much of his colour as Barry Lynch.’
‘This is a very grave matter, Martin, and takes some little time to think about. To tell the truth, I forgot your matrimonial speculation when I asked for the money. Though I want the cash, I think you should keep it in your power to close with Barry: no, you’d better keep the money by you.’
‘After all, the ould woman could let me have it on the security of the house, you know, av’ I did take up with the offer. So, any way, your lordship needn’t be balked about the cash.’
‘But is Miss Lynch so very ill, Martin?’
‘‘Deed, and she is, Mr Frank; very bad intirely. Doctor Colligan was with her three times yestherday.’
‘And does Barry take any notice of her now she’s ill?’
‘Why, not yet he didn’t; but then, we kept it from him as much as we could, till it got dangerous like. Mother manes to send Colligan to him today, av’ he thinks she’s not betther.’
‘If she were to die, Martin, there’d be an end of it all, wouldn’t there?’
‘Oh, in course there would, my lord’ and then he added, with a sigh, ‘I’d be sorry she’d die, for, somehow, I’m very fond of her, quare as it’ll seem to you. I’d be very sorry she should die.’
‘Of course you would, Martin; and it doesn’t seem queer at all.’
‘Oh, I wasn’t thinking about the money, then, my lord; I was only thinking of Anty herself: you don’t know what a good young woman she is it’s anything but herself she’s thinking of always.’
‘Did she make any will?’
“Deed she didn’t, my lord: nor won’t, it’s my mind.’
‘Ah! but she should, after all that you and your mother’ve gone through. It’d be a thousand pities that wretch Barry got all the property again.’
‘He’s wilcome to it for the Kellys, av’ Anty dies. But av’ she lives he shall niver rob a penny from her. Oh, my lord! we wouldn’t put sich a thing as a will into her head, and she so bad, for all the money the ould man their father iver had. But, hark! my lord that’s Gaylass, I know the note well, and she’s as true as gould: there’s the fox there, just inside the gorse, as the Parson said’ and away they both trotted, to the bottom of the plantation, from whence the cheering sound of the dog’s voices came, sharp, sweet, and mellow.
Yes; the Parson was as right as if he had been let into the fox’s confidence overnight, and had betrayed it in the morning. Gaylass was hardly in the gorse before she discovered the doomed brute’s vicinity, and told of it to the whole canine confraternity. Away from his hiding-place he went, towards the open country, but immediately returned into the covert, for he saw a lot of boys before him, who had assembled with the object of looking at the hunt, but with the very probable effect of spoiling it; for, as much as a fox hates a dog, he fears the human race more, and will run from an urchin with a stick into the jaws of his much more fatal enemy.
‘As long as them blackguards is there, a hollowing, and a screeching, divil a fox in all Ireland’d go out of this,’ said Mick to his master.
‘Ah, boys,’ said Frank, riding up, ‘if you want to see a hunt, will you keep back!’
‘Begorra we will, yer honer,’ said one.
‘Faix we wouldn’t be afther spiling your honer’s divarsion, my lord, on no account,’ said another.
‘We’ll be out o’ this althogether, now this blessed minute,’ said a third, but still there they remained, each loudly endeavouring to banish the others.
At last, however, the fox saw a fair course before him, and away he went; and with very little start, for the dogs followed him out of the covert almost with a view.
And now the men settled themselves to the work, and began to strive for the pride of place, at least the younger portion of them: for in every field there are two classes of men. Those, who go out to get the greatest possible quantity of riding, and those whose object is to get the least. Those who go to work their nags, and those who go to spare them. The former think that the excellence of the hunt depends on the horses; the latter, on the dogs. The former go to act, and the latter to see. And it is very generally the case that the least active part of the community know the most about the sport.
They, the less active part above alluded to, know every high-road and bye-road; they consult the wind, and calculate that a fox won’t run with his nose against it; they remember this stream and this bog, and avoid them; they are often at the top of eminences, and only descend when they see which way the dogs are going; they take short cuts, and lay themselves out for narrow lanes; they dislike galloping, and eschew leaping; and yet, when a hard-riding man is bringing up his two hundred guinea hunter, a minute or two late for the finish, covered with foam, trembling with his exertion, not a breath left in him he’ll probably find one of these steady fellows there before him, mounted on a broken-down screw, but as cool and as fresh as when he was brought out of the stable; and what is, perhaps, still more amazing, at the end of the day, when the hunt is canvassed after dinner, our dashing friend, who is in great doubt whether his thoroughbred steeplechaser will ever recover his day’s work, and who has been personally administering warm mashes and bandages before he would venture to take his own boots off, finds he does not know half as much about the hunt, or can tell half as correctly where the game went, as our, quiet-going friend, whose hack will probably go out on the following morning under the car, with the mistress and children. Such a one was Parson Armstrong; and when Lord Ballindine and most of the others went away after the hounds, he coolly turned round in a different direction, crept through a broken wall into a peasant’s garden, and over a dunghill, by the cabin door into a road, and then trotted along as demurely and leisurely as though he were going to bury an old woman in the next parish.
Frank was, generally speaking, as good-natured a man as is often met, but even he got excited and irritable when hunting his own pack. All masters of hounds do. Some one was always too forward, another too near the dogs, a third interfering with the servants, and a fourth making too much noise.
‘Confound it, Peter,’ he said, when they had gone over a field or two, and the dogs missed the scent for a moment, ‘I thought at any rate you knew better than to cross the dogs that way.’
‘Who crossed the dogs?’ said the other ‘what nonsense you’re talking: why I wasn’t out of the potato-field till they were nearly all at the next wall.’
‘Well, it may be nonsense,’ continued Frank; ‘but when I see a man riding right through the hounds, and they hunting, I call that crossing them.’
‘Hoicks! Tally’ hollowed some one ‘there’s Graceful has it again well done, Granger! Faith, Frank, that’s a good dog! if he’s not first, he’s always second.’
‘Now, gentlemen, steady, for heaven’s sake. Do let the dogs settle to their work before you’re a-top of them. Upon my soul, Nicholas Brown, it’s ridiculous to see you!’
‘It’d be a good thing if he were half as much in a hurry to get to heaven,’ said Bingham Blake.
‘Thank’ee,’ said Nicholas; ‘go to heaven yourself. I’m well enough where I am.’
And now they were off again. In the next field the whole pack caught a view of the fox just as he was stealing out; and after him they went, with their noses well above the ground, their voices loud and clear, and in one bevy.
Away they went: the game was strong; the scent was good; the ground was soft, but not too soft; and a magnificent hunt they had; but there were some misfortunes shortly after getting away. Barry Lynch, wishing, in his ignorance, to lead and show himself off, and not knowing how scurrying along among the dogs, and bothered at every leap, had given great offence to Lord Ballindine. But, not wishing to speak severely to a man whom he would not under any circumstances address in a friendly way, he talked at him, and endeavoured to bring him to order by blowing up others in his hearing. But this was thrown away on Barry, and he continued his career in a most disgusting manner; scrambling through gaps together with the dogs, crossing other men without the slightest reserve, annoying every one, and evidently pluming himself on his performance. Frank’s brow was getting blacker and blacker. Jerry Blake and young Brown were greatly amusing themselves at the exhibition, and every now and then gave him a word or two of encouragement, praising his mare, telling how well he got over that last fence, and bidding him mind and keep well forward. This was all new to Barry, and he really began to feel himself in his element if it hadn’t been for those abominable walls, he would have enjoyed himself. But this was too good to last, and before very long he made a faux pas, which brought down on him in a torrent the bottled-up wrath of the viscount.
They had been galloping across a large, unbroken sheep-walk, which exactly suited Barry’s taste, and he had got well forward towards the hounds. Frank was behind, expostulating with Jerry Blake and the others for encouraging him, when the dogs came to a small stone wall about two feet and a half high. In this there was a broken gap, through which many of them crept. Barry also saw this happy escape from the grand difficulty of jumping, and, ignorant that if he rode the gap at all, he should let the hounds go first, made for it right among them, in spite of Frank’s voice, now raised loudly to caution him. The horse the man rode knew his business better than himself, and tried to spare the dogs which were under his feet; but, in getting out, he made a slight spring, and came down on the haunches of a favourite young hound called ‘Goneaway’; he broke the leg close to the socket, and the poor beast most loudly told his complaint.
This was too much to be borne, and Frank rode up red with passion; and a lot of others, including the whipper, soon followed.
‘He has killed the dog!’ said he. ‘Did you ever see such a clumsy, ignorant fool? Mr Lynch, if you’d do me the honour to stay away another day, and amuse yourself in any other way, I should be much obliged.’
much obliged.’ ’
‘It wasn’t my fault then,’ said Barry.
‘Do you mean to give me the lie, sir?’ replied Frank.
‘The dog got under the horse’s feet. How was I to help it?’
There was a universal titter at this, which made Barry wish himself at home again, with his brandy-bottle.
‘Ah! sir,’ said Frank; ‘you’re as fit to ride a hunt as you are to do anything else which gentlemen usually do. May I trouble you to make yourself scarce? Your horse, I see, can’t carry you much farther, and if you’ll take my advice, you’ll go home, before you’re ridden over yourself. Well, Martin, is the bone broken?’
Martin had got off his horse, and was kneeling down beside the poor hurt brute. ‘Indeed it is, my lord, in two places. You’d better let Tony kill him; he has an awful sprain in the back, as well; he’ll niver put a foot to the ground again.’
‘By heavens, that’s too bad! isn’t it Bingham? He was, out and out, the finest puppy we entered last year.’
‘What can you expect,’ said Bingham, ‘when such fellows as that come into a field? He’s as much business here as a cow in a drawing-room.’
‘But what can we do? one can’t turn him off the land; if he chooses to come, he must.’
‘Why, yes,’ said Bingham, ‘if he will come he must. But then, if he insists on doing so, he may be horsewhipped; he may be ridden over; he may be kicked; and he may be told that he’s a low, vulgar, paltry scoundrel; and, if he repeats his visits, that’s the treatment he’ll probably receive.’
Barry was close to both the speakers, and of course heard, and was intended to hear, every word that was said. He contented himself, however, with muttering certain inaudible defiances, and was seen and heard of no more that day.
The hunt was continued, and the fox was killed; but Frank and those with him saw but little more of it. However, as soon as directions were given for the death of poor Goneaway, they went on, and received a very satisfactory account of the proceedings from those who had seen the finish. As usual, the Parson was among the number, and he gave them a most detailed history, not only of the fox’s proceedings during the day, but also of all the reasons which actuated the animal, in every different turn he took.
‘I declare, Armstrong,’ said Peter Dillon, ‘I think you were a fox yourself, once! Do you remember anything about it?’
‘What a run he would give!’ said Jerry; ‘the best pack that was ever kennelled wouldn’t have a chance with him.’
‘Who was that old chap,’ said Nicholas Dillon, showing off his classical learning, ‘who said that dead animals always became something else? maybe it’s only in the course of nature for a dead fox to become a live parson.’
‘Exactly: you’ve hit it,’ said Armstrong; ‘and, in the same way, the moment the breath is out of a goose it becomes an idle squireen, and, generally speaking, a younger brother.’
‘Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Nick,’ said Jerry; ‘and take care how you meddle with the Church again.’
‘Who saw anything of Lambert Brown?’ said another; ‘I left him bogged below there at Gurtnascreenagh, and all he could do, the old grey horse wouldn’t move a leg to get out for him.’
‘Oh, he’s there still,’ said Nicholas. ‘He was trying to follow me, and I took him there on purpose. It’s not deep, and he’ll do no hurt: he’ll keep as well there, as anywhere else.’
‘Nonsense, Dillon!’ said the General ‘you’ll make his brother really angry, if you go on that way. If the man’s a fool, leave him in his folly, but don’t be playing tricks on him. You’ll only get yourself into a quarrel with the family.’
‘And how shall we manage about the money, my lord?’ said Martin, as he drew near the point at which he would separate from the rest, to ride towards Dunmore. ‘I’ve been thinking about it, and there’s no doubt about having it for you on Friday, av that’ll suit.’
‘That brother-inlaw of yours is a most unmitigated blackguard, isn’t he, Martin?’ said Frank, who was thinking more about poor Goneaway than the money.
‘He isn’t no brother-inlaw of mine yet, and probably niver will be, for I’m afeard poor Anty’ll go. But av he iver is, he’ll soon take himself out of the counthry, and be no more throuble to your lordship or any of us.’
‘But to think of his riding right a-top of the poor brute, and then saying that the dog got under his horse’s feet! Why, he’s a fool as well as a knave. Was he ever out before?’
‘Well, then, I believe he was, twice this year; though I didn’t see him myself.’
‘Then I hope this’ll be the last time: three times is quite enough for such a fellow as that.’
‘I don’t think he’ll be apt to show again afther what you and Mr Bingham said to him. Well, shure, Mr Bingham was very hard on him!’
‘Serve him right; nothing’s too bad for him.’
‘Oh, that’s thrue for you, my lord: I don’t pity him one bit. But about the money, and this job of my own. Av it wasn’t asking too much, it’d be a great thing av your lordship’d see Daly.’
It was then settled that Lord Ballindine should ride over to Dunmore on the following Friday, and if circumstances seemed to render it advisable, that he and Martin should go on together to the attorney at Tuam.
Doctor Colligan, the Galen of Dunmore, though a practitioner of most unprepossessing appearance and demeanour, was neither ignorant nor careless. Though for many years he had courted the public in vain, his neighbours had at last learned to know and appreciate him; and, at the time of Anty’s illness, the inhabitants of three parishes trusted their corporeal ailments to his care, with comfort to themselves and profit to him. Nevertheless, there were many things about Doctor Colligan not calculated to inspire either respect or confidence. He always seemed a little afraid of his patient, and very much afraid of his patient’s friends: he was always dreading the appearance at Dunmore of one of those young rivals, who had lately established themselves at Tuam on one side, and Hollymount on the other; and, to prevent so fatal a circumstance, was continually trying to be civil and obliging to his customers. He would not put on a blister, or order a black dose, without consulting with the lady of the house, and asking permission of the patient, and consequently had always an air of doubt and indecision. Then, he was excessively dirty in his person and practice: he carried a considerable territory beneath his nails; smelt equally strongly of the laboratory and the stable; would wipe his hands on the patient’s sheets, and wherever he went left horrid marks of his whereabouts: he was very fond of good eating and much drinking, and would neglect the best customer that ever was sick, when tempted by the fascination of a game of loo. He was certainly a bad family-man; for though he worked hard for the support of his wife and children, he was little among them, paid them no attention, and felt no scruple in assuring Mrs C. that he had been obliged to remain up all night with that dreadful Mrs Jones, whose children were always so tedious; or that Mr Blake was so bad after his accident that he could not leave him for a moment; when, to tell the truth, the Doctor had passed the night with the cards in his hands, and a tumbler of punch beside him.
He was a tall, thick-set, heavy man, with short black curly hair; was a little bald at the top of his head; and looked always as though he had shaved himself the day before yesterday, and had not washed since. His face was good-natured, but heavy and unintellectual. He was ignorant of everything but his profession, and the odds on the card-table or the race-course. But to give him his due, on these subjects he was not ignorant; and this was now so generally known that, in dangerous cases, Doctor Colligan had been sent for, many, many miles.
This was the man who attended poor Anty in her illness, and he did as much for her as could be done; but it was a bad case, and Doctor Colligan thought it would be fatal. She had intermittent fever, and was occasionally delirious; but it was her great debility between the attacks which he considered so dangerous.
On the morning after the hunt, he told Martin that he greatly feared she would go off, from exhaustion, in a few days, and that it would be wise to let Barry know the state in which his sister was. There was a consultation on the subject between the two and Martin’s mother, in which it was agreed that the Doctor should go up to Dunmore House, and tell Barry exactly the state of affairs.
‘And good news it’ll be for him,’ said Mrs Kelly; ‘the best he heard since the ould man died. Av he had his will of her, she’d niver rise from the bed where she’s stretched. But, glory be to God, there’s a providence over all, and maybe she’ll live yet to give him the go-by.’
‘How you talk, mother,’ said Martin; ‘and what’s the use? Whatever he wishes won’t harum her; and maybe, now she’s dying, his heart’ll be softened to her. Any way, don’t let him have to say she died here, without his hearing a word how bad she was.’
‘Maybe he’d be afther saying we murdhered her for her money,’ said the widow, with a shudder.
‘He can hardly complain of that, when he’ll be getting all the money himself. But, however, it’s much betther, all ways, that Doctor Colligan should see him.’
‘You know, Mrs Kelly,’ said the Doctor, ‘as a matter of course he’ll be asking to see his sister.’
‘You wouldn’t have him come in here to her, would you? Faix, Doctor Colligan, it’ll be her death out right at once av he does.’
‘It’d not be nathural, to refuse to let him see her,’ said the Doctor; ‘and I don’t think it would do any harm: but I’ll be guided by you, Mrs Kelly, in what I say to him.’
‘Besides,’ said Martin, ‘I know Anty would wish to see him: he is her brother; and there’s only the two of ’em.’
‘Between you be it,’ said the widow; ‘I tell you I don’t like it. You neither of you know Barry Lynch, as well as I do; he’d smother her av it come into his head.’
‘Ah, mother, nonsense now; hould your tongue; you don’t know what you’re saying.’
‘Well; didn’t he try to do as bad before?’
‘It wouldn’t do, I tell you,’ continued Martin, ‘not to let him see her; that is, av Anty wishes it.’
It ended in the widow being sent into Anty’s room, to ask her whether she had any message to send to her brother. The poor girl knew how ill she was, and expected her death; and when the widow told her that Doctor Colligan was going to call on her brother, she said that she hoped she should see Barry once more before all was over.
‘Mother,’ said Martin, as soon as the Doctor’s back was turned, ‘you’ll get yourself in a scrape av you go on saying such things as that about folk before strangers.’
‘Is it about Barry?’
‘Yes; about Barry. How do you know Colligan won’t be repating all them things to him?’
‘Let him, and wilcome. Shure wouldn’t I say as much to Barry Lynch himself? What do I care for the blagguard? only this, I wish I’d niver heard his name, or seen his foot over the sill of the door. I’m sorry I iver heard the name of the Lynches in Dunmore.’
‘You’re not regretting the throuble Anty is to you, mother?’
‘Regretting? I don’t know what you mane by regretting. I don’t know is it regretting to be slaving as much and more for her than I would for my own, and no chance of getting as much as thanks for it.’
‘You’ll be rewarded hereafther, mother; shure won’t it all go for charity?’
‘I’m not so shure of that,’ said the widow. ‘It was your schaming to get her money brought her here, and, like a poor wake woman, as I was, I fell into it; and now we’ve all the throuble and the expinse, and the time lost, and afther all, Barry’ll be getting everything when she’s gone. You’ll see, Martin; we’ll have the wake, and the funeral, and the docthor and all, on us mind my words else. Och musha, musha! what’ll I do at all? Faix, forty pounds won’t clear what this turn is like to come to; an’ all from your dirthy undherhand schaming ways.’
In truth, the widow was perplexed in her inmost soul about Anty; torn and tortured by doubts and anxieties. Her real love of Anty and true charity was in state of battle with her parsimony; and then, avarice was strong within her; and utter, uncontrolled hatred of Barry still stronger. But, opposed to these was dread of some unforeseen evil some tremendous law proceedings: she had a half-formed idea that she was doing what she had no right to do, and that she might some day be walked off to Galway assizes. Then again, she had an absurd pride about it, which often made her declare that she’d never be beat by such a ‘scum of the ‘arth’ as Barry Lynch, and that she’d fight it out with him if it cost her a hundred pounds; though no one understood what the battle was which she was to fight.
Just before Anty’s illness had become so serious, Daly called, and had succeeded in reconciling both Martin and the widow to himself; but he had not quite made them agree to his proposal. The widow, indeed, was much averse to it. She wouldn’t deal with such a Greek as Barry, even in the acceptance of a boon. When she found him willing to compromise, she became more than ever averse to any friendly terms; but now the whole ground was slipping from under her feet. Anty was dying: she would have had her trouble for nothing; and that hated Barry would gain his point, and the whole of his sister’s property, in triumph.
Twenty times the idea of a will had come into her mind, and how comfortable it would be if Anty would leave her property, or at any rate a portion of it, to Martin. But though the thoughts of such a delightful arrangement kept her in a continual whirlwind of anxiety, she never hinted at the subject to Anty. As she said to herself, ‘a Kelly wouldn’t demane herself to ask a brass penny from a Lynch.’ She didn’t even speak to her daughters about it, though the continual twitter she was in made them aware that there was some unusual burthen on her mind.
It was not only to the Kellys that the idea occurred that Anty in her illness might make a will. The thoughts of such a catastrophe had robbed Barry of half the pleasure which the rumours of his sister’s dangerous position had given him. He had not received any direct intimation of Anty’s state, but had heard through the servants that she was ill very ill dangerously ‘not expected,’ as the country people call it; and each fresh rumour gave him new hopes, and new life. He now spurned all idea of connexion with Martin; he would trample on the Kellys for thinking of such a thing: he would show Daly, when in the plenitude of his wealth and power, how he despised the lukewarmness and timidity of his councils. These and other delightful visions were floating through his imagination; when, all of a sudden, like a blow, like a thunderbolt, the idea of a will fell as it were upon him with a ton weight. His heart sunk low within him; he became white, and his jaw dropped. After all, there were victory and triumph, plunder and wealth, his wealth, in the very hands of his enemies! Of course the Kellys would force her to make a will, if she didn’t do it of her own accord; if not, they’d forge one. There was some comfort in that thought: he could at any rate contest the will, and swear that it was a forgery.
He swallowed a dram, and went off, almost weeping to Daly.
‘Oh, Mr Daly, poor Anty’s dying: did you hear, Mr Daly she’s all but gone?’ Yes; Daly had been sorry to hear that Miss Lynch was very ill. ‘What shall I do,’ continued Barry, ‘if they say that she’s left a will?’
‘Go and hear it read. Or, if you don’t like to do that yourself, stay away, and let me hear it.’
‘But they’ll forge one! They’ll make out what they please, and when she’s dying, they’ll make her put her name to it; or they’ll only just put the pen in her hand, when she’s not knowing what she’s doing. They’d do anything now, Daly, to get the money they’ve been fighting for so hard.’
‘It’s my belief,’ answered the attorney, ‘that the Kellys not only won’t do anything dishonest, but that they won’t even take any unfair advantage of you. But at any rate you can do nothing. You must wait patiently; you, at any rate, can take no steps till she’s dead.’
‘But couldn’t she make a will in my favour? I know she’d do it if I asked her if I asked her now now she’s going off, you know. I’m sure she’d do it. Don’t you think she would?’
‘You’re safer, I think, to let it alone,’ said Daly, who could hardly control the ineffable disgust he felt.
‘I don’t know that,’ continued Barry. ‘She’s weak, and’ll do what she’s asked: besides, they’ll make her do it. Fancy if, when she’s gone, I find I have to share everything with those people!’ And he struck his forehead and pushed the hair off his perspiring face, as he literally shook with despair. ‘I must see her, Daly. I’m quite sure she’ll make a will if I beg her; they can’t hinder me seeing my own, only, dying sister; can they, Daly? And when I’m once there, I’ll sit with her, and watch till it’s all over. I’m sure, now she’s ill, I’d do anything for her.’
Daly said nothing, though Barry paused for him to reply. ‘Only about the form,’ continued he, ‘I wouldn’t know what to put. By heavens, Daly! you must come with me. You can be up at the house, and I can have you down at a minute’s warning.’ Daly utterly declined, but Barry continued to press him. ‘But you must, Daly; I tell you I know I’m right. I know her so well she’ll do it at once for the sake for the sake of You know she is my own sister, and all that and she thinks so much of that kind of thing. I’ll tell you what, Daly; upon my honour and soul,’ and he repeated the words in a most solemn tone, ‘if you’ll draw the will, and she signs it, so that I come in for the whole thing and I know she will I’ll make over fifty ay, seventy pounds a year for you for ever and ever. I will, as I live.’
The interview ended by the attorney turning Barry Lynch into the street, and assuring him that if he ever came into his office again, on any business whatsoever, he would unscrupulously kick him out. So ended, also, the connexion between the two; for Daly never got a farthing for his labour. Indeed, after all that had taken place, he thought it as well not to trouble his ?i-devant client with a bill. Barry went home, and of course got drunk.
When Doctor Colligan called on Lynch, he found that he was not at home. He was at that very moment at Tuam, with the attorney. The doctor repeated his visit later in the afternoon, but Barry had still not returned, and he therefore left word that he would call early after breakfast the following morning. He did so; and, after waiting half an hour in the dining-room, Barry, only half awake and half dressed, and still half drunk, came down to him.
The doctor, with a long face, delivered his message, and explained to him the state in which his sister was lying; assured him that everything in the power of medicine had been and should be done; that, nevertheless, he feared the chance of recovery was remote; and ended by informing him that Miss Lynch was aware of her danger, and had expressed a wish to see him before it might be too late. Could he make it convenient to come over just now in half an hour or say an hour? said the doctor, looking at the red face and unfinished toilet of the distressed brother.
Barry at first scarcely knew what reply to give. On his return from Tuam, he had determined that he would at any rate make his way into his sister’s room, and, as he thought to himself, see what would come of it. In his after-dinner courage he had further determined, that he would treat the widow and her family with a very high hand, if they dared to make objection to his seeing his sister; but now, when the friendly overture came from Anty herself, and was brought by one of the Kelly faction, he felt himself a little confounded, as though he rather dreaded the interview, and would wish to put it off for a day or two.
‘Oh, yes certainly, Doctor Colligan; to be sure that is tell me, doctor, is she really so bad?’
‘Indeed, Mr Lynch, she is very weak.’
‘But, doctor, you don’t think there is any chance I mean, there isn’t any danger, is there, that she’d go off at once?’
‘Why, no, I don’t think there is; indeed, I have no doubt she will hold out a fortnight yet.’
‘Then, perhaps, doctor, I’d better put it off till tomorrow; I’ll tell you why: there’s a person I wish ’
‘Why, Mr Lynch, today would be better. The fever’s periodical, you see, and will be on her again tomorrow ’
‘I beg your pardon, Doctor Colligan,’ said Barry, of a sudden remembering to be civil, ‘but you’ll take a glass of wine?’
‘Not a drop, thank ye, of anything.’
‘Oh, but you will;’ and Barry rang the bell and had the wine brought. ‘And you expect she’ll have another attack tomorrow?’
‘That’s a matter of course, Mr Lynch; the fever’ll come on her again tomorrow. Every attack leaves her weaker and weaker, and we fear she’ll go off, before it leaves her altogether.’
‘Poor thing!’ said Barry, contemplatively.
‘We had her head shaved,’ said the doctor.
‘Did you, indeed!’ answered Barry. ‘She was my favourite sister, Doctor Colligan that is, I had no other.’
‘I believe not,’ said Doctor Colligan, looking sympathetic.
‘Take another glass of wine, doctor? now do,’ and he poured out another bumper.
‘Thank’ee, Mr Lynch, thank’ee; not a drop more. And you’ll be over in an hour then? I’d better go and tell her, that she may be prepared, you know,’ and the doctor returned to the sick room of his patient.
Barry remained standing in the parlour, looking at the glasses and the decanter, as though he were speculating on the manner in which they had been fabricated. ‘She may recover, after all,’ thought he to himself. ‘She’s as strong as a horse I know her better than they do. I know she’ll recover, and then what shall I do? Stand to the offer Daly made to Kelly, I suppose!’ And then he sat down close to the table, with his elbow on it, and his chin resting on his hand; and there he remained, full of thought. To tell the truth, Barry Lynch had never thought more intensely than he did during those ten minutes. At last he jumped up suddenly, as though surprised at what had been passing within himself; he looked hastily at the door and at the window, as though to see that he had not been watched, and then went upstairs to dress himself, preparatory to his visit to the inn.
Anty had borne her illness with that patience and endurance which were so particularly inherent in her nature. She had never complained; and had received the untiring attentions and care of her two young friends, with a warmth of affection and gratitude which astonished them, accustomed as they had been in every little illness to give and receive that tender care with which sickness is treated in affectionate families. When ill, they felt they had a right to be petulant, and to complain; to exact, and to he attended to: they had been used to it from each other, and thought it an incidental part of the business. But Anty had hitherto had no one to nurse her, and she looked on Meg and Jane as kind ministering angels, emulous as they were to relieve her wants and ease her sufferings.
Her thin face had become thinner, and was very pale; her head had been shaved close, and there was nothing between the broad white border of her nightcap and her clammy brow and wan cheek. But illness was more becoming to Anty than health; it gave her a melancholy and beautiful expression of resignation, which, under ordinary circumstances, was wanting to her features, though not to her character. Her eyes were brighter than they usually were, and her complexion was clear, colourless, and transparent. I do not mean to say that Anty in her illness was beautiful, but she was no longer plain; and even to the young Kellys, whose feelings and sympathies cannot be supposed to have been of the highest order, she became an object of the most intense interest, and the warmest affection.
‘Well, doctor,’ she said, as Doctor Colligan crept into her room, after the termination of his embassy to Barry; ‘will he come?’
‘Oh, of course he will; why wouldn’t he, and you wishing it? He’ll be here in an hour, Miss Lynch. He wasn’t just ready to come over with me.’
‘I’m glad of that,’ said Anty, who felt that she had to collect her thoughts before she saw him; and then, after a moment, she added, ‘Can’t I take my medicine now, doctor?’
‘Just before he comes you’d better have it, I think. One of the girls will step up and give it you when he’s below. He’ll want to speak a word or so to Mrs Kelly before he comes up.’
‘Spake to me, docthor!’ said the widow, alarmed. ‘What’ll he be spaking to me about? Faix, I had spaking enough with him last time he was here.’
‘You’d better just see him, Mrs Kelly,’ whispered the, doctor. ‘You’ll find him quiet enough, now; just take him fair and asy; keep him downstairs a moment, while Jane gives her the medicine. She’d better take it just before he goes to her, and don’t let him stay long, whatever you do. I’ll be back before the evening’s over; not that I think that she’ll want me to see her, but I’ll just drop in.’
‘Are you going, doctor?’ said Anty, as he stepped up to the bed. He told her he was. ‘You’ve told Mrs Kelly, haven’t you, that I’m to see Barry alone?’
‘Why, I didn’t say so,’ said the doctor, looking at the widow; ‘but I suppose there’ll be no harm eh, Mrs Kelly?’
‘You must let me see him alone, dear Mrs Kelly!’
‘If Doctor Colligan thinks you ought, Anty dear, I wouldn’t stay in the room myself for worlds.’
‘But you won’t keep him here long, Miss Lynch eh? And you won’t excite yourself? indeed, you mustn’t. You’ll allow them fifteen minutes, Mrs Kelly, not more, and then you’ll come up;’ and with these cautions, the doctor withdrew.
‘I wish he was come and gone,’ said the widow to her elder daughter. ‘Well; av I’d known all what was to follow, I’d niver have got out of my warm bed to go and fetch Anty Lynch down here that cowld morning! Well, I’ll be wise another time. Live and lam, they say, and it’s thrue, too.’
‘But, mother, you ain’t wishing poor Anty wasn’t here?’
‘Indeed, but I do; everything to give and nothin to get that’s not the way I have managed to live. But it’s not that altogether, neither. I’m not begrudging Anty anything for herself; but that I’d be dhriven to let that blagguard of a brother of hers into the house, and that as a frind like, is what I didn’t think I’d ever have put upon me!’
Barry made his appearance about an hour after the time at which they had begun to expect him; and as soon as Meg saw him, one of them flew upstairs, to tell Anty and give her her tonic. Barry had made himself quite a dandy to do honour to the occasion of paying probably a parting visit to his sister, whom he had driven out of her own house to die at the inn. He had on his new blue frock-coat, and a buff waistcoat with gilt buttons, over which his watch-chain was gracefully arranged. His pantaloons were strapped clown very tightly over his polished boots; a shining new silk hat was on one side of his head; and in his hand he was dangling an ebony cane. In spite, however, of all these gaudy trappings, he could not muster up an easy air; and, as he knocked, he had that look proverbially attributed to dogs who are going to be hung.
Sally opened the door for him, and the widow, who had come out from the shop, made him a low courtesy in the passage.
‘Oh ah yes Mrs Kelly, I believe?’ said Barry.
‘Yes, Mr Lynch, that’s my name; glory be to God!’
‘My sister, Miss Lynch, is still staying here, I believe?’
‘Why, drat it, man; wasn’t Dr Colligan with you less than an hour ago, telling you you must come here, av you wanted to see her?’
‘You’ll oblige me by sending up the servant to tell Miss Lynch I’m here.’
‘Walk up here a minute, and I’ll do that errand for you myself. Well,’ continued she, muttering to herself ‘for him to ax av she war staying here, as though he didn’t know it! There niver was his ditto for desait, maneness and divilry!’
A minute or two alter the widow had left him, Barry found himself by his sister’s bed-side, but never had he found himself in a position for which he was less fitted, or which was less easy to him. He assumed, however, a long and solemn face, and crawling up to the bed-side, told his sister, in a whining voice, that he was very glad to see her.
‘Sit down, Barry, sit down,’ said Anty, stretching out her thin pale hand, and taking hold of her brother’s.
Barry did as he was told, and sat down. ‘I’m so glad to see you, Barry,’ said she: ‘I’m so very glad to see you once more —’ and then after a pause, ‘and it’ll be the last time, Barry, for I’m dying.’
Barry told her he didn’t think she was, for he didn’t know when he’d seen her looking better.
‘Yes, I am, Barry: Doctor Colligan has said as much; and I should know it well enough myself, even if he’d never said a word. We’re friends now, are we not? Everything’s forgiven and forgotten, isn’t it, Barry?’
Anty had still hold of her brother’s hand, and seemed desirous to keep it. He sat on the edge of his chair, with his knees tucked in against the bed, the very picture of discomfort, both of body and mind.
‘Oh, of course it is, Anty,’ said he; ‘forgive and forget; that was always my motto. I’m sure I never bore any malice indeed I never was so sorry as when you went away, and ’
‘Ah, Barry,’ said Anty; ‘it was better I went then; maybe it’s all better as it is. When the priest has been with me and given me comfort, I won’t fear to die. But there are other things, Barry, I want to spake to you about.’
‘If there’s anything I can do, I’m sure I’d do it: if there’s anything at all you wish done. Would you like to come up to the house again?’
‘Oh no, Barry, not for worlds.’
‘Why, perhaps, just at present, you are too weak to move; only wouldn’t it be more comfortable for you to be in your own house? These people here are all very well, I dare say, but they must be a great bother to you, eh? so interested, you know, in everything they do.’
‘Ah! Barry, you don’t know them.’
Barry remembered that he would be on the wrong tack to abuse the Kellys. ‘I’m sure they’re very nice people,’ said he; ‘indeed I always thought so, and said so but they’re not like your own flesh and blood, are they, Anty? and why shouldn’t you come up and be ’
‘No, Barry,’ said she; ‘I’ll not do that; as they’re so very, very kind as to let me stay here, I’ll remain till till God takes me to himself. But they’re not my flesh and blood’ and she turned round and looked affectionately in the face of her brother ‘there are only the two of us left now; and soon, very soon you’ll be all alone.’ Barry felt very uncomfortable, and wished the interview was over: he tried to say something, but failed, and Anty went on ‘when that time comes, will you remember what I say to you now? When you’re all alone, Barry; when there’s nothing left to trouble you or put you out will you think then of the last time you ever saw your sister, and ’
‘Oh, Anty, sure I’ll be seeing you again!’
‘No, Barry, never again. This is the last time we shall ever meet, and think how much we ought to be to each other! We’ve neither of us father or mother, husband or wife. When I’m gone you’ll be alone: will you think of me then and will you remember, remember every day what I say to you now?’
‘Indeed I will, Anty. I’ll do anything, everything you’d have me. Is there anything you’d wish me to give to any person?’
‘Barry,’ she continued, ‘no good ever came of my father’s will.’ Barry almost jumped off his chair as he heard his sister’s words, so much did they startle him; but he said nothing. ‘The money has done me no good, but the loss of it has blackened your heart, and turned your blood to gall against me. Yes, Barry yes don’t speak now, let me go on; the old man brought you up to look for it, and, alas, he taught you to look for nothing else; it has not been your fault, and I’m not blaming you I’m not maning to blame you, my own brother, for you are my own’ and she turned round in the bed and shed tears upon his hand, and kissed it. ‘But gold, and land, will never make you happy, no, not all the gold of England, nor all the land the old kings ever had could make you happy, av the heart was bad within you. You’ll have it all now, Barry, or mostly all. You’ll have what you think the old man wronged you of; you’ll have it with no one to provide for but yourself, with no one to trouble you, no one to thwart you. But oh, Barry, av it’s in your heart that that can make you happy there’s nothing before you but misery and death and hell.’ Barry shook like a child in the clutches of its master ‘Yes, Barry; misery and death, and all the tortures of the damned. It’s to save you from this, my own brother, to try and turn your heart from that foul love of money, that your sister is now speaking to you from her grave. Oh, Barry! try and cure it. Learn to give to others, and you’ll enjoy what you have yourself. Learn to love others, and then you’ll know what it is to be loved yourself. Try, try to soften that hard heart. Marry at once, Barry, at once, before you’re older and worse to cure; and you’ll have children, and love them; and when you feel, as feel you must, that the money is clinging round your soul, fling it from you, and think of the last words your sister said to you.’
The sweat was now running down the cheeks of the wretched man, for the mixed rebuke and prayer of his sister had come home to him, and touched him; but it was neither with pity, with remorse, nor penitence. No; in that foul heart there was no room, even for remorse; but he trembled with fear as he listened to her words, and, falling on his knees, swore to her that he would do just as she would have him.
‘If I could but think,’ continued she, ‘that you would remember what I am saying ’
‘Oh, I will, Anty: I will indeed, indeed, I will!’
‘If I could believe so, Barry I’d die happy and in comfort, for I love you better than anything on earth;’ and again she pressed his hot red hand ‘but oh, brother! I feel for you: you never kneel before the altar of God you’ve no priest to move the weight of sin from your soul and how heavy that must be! Do you remember, Barry; it’s but a week or two ago and you threatened to kill me for the sake of our father’s money? you wanted to put me in a mad-house; you tried to make me mad with fear and cruelty; me, your sister; and I never harmed or crossed you. God is now doing what you threatened; a kind, good God is now taking me to himself, and you will get what you so longed for without more sin on your conscience; but it’ll never bless you, av you’ve still the same wishes in your heart, the same love of gold the same hatred of a fellow-creature.’
‘Oh, Anty!’ sobbed out Barry, who was now absolutely in tears, ‘I was drunk that night; I was indeed, or I’d never have said or done what I did.’
‘And how often are you so, Barry? isn’t it so with you every night? That’s another thing; for my sake, for your own sake for God’s sake, give up the dhrink. It’s killing you from day to day, and hour to hour. I see it in your eyes, and smell it in your breath, and hear it in your voice; it’s that that makes your heart so black it’s that that gives you over, body and soul, to the devil. I would not have said a word about that night to hurt you now; and, dear Barry, I wouldn’t have said such words as these to you at all, but that I shall never speak to you again. And oh! I pray that you’ll remember them. You’re idle now, always don’t continue so; earn your money, and it will be a blessing to you and to others. But in idleness, and drunkenness, and wickedness, it will only lead you quicker to the devil.’
Barry reiterated his promises; he would take the pledge; he would work at the farm; he would marry and have a family; he would not care the least for money; he would pay his debts; he would go to church, or chapel, if Anty liked it better; at any rate, he’d say his prayers; he would remember every word she had said to the last day of his life; he promised everything or anything, as though his future existence depended on his appeasing his dying sister. But during the whole time, his chief wish, his longing desire, was to finish the interview, and get out of that horrid room. He felt that he was mastered and cowed by the creature whom he had so despised, and he could not account for the feeling. Why did he not dare to answer her? She had told him he would have her money: she had said it would come to him as a matter of course; and it was not the dread of losing that which prevented his saying a word in his own defence. No; she had really frightened him: she had made him really feel that he was a low, wretched, wicked creature, and he longed to escape from her, that he might recover his composure.
‘I have but little more to say to you, Barry,’ she continued, ‘and that little is about the property. You will have it all, but a small sum of money ’
Here Anty was interrupted by a knock at the door, and the entrance of the widow. She came to say that the quarter of an hour allowed by the doctor had been long exceeded, and that really Mr Barry ought to take his leave, as so much talking would be bad for Anty.
This was quite a god-send for Barry, who was only anxious to be off; but Anty begged for a respite.
‘One five minutes longer, dear Mrs Kelly,’ said she, ‘and I shall have done; only five minutes I’m much stronger now, and really it won’t hurt me.’
‘Well, then mind, only five minutes,’ said the widow, and again left them alone.
‘You don’t know, Barry you can never know how good that woman has been to me; indeed all of them and all for nothing. They’ve asked nothing of me, and now that they know I’m dying, I’m sure they expect nothing from me. She has enough; but I wish to leave something to Martin, and the girls;’ and a slight pale blush covered her wan cheeks and forehead as she mentioned Martin’s name. ‘I will leave him five hundred pounds, and them the same between them. It will be nothing to you, Barry, out of the whole; but see and pay it at once, will you?’ and she looked kindly into his face.
He promised vehemently that he would, and told her not to bother herself about a will: they should have the money as certainly as if twenty wills were made. To give Barry his due, at that moment, he meant to be as good as his word. Anty, however, told him that she would make a will; that she would send for a lawyer, and have the matter properly settled.
‘And now,’ she said, ‘dear Barry, may God Almighty bless you may He guide you and preserve you; and may He, above all, take from you that horrid love of the world’s gold and wealth. Good bye,’ and she raised herself up in her bed good bye, for the last time, my own dear brother; and try to remember what I’ve said to you this day. Kiss me before you go, Barry.’
Barry leaned over the bed, and kissed her, and then crept out of the room, and down the stairs, with the tears streaming down his red cheeks; and skulked across the street to his own house, with his hat slouched over his face, and his handkerchief held across his mouth.
Anty was a good deal exhausted by her interview with her brother, but towards evening she rallied a little, and told Jane, who was sitting with her, that she wanted to say one word in private, to Martin.
Jane was rather surprised, for though Martin was in the habit of going into the room every morning to see the invalid, Anty had never before asked for him. However, she went for Martin, and found him.
‘Martin,’ said she; ‘Anty wants to see you alone, in private.’
‘Me?’ said Martin, turning a little red. ‘Do you know what it’s about?’
‘She didn’t say a word, only she wanted to see you alone; but I’m thinking it’s something about her brother; he was with her a long long time this morning, and went away more like a dead man than a live one. But come, don’t keep her waiting; and, whatever you do, don’t stay long; every word she spakes is killing her.’
Martin followed his sister into the sick-room, and, gently taking Anty’s offered hand, asked her in a whisper, what he could do for her. Jane went out; and, to do her justice sat herself down at a distance from the door, though she was in a painful state of curiosity as to what was being said within.
‘You’re all too good to me, Martin,’ said Anty; ‘you’ll spoil me, between you, minding every word I say so quick.’
Martin assured her again, in a whisper, that anything and everything they could do for her was only a pleasure.
‘Don’t mind whispering,’ said Anty; ‘spake out; your voice won’t hurt me. I love to hear your voices, they’re all so kind and good. But Martin, I’ve business you must do for me, and that at once, for I feel within me that I’ll soon he gone from this.’
‘We hope not, Anty; but it’s all with God now isn’t it? No one knows that betther than yourself.’
‘Oh yes, I do know that; and I feel it is His pleasure that it should be so, and I don’t fear to die. A few weeks back the thoughts of death, when they came upon me, nearly killed me; but that feeling’s all gone now.’
Martin did not know what answer to make; he again told her he hoped she would soon get better. It is a difficult task to talk properly to a dying person about death, and Martin felt that he was quite incompetent to do so.
‘But,’ she continued, after a little, ‘there’s still much that I want to do that I ought to do. In the first place, I must make my will.’
Martin was again puzzled. This was another subject on which he felt himself equally unwilling to speak; he could not advise her not to make one; and he certainly would not advise her to do so.
‘Your will, Anty? there’s time enough for that; you’ll be sthronger you know, in a day or two. Doctor Colligan says so and then we’ll talk about it.’
‘I hope there is time enough, Martin; but there isn’t more than enough; it’s not much that I’ll have to say ’
‘Were you spaking to Barry about it this morning?’
‘Oh, I was. I told him what I’d do: he’ll have the property now, mostly all as one as av the ould man had left it to him. It would have been betther so, eh Martin?’ Anty never doubted her lover’s disinterestedness; at this moment she suspected him of no dirty longing alter her money, and she did him only justice. When he came into her room he had no thoughts of inheriting anything from her. Had he been sure that by asking he could have induced her to make a will in his favour, he would not have done so. But still his heart sunk a little within him when he heard her declare that she was going to leave everything back to her brother. It was, however, only for a moment; he remembered his honest determination firmly and resolutely to protect their joint property against any of her brother’s attempts, should he ever marry her; but in no degree to strive or even hanker after it, unless it became his own in a fair, straightforward manner.
‘Well, Anty; I think you’re right,’ said he. ‘But wouldn’t it all go to Barry, nathurally, without your bothering yourself about a will, and you so wake.’
‘In course it would, at laist I suppose so; but Martin,’ and she smiled faintly as she looked up into his face, ‘I want the two dear, dear girls, and I want yourself to have some little thing to remember me by; and your dear kind mother she doesn’t want money, but if I ask her to take a few of the silver things in the house, I’m sure she’ll keep them for my sake. Oh, Martin! I do love you all so very so very much!’ and the warm tears streamed down her cheeks.
Martin’s eyes were affected, too: he made a desperate struggle to repress the weakness, but he could not succeed, and was obliged to own it by rubbing his eyes with the sleeve of his coat. ‘And I’m shure, Anty,’ said he, ‘we all love you; any one must love you who knew you.’ And then he paused: he was trying to say something of his own true personal regard for her, but he hardly knew how to express it. ‘We all love you as though you were one of ourselves and so you are it’s all the same at any rate it is to me.’
‘And I would have been one of you, had I lived. I can talk to you more about it now, Martin, than I ever could before, because I know I feel I am dying.’
‘But you mustn’t talk, Anty; it wakens you, and you’ve had too much talking already this day.’
‘It does me good, Martin, and I must say what I have to say to you. I mayn’t be able again. Had it plazed God I should have lived, I would have prayed for nothing higher or betther than to be one of such a family as yourselves. Had I been had I been’ and now Anty blushed again, and she also found a difficulty in expressing herself; but she soon got over it, and continued, ‘had I been permitted to marry you, Martin, I think I would have been a good wife to you. I am very, very sure I would have been an affectionate one.’
‘I’m shure you would I’m shure you would, Anty. God send you may still: av you war only once well again there’s nothing now to hindher us.’
‘You forget Barry,’ Anty said, with a shudder. ‘But it doesn’t matther talking of that now’ Martin was on the point of telling her that Barry had agreed, under certain conditions, to their marriage: but, on second thoughts, he felt it would be useless to do so; and Anty continued,
‘I would have done all I could, Martin. I would have loved you fondly and truly. I would have liked what you liked, and, av I could, I would’ve made your home quiet and happy. Your mother should have been my mother, and your sisthers my sisthers.’
‘So they are now, Anty so they are now, my own, own Anty they love you as much as though they were.’
‘God Almighty bless them for their goodness, and you too, Martin. I cannot tell you, I niver could tell you, how I’ve valued your honest thrue love, for I know you have loved me honestly and thruly; but I’ve always been afraid to spake to you. I’ve sometimes thought you must despise me, I’ve been so wake and cowardly.’
‘Despise you, Anty? how could I despise you, when I’ve always loved you?’
‘But now, Martin, about poor Barry for he is poor. I’ve sometimes thought, as I’ve been lying here the long long hours awake, that, feeling to you as I do, l ought to be laving you what the ould man left to me.’
‘I’d be sorry you did, Anty. I’ll not be saying but what I thought of that when I first looked for you, but it was never to take it from you, but to share it with you, and make you happy with it.’
‘I know it, Martin: I always knew it and felt it.’
‘And now, av it’s God’s will that you should go from us, I’d rather Barry had the money than us. We’ve enough, the Lord be praised; and I wouldn’t for worlds it should be said that it war for that we brought you among us; nor for all County Galway would I lave it to Barry to say, that when you were here, sick, and wake, and dying, we put a pen into your hand to make you sign a will to rob him of what should by rights be his.’
‘That’s it, dear Martin; it wouldn’t bless you if you had it; it can bless no one who looks to it alone for a blessing. It wouldn’t make you happy it would make you miserable, av people said you had that which you ought not to have. Besides, I love my poor brother; he is my brother, my only real relation; we’ve lived all our lives together; and though he isn’t what he should be, the fault is not all his own, I should not sleep in my grave, av I died with his curse upon me; as I should, av he found, when I am gone, that I’d willed the property all away. I’ve told him he’d have it all nearly all; and I’ve begged him, prayed to him, from. my dying bed, to mend his ways; to try and be something betther in the world than what I fear he’s like to be. I think he minded what I said when he was here, for death-bed words have a solemn sound to the most worldly; but when I’m gone he’ll be all alone, there’ll be no one to look afther him. Nobody loves him no one even likes him; no one will live with him but those who mane to rob him; and he will be robbed, and plundered, and desaved, when he thinks he’s robbing and desaving others.’ Anty paused, more for breath than for a reply, but Martin felt that he must say something.
‘Indeed, Anty, I fear he’ll hardly come to good. He dhrinks too much, by all accounts; besides, he’s idle, and the honest feeling isn’t in him.’
‘It’s thrue, dear Martin; it’s too thrue. Will you do me a great great favour, Martin’ and she rose up a little and turned her moist clear eye full upon him ‘will you show your thrue love to your poor Anty, by a rale lasting kindness, but one that’ll be giving you much much throuble and pain? Afther I’m dead and gone long long after I’m in my cold grave, will you do that for me, Martin?’.
‘Indeed I will, Anty,’ said Martin, rather astonished, but with a look of solemn assurance; ‘anything that I can do, I will: you needn’t dread my not remembering, but I fear it isn’t much that I can do for you.’
‘Will you always think and spake of Barry will you always act to him and by him, and for him, not as a man whom you know and dislike, but as my brother your own Anty’s only brother? Whatever he does, will you thry to make him do betther? Whatever troubles he’s in, will you lend him your hand? Come what come may to him, will you be his frind? He has no frind now. When I’m gone, will you be a frind to him?’
Martin was much confounded. ‘He won’t let me be his frind,’ he said; ‘he looks down on us and despises us; he thinks himself too high to be befrinded by us. Besides, of all Dunmore he hates us most.’
‘He won’t when he finds you haven’t got the property from him: but frindship doesn’t depend on letting rale frindship doesn’t. I don’t want you to be dhrinking, and ating, and going about with him. God forbid! you’re too good for that. But when you find he wants a frind, come forward, and thry and make him do something for himself. You can’t but come together; you’ll be the executhor in the will; won’t you, Martin? and then he’ll meet you about the property; he can’t help it, and you must meet then as frinds. And keep that up. If he insults you, forgive it or my sake; if he’s fractious and annoying, put up with it for my sake; for my sake thry to make him like you, and thry to make others like him.’ Martin felt that this would be impossible, but he didn’t say so ‘No one respects him now, but all respect you. I see it in people’s eyes and manners, without hearing what they say. Av you spake well of him at any rate kindly of him, people won’t turn themselves so against him. Will you do all this, for my sake?’
Martin solemnly promised that, as far as he could, he would do so; that, at any rate as far as himself was concerned, he would never quarrel with him.
‘You’ll have very, very much to forgive,’ continued Anty; ‘but then it’s so sweet to forgive; and he’s had no fond mother like you; he has not been taught any duties, any virtues, as you have. He has only been taught that money is the thing to love, and that he should worship nothing but that. Martin, for my sake, will you look on him as a brother? a wicked, bad, castaway brother; but still as a brother, to be forgiven, and, if possible, redeemed?’
‘As I hope for glory in Heaven, I will,’ said Martin; ‘but I think he’ll go far from this; I think he’ll quit Dunmore.’
‘Maybe he will; perhaps it’s betther he should; but he’ll lave his name behind him. Don’t be too hard on that, and don’t let others; and even av he does go, it’ll not be long before he’ll want a frind, and I don’t know anywhere he can go that he’s likely to find one. Wherever he may go, or whatever he may do, you won’t forget he was my brother; will you, Martin? You won’t forget he was your own Anty’s only brother.’
Martin again gave her his solemn word that he would, to the best of his ability, act as a friend and brother to Barry.
‘And now about the will.’ Martin again endeavoured to dissuade her from thinking about a will just at present.
‘Ah! but my heart’s set upon it,’ she said; ‘— I shouldn’t be happy unless I did it, and I’m sure you don’t want to make me unhappy, now. You must get me some lawyer here, Martin; I’m afraid you’re not lawyer enough for that yourself.’
‘Indeed I’m not, Anty; it’s a trade I know little about.’
‘Well; you must get me a lawyer; not tomorrow, for I know I shan’t be well enough; but I hope I shall next day, and you may tell him just what to put in it. I’ve no secrets from you.’ And she told him exactly what she had before told her brother. ‘That’ll not hurt him,’ she continued; ‘and I’d like to think you and the dear girls should accept something from me.’
Martin then agreed to go to Daly. He was on good terms with them all now, since making the last offer to them respecting the property; besides, as Martin said, ‘he knew no other lawyer, and, as the will was so decidedly in Barry’s favour, who was so proper to make it as Barry’s own lawyer?’
‘Good-bye now, Martin,’ said Anty; ‘we shall be desperately scolded for talking so long; but it was on my mind to say it all, and I’m betther now it’s all over.’
‘Good night, dear Anty,’ said Martin, ‘I’ll be seeing you tomorrow.’
‘Every day, I hope, Martin, till it’s all over. God bless you, God bless you all and you above all. You don’t know, Martin at laist you didn’t know all along, how well, how thruly I’ve loved you. Good night,’ and Martin left the room, as Barry had done, in tears. But he had no feeling within him of which he had cause to be ashamed. He was ashamed, and tried to hide his face, for he was not accustomed to be seen with the tears running down his cheeks; but still he had within him a strong sensation of gratified pride, as he reflected that he was the object of the warmest affection to so sweet a creature as Anty Lynch.
‘Well, Martin what was it she wanted?’ said his mother, as she met him at the bottom of the stairs.
‘I couldn’t tell you now, mother,’ said he; ‘but av there was iver an angel on ‘arth, it’s Anty Lynch.’ And saying so, he pushed open the door and escaped into the street.
‘I wondher what she’s been about now?’ said the widow, speculating to herself ‘— well, av she does lave it away from Barry, who can say but what she has a right to do as she likes with her own? and who’s done the most for her, I’d like to know?’ and pleasant prospects of her son’s enjoying an independence flitted before her mind’s eye. ‘But thin,’ she continued, talking to herself, ‘I wouldn’t have it said in Dunmore that a Kelly demaned hisself to rob a Lynch, not for twice all Sim Lynch ever had. Well we’ll see; but no good’ll ever come of meddling with them people. Jane, Jane,’ she called out, at the top of her voice, ‘are you niver coming down, and letting me out of this? bad manners to you.’
Jane answered, in the same voice, from the parlour upstairs, ‘Shure, mother, ain’t I getting Anty her tay?
‘Drat Anty and her tay! Well, shure, I’m railly bothered now wid them Lynches! Well, glory be to God, there’s an end to everything not that I’m wishing her anywhere but where she is; she’s welcome, for Mary Kelly.’
Two days after the hunt in which poor Goneaway was killed by Barry’s horse, Ballindine received the following letter from his friend Dot Blake.
Limmer’s Hotel, 27th March, 1844.
Dear Frank,
I and Brien, and Bottom, crossed over last Friday night, and, thanks to the God of storms, were allowed to get quietly through it. The young chieftain didn’t like being boxed on the quay a bit too well; the rattling of the chains upset him, and the fellows there are so infernally noisy and awkward, that I wonder he was ever got on board. It’s difficult to make an Irishman handy, but it’s the very devil to make him quiet. There were four at his head, and three at his tail, two at the wheel, turning, and one up aloft, hallooing like a demon in the air; and when Master Brien showed a little aversion to this comic performance, they were going to drag him into the box bon gr?, mal gr?, till Bottom interposed and saved the men and the horse from destroying each other.
We got safe to Middleham on Saturday night, the greatest part of the way by rail. Scott has a splendid string of horses. These English fellows do their work in tiptop style, only they think more of spending money than they do of making it. I waited to see him out on Monday, when he’d got a trot, and he was as bright as though he’d never left the Curragh. Scott says he’s a little too fine; but you know of course he must find some fault. To give Igoe his due, he could not be in better condition, and Scott was obliged to own that, considering where he came from, he was very well. I came on here on Tuesday, and have taken thirteen wherever I could get it, and thought the money safe. I have got a good deal on, and won’t budge till I do it at six to one; and I’m sure I’ll bring him to that. I think he’ll rise quickly, as he wants so little training, and as his qualities must be at once known now he’s in Scott’s stables; so if you mean to put any more on you had better do it at once.
So much for the stables. I left the other two at home, but have one of my own string here, as maybe I’ll pick up a match: and now I wish to let you know a report that I heard this morning at least a secret, which bids fair to become a report. It is said that Kilcullen is to marry F— W—, and that he has already paid Heaven only knows how many thousand pounds of debt with her money; that the old earl has arranged it all, and that the beautiful heiress has reluctantly agreed to be made a viscountess. I’m very far from saying that I believe this; but it may suit you to know that I heard the arrangement mentioned before two other persons, one of whom was Morris strange enough this, as he was one of the set at Handicap Lodge when you told them that the match with yourself was still on. I have no doubt the plan would suit father and son; you best know how far the lady may have been likely to accede. At any rate, my dear Frank, if you’ll take my advice, you’ll not sit quiet till she does marry some one. You can’t expect she’ll wear the willow for you very long, if you do nothing yourself. Write to her by post, and write to the earl by the same post, saying you have done so. Tell her in the sweetest way you can, that you cannot live without seeing her, and getting your cong?, if cong? it is to be, from her own dear lips; and tell him, in as few words, as you please, that you mean to do yourself the honour of knocking at his door on such and such a day and do it.
By the bye, Kilcullen certainly returns to Ireland immediately. There’s been the devil’s own smash among him and the Jews. He has certainly been dividing money among them; but not near enough, by all accounts, to satisfy the half of them. For the sake of your reputation, if not of your pocket, don’t let him walk off with the hundred and thirty thousand pounds. They say it’s not a penny less.
Very faithfully yours,
W. BLAKE.
Shall I do anything for you here about Brien? I think I might still get you eleven to one, but let me hear at once.
As Frank read the first portion of this epistle, his affection for his poor dear favourite nag returned in full force, and he felt all the pangs of remorse for having parted with him; but when he came to the latter part, to Lord Kilcullen’s name, and the initials by which his own Fanny was designated, he forgot all about horse and owner; became totally regardless of thirteen, eleven, and six to one, and read on hastily to the end; read it all again then closed the letter, and put it in his pocket, and remained for a considerable time in silent contemplation, trying to make up his mind what he would do.
Nobody was with him as he opened his post-bag, which he took from the messenger as the boy was coming up to the house; he therefore read his letter alone, on the lawn, and he continued pacing up and down before the house with a most perturbed air, for half an hour.
Kilcullen going to marry Fanny Wyndham! So, that was the cause of Lord Cashel’s singular behaviour his incivility, and refusal to allow Frank to see his ward. ‘What! to have arranged it all in twenty-four hours,’ thought Frank to himself; ‘to have made over his ward’s money to his son, before her brother, from whom she inherited it, was in his grave: to determine at once to reject an accepted suitor for the sake of closing on the poor girl’s money and without the slightest regard for her happiness, without a thought for her welfare! And then, such lies,’ said the viscount, aloud, striking his heel into the grass in his angry impetuosity; ‘such base, cruel lies! to say that she had authorised him, when he couldn’t have dared to make such a proposal to her, and her brother but two days dead. Well; I took him for a stiff-necked pompous fool, but I never thought him such an avaricious knave.’ And Fanny, too could Fanny have agreed, so soon, to give her hand to another? She could not have transferred her heart. His own dear, fond Fanny! A short time ago they had been all in all to each other; and now so completely estranged as they were! However, Dot was right; up to this time Fanny might be quite true to him; indeed, there was not ground even for doubting her, for it was evident that no reliance was to be placed in Lord Cashel’s asseverations. But still he could not expect that she should continue to consider herself engaged, if she remained totally neglected by her lover. He must do something, and that at once; but there was very great difficulty in deciding what that something was to be. It was easy enough for Dot to say, first write, and then go. If he were to write, what security was there that his letter would be allowed to reach Fanny? and, if he went, how much less chance was there that he would be allowed to see her. And then, again to be turned out of the house! again informed, by that pompous scheming earl, that his visits there were not desired. Or, worse still, not to be admitted; to be driven from the door by a footman who would well know for what he came! No; come what come might, he would never again go to Grey Abbey; at least not unless he was specially and courteously invited thither by the owner; and then it should only be to marry his ward, and take her from the odious place, never to return again.
‘The impudent impostor!’ continued Frank to himself; ‘to pretend to suspect me, when he was himself hatching his dirty, mercenary, heartless schemes!’
But still the same question recurred what was to be done? Venting his wrath on Lord Cashel would not get him out of the difficulty: going was out of the question; writing was of little use. Could he not send somebody else? Some one who could not be refused admittance to Fanny, and who might at any rate learn what her wishes and feelings were? He did not like making love by deputy; but still, in his present dilemma, he could think of nothing better. But whom was he to send? Bingham Blake was a man of character, and would not make a fool of himself; but he was too young; he would not be able to make his way to Fanny. No a young unmarried man would not do. Mat Tierney? he was afraid of no one, and always cool and collected; but then, Mat was in London; besides, he was a sort of friend of Kilcullen’s. General Bourke? No one could refuse an entr?e to his venerable grey hairs, and polished manner; besides, his standing in the world was so good, so unexceptionable; but then the chances were he would not go on such an errand; he was too old to be asked to take such a troublesome service; and besides, if asked, it was very probable he would say that he considered Lord Cashel entitled to his ward’s obedience. The rector the Rev. Joseph Armstrong? He must be the man: there was, at any rate, respectability in his profession; and he had sufficient worldly tact not easily to be thrust aside from his object: the difficulty would be, whether he had a coat sufficiently decent to appear in at Grey Abbey.
After mature consideration he made up his mind that the parson should be his ambassador. He would sooner have confided in Bingham Blake, but an unmarried man would not do. No; the parson must be the man. Frank was, unfortunately, but little disposed to act in any case without advice, and in his anxiety to consult some one as to consulting the parson, returned into the house, to make a clear breast of it to his mother. He found her in the breakfast-room with the two girls, and the three were holding council deep.
‘Oh, here’s Frank,’ said Sophy; ‘we’d better tell him all about it at once and he’ll tell us which she’d like best.’
‘We didn’t mean to tell you,’ said Guss; ‘but I and Sophy are going to work two sofas for the drawing-room in Berlin wool, you know: they’ll be very handsome everybody has them now, you know; they have a splendid pair at Ballyhaunis which Nora and her cousin worked.’
‘But we want to know what pattern would suit Fanny’s taste,’ said Sophy.
‘Well; you can’t know that,’ said Frank rather pettishly, ‘so you’d better please yourselves.’
‘Oh, but you must know what she likes,’ continued Guss; ‘I’m for this,’ and she, displayed a pattern showing forth two gorgeous macaws each with plumage of the brightest colours. ‘The colours are so bright, and the feathers will work in so well.’
‘I don’t like anything in worsted-work but flowers,’ said Sophy; ‘Nora Dillon says she saw two most beautiful wreaths at that shop in Grafton Street, both hanging from bars, you know; and that would be so much prettier. I’m sure Fanny would like flowers best; wouldn’t she now, Frank? Mamma thinks the common cross-bar patterns are nicer for furniture.’
‘Indeed I do, my dear,’ said Mrs O’Kelly; ‘and you see them much more common now in well-furnished drawing-rooms. But still I’d much sooner have them just what Fanny would like best. Surely, Frank, you must have heard her speak about worsted-work?’
All this completely disconcerted Frank, and made him very much out of love with his own plan of consulting his mother. He gave the trio some not very encouraging answer as to their good-natured intentions towards his drawing-room, and again left them alone. ‘Well; there’s nothing for it but to send the parson; I don’t think he’ll make a fool of himself, but then I know he’ll look so shabby. However, here goes,’ and he mounted his nag, and rode off to Ballindine glebe.
The glebe-house was about a couple of miles from Kelly’s Court, and it was about half-past four when Lord Ballindine got there. He knocked at the door, which was wide open, though it was yet only the last day of March, and was told by a remarkably slatternly maid-servant, that her master was ‘jist afther dinner; that he was stepped out,’ but was about the place, and could be ‘fetched in at oncet’; and would his honour walk in? And so Lord Ballindine was shown into the rectory drawing-room on one side of the passage (alias hall), while the attendant of all work went to announce his arrival in the rectory dining-room on the other side. Here Mrs Armstrong was sitting among her numerous progeny, securing the d?bris of the dinner from their rapacious paws, and endeavouring to make two very unruly boys consume the portions of fat which had been supplied to them with, as they loudly declared, an unfairly insufficient quantum of lean. As the girl was good-natured enough to leave both doors wide open, Frank had the full advantage of the conversation.
‘Now, Greg,’ said the mother, ‘if you leave your meat that way I’ll have it put by for you, and you shall have nothing but potatoes till it’s ate.’
‘Why, mother, it’s nothing but tallow; look here; you gave me all the outside part.’
‘I’ll tell your dada, and see what he’ll say, if you call the meat tallow; and you’re just as bad, Joe; worse if anything gracious me, here’s waste! well, I’ll lock it up for you, and you shall both of you eat it tomorrow, before you have a bit of anything else.’
Then followed a desperate fit of coughing.
‘My poor Minny!’ said the mother, ‘you’re just as bad as ever. Why would you go out on the wet grass? Is there none of the black currant jam left?’
‘No, mother,’ coughed Minny, ‘not a bit.’
‘Greg ate it all,’ peached Sarah, an elder sister; ‘I told him not, but he would.’
‘Greg, I’ll have you flogged, and you never shall come from school again. What’s that you’re saying, Mary?’
‘There’s a jintleman in the drawing-room as is axing afther masther.’
‘Gentleman what gentleman?’ asked the lady.
‘Sorrow a know I know, ma’am!’ said Mary, who was a new importation ‘only, he’s a dark, sightly jintleman, as come on a horse.’
‘And did you send for the master?’
‘I did, ma’am; I was out in the yard, and bad Patsy go look for him.’
‘It’s Nicholas Dillon, I’ll bet twopence,’ said Greg, jumping up to rush into the other room: ‘he’s come about the black colt, I know.’
‘Stay where you are, Greg; and don’t go in there with your dirty face and fingers; and, after speculating a little longer, the lady went into the drawing-room herself; though, to tell the truth, her own face and fingers were hardly in a state suitable for receiving company. Mrs Armstrong marched into the drawing-room with something of a stately air, to meet the strange gentleman, and there she found her old friend Lord Ballindine. Whoever called at the rectory, and at whatever hour the visit might be made, poor Mrs Armstrong was sure to apologise for the confusion in which she was found. She had always just got rid of a servant, and could not get another that suited her; or there was some other commonplace reason for her being discovered en d?shabille. However, she managed to talk to Frank for a minute or two with tolerable volubility, till her eyes happening to dwell on her own hands, which were certainly not as white as a lady’s should be, she became a little uncomfortable and embarrassed tried to hide them in her drapery then remembered that she had on her morning slippers, which were rather the worse for wear; and, feeling too much ashamed of her tout ensemble to remain, hurried out of the room, saying that she would go and see where Armstrong could possibly have got himself to. She did not appear again to Lord Ballindine.
Poor Mrs Armstrong! though she looked so little like one, she had been brought up as a lady, carefully and delicately; and her lot was the more miserable, for she knew how lamentable were her present deficiencies. When she married a poor curate, having, herself, only a few hundred pounds’ fortune, she had made up her mind to a life of comparative poverty; but she had meant even in her poverty to be decent, respectable, and lady-like. Weak health, nine children, an improvident husband, and an income so lamentably ill-suited to her wants, had however been too much for her, and she had degenerated into a slatternly, idle scold.
In a short time the parson came in from his farm, rusty and muddy rusty, from his clerical dress; muddy from his farming occupations; and Lord Ballindine went into the business of his embassy. He remembered, however, how plainly he had heard the threats about the uneaten fat, and not wishing the household to hear all he had to say respecting Fanny Wyndham, he took the parson out into the road before the house, and, walking up and down, unfolded his proposal.
Mr Armstrong expressed extreme surprise at the nature of the mission on which he was to be sent; secondly at the necessity of such a mission at all; and thirdly, lastly, and chiefly, at the enormous amount of the heiress’s fortune, to lose which he declared would be an unpardonable sin on Lord Ballindine’s part. He seemed to be not at all surprised that Lord Cashel should wish to secure so much money in his own family; nor did he at all participate in the unmeasured reprobation with which Frank loaded the worthy earl’s name. One hundred and thirty thousand pounds would justify anything, and he thought of his nine poor children, his poor wife, his poor home, his poor two hundred a-year, and his poor self. He calculated that so very rich a lady would most probably have some interest in the Church, which she could not but exercise in his favour, if he were instrumental in getting her married; and he determined to go. Then the, difficult question as to the wardrobe occurred to him. Besides, he had no money for the road. Those, however, were minor evils to be got over, and he expressed himself willing to undertake the embassy.
‘But, my dear Ballindine; what is it I’m to do?’ said he. ‘Of course you know, I’d do anything for you, as of course I ought anything that ought to be done; but what is it exactly you wish me to say?’
‘You see, Armstrong, that pettifogging schemer told me he didn’t wish me to come to his house again, and I wouldn’t, even for Fanny Wyndham, force myself into any man’s house. He would not let me see her when I was there, and I could not press it, because her brother was only just dead; so I’m obliged to take her refusal second hand. Now I don’t believe she ever sent the message he gave me. I think he has made her believe that I’m deserting and ill-treating her; and in this way she may be piqued and tormented into marrying Kilcullen.’
‘I see it now: upon my word then Lord Cashel knows how to play his cards! But if I go to Grey Abbey I can’t see her without seeing him.’
‘Of course not but I’m coming to that. You see, I have no reason to doubt Fanny’s love; she has assured me of it a thousand times. I wouldn’t say so to you even, as it looks like boasting, only it’s so necessary you should know how the land lies; besides, everybody knew it; all the world knew we were engaged.’
‘Oh, boasting it’s no boasting at all: it would be very little good my going to Grey Abbey, if she had not told you so.’
‘Well, I think that if you were to see Lord Cashel and tell him, in your own quiet way, who you are; that you are rector of Ballindine, and my especial friend; and that you had come all the way from County Mayo especially to see Miss Wyndham, that you might hear from herself whatever message she had to send to me if you were to do this, I don’t think he would dare to prevent you from seeing her.’
‘If he did, of course I would put it to him that you, who were so long received as Miss Wyndham’s accepted swain, were at least entitled to so much consideration at her hands; and that I must demand so much on your behalf, wouldn’t that be it, eh?’
‘Exactly. I see you understand it, as if you’d been at it all your life; only don’t call me her swain.’
‘Well, I’ll think of another word her beau.’
‘For Heaven’s sake, no! that’s ten times worse.’
‘Well, her lover?’
‘That’s at any rate English: but say, her accepted husband that’ll be true and plain: if you do that I think you will manage to see her, and then ’
‘Well, then for that’ll be the difficult part.’
‘Oh, when you see her, one simple word will do: Fanny Wyndham loves plain dealing. Merely tell her that Lord Ballindine has not changed his mind; and that he wishes to know from herself, by the mouth of a friend whom he can trust, whether she has changed hers. If she tells you that she has, I would not follow her farther though she were twice as rich as Croesus. I’m not hunting her for her money; but I am determined that Lord Cashel shall not make us both miserable by forcing her into a marriage with his rou? of a son.’
‘Well, Ballindine, I’ll go; but mind, you must not blame me if I fail. I’ll do the best I can for you.’
‘Of course I won’t. When will you be able to start?’
‘Why, I suppose there’s no immediate hurry? said the parson, remembering that the new suit of clothes must be procured.
‘Oh, but there is. Kilcullen will be there at once; and considering how long it is since I saw Fanny three months, I believe no time should be lost.’
‘How long is her brother dead?’
‘Oh, a month or very near it.’
‘Well, I’ll go Monday fortnight; that’ll do, won’t it?’
It was at last agreed that the parson was to start for Grey Abbey on the Monday week following; that he was to mention to no one where he was going; that he was to tell his wife that he was going on business he was not allowed to talk about she would be a very meek woman if she rested satisfied with that! and that he was to present himself at Grey Abbey on the following Wednesday.
‘And now,’ said the parson, with some little hesitation, ‘my difficulty commences. We country rectors are never rich; but when we’ve nine children, Ballindine, it’s rare to find us with money in our pockets. You must advance me a little cash for the emergencies of the road.’
‘My dear fellow! Of course the expense must be my own. I’ll send you down a note between this and then; I haven’t enough about me now. Or, stay I’ll give you a cheque,’ and he turned into the house, and wrote him a cheque for twenty pounds.
That’ll get the coat into the bargain, thought the rector, as he rather uncomfortably shuffled the bit of paper into his pocket. He had still a gentleman’s dislike to be paid for his services. But then, Necessity how stern she is! He literally could not have gone without it.
On the following morning Lord Ballindine as he had appointed to do, drove over to Dunmore, to settle with Martin about the money, and, if necessary, to go with him to the attorney’s office in Tuam. Martin had as yet given Daly no answer respecting Barry Lynch’s last proposal; and though poor Anty’s health made it hardly necessary that any answer should be given, still Lord Ballindine had promised to see the attorney, if Martin thought it necessary. The family were all in great confusion that morning, for Anty was very bad worse than she had ever been. She was in a paroxysm of fever, was raving in delirium, and in such a state that Martin and his sister were occasionally obliged to hold her in bed.
Sally, the old servant, had been in the room for a considerable time during the morning, standing at the foot of the bed with a big tea-pot in her hand, and begging in a whining voice, from time to time, that ‘Miss Anty, God bless her, might get a dhrink of tay!’ But, as she had been of no other service, and as the widow thought it as well that she should not, hear what Anty said in her raving, she had been desired to go down-stairs, and was sitting over the fire. She had fixed the big tea-pot among the embers, and held a slop-bowl of tea in her lap, discoursing to Nelly, who with her hair somewhat more than ordinarily dishevelled, in token of grief for Anty’s illness, was seated on a low stool, nursing a candle-stick.
‘Well, Nelly,’ said the prophetic Sally, boding evil in her anger for, considering how long she had been in the family, she had thought herself entitled to hear Anty’s ravings; ‘mind, I tell you, good won’t come of this. The Virgin prothect us from all harum! it niver war lucky to have sthrangers dying in the house.’
‘But shure Miss Anty’s no stranger.’
‘Faix thin, her words must be sthrange enough when the likes o’ me wouldn’t be let hear ’em. Not but what I did hear, as how could I help it? There’ll be no good come of it. Who’s to be axed to the wake, I’d like to know.’
‘Axed to the wake, is it? Why, shure, won’t there be rashions of ating and lashings of dhrinking? The misthress isn’t the woman to spare, and sich a frind as Miss Anty dead in the house. Let ’em ax whom they like.’
‘You’re a fool, Nelly Ax whom they like! that’s asy said. Is they to ax Barry Lynch, or is they to let it alone, and put the sisther into the sod without a word said to him about it? God be betwixt us and all evil’ and she took a long pull at the slop-bowl; and, as the liquid flowed down her throat, she gradually threw back her head till the top of her mop cap was flattened against the side of the wide fire-place, and the bowl was turned bottom upwards, so that the half-melted brown sugar might trickle into her mouth. She then gave a long sigh, and repeated that difficult question ‘Who is they to ax to the wake?’
It was too much for Nelly to answer: she reechoed the sigh, and more closely embraced the candlestick.
‘Besides, Nelly, who’ll have the money when she’s gone? and she’s nigh that already, the Blessed Virgin guide and prothect her. Who’ll get all her money?
‘Why; won’t Mr Martin? Sure, an’t they as good as man and wife all as one?’
‘That’s it; they’ll be fighting and tearing, and tatthering about that money, the two young men will, you’ll see. There’ll be lawyering, an’ magisthrate’s work an’ factions an’ fighthins at fairs; an’ thin, as in course the Lynches can’t hould their own agin the Kellys, there’ll be undherhand blows, an’ blood, an’ murdher! you’ll see else.’
‘Glory be to God,’ involuntarily prayed Nelly, at the thoughts suggested by Sally’s powerful eloquence.
‘There will, I tell ye,’ continued Sally, again draining the tea-pot into the bowl. ‘Sorrow a lie I’m telling you;’ and then, in a low whisper across the fire, ‘didn’t I see jist now Miss Anty ketch a hould of Misther Martin, as though she’d niver let him go agin, and bid him for dear mercy’s sake have a care of Barry Lynch? Shure I knowed what that meant. And thin, didn’t he thry and do for herself with his own hands? Didn’t Biddy say she’d swear she heard him say he’d do it? and av he wouldn’t boggle about his own sisther, it’s little he’d mind what he’d do to an out an out inemy like Misther Martin.’
‘Warn’t that a knock at the hall-door, Sally?’
‘Run and see, girl; maybe it’s the docthor back again; only mostly he don’t mind knocking much.’
Nelly went to the door, and opened it to Lord Ballindine, who had left his gig in charge of his servant. He asked for Martin, who in a short time, joined him in the parlour.
‘This is a dangerous place for your lordship, now,’ said he: ‘the fever is so bad in the house. Thank God, nobody seems to have taken it yet, but there’s no knowing.’
‘Is she still so bad, Martin?’
‘Worse than iver, a dale worse; I don’t think It’ll last long, now: another bout such as this last’ll about finish it. But I won’t keep your lordship. I’ve managed about the money;’ and the necessary writing was gone through, and the cash was handed to Lord Ballindine.
‘You’ve given over all thoughts then, about Lynch’s offer eh, Martin? I suppose you’ve done with all that, now?’
‘Quite done with it, my lord; and done with fortune-hunting too. I’ve seen enough this last time back to cure me altogether at laist, I hope so.’
‘She doesn’t mean to make any will, then?’
‘Why, she wishes to make one, but I doubt whether she’ll ever be able;’ and then Martin gave his landlord an account of all that Anty had said about her will, her wishes as to the property, her desire to leave something to him (Martin) and his sisters: and last he repeated the strong injunctions which Anty had given him respecting her poor brother, and her assurance, so full of affection, that had she lived she would have done her best to make him happy as her husband.
Lord Ballindine was greatly affected; he warmly shook hands with Martin, told him how highly he thought of his conduct, and begged him to take care that Anty had the gratification of making her will as she had desired to do. ‘The fact,’ Lord Ballindine said, ‘of your being named in the will as her executor will give you more. control over Barry than anything else could do.’ He then proposed at once to go, himself, to Tuam, and explain to Daly what it was Miss Lynch wished him to do. This Lord Ballindine did, and the next day the will was completed.
For a week or ten days Anty remained in much the same condition. After each attack of fever it was expected that she would perish from weakness and exhaustion; but she still held on, and then the fever abated, and Doctor Colligan thought that it was possible she might recover: she was, however, so dreadfully emaciated and worn out, there was so little vitality left in her, that he would not encourage more than the faintest hope. Anty herself was too weak either to hope or fear and the women of the family, who from continual attendance knew how very near to death she was, would hardly allow themselves to think that she could recover.
There were two persons, however, who from the moment of her amendment felt an inward sure conviction of her convalescence. They were Martin and Barry. To the former this feeling was o course one of unalloyed delight. He went over to Kelly’s Court, and spoke there of his betrothed as though she were already sitting up and eating mutton chops; was congratulated by the young ladies on his approaching nuptials, and sauntered round the Kelly’s Court shrubberies with Frank, talking over his future prospects; asking advice about this and that, and propounding the pros and cons on that difficult question, whether he would live at Dunmore, or build a house at Toneroe for himself and Anty. With Barry, however, the feeling was very different: he was again going to have his property wrenched from him; he was again to suffer the pangs he had endured, when first he learned the purport of his father’s will; after clutching the fruit for which he had striven, as even he himself felt, so basely, it was again to be torn from him so cruelly.
He had been horribly anxious for a termination to Anty’s sufferings; horribly impatient to feel himself possessor of the whole. From day to day, and sometimes two or three times a day, he had seen Dr Colligan, and inquired how things were going on: he had especially enjoined that worthy man to come up after his morning call at the inn, and get a glass of sherry at Dunmore House; and the doctor had very generally done so. For some time Barry endeavoured to throw the veil of brotherly regard over the true source of his anxiety; but the veil was much too thin to hide what it hardly covered, and Barry, as he got intimate with the doctor, all but withdrew it altogether. When Barry would say, ‘Well, doctor, how is she today?’ and then remark, in answer to the doctor’s statement that she was very bad ‘Well, I suppose it can’t last much longer; but it’s very tedious, isn’t it, poor thing?’ it was plain enough that the brother was not longing for the sister’s recovery. And then he would go a little further, and remark that ‘if the poor thing was to go, it would be better for all she went at once,’ and expressed an opinion that he was rather ill-treated by being kept so very long in suspense.
Doctor Colligan ought to have been shocked at this; and so he was,, at first, to a certain extent, but he was not a man of a very high tone of feeling. He had so often heard of heirs to estates longing for the death of the proprietors of them; he had so often seen relatives callous and indifferent at the loss of those who ought to have been dear to them; it seemed so natural to him that Barry should want the estate, that he gradually got accustomed to his impatient inquiries, and listened to, and answered them, without disgust. He fell too into a kind of intimacy with Barry; he liked his daily glass, or three or four glasses, of sherry; and besides, it was a good thing for him to stand well in a professional point of view with a man who had the best house in the village, and who would soon have eight hundred a-year.
If Barry showed his impatience and discontent as long as the daily bulletins told him that Anty was still alive, though dying, it may easily be imagined that he did not hide his displeasure when he first heard that she was alive and better. His brow grew very black, his cheeks flushed, the drops of sweat stood on his forehead, and he said, speaking through his closed teeth, ‘D— it, doctor, you don’t mean to tell me she’s recovering now?’
‘I don’t say, Mr Lynch, whether she is or no; but it’s certain the fever has left her. She’s very weak, very weak indeed; I never knew a person to be alive and have less life in ’em; but the fever has left her and there certainly is hope.’
‘Hope!’ said Barry ‘why, you told me she couldn’t live!’
‘I don’t say she will, Mr Lynch, but I say she may. Of course we must do what we can for her,’ and the doctor took his sherry and went his way.
How horrible then was the state of Barry’s mind! For a time he was absolutely stupified with despair; he stood fixed on the spot where the doctor had left him, realising, bringing home to himself, the tidings which he had heard. His sister to rise again, as though it were from the dead, to push him off his stool! Was he to fall again into that horrid low abyss in which even the Tuam attorney had scorned him; in which he had even invited that odious huxter’s son to marry his sister and live in his house? What! was he again to be reduced to poverty, to want, to despair, by her whom he so hated? Could nothing be done? Something must be done she should not be, could not be allowed to leave that bed of sickness alive. ‘There must be an end of her,’ he muttered through his teeth, ‘or she’ll drive me mad!’ And then he thought how easily he might have smothered her, as she lay there clasping his hand, with no one but themselves in the room; and as the thought crossed his brain his eyes nearly started from his head, the sweat ran down his face, he clutched the money in his trousers’ pocket till the coin left an impression on his flesh, and he gnashed his teeth till his jaws ached with his own violence. But then, in that sick-room, he had been afraid of her; he could not have touched her then for the wealth of the Bank of England! but now!
The devil sat within him, and revelled with full dominion over his soul: there was then no feeling left akin to humanity to give him one chance of escape; there was no glimmer of pity, no shadow of remorse, no sparkle of love, even though of a degraded kind; no hesitation in the will for crime, which might yet, by God’s grace, lead to its eschewal: all there was black, foul, and deadly, ready for the devil’s deadliest work. Murder crouched there, ready to spring, yet afraid cowardly, but too thirsty alter blood to heed its own fears. Theft low, pilfering, pettifogging, theft; avarice, lust, and impotent, scalding hatred. Controlled by these the black blood rushed quick to and from his heart, filling him with sensual desires below the passions of a brute, but denying him one feeling or one appetite for aught that was good or even human.
Again the next morning the doctor was questioned with intense anxiety; ‘Was she going? was she drooping? had yesterday’s horrid doubts raised only a false alarm?’ It was utterly beyond Barry’s power to make any attempt at concealment, even of the most shallow kind. ‘Well, doctor, is she dying yet?’ was the brutal question he put.
‘She is, if anything, rather stronger;’ answered the doctor, shuddering involuntarily at the open expression of Barry’s atrocious wish, and yet taking his glass of wine.
‘The devil she is!’ muttered Barry, throwing himself into an arm-chair. He sat there some little time, and the doctor also sat down, said nothing, but continued sipping his wine.
‘In the name of mercy, what must I do?’ said Barry, speaking more to himself than to the other.
‘Why, you’ve enough, Mr Lynch, without hers; you can do well enough without it.’
‘Enough! Would you think you had enough if you were robbed of more than half of all you have. Half, indeed,’ he shouted ‘I may say all, at once. I don’t believe there’s a man in Ireland would bear it. Nor will I.’
Again there was a silence; but still, somehow, Colligan seemed to stay longer than usual. Every now and then Barry would for a moment look full in his face, and almost instantly drop his eyes again. He was trying to mature future plans; bringing into shape thoughts which had occurred to him, in a wild way at different times; proposing to himself schemes, with which his brain had been long loaded, but which he had never resolved on which he had never made palpable and definite. One thing he found sure and certain; on one point he was able to become determined: he could not do it alone; he must have an assistant; he must buy some one’s aid; and again he looked at Colligan, and again his eyes fell. There was no encouragement there, but there was no discouragement. Why did he stay there so long? Why did he so slowly sip that third glass of wine? Was he waiting to be asked? was he ready, willing, to be bought? There must be something in his thoughts he must have some reason for sitting there so long, and so silent, without speaking a word, or taking his eyes off the fire.
Barry had all but made up his mind to ask the aid he wanted; but he felt that he was not prepared to do so that he should soon quiver and shake, that he could not then carry it through. He felt that he wanted spirit to undertake his own part in the business, much less to inspire another with the will to assist him in it. At last he rose abruptly from his chair, and said,
‘Will you dine with me today, Colligan? I’m so down in the mouth, so deucedly hipped, it will be a charity.’
‘Well,’ said Colligan, ‘I don’t care if I do. I must go down to your sister in the evening, and I shall be near her here.’
‘Yes, of course; you’ll be near her here, as you say: come at six, then. By the bye, couldn’t you go to Anty first, so that we won’t be disturbed over our punch?’
‘I must see her the last thing, about nine, but I can look up again afterwards, for a minute or so. I don’t stay long with her now: it’s better not.’
‘Well, then, you’ll be here at six?’
‘Yes, six sharp;’ and at last the doctor got up and went away.
It was odd that Doctor Colligan should have sat thus long; it showed a great want of character and of good feeling in him. He should never have become intimate, or even have put up with a man expressing such wishes as those which so often fell from Barry’s lips. But he was entirely innocent of the thoughts which Barry attributed to him. It had never even occurred to him that Barry, bad as he was, would wish to murder his sister. No; bad, heedless, sensual as Doctor Colligan might be, Barry was a thousand fathoms deeper in iniquity than he.
As soon as he had left the room the other uttered a long, deep sigh. It was a great relief to him to be alone: he could now collect his thoughts, mature his plans, and finally determine. He took his usual remedy in his difficulties, a glass of brandy; and, going out into the garden, walked up and down the gravel walk almost unconsciously, for above an hour.
Yes: he would do it. He would not be a coward. The thing had been clone a thousand times before. Hadn’t he heard of it over and over again? Besides, Colligan’s manner was an assurance to him that he would not boggle at such a job. But then, of course, he must be paid and Barry began to calculate how much he must offer for the service; and, when the service should be performed, how he might avoid the fulfilment of his portion of the bargain.
He went in and ordered the dinner; filled the spirit decanters, opened a couple of bottles of wine, and then walked out again. In giving his orders, and doing the various little things with which he had to keep himself employed, everybody, and everything seemed strange to him. He hardly knew what he was about, and felt almost as though he were in a dream. He had quite made up his mind as to what he would do; his resolution was fixed to carry it through but: still there was the but, how was he to open it to Doctor Colligan? He walked up and down the gravel path for a long time, thinking of this; or rather trying to think of it, for his thoughts would fly away to all manner of other subjects, and he continually found himself harping upon some trifle, connected with Anty, but wholly irrespective of her death; some little thing that she had done for him, or ought to have done; something she had said a long time ago, and which he had never thought of till now; something she had worn, and which at the time he did not even know that he had observed; and as often as he found his mind thus wandering, he would start off at a quicker pace, and again endeavour to lay out a line of conduct for the evening.
At last, however, he came to the conclusion that it would he better to trust to the chapter of chances: there was one thing, or rather two things, he could certainly do: he could make the doctor half drunk before he opened on the subject, and he would take care to be in the same state himself. So he walked in and sat still before the fire, for the two long remaining hours, which intervened before the clock struck six.
It was about noon when the doctor left him, and during those six long solitary hours no one feeling of remorse had entered his breast. He had often doubted, hesitated as to the practicability of his present plan, but not once had he made the faintest effort to overcome the wish to have the deed done. There was not one moment in which lie would not most willingly have had his sister’s blood upon his hands, upon his brain, upon his soul; could he have willed and accomplished her death, without making himself liable to the penalties of the law.
At length Doctor Colligan came, and Barry made a great effort to appear unconcerned and in good humour.
‘And how is she now, doctor?’ he said, as they sat down to table.
‘Is it Anty? why, you know I didn’t mean to see her since I was here this morning, till nine o’clock.’
‘Oh, true; so you were saying. I forgot. Well, will you take a glass of wine?’ and Barry filled his own glass quite full.
He drank his wine at dinner like a glutton, who had only a short time allowed him, and wished during that time to swallow as much as possible; and he tried to hurry his companion in the same manner. But the doctor didn’t choose to have wine forced down his throat; he wished to enjoy himself, and remonstrated against Barry’s violent hospitality.
At last, dinner was over; the things were taken away, they both drew their chairs over the fire, and began the business of the evening the making and consumption of punch. Barry had determined to begin upon the subject which lay so near his heart, at eight o’clock. He had thought it better to fix an exact hour, and had calculated that the whole matter might be completed before Colligan went over to the inn. He kept continually looking at his watch, and gulping down his drink, and thinking over and over again how he would begin the conversation.
‘You’re very comfortable here, Lynch,’ said the doctor, stretching his long legs before the fire, and putting his dirty boots upon the fender.
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Barry, not knowing what the other was saying.
‘All you want’s a wife, and you’d have as warm a house as there is in Galway. You’ll be marrying soon, I suppose?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t wonder if I did. You don’t take your punch; there’s brandy there, if you like it better than whiskey.’
‘This is very good, thank you couldn’t be better. You haven’t much land in your own hands, have you?’
‘Why, no I don’t think I have. What’s that you’re saying? land? No, not much: if there’s a thing I hate, it’s farming.’
‘Well, upon my word you’re wrong. I don’t see what else a gentleman has to do in the country. I wish to goodness I could give up the gallipots and farm a few acres of my own land. There’s nothing I wish so much as to get a bit of land: indeed, I’ve been looking out for it, but it’s so difficult to get.’
Up to this, Barry had hardly listened to what the doctor had been saying; but now he was all attention. ‘So that is to be his price,’ thought he to himself, ‘he’ll cost me dear, but I suppose he must have it.’
Barry looked at his watch: it was near eight o’clock, but he seemed to feel that all he had drank had had no effect on him: it had not given him the usual pluck; it had not given him the feeling of reckless assurance, which he mistook for courage and capacity.
‘If you’ve a mind to be a tenant of mine, Colligan, I’ll keep a look out for you. The land’s crowded now, but there’s a lot of them cottier devils I mean to send to the right about. They do the estate no good, and I hate the sight of them. But you know how the property’s placed, and while Anty’s in this wretched state, of course I can do nothing.’
‘Will you bear it in mind though, Lynch? When a bit of land does fall into your hands, I should be glad to be your tenant. I’m quite in earnest, and should take it as a great favour.’
‘I’ll not forget it;’ and then he remained silent for a minute. What an opportunity this was for him to lose! Colligan so evidently wished to be bribed so clearly showed what the price was which was to purchase him. But still he could not ask the fatal question.
Again he sat silent for a while, till he looked at his watch, and found it was a quarter past eight.
‘Never fear,’ he said, referring to the farm; ‘you shall have it, and it shall not be the worst land on the estate that I’ll give you, you may be sure; for, upon my soul, I have a great regard for you; I have indeed.’
The doctor thanked him for his good opinion.
‘Oh! I’m not blarneying you; upon my soul I’m not; that’s not the way with me at all; and when you know me better you’ll say so and you may be sure you shall have the farm by Michaelmas.’ And then, in a voice which he tried to make as unconcerned as possible, he continued: ‘By the bye, Colligan, when do you think this affair of Anty’s will be over? It’s the devil and all for a man not to know when he’ll be his own master.’
‘Oh, you mustn’t calculate on your sister’s property at all now,’ said the other, in an altered voice. ‘I tell you it’s very probable she may recover.’
This again silenced Barry, and he let the time go by, till the doctor took up his hat, to go down to his patient.
‘You’ll not be long, I suppose?’ said Barry.
‘Well, it’s getting late,’ said Colligan, ‘and I don’t think I’ll be coming back to-night.’
‘Oh, but you will; indeed, you must. You promised you would, you know, and I want to hear how she goes on.’
‘Well, I’ll just come up, but I won’t stay, for I promised Mrs Colligan to be home early.’ This was always the doctor’s excuse when he wished to get away. He never allowed his domestic promises to draw him home when there was anything to induce him to stay abroad; but, to tell the truth, he was getting rather sick of his companion. The doctor took his hat, and went to his patient.
‘He’ll not be above ten minutes or at any rate a quarter of an hour,’ thought Barry, ‘and then I must do it. How he sucked it all in about the farm! that’s the trap, certainly.’ And he stood leaning with his back against the mantel-piece, and his coat-laps hanging over his arm, waiting for and yet. fearing, the moment of the doctor’s return. It seemed an age since he went. Barry looked at his, watch almost every minute; it was twenty minutes past nine, five-and-twenty thirty forty three quarters of an hour ‘By Heaven!’ said he, ‘the man is not coming! he is going to desert me and I shall be ruined! Why the deuce didn’t I speak out when the man was here!’
At last his ear caught the sound of the doctor’s heavy foot on the gravel outside the door, and immediately afterwards the door bell was rung. Barry hastily poured out a glass of raw spirits and swallowed it; he then threw himself into his chair, and Doctor Colligan again entered the room.
‘What a time you’ve been, Colligan! Why I thought you weren’t coming all night. Now, Terry, some hot water, and mind you look sharp about it. Well, how’s Anty to-night?’
‘Weak, very weak; but mending, I think. The disease won’t kill her now; the only thing is whether the cure will.’
‘Well, doctor, you can’t expect me to be very anxious about it: unfortunately, we had never any reason to be proud of Anty, and it would be humbug in me to pretend that I wish she should recover, to rob me of what you know I’ve every right to consider my own.’ Terry brought the hot water in, and left the room.
‘Well, I can’t say you do appear very anxious about it. I’ll just swallow one dandy of punch, and then I’ll get home. I’m later now than I meant to be.’
‘Nonsense, man. The idea of your being in a hurry, when everybody knows that a doctor can never tell how long he may be kept in a sick-room! But come now, tell the truth; put yourself in my condition, and do you mean to say you’d be very anxious that Anty should recover? Would you like your own sister to rise from her death-bed to rob you of everything you have? For, by Heaven! it is robbery nothing less. She’s so stiff-necked, that there’s no making any arrangement with her. I’ve tried everything, fair means and foul, and nothing’ll do but she must go and marry that low young Kelly so immeasurably beneath her, you know, and of course only scheming for her money. Put yourself in my place, I say; and tell me fairly what your own wishes would be?’
‘I was always fond of my brothers and sisters,’ answered the doctor; ‘and we couldn’t well rob each other, for none of us had a penny to lose.’
‘That’s a different thing, but just supposing you were exactly in my shoes at this moment, do you mean to tell me that you’d be glad she should get well? that you’d be glad she should be able to deprive you of your property, disgrace your family, drive you from your own home, and make your life miserable for ever after?’
‘Upon my soul I can’t say; but good night now, you’re getting excited, and I’ve finished my drop of punch.’
‘Ah! nonsense, man, sit down. I’ve something in earnest I want to say to you,’ and Barry got up and prevented the doctor from leaving the room. Colligan had gone so far as to put on his hat and great coat, and now sat down again without taking them off.
‘You and I, Colligan, are men of the world, and too wide awake for all the old woman’s nonsense people talk. What can I, or what could you in my place, care for a half-cracked old maid like Anty, who’s better dead than alive, for her own sake and everybody’s else; unless it is some scheming ruffian like young Kelly there, who wants to make money by her?’
‘I’m not asking you to care for her; only, if those are your ideas, it’s as well not to talk about them for appearance sake.’
‘Appearance sake! There’s nothing makes me so sick, as for two men like you and me, who know, what’s what, to be talking about appearance sake, like two confounded parsons, whose business it is to humbug everybody, and themselves into the bargain. I’ll tell you what: had my father bad luck to him for an old rogue not made such a will as he did, I’d’ve treated Anty as well as any parson of ’em all would treat an old maid of a sister; but I’m not going to have her put over my head this way. Come, doctor, confound all humbug. I say it openly to you to please me, Anty must never come out of that bed alive.’
‘As if your wishes could make any difference. If it is to be so, she’ll die, poor creature, without your saying so much about it; but maybe, and it’ very likely too, she’ll be alive and strong, after the two of us are under the sod.’
‘Well; if it must be so, it must; but what I wanted to say to you is this: while you were away, I was thinking about what you said of the farm of being a tenant of mine, you know.’
‘We can talk about that another time,’ said the doctor, who began to feel an excessive wish to be out of the house.
‘There’s no time like the present, when I’ve got it in my mind; and, if you’ll wait, I can settle it all for you to-night. I was telling you that I hate farming, and so I do. There are thirty or five-and-thirty acres of land about the house, and lying round to the back of the town; you shall take them off my hands, and welcome.’
This was too good an offer to be resisted, and Colligan said he would take the land, with many thanks, if the rent any way suited him.
‘We’ll not quarrel about that, you may be sure, Colligan,’ continued Barry; ‘and as I said fifty acres at first it was fifty acres I think you were saying you wished for I’ll not baulk you, and go back from my own word.’
‘What you have yourself, round the house, ‘ll be enough; only I’m thinking the rent’ll be too high.’
‘It shall not; it shall be low enough; and, as I was saying, you shall have the remainder, at the same price, immediately after Michaelmas, as soon as ever those devils are ejected.’
‘Well;’ said Colligan, who was now really interested, ‘what’s the figure?’
Barry had been looking steadfastly at the fire during the whole conversation, up to this: playing with the poker, and knocking the coals about. He was longing to look into the other’s face, but he did not dare. Now, however, was his time; it was now or never: he took one furtive glance at the doctor, and saw that he was really anxious on the subject that his attention was fixed.
‘The figure,’ said he; ‘the figure should not trouble you if you had no one but me to deal, with. But there’ll be Anty, confound her, putting her fist into this and every other plan of mine!’
‘I’d better deal with the agent, I’m thinking,’ said Colligan; ‘so, good night.’
‘You’ll find you’d a deal better be dealing with me: you’ll never find an easier fellow to deal with, or one who’ll put a better thing in your way.’
Colligan again sat down. He couldn’t quite make Barry out: he suspected he was planning some iniquity, but he couldn’t, tell what; and he remained silent, looking full into the other’s face till he should go on. Barry winced under the look, and hesitated; but at last he screwed himself up to the point, and said,
‘One word, between two friends, is as good as a thousand. If Anty dies of this bout, you shall have the fifty acres, with a lease for perpetuity, at sixpence an acre. Come, that’s not a high figure, I think.’
‘What?’ said Colligan, apparently not understanding him, ‘a lease for perpetuity at how much an acre?’
‘Sixpence a penny a pepper-corn just anything you please. But it’s all on Anty’s dying. While she’s alive I can do nothing for the best friend I have.’
‘By the Almighty above us,’ said the doctor, almost in a whisper, ‘I believe the wretched man means me to murder her his own sister!’
‘Murder? Who talked or said a word of murder?’ said Barry, with a hoarse and croaking voice ‘isn’t she dying as she is? and isn’t she better dead than alive? It’s only just not taking so much trouble to keep the life in her; you’re so exceeding clever you know!’ and he made a ghastly attempt at smiling. ‘With any other doctor she’d have been dead long since: leave her to herself a little, and the farm’s your own; and I’m sure there’ll ‘ve been nothing at all like murder between us.’
‘By Heavens, he does!’ and Colligan rose quickly from his seat ‘he means to have her murdered, and thinks to make me do the deed! Why, you vile, thieving, murdering reptile!’ and as he spoke the doctor seized him by the throat, and shook him violently in his strong grasp ‘who told you I was a fit person for such a plan? who told you to come to me for such a deed? who told you I would sell my soul for your paltry land?’ and he continued grasping Barry’s throat till he was black in the face, and nearly choked. ‘Merciful Heaven! that I should have sat here, and listened to such a scheme! Take care of yourself,’ said he; and he threw him violently backwards over the chairs ‘if you’re to be found in Connaught tomorrow, or in Ireland the next day, I’ll hang you!’ and so saying, he hurried out of the room, and went home.
‘Well,’ thought he, on his road: ‘I have heard of such men as that before, and I believe that when I was young I read of such: but I never expected to meet so black a villain! What had I better do? If I go and swear an information before a magistrate there’ll be nothing but my word and his. Besides, he said nothing that the law could take hold of. And yet I oughtn’t to let it pass: at any rate I’ll sleep on it.’ And so he did; but it was not for a 1ong time, for the recollection of Barry’s hideous proposal kept him awake.
Barry lay sprawling among the chairs till the sound of the hall door closing told him that his guest had gone, when he slowly picked himself up, and sat down upon the sofa. Colligan’s last words were ringing in his ear ‘If you’re found in Ireland the next day, I’ll hang you.’ Hang him! and had he really given any one the power to speak to him in such language as that? After all, what had he said? He had not even whispered a word of murder; he had only made an offer of what he would do if Anty should die: besides, no one but themselves had heard even that; and then his thoughts went off to another train. ‘Who’d have thoughts’ he said to himself ‘the man was such a fool! He meant it, at first, as well as I did myself. I’m sure he did. He’d never have caught as he did about the farm else, only he got afraid — the confounded fool! As for hanging, I’ll let him know; it’s just as easy for me to tell a story, I suppose, as it is for him.’ And then Barry, too, dragged himself up to bed, and cursed himself to sleep. His waking thoughts, however, were miserable enough.
We will now return to Grey Abbey, Lord Cashel, and that unhappy love-sick heiress, his ward, Fanny Wyndham. Affairs there had taken no turn to give increased comfort either to the earl or to his niece, during the month which succeeded the news of young Harry Wyndham’s death.
The former still adhered, with fixed pertinacity of purpose, to the matrimonial arrangement which he had made with his son. Circumstances, indeed, rendered it even much more necessary in the earl’s eyes than it had appeared to be when he first contemplated this scheme for releasing himself from his son’s pecuniary difficulties. He had, as the reader will remember, advanced a very large sum of money to Lord Kilcullen, to be repaid out of Fanny Wyndham’s fortune, This money Lord Kilcullen had certainly appropriated in the manner intended by his father, but it had anything but the effect of quieting the creditors. The payments were sufficiently large to make the whole hungry crew hear that his lordship was paying his debts, but not at all sufficient to satisfy their craving. Indeed, nearly the whole went in liquidation of turf engagements, and gambling debts. The Jews, money-lenders, and tradesmen merely heard that money was going from Lord Kilcullen’s pocket; but with all their exertions they got very little of it themselves.
Consequently, claims of all kinds bills, duns, remonstrances and threats, poured in not only upon the son but also upon the father. The latter, it is true, was not in his own person liable, for one penny of them, nor could he well, on his own score, be said to be an embarrassed man; but he was not the less uneasy. He had determined if possible to extricate his son once more, and as a preliminary step had himself already raised a large sum of money which it would much trouble him to pay; and he moreover, as he frequently said to Lord Kilcullen, would not and could not pay another penny for the same purpose, until he saw a tolerably sure prospect of being repaid out of his ward’s fortune.
He was therefore painfully anxious on the subject; anxious not only that the matter should be arranged, but that it should be done at once. It was plain that Lord Kilcullen could not remain in London, for he would be arrested; the same thing would happen at Grey Abbey, if, he were to remain there long without settling his affairs; and if he were once to escape his creditors by going abroad, there would be no such thing as getting him back again. Lord Cashel saw no good reason why there should, be any delay; Harry Wyndham was dead above a month, and Fanny was evidently grieving more for the loss of her lover than that of her brother; she naturally felt alone in the world and, as Lord Cashel thought, one young viscount would be just as good as another. The advantages, too, were much in favour of his son; he would one day be an earl, and possess Grey Abbey. So great an accession of grandeur, dignity, and rank could not but be, as the earl considered, very delightful to a sensible girl like his ward. The marriage, of course, needn’t be much hurried; four or five months’ time would do for that; he was only anxious that they should be engaged that Lord Kilcullen should be absolutely accepted Lord Ballindine finally rejected.
The earl certainly felt some scruples of conscience at the sacrifice he was making of his ward, and stronger still respecting his ward’s fortune; but he appeased them with the reflection that if his son were a gambler, a rou?, and a scamp, Lord Ballindine was probably just as bad; and that if the latter were to spend all Fanny’s money there would be no chance of redemption; whereas he could at any rate settle on his wife a jointure, which would be a full compensation for the loss of her fortune, should she outlive her husband and father-inlaw. Besides, he looked on Lord Kilcullen’s faults as a father is generally inclined to look on those of a son, whom he had not entirely given up whom he is still striving to redeem. He called his iniquitous vices, follies his licentiousness, love of pleasure his unprincipled expenditure and extravagance, a want of the knowledge of what money was: and his worst sin of all, because the one least likely to be abandoned, his positive, unyielding damning selfishness, he called ‘fashion’ the fashion of the young men of the day.
Poor Lord Cashel! he wished to be honest to his ward; and yet to save his son, and his own pocket at the same time, at her expense: he wished to be, in his own estimation, high-minded, honourable, and disinterested, and yet he could not resist the temptation to be generous to his own flesh and blood at the expense of another. The contest within him made him miserable; but the devil and mammon were too strong for him, particularly coming as they did, half hidden beneath the gloss of parental affection. There was little of the Roman about the earl, and he could not condemn his own son; so he fumed and fretted, and twisted himself about in the easy chair in his dingy book-room, and passed long hours in trying to persuade himself that it was for Fanny’s advantage that he was going to make her Lady Kilcullen.
He might have saved himself all his anxiety. Fanny Wyndham had much too strong a mind much too marked a character of her own, to be made Lady Anything by Lord Anybody. Lord Cashel might possibly prevent her from marrying Frank, especially as she had been weak enough, through ill-founded pique and anger, to lend him her name for dismissing him; but neither he nor anyone else could make her accept one man, while she loved another, and while that other was unmarried.
Since the interview between Fanny and her uncle and aunt, which has been recorded, she had been nearly as uncomfortable as Lord Cashel, and she had, to a certain extent, made the whole household as much so as herself. Not that there was anything of the kill-joy character in Fanny’s composition; but that the natural disposition of Grey Abbey and all belonging to it was to be dull, solemn, slow, and respectable. Fanny alone had ever given any life to the place, or made the house tolerable; and her secession to the ranks of the sombre crew was therefore the more remarked. If Fanny moped, all Grey Abbey might figuratively be said to hang down its head. Lady Cashel was, in every sense of the words, continually wrapped up in wools and worsteds. The earl was always equally ponderous, and the specific gravity of Lady Selina could not be calculated. It was beyond the power of figures, even in algebraic denominations, to describe her moral weight.
And now Fanny did mope, and Grey Abbey was triste indeed. Griffiths in my lady’s boudoir rolled and unrolled those huge white bundles of mysterious fleecy hosiery with more than usually slow and unbroken perseverance. My lady herself bewailed the fermentation among the jam-pots with a voice that did more than whine, it was almost funereal. As my lord went from breakfast-room to book-room, from book-room to dressing-room, and from dressing-room to dining-room, his footsteps creaked with a sound more deadly than that of a death-watch. The book-room itself had caught a darker gloom; the backs of the books seemed to have lost their gilding, and the mahogany furniture its French polish. There, like a god, Lord Cashel sate alone, throned amid clouds of awful dulness, ruling the world of nothingness around by the silent solemnity of his inertia.
Lady Selina was always useful, but with a solid, slow activity, a dignified intensity of heavy perseverance, which made her perhaps more intolerable than her father. She was like some old coaches which we remember very sure, very respectable; but so tedious, so monotonous, so heavy in their motion, that a man with a spark of mercury in his composition would prefer any danger from a faster vehicle to their horrid, weary, murderous, slow security. Lady Selina from day to day performed her duties in a most uncompromising manner; she knew what was due to her position, and from it, and exacted and performed accordingly with a stiff, steady propriety which made her an awful if not a hateful creature. One of her daily duties, and one for the performance of which she had unfortunately ample opportunity, was the consolation of Fanny under her troubles. Poor Fanny! how great an aggravation was this to her other miseries! For a considerable time Lady Selma had known nothing of the true cause of Fanny’s gloom; for though the two cousins were good friends, as far as Lady Selina was capable of admitting so human a frailty as friendship, still Fanny could not bring herself to make a confidante of her. Her kind, stupid, unpretending old aunt was a much better person to talk to, even though she did arch her eyebrows, and shake her head when Lord Ballindine’s name was mentioned, and assure her niece that though she had always liked him herself, he could not be good for much, because Lord Kilcullen had said so. But Fanny could not well dissemble; she was tormented by Lady Selina’s condolements, and recommendations of Gibbon, her encomiums on industry, and anathemas against idleness; she was so often reminded that weeping would not bring back her brother, nor inactive reflection make his fate less certain, that at last she made her monitor understand that it was about Lord Ballindine’s fate that she was anxious, and that it was his coming back which might be effected by weeping or other measures.
Lady Selina was shocked by such feminine, girlish weakness, such want of dignity and character, such forgetfulness, as she said to Fanny, of what was due to her own position. Lady Selina was herself unmarried, and not likely to marry; and why had she maintained her virgin state, and foregone the blessings of love and matrimony? Because, as she often said to herself, and occasionally said to Fanny, she would not step down from the lofty pedestal on which it had pleased fortune and birth to place her.
She learned, however, by degrees, to forgive, though she couldn’t approve, Fanny’s weakness; she remembered that it was a very different thing to be an earl’s niece and an earl’s daughter, and that the same conduct could not be expected from Fanny Wyndham and Lady Selina Grey.
The two were sitting together, in one of the Grey Abbey drawing-rooms, about the middle of April. Fanny had that morning again been talking to her guardian on the subject nearest to her heart, and had nearly distracted him by begging him to take steps to make Frank understand that a renewal of his visits at Grey Abbey would not be ill received. Lord Cashel at first tried to frighten her out of her project by silence, frowns, and looks: but not finding himself successful, he commenced a long oration, in which he broke down, or rather, which he had to cut up into sundry short speeches; in which he endeavoured to make it appear that Lord Ballindine’s expulsion had originated with Fanny herself, and that, banished or not banished, the less. Fanny had to do with him the better. His ward, however, declared, in rather a tempestuous manner, that if she could not see him at Grey Abbey she would see him elsewhere; and his lordship was obliged to capitulate by promising that if Frank were unmarried in twelve months’ time, and Fanny should then still be of the same mind, he would consent to the match and use his influence to bring it about. This by no means satisfied Fanny, but it was all that the earl would say, and she had now to consider whether she would accept those terms or act for herself. Had she had any idea what steps she could with propriety take in opposition to the earl, she would have withdrawn herself and her fortune from his house and hands, without any scruples of conscience. But what was she to do? She couldn’t write to her lover and ask him to come back to her! Whither could she go? She couldn’t well set up house for herself.
Lady Selina was bending over her writing-desk, and penning most decorous notes, with a precision of calligraphy which it was painful to witness. She was writing orders to Dublin tradesmen, and each order might have been printed in the Complete Letter-Writer, as a specimen of the manner in which young ladies should address such correspondents. Fanny had a volume of French poetry in her hand, but had it been Greek prose it would have given her equal occupation and amusement. It had been in her hands half-an-hour, and she had not read a line.
‘Fanny,’ said Lady Selina, raising up her thin red spiral tresses from her desk, and speaking in a firm, decided tone, as if well assured of the importance of the question she was going to put; ‘don’t you want some things from Ellis’s?’
‘From where, Selina?’ said Fanny, slightly starting.
‘From Ellis’s,’ repeated Lady Selina.
‘Oh, the man in Grafton Street. No, thank you.’ And Fanny returned to her thoughts.
‘Surely you do, Fanny,’ said her ladyship. ‘I’m sure you want black crape; you were saying so on Friday last.’
‘Was I? Yes; I think I do. It’ll do another time, Selina; never mind now.’
‘You had better have it in the parcel he will send tomorrow; if you’ll give me the pattern and tell me how much you want, I’ll write for it.’
‘Thank you, Selina. You’re very kind, but I won’t mind it today.’
‘How very foolish of you, Fanny; you know you want it, and then you’ll be annoyed about it. You’d better let me order it with the other things.’
‘Very well, dear: order it then for me.’
‘How much will you want? you must send the pattern too, you know.’
‘Indeed, Selina, I don’t care about having it at all; I can do very well without it, so don’t mind troubling yourself.’
‘How very ridiculous, Fanny! You know you want black crape and you must get it from Ellis’s.’ Lady Selina paused for a reply, and then added, in a voice of sorrowful rebuke, ‘It’s to save yourself the trouble of sending Jane for the pattern.’
‘Well, Selina, perhaps it is. Don’t bother me about it now, there’s a dear. I’ll be more myself by-and-by; but indeed, indeed, I’m neither well nor happy now.’
‘Not well, Fanny! What ails you?’
‘Oh, nothing ails me; that is, nothing in the doctor’s way. I didn’t mean I was ill.’
‘You said you weren’t well; and people usually mean by that, that they are ill.’
‘But I didn’t mean it,’ said Fanny, becoming almost irritated, ‘I only meant —’ and she paused and did not finish her sentence. Lady Selina wiped her pen, in her scarlet embroidered pen-wiper, closed the lid of her patent inkstand, folded a piece of blotting-paper over the note she was writing, pushed back the ruddy ringlets from her contemplative forehead, gave a slight sigh, and turned herself towards her cousin, with the purpose of commencing a vigorous lecture and cross-examination, by which she hoped to exorcise the spirit of lamentation from Fanny’s breast, and restore her to a healthful activity in the performance of this world’s duties. Fanny felt what was coming; she could not fly; so she closed her book and her eyes, and prepared herself for endurance.
‘Fanny,’ said Lady Selina, in a voice which was intended to be both severe and sorrowful, ‘you are giving way to very foolish feelings in a very foolish way; you are preparing great unhappiness for yourself, and allowing your mind to waste itself in uncontrolled sorrow in a manner in a manner which cannot but be ruinously injurious. My dear Fanny, why don’t you do something? why don’t you occupy yourself? You’ve given up your work; you’ve given up your music; you’ve given up everything in the shape of reading; how long, Fanny, will you go on in this sad manner?’ Lady Selina paused, but, as Fanny did not immediately reply, she continued her speech ‘I’ve begged you to go on with your reading, because nothing but mental employment will restore your mind to its proper tone. I’m sure I’ve brought you the second volume of Gibbon twenty times, but I don’t believe you’ve read a chapter this month back. How long will you allow yourself to go on in this sad manner?’
‘Not long, Selina. As you say, I’m sad enough.’
‘But is it becoming in you, Fanny, to grieve in this way for a man whom you yourself rejected because he was unworthy of you?’
‘Selina, I’ve told you before that such was not the case. I believe him to be perfectly worthy of me, and of any one much my superior too.’
‘But you did reject him, Fanny: you bade papa tell him to discontinue his visits didn’t you?’
Fanny felt that her cousin was taking an unfair advantage in throwing thus in her teeth her own momentary folly in having been partly persuaded, partly piqued, into quarrelling with her lover; and she resented it as such. ‘If I did,’ she said, somewhat angrily, ‘it does not make my grief any lighter, to know that I brought it on myself.’
‘No, Fanny; but it should show you that the loss for which you grieve is past recovery. Sorrow, for which there is no cure, should cease to be grieved for, at any rate openly. If Lord Ballindine were to die you would not allow his death to doom you to perpetual sighs, and perpetual inactivity. No; you’d then know that grief was hopeless, and you’d recover.’
‘But Lord Ballindine is not dead,’ said Fanny.
‘Ah! that’s just the point,’ continued her ladyship; ‘he should be dead to you; to you he should now be just the same as though he were in his grave. You loved him some time since, and accepted him; but you found your love misplaced, unreturned, or at any rate coldly returned. Though you loved him, you passed a deliberate judgment on him, and wisely rejected him. Having done so, his name should not be on your lips; his form and figure should be forgotten. No thoughts of him should sully your mind, no love for him should be permitted to rest in your heart; it should be rooted out, whatever the exertion may cost you.’
‘Selina, I believe you have no heart yourself.’
‘Perhaps as much as yourself, Fanny. I’ve heard of some people who were said to be all heart; I flatter myself I am not one of them. I trust I have some mind, to regulate my heart; and some conscience, to prevent my sacrificing my duties for the sake of my heart.’
‘If you knew,’ said Fanny, ‘the meaning of what love was, you’d know that it cannot be given up in a moment, as you suppose; rooted out, as you choose to call it. But, to tell you the truth, Selina, I don’t choose to root it out. I gave my word to Frank not twelve months since, and that with the consent of every one belonging to me. I owned that I loved him, and solemnly assured him I would always do so. I cannot, and I ought not, and I will not break my word. You would think of nothing but what you call your own dignity; I will not give up my own happiness, and, I firmly believe his, too, for anything so empty.’
‘Don’t be angry with me, Fanny,’ said Lady Selina; ‘my regard for your dignity arises only from my affection for you. I should be sorry to see you lessen yourself in the eyes of those around you. You must remember that you cannot act as another girl might, whose position was less exalted. Miss O’Joscelyn might cry for her lost lover till she got him back again, or got another; and no one would be the wiser, and she would not be the worse; but you cannot do that. Rank and station are in themselves benefits; but they require more rigid conduct, much more control over the feelings than is necessary in a humbler position. You should always remember, Fanny, that much is expected from those to whom much is given.’
‘And I’m to be miserable all my life because I’m not a parson’s daughter, like Miss O’Joscelyn!’
‘God forbid, Fanny! If you’d employ your time, engage your mind, and cease to think of Lord Ballindine, you’d soon cease to be miserable. Yes; though you might never again feel the happiness of loving, you might still be far from miserable.’
‘But I can’t cease to think of him, Selina; I won’t even try.’
‘Then, Fanny, I truly pity you.’
‘No, Selina; it’s I that pity you,’ said Fanny, roused to energy as different thoughts crowded to her mind. ‘You, who think more of your position as an earl’s daughter an aristocrat, than of your nature as a woman! Thank Heaven, I’m not a queen, to be driven to have other feelings than those of my sex. I do love Lord Ballindine, and if I had the power to cease to do so this moment, I’d sooner drown myself than exercise it.’
‘Then why were you weak enough to reject him?’
‘Because I was a weak, wretched, foolish girl. I said it in a moment of passion, and my uncle acted on it at once, without giving me one minute for reflection without allowing me one short hour to look into my own heart, and find how I was deceiving myself in thinking that I ought to part from him. I told Lord Cashel in the morning that I would give him up; and before I had time to think of what I had said, he had been here, and had been turned out of the house. Oh, Selina! it was very, very cruel in your father to take me at my word so shortly!’ And Fanny hid her face in her handkerchief, and burst into tears.
‘That’s unfair, Fanny; it couldn’t be cruel in him to do for you that which he would have done for his own daughter. He thought, and thinks, that Lord Ballindine would not make you happy.’
‘Why should he think so? he’d no business to think so,’ sobbed Fanny through her tears.
‘Who could have a business to think for you, if not your guardian?’
‘Why didn’t he think so then, before he encouraged me to receive him? It was because Frank wouldn’t do just what he was bid; it was because he wouldn’t become stiff, and solemn, and grave like — like —’ Fanny was going to make a comparison that would not have been flattering either to Lady Selina or to her father, but she did not quite forget herself, and stopped short without expressing the likeness. ‘Had he spoken against him at first, I would have obeyed; but I will not destroy myself now for his prejudices.’ And Fanny buried her face among the pillows of the sofa, and sobbed aloud.
Lady Selina walked over to the sofa, and stood at the head of it bending over her cousin. She wished to say something to soothe and comfort her, but did not know how; there was nothing soothing or comforting in her nature, nothing soft in her voice; her manner was repulsive, and almost unfeeling; and yet she was not unfeeling. She loved Fanny as warmly as she was capable of loving; she would have made almost any personal sacrifice to save her cousin from grief; she would, were it possible, have borne her sorrows herself; but she could not unbend; she could not sit down by Fanny’s side, and, taking her hand, say soft and soothing things; she could not make her grief easier by expressing hope for the future or consolation for the past. She would have felt that she was compromising truth by giving hope, and dignity by uttering consolation for the loss of that which she considered better lost than retained. Lady Selina’s only recipe was endurance and occupation. And at any rate, she practised what she preached; she was never idle, and she never complained.
As she saw Fanny’s grief, and heard her sobs, she at first thought that in mercy she should now give up the subject of the conversation; but then she reflected that such mercy might be the greatest cruelty, and that the truest kindness would be to prove to Fanny the hopelessness of her passion.
‘But, Fanny,’ she said, when the other’s tears were a little subsided, ‘it’s no use either saying or thinking impossibilities. What are you to do? You surely will not willingly continue to indulge a hopeless passion?’
‘Selina, you’ll drive me mad; if you go on! Let me have my own way.’
‘But, Fanny, if your own way’s a bad way? Surely you won’t refuse to listen to reason? You must know that what I say is only from my affection. I want you to look before you; I want you to summon courage to look forward; and then I’m sure your common sense will tell you that Lord Ballindine can never be anything to you.’
‘Look here, Selina,’ and Fanny rose, and wiped her eyes, and somewhat composed her ruffled hair, which she shook back from her face and forehead, as she endeavoured to repress the palpitation which had followed her tears; ‘I have looked forward, and I have determined what I mean to do. It was your father who brought me to this, by forcing me into a childish quarrel with the man I love. I have implored him, almost on my knees, to invite Lord Ballindine again to Grey Abbey: he has refused to do so, at any rate for twelve months ’
‘And has he consented to ask him at the end of twelve months?’ asked Selina, much astonished, and, to tell the truth, considerably shocked at this instance of what she considered her father’s weakness.
‘He might as well have said twelve years,’ replied Fanny. ‘How can I, how can any one, suppose that he should remain single for my sake for twelve months, after being repelled without a cause, or without a word of explanation; without even seeing me turned out of the house, and insulted in every way? No; whatever he might do, I will not wait twelve months. I’ll ask Lord Cashel once again, and then —’ Fanny paused for a moment, to consider in what words she would finish her declaration.
‘Well, Fanny,’ said Selina, waiting with eager expectation for Fanny’s final declaration; for she expected to hear her say that she would drown herself, or lock herself up for ever, or do something equally absurd.
‘Then,’ continued Fanny and a deep blush covered her face as she spoke, ‘I will write to Lord Ballindine, and tell him that I am still his own if he chooses to take me.’
‘Oh, Fanny! do not say such a horrid thing. Write to a man, and beg him to accept you? No, Fanny; I know you too well, at any rate, to believe that you’ll do that.’
‘Indeed, indeed, I will.’
‘Then you’ll disgrace yourself for ever. Oh, Fanny! though my heart were breaking, though I knew I were dying for very love, I’d sooner have it break, I’d sooner die at once, than disgrace my sex by becoming a suppliant to a man.’
‘Disgrace, Selina! and am I not now disgraced? Have I not given him my solemn word? Have I not pledged myself to him as his wife? Have I not sworn to him a hundred times that my heart was all his own? Have I not suffered those caresses which would have been disgraceful had I not looked on myself as almost already his bride? And is it no disgrace, after that, to break my word? to throw him aside like a glove that wouldn’t fit? to treat him as a servant that wouldn’t suit me? to send him a contemptuous message to be gone? and so, to forget him, that I might lay myself out for the addresses and admiration of another? Could any conduct be worse than that? any disgrace deeper? Oh, Selina! I shudder as I think of it. Could I ever bring my lips to own affection for another, without being overwhelmed with shame and disgrace? And then, that the world should say that I had accepted, and rejoiced in his love when I was poor, and rejected it with scorn when I was rich! No; I would sooner .-ten thousand times sooner my uncle should do it for me! but if he will not write to Frank, I will. And though my hand will shake, and my face will be flushed as I do so, I shall never think that I have disgraced myself.’
‘And if, Fanny if, after that he refuses you?’
Fanny was still standing, and she remained so for a moment or two, meditating her reply, and then she answered ‘Should he do so, then I have the alternative which you say you would prefer; then I will endeavour to look forward to a broken heart, and death, without a complaint and without tears. Then, Selina,’ and she tried to smile through the tears which were again running down her cheeks, ‘I’ll come to you, and endeavour to borrow your stoic endurance, and patient industry;’ and, as she said so, she walked to the door and escaped, before Lady Selina had time to reply.
After considerable negotiation between the father and the son, the time was fixed for Lord Kilcullen’s arrival at Grey Abbey. The earl tried much to accelerate it, and the viscount was equally anxious to stave off the evil day; but at last it was arranged that, on the 3rd of April, he was to make his appearance, and that he should commence his wooing as soon as possible after that day.
When this was absolutely fixed, Lord Cashel paid a visit to his countess, in her boudoir, to inform her of the circumstance, and prepare her for the expected guest. He did not, however, say a word of the purport of his son’s visit. He had, at one time, thought of telling the old lady all about it, and bespeaking her influence with Fanny for the furtherance of his plan; but, on reconsideration, he reflected that his wife was not the person to he trusted with any intrigue. So he merely told her that Lord Kilcullen would be at Grey Abbey in five days; that he would probably remain at home a long time; that, as he was giving up his London vices and extravagances, and going to reside at Grey Abbey, he wished that the house should be made as pleasant for him as possible; that a set of friends, relatives, and acquaintances should be asked to come and stay there; and, in short, that Lord Kilcullen, having been a truly prodigal son, should have a fatted calf prepared for his arrival.
All this flurried and rejoiced, terrified and excited my lady exceedingly. In the first place it was so truly delightful that her son should turn good and proper, and careful and decorous, just at the right time of life; so exactly the thing that ought to happen. Of course young noblemen were extravagant, and wicked, and lascivious, habitual breakers of the commandments, and self-idolators; it was their nature. In Lady Cashel’s thoughts on the education of young men, these evils were ranked with the measles and hooping cough; it was well that they should be gone through and be done with early in life. She had a kind of hazy idea that an opera-dancer and a gambling club were indispensable in fitting a young aristocrat for his future career; and I doubt whether she would not have agreed to the expediency of inoculating a son of hers with these ailments in a mild, degree vaccinating him as it were with dissipation, in order that he might not catch the disease late in life in a violent and fatal form. She had not therefore made herself unhappy about her son for a few years after his first entrance on a life in London, but latterly she had begun to be a little uneasy. Tidings of the great amount of his debts reached even her ears; and, moreover, it was nearly time that he should reform and settle down. During the last twelve months she had remarked fully twelve times, to Griffiths, that she wondered when Kilcullen would marry? and she had even twice asked her husband, whether he didn’t think that such a circumstance would be advantageous. She was therefore much rejoiced to hear that her son was coming to live at home. But then, why was it so sudden? It was quite proper that the house should be made a little gay for his reception; that he shouldn’t be expected to spend his evenings with no other society than that of his father and mother, his sister and his cousin; but how was she to get the house ready for the people, and the people ready for the house, at so very short a notice? What trouble, also, it would be to her! Neither she nor Griffiths would know another moment’s rest; besides and the thought nearly drove her into hysterics where was she to get a new cook?
However, she promised her husband to do her best. She received from him a list of people to be invited, and, merely stipulating that she shouldn’t be required to ask any one except the parson of the parish under a week, undertook to make the place as bearable as possible to so fastidious and distinguished a person as her own son.
Her first confidante was, of course, Griffiths; and, with her assistance, the wool and the worsted, and the knitting-needles, the unfinished vallances and interminable yards of fringe, were put up and rolled out of the way; and it was then agreed that a council should be held, to which her ladyship proposed to invite Lady Selina and Fanny. Griffiths, however, advanced an opinion that the latter was at present too lack-a-daisical to be of any use in such a matter, and strengthened her argument by asserting that Miss Wyndham had of late been quite mumchance.
Lady Cashel was at first rather inclined to insist on her niece being called to the council, but Griffiths’s
eloquence was too strong, and her judgment too undoubted; so Fanny was left undisturbed, and Lady Selina alone summoned to join the aged female senators of Grey Abbey.
‘Selina,’ said her ladyship, as soon as her daughter was seated on the sofa opposite to her mother’s easy chair, while Griffiths, having shut the door, had, according to custom, sat herself down on her own soft-bottomed chair, on the further side of the little table that always stood at the countess’s right hand. ‘Selina, what do you think your father tells me?’
Lady Selina couldn’t think, and declined guessing; for, as she remarked, guessing was a loss of time, and she never guessed right.
‘Adolphus is coming home on Tuesday.’
‘Adolphus! why it’s not a month since he was here.’
‘And he’s not coming only for a visit; he’s coming to stay here; from what your father says, I suppose he’ll stay here the greater part of the summer.’
‘What, stay at Grey Abbey all May and June?’ said Lady Selina, evidently discrediting so unlikely a story, and thinking it all but impossible that her brother should immure himself at Grey Abbey during the London season.
‘It’s true, my lady,’ said Griffiths, oracularly; as if her word were necessary to place the countess’s statement beyond doubt.
‘Yes,’ continued Lady Cashel; ‘and he has given up all his establishment in London his horses, and clubs, and the opera, and all that. He’ll go into Parliament, I dare say, now, for the county; at any rate he’s coming to live at home here for the summer.’
‘And has he sold all his horses?’ asked Lady Selina. ‘If he’s not done it, he’s doing it,’ said the countess. ‘I declare I’m delighted with him; it shows such proper feeling. I always knew he would; I was sure that when the time came for doing it, Adolphus would not forget what was due to himself and to his family.’
‘If what you say is true, mamma, he’s going to be married.’
‘That’s just what I was thinking, my lady,’ said Griffiths. ‘When her ladyship first told me all about it how his lordship was coming down to live regular and decorous among his own people, and that he was turning his back upon his pleasures and iniquities, thinks I to myself there’ll be wedding favours coming soon to Grey Abbey.’
‘If it is so, Selina, your father didn’t say anything to me about it,’ said the countess, somewhat additionally flustered by the importance of the last suggestion; ‘and if he’d even guessed such a thing, I’m sure he’d have mentioned it.’
‘It mightn’t be quite fixed, you know, mamma: but if Adolphus is doing as you say, you may be sure he’s either engaged, or thinking of becoming so.’
‘Well, my dear, I’m sure I wish it may be so; only I own I’d like to know, because it makes a difference, as to the people he’d like to meet, you know. I’m sure nothing would delight me so much as to receive Adolphus’s wife. Of course she’d always be welcome to lie in here indeed it’d be the fittest place. But we should be dreadfully put about, eh, Griffiths?’
‘Why, we should, my lady; but, to my mind, this would be the only most proper place for my lord’s heir to be born in. If the mother and child couldn’t have the best of minding here, where could they?’
‘Of course, Griffiths; and we wouldn’t mind the trouble, on such an occasion. I think the south room would be the best, because of the dressing-room being such a good size, and neither of the fireplaces smoking, you know.’
‘Well, I don’t doubt but it would, my lady; only the blue room is nearer to your ladyship here, and in course your ladyship would choose to be in and out.’
And visions of caudle cups, cradles, and monthly nurses, floated over Lady Cashel’s brain, and gave her a kind of dreamy feel that the world was going to begin again with her.
‘But, mamma, is Adolphus really to be here on Tuesday?’ said Lady Selina, recalling the two old women from their attendance on the unborn, to the necessities of the present generation.
‘Indeed he is, my dear, and that’s what I sent for you for. Your papa wishes to have a good deal of company here to meet your brother; and indeed it’s only reasonable, for of course this place would be very dull for him, if there was nobody here but ourselves and he’s always used to see so many people; but the worst is, it’s all to be done at once, and you know there’ll be so much to be got through before we’ll be ready for a house full of company things to be got from Dublin, and the people to be asked. And then, Selina,’ and her ladyship almost wept as the latter came to her great final difficulty ‘What are we to do about a cook? Richards’ll never do; Griffiths says she won’t even do for ourselves, as it is.’
‘Indeed she won’t, my lady; it was only impudence in her coming to such a place at all. She’d never be able to send a dinner up for eighteen or twenty.’
‘What are we to do, Griffiths? What can have become of all the cooks? I’m sure there used to be cooks enough when I was first married.’ ‘Well, my lady, I think they must be all gone to England, those that are any good; but I don’t know what’s come to the servants altogether; as your ladyship says, they’re quite altered for the worse since we were young.’
‘But, mamma,’ said Lady Selina, ‘you’re not going to ask people here just immediately, are you?’
‘Directly, my dear; your papa wishes it done at once. We’re to have a dinner-party this day week that’ll be Thursday; and we’ll get as many of the people as we can to stay afterwards; and we’ll get the O’Joscelyns to come on Wednesday, just to make the table look not quite so bare, and I want you to write the notes at once. There’ll be a great many things to be got from Dublin too.’
‘It’s very soon after poor Harry Wyndham’s death, to be receiving company,’ said Lady Selina, solemnly. ‘Really, mamma, I don’t think it will be treating Fanny well to be asking all these people so soon. The O’Joscelyns, or the Fitzgeralds, are all very well just our own near neighbours; but don’t you think, mamma, it’s rather too soon to be asking a house-full of strange people?’
‘Well, my love, I was thinking so, and I mentioned it to your father; but he said that poor Harry had been dead a month now and that’s true, you know and that people don’t think so much now about those kind of things as they used to; and that’s true too, I believe.’
‘Indeed you may say that, my lady,’ interposed Griffiths. ‘I remember when bombazines used to be worn three full months for an uncle or cousin, and now they’re hardly ever worn at all for the like, except in cases where the brother or sister of him or her as is dead may be stopping in the house, and then only for a month: and they were always worn the full six months for a brother or sister, and sometimes the twelve months round. Your aunt, Lady Charlotte, my lady, wore hers the full twelve months, when your uncle, Lord Frederick, was shot by Sir Patrick O’Donnel; and now they very seldom, never, I may say, wear them the six months I Indeed, I think mourning is going out altogether; and I’m very sorry for it, for it’s a very decent, proper sort of thing; at least, such was always my humble opinion, my lady.’
‘Well; but what I was saying is,’ continued the countess, ‘that what would be thought strange a few years ago, isn’t thought at all so now; and though I’m sure, Selina, I wouldn’t like to do anything that looked unkind to Fanny, I really don’t see how we can help it, as your father makes such a point of it.’
‘I can’t say I think it’s right, mamma, for I don’t. But if you and papa do, of course I’ve nothing further to my.’
‘Well, my love, I don’t know that I do exactly think it’s right; and I’m sure it’s not my wish to be having people especially when I don’t know where on earth to turn for a cook. But what can we do, my dear? Adolphus wouldn’t stay the third night here, I’m sure, if there was nobody to amuse him; and you wouldn’t have him turned out of the house, would you?’
‘I have him turned out, mamma? God forbid! I’d sooner he should be here than anywhere, for here he must be out of harm’s way; but still I think that if he comes to a house of mourning, he might, for a short time, submit to put up with its decent tranquillity.’ ‘Selina,’ said the mother, pettishly, ‘I really thought you’d help me when I’ve so much to trouble and vex me and not make any fresh difficulties. How can I help it? If your father says the people are to come, I can’t say I won’t let them in. I hope you won’t make Fanny think I’m doing it from disrespect to her. I’m sure I wouldn’t have a soul here for a twelvemonth, on my own account.’
‘I’m sure Miss Wyndham won’t think any such thing, my lady,’ said Griffiths; ‘will she, Lady Selina? Indeed, I don’t think she’ll matter it one pin.’
‘Indeed, Selina, I don’t think she will,’ said the countess; and then she half whispered to her daughter. ‘Poor Fanny! it’s not about her brother she’s grieving; it’s that horrid man, Ballindine. She sent him away, and now she wants to have him back. I really think a little company will be the best thing to bring her to herself again.’ There was a little degree of humbug in this whisper, for her ladyship meant her daughter to understand that she wouldn’t speak aloud about Fanny’s love-affair before Griffiths; and yet she had spent many a half hour talking to her factotum on that very subject. Indeed, what subject was there of any interest to Lady Cashel on which she did not talk to Griffiths!
‘Well, mamma,’ said Lady Selina, dutifully, ‘I’ll not say another word about it; only let me know what you want me to do, and I’ll do it. Who is it you mean to ask?’
‘Why, first of all, there’s the Fitzgeralds: your father thinks that Lord and Lady George would come for a week or so, and you know the girls have been long talking of coming to Grey Abbey these two years I believe, and more.’
‘The girls will come, I dare say, mamma; though I don’t exactly think they’re the sort of people who will amuse Adolphus; but I don’t think Lord George or Lady George will sleep away from home. We can ask them, however; Mountains is only five miles from here, and I’m sure they’ll go back after dinner.’
‘Well, my dear, if they will, they must, and I can’t help it; only I must say it’ll be very ill-natured of them. I’m sure it’s a long time since they were asked to stay here.’
‘As you say, mamma, at any rate we can ask them. And who comes next?’
‘Why your father has put down the Swinburn people next; though I’m sure I don’t know how they are to come so far.’
‘Why, mamma, the colonel is a martyr to the gout!’
‘Yes, my lady,’ said Griffiths, ‘and Mrs. Ellison is worse again, with rheumatics. There would be nothing to do, the whole time, but nurse the two of them.’
‘Never mind, Griffiths; you’ll not have to nurse them, so you needn’t be so ill-natured.’
‘Me, ill-natured, my lady? I’m sure I begs pardon, but I didn’t mean nothing ill-natured; besides, Mrs. Ellison was always a very nice lady to me, and I’m sure I’d be happy to nurse her, if she wanted it; only that, as in duty bound, I’ve your ladyship to look to first, and so couldn’t spare time very well for nursing any one.’ ‘Of course you couldn’t, Griffiths; but, Selina, at any rate you must ask the Ellisons: your papa thinks a great deal about the colonel he has so much influence in the county, and Adolphus will very likely stand, now. Your papa and the colonel were members together for the county more than forty years since.’
‘Well, mamma, I’ll write Mrs. Ellison. Shall I say for a week or ten days?’
‘Say for ten days or a fortnight, and then perhaps they’ll stay a week. Then there’s the Bishop of Maryborough, and Mrs. Moore. I’m sure Adolphus will be glad to meet the bishop, for it was he that christened him.’
‘Very well, mamma, I’ll write to Mrs. Moore. I suppose the bishop is in Dublin at present?’
‘Yes, my dear, I believe so. There can’t be anything to prevent their coming.’
‘Only that he’s the managing man on the Education Board, and he’s giving up his time very much to that at present. I dare say he’ll come, but he won’t stay long.’
‘Well, Selina, if he won’t, I can’t help it; and I’m sure, now I think about the cook, I don’t see how we’re to expect anybody to stay. What am I to do, Griffiths, about that horrid woman?’
‘I’ll tell you what I was thinking, my lady; only I don’t know whether your ladyship would like it, either, and if you didn’t you could easily get rid of him when all these people are gone.’
‘Get rid of who?’
‘I was going to say, my lady if your ladyship would consent to have a man cook for a time, just to try.’
‘Then I never will, Griffiths: there’d be no peace in the house with him!’
‘Well, your ladyship knows best, in course; only if you thought well of trying it, of course you needn’t keep the man; and I know there’s Murray in Dublin, that was cook so many years to old Lord Galway. I know he’s to be heard of at the hotel in Grafton Street.’
‘I can’t bear the thoughts of a man cook, Griffiths:
‘I’d sooner have three women cooks, and I’m sure one’s enough to plague anybody.’
‘But none’s worse, my lady,’ said Griffiths.
‘You needn’t tell me that. I wonder, Selina, if I were to write to my sister, whether she could send me over anything that would answer?’
‘What, from London, my lady?’ answered Griffiths ‘You’d find a London woman cook sent over in that way twice worse than any man: she’d be all airs and graces. If your ladyship thought well of thinking about Murray, Richards would do very well under him: she’s a decent poor creature, poor woman only she certainly is not a cook that’d suit for such a house as this; and it was only impudence her thinking to attempt it.’ ‘But, mamma,’ said Lady Selina, ‘do let me know to whom I am to write, and then you and Griffiths can settle about the cook afterwards; the time is so very short that I ought not to lose a post.’
The poor countess threw herself back in her easy chair, the picture of despair. Oh, how much preferable were rolls of worsted and yards of netting, to the toils and turmoil of preparing for, and entertaining company! She was already nearly overcome by the former: she didn’t dare to look forward to the miseries of the latter. She already began to feel the ill effects of her son’s reformation, and to wish that it had been postponed just for a month or two, till she was a little more settled.
‘Well, mamma,’ said Lady Selina, as undisturbed and calm as ever, and as resolved to do her duty without flinching, ‘shall we go on?’
The countess groaned and sighed ‘There’s the list there, Selina, which your father put down in pencil. You know the people as well as I do: just ask them all ’
‘But, mamma, I’m not to ask them all to stay here I suppose some are only to come to dinner? the O’Joscelyns, and the Parchments?’
‘Ask the O’Joscelyns for Wednesday and Thursday: the girls might as well stay and sleep here. But what’s the good of writing to them? can’t you drive over to the Parsonage and settle it all there? you do nothing but make difficulties, Selina, and my head’s racking.’
Lady Selina sate silent for a short time, conning the list, and endeavouring to see her way through the labyrinth of difficulties which was before her, without further trouble to her mother; while the countess leaned back, with her eyes closed, and her hands placed on the arms of her chair, as though she were endeavouring to get some repose, after the labour she had gone through. Her daughter, however, again disturbed her.
‘Mamma,’ she said, trying by the solemnity of her tone to impress her mother with the absolute necessity she was under of again appealing to her upon the subject, ‘what are we to do about young men?’
‘About young men, my dear?’ ‘Yes, mamma: there’ll be a house-full of young ladies there’s the Fitzgeralds and Lady Louisa Pratt and Miss Ellison and the three O’Joscelyns and not a single young man, except Mr O’Joscelyn’s curate!’
‘Well, my dear, I’m sure Mr. Hill’s a very nice young man’.
“So he is, mamma; a very good young man; but he won’t do to amuse such a quantity of girls. If there were only one or two he’d do very well; besides, I’m sure Adolphus won’t like it.’
‘Why; won’t he talk to the young ladies? I’m sure he was always fond of ladies’ society.’
‘I tell you, mamma, it won’t do. There’ll be the bishop and two other clergymen, and old Colonel Ellison, who has always got the gout, and Lord George, if he comes and I’m sure he won’t. If you want to make a pleasant party for Adolphus, you must get some young men; besides, you can’t ask all those girls, and have nobody to dance with them or talk to them.’ ‘I’m sure, my dear, I don’t know what you’re to do. I don’t know any young men except Mr. Hill; and there’s that young Mr. Grundy, who lives in Dublin. I promised his aunt to be civil to him: can’t you ask him down?’
‘He was here before, mamma, and I don’t think he liked it. I’m sure we didn’t. He didn’t speak a word the whole day he was here. He’s not at all the person to suit Adolphus.’
‘Then, my dear, you must go to your papa, and ask bin: it’s quite clear I can’t make young men. I remember, years ago, there always used to be too many of them, and I don’t know where they’re all gone to. At any rate, when they do come, there’ll be nothing for them to eat,’ and Lady Cashel again fell back upon her deficiencies in the kitchen establishment.
Lady Selina saw that nothing more could be obtained from her mother, no further intelligence as regarded the embryo party. The whole burden was to lie on her shoulders, and very heavy she felt it. As far as concerned herself, she had no particular wish for one kind of guest more than another: it was not for herself that she wanted young men; she knew that at any rate there were none within reach whom she could condescend to notice save as her father’s guests; there could be no one there whose presence could be to her of any interest: the gouty colonel, and the worthy bishop, would be as agreeable to her as any other men that would now be likely to visit Grey Abbey. But Lady Selina felt a real desire that others in the house might be happy while there. She was no flirt herself, nor had she ever been; it was not in her nature to be so. But though she herself might be contented to twaddle with old men, she knew that other girls would not. Yet it was not that she herself had no inward wish for that admiration which is desired by nearly every woman, or that she thought a married state was an unenviable one. No; she could have loved and loved truly, and could have devoted herself most scrupulously to the duties of a wife; but she had vainly and foolishly built up for herself a pedestal, and there she had placed herself; nor would she come down to stand on common earth, though Apollo had enticed her, unless he came with the coronet of a peer upon his brow.
She left her mother’s boudoir, went down into the drawing-room, and there she wrote her notes of invitation, and her orders to the tradesmen; and then she went to her father, and consulted him on the difficult subject of young men. She suggested the Newbridge Barracks, where the dragoons were; and the Curragh, where perhaps some stray denizen of pleasure might be found, neither too bad for Grey Abbey, nor too good to be acceptable to Lord Kilcullen; and at last it was decided that a certain Captain Cokely, and Mat Tierney, should be asked. They were both acquaintances of Adolphus; and though Mat was not a young man, he was not very old, and was usually very gay.
So that matter was settled, and the invitations were sent off. The countess overcame her difficulty by consenting that Murray the man cook should be hired for a given time, with the distinct understanding that he was to take himself off with the rest of the guests, and so great was her ladyship’s sense of the importance of the negotiation, that she absolutely despatched Griffiths to Dublin to arrange it, though thereby she was left two whole days in solitary misery at Grey Abbey; and had to go to bed, and get up, she really hardly knew how, with such assistance as Lady Selina’s maid could give her.
When these things were all arranged, Selina told her cousin that Adolphus was coming home, and that a house full of company had been asked to meet him. She was afraid that Fanny would be annoyed and offended at being forced to go into company so soon after her brother’s death, but such was not the case. She felt, herself, that her poor brother was not the cause of the grief that was near her heart; and she would not pretend what she didn’t really feel.
‘You were quite right, Selina,’ she said, smiling, ‘about the things you said yesterday I should want from Dublin: now, I shall want them; and, as I wouldn’t accept of your good-natured offer, I must take the trouble of writing myself.’
‘If you like it, Fanny, I’ll write for you,’ said Selina.
‘Oh no, I’m not quite so idle as that’ and she also began her preparations for the expected festivities. Little did either of them think that she, Fanny Wyndham, was the sole cause of all the trouble which the household and neighbourhood were to undergo the fatigue of the countess; Griffiths’s journey; the arrival of the dread man cook; Richards’s indignation at being made subordinate to such authority; the bishop’s desertion of the Education Board; the colonel’s dangerous and precipitate consumption of colchicum; the quarrel between Lord and Lady George as to staying or not staying; the new dresses of the Miss O’Joscelyns, which their worthy father could so ill afford; and, above all, the confusion, misery, rage, and astonishment which attended Lord Kilcullen’s unexpected retreat from London, in the middle of the summer. And all in vain!
How proud and satisfied Lord Ballindine might have been, had he been able to see all this, and could he have known how futile was every effort Lord Cashel could make to drive from Fanny Wyndham’s heart the love she felt for him.
The invitations, however, were, generally speaking, accepted. The bishop and his wife would be most happy; the colonel would come if the gout would possibly allow; Lady George wrote a note to say they would be very happy to stay a few days, and Lord George wrote another soon after to say he was sorry, but that they must return the same evening. The O’Joscelyns would be delighted; Mat Tierney would be very proud; Captain Cokely would do himself the honour; and, last but not least, Mr. Murray would preside below stairs for a serious consideration.
What a pity so much trouble should have been taken! They might all have stayed at home; for Fanny Wyndham will never become Lady Kilcullen.
On the appointed day, or rather on the night of the appointed day, Lord Kilcullen reached Grey Abbey; for it was about eleven o’clock when his travelling-pha‰ton rattled up to the door. He had been expected to dinner at seven, and the first attempts of Murray in the kitchens of Grey Abbey had been kept waiting for him till half-past eight; but in vain. At that hour the earl, black with ill-humour, ordered dinner; and remarked that he considered it criminal in any man to make an appointment, who was not sufficiently attached to veracity to keep
The evening was passed in moody silence. The countess was disappointed, for she always contrived to persuade herself that she was very anxious to see her son. Lady Selina was really vexed, and began to have her doubts as to her brother’s coming at all: what was to be done, if it turned out that all the company had been invited for nothing? As to Fanny, though very indifferent to the subject of her cousin’s coming, she was not at all in a state of mind to dissipate the sullenness which prevailed. The ladies went to bed early, the countess grumbling at her lot, in not being allowed to see her son, and her daughter and niece marching off with their respective candlesticks in solemn silence. The earl retired to his book-room soon afterwards; but he had not yet sat down, when the quick rattle of the wheels was heard upon the gravel before the house.
Lord Cashel walked out into the hall, prepared to meet his son in a befitting manner; that is, with a dignified austerity that could not fail to convey a rebuke even to his hardened heart. But he was balked in his purpose, for he found that Lord Kilcullen was not alone; Mat Tierney had come down with him. Kilcullen had met his friend in Dublin, and on learning that he also was bound for Grey Abbey on the day but one following, had persuaded him to accelerate his visit, had waited for him, and brought him down in his own carriage. The truth was, that Lord Kilcullen had thought that the shades of Grey Abbey would be too much for him, without some genial spirit to enlighten them: he was delighted to find that Mat Tierney was to be there, and was rejoiced to be able to convey him with him, as a sort of protection from his father’s eloquence for the first two days of the visit.
‘Lord Kilcullen, your mother and I—’ began the father, intent on at once commenting on the iniquity of the late arrival; when he saw the figure of a very stout gentleman, amply wrapped up in travelling habiliments, follow his son into the inner hall.
‘Tierney, my lord,’ said the son, ‘was good enough to come down with me. I found that he intended to be here tomorrow, and I told him you and my mother would be delighted to see him today instead.’
The earl shook Mr. Tierney’s hand, and told him how very welcome he was at all times, and especially at present unexpected pleasures were always the most agreeable; and then the earl bustled about, and ordered supper and wine, and fussed about the bedrooms, and performed the necessary rites of hospitality, and then went to bed, without having made one solemn speech to his son. So far, Lord Kilcullen had been successful in his manoeuvre; and he trusted that by making judicious use of Mat Tierney, he might be able to stave off the evil hour for at any rate a couple of days.
But he was mistaken. Lord Cashel was now too much in earnest to be put off his purpose; he had been made too painfully aware that his son’s position was desperate, and that lie must at once be saved by a desperate effort, or given over to utter ruin. And, to tell the truth, so heavy were the new debts of which he heard from day to day, so insurmountable seemed the difficulties, that he all but repented that he had not left him to his fate. The attempt, however, must again be made; he was there, in the house, and could not be turned out; but Lord Cashel determined that at any rate no time should be lost.
The two new arrivals made their appearance the next morning, greatly to Lady Cashel’s delight; she was perfectly satisfied with her son’s apology, and delighted to find that at any rate one of her expected guests would not fail her in her need. The breakfast went over pleasantly enough, and Kilcullen was asking Mat to accompany him into the stables, to see what novelties they should find there, when Lord Cashel spoiled the arrangement by saying,
‘Could you spare me half-an-hour in tile bookroom first, Kilcullen?’
This request, of course, could not be refused; and the father and son walked off, leaving Mat Tierney to the charity of the ladies.
There was much less of flippant overbearing impudence now, about Lord Kilcullen, much less of arrogance and insult from the son towards the father, than there had been in the previous interview which has been recorded. He seemed to be somewhat in dread, to be cowed, and ill at ease; he tried, however, to assume his usual manner, and followed his father into the book-room with an affected air of indifference, which very ill concealed his real feelings.
‘Kilcullen,’ began the earl, ‘I was very sorry to see Tierney with you last night. It would have been much better that we should have been alone together, at any rate for one morning. I suppose you are aware that there is a great deal to be talked over between us?’
‘I suppose there is,’ said the son; ‘but I couldn’t well help bringing the man, when he told me he was coming here.’
‘He didn’t ask you to bring him, I suppose? but we will not talk about that. Will you do me the favour to inform me what your present plans are?’
‘My present plans, my lord? Indeed, I’ve no plans! It’s a long time since I had a plan of my own. I am, however, prepared to acquiesce entirely in any which you may propose. I have come quite prepared to throw at Miss Wyndham’s feet myself and my fortune.’
‘And do you expect her to accept you?’
‘You said she would, my lord: so I have taken that for granted. I, at any rate, will ask her; if she refuses me, your lordship will perhaps be able to persuade her to a measure so evidently beneficial to all parties.’
‘The persuading must be with yourself; but if you suppose you can carry her with a high hand, without giving yourself the trouble to try to please her, you are very much mistaken. If you think she’ll accept you merely because you ask her, you might save yourself the trouble, and as well return to London at once.’
‘Just as you please, my lord; but I thought I came in obedience to your express wishes.’
‘So you did; but, to tell you the truth your manner in coming is very different from what I would wish it to be. Your ’
‘Did you want me to crawl here on my hands and knees?’
‘I wanted you to come, Kilcullen, with some sense of what you owe to those who are endeavouring to rescue you from ruin: with some feeling of, at any rate, sorrow for the mad extravagance of your past career. Instead of that, you come gay, reckless, and unconcerned as ever; you pick up the first jovial companion you meet, and with him disturb the house at a most unseasonable hour. You are totally regardless of the appointments you make; and plainly show, that as you come here solely for your own pleasure, you consider it needless to consult my wishes or my comfort .Are you aware that you kept your mother and myself two hours waiting for dinner yesterday?’
The pathos with which Lord Cashel terminated his speech and it was one the thrilling effect of which he intended to be overwhelming almost restored Lord Kilcullen to his accustomed effrontery.
‘My lord,’ he said, ‘I did not consider myself of sufficient importance to have delayed your dinner ten minutes.’
‘I have always endeavoured, Kilcullen, to show the same respect to you in my house, which my father showed to me in his; but you do not allow me the opportunity. But let that pass; we have more important things to speak of. When last we were here together why did you not tell me the whole truth?’
‘What truth, my lord?’
‘About your debts, Kilcullen: why did you conceal from me their full amount? Why, at any rate, did you take pains to make me think them so much less than they really are?’
‘Conceal, my lord? that is hardly fair, considering that 1 told you expressly I could not give you any idea what was the amount I owed. I concealed nothing; if you deceived yourself, the fault was not mine.’
‘You could not but have known that the claims against you were much larger than I supposed them to be double, I suppose. Good heaven! why in ten years more, at this rate, you would more than consume the lee simple of the whole property! What can I say to you, Kilcullen, to make you look on your own conduct in the proper light?’
‘I think you have said enough for the purpose; you have told me to marry, and I have consented to do so.’
‘Do you think, Kilcullen, you have spent the last eight years in a way which it can please a father to contemplate? Do you think I can look back on your conduct with satisfaction or content? And yet you have no regret to express for the past no promises to make for the future. I fear it is all in vain. I fear that what I am doing what I am striving to do, is now all in vain. I fear it is hopeless to attempt to recall you from the horrid, reckless, wicked mode of life you have adopted.’ The sombre mantle of expostulatory eloquence had now descended on the earl, and he continued, turning full upon his victim, and raising and lowering his voice with monotonous propriety. ‘I fear it is to no good purpose that I am subjecting your mother and myself to privation, restraint, and inconvenience; that I am straining every nerve to place you again in a position of respectability, a position suitable to my fortune and your own rank. I am endeavouring to retrieve the desperate extravagance the I must say though I do not wish to hurt your feelings, yet I must say, disgraceful ruin of your past career. And how do you help me? what regret do you show? what promises of amendment do you afford? You drive up to my hall-door at midnight with your boon companion; you disturb the whole household at most unseasonable hours, and subject my family to the same disreputable irregularity in which you have yourself so long indulged. Can such doings, Kilcullen, give me any hopes for the future? Can ’
‘My lord I am extremely sorry for the dinner: what can I say more? And as for Mat Tierney, he is your own guest or her ladyship’s not mine. It is my misfortune to have come in the same carriage with him, but that is the extent of my offence.’
‘Well, Kilcullen; if you think your conduct has always been such as it ought to be, it is of little use for me to bring up arguments to the contrary.’
‘I don’t think so, my lord. What can I say more? I have done those things which I ought not to have done. Were I to confess my transgressions for the hour together, I could not say more; except that I have left undone the things which I ought to have done. Or, do you want me to beat my breast and tear my hair?’
‘I want you, Lord Kilcullen, to show some sense of decency some filial respect.’
‘Well, my lord, here I am, prepared to marry a wife of your own choosing, and to set about the business this morning, if you please. I thought you would have called that decent, filial, and respectable.’
The earl could hardly gainsay this; but still he could not bring himself to give over so soon the unusual pleasure of blowing up his only son. It was so long since Lord Kilcullen had been regularly in his power, and it might never occur again. So he returned from consideration of the future to a further retrospect on the past.
‘You certainly have played your cards most foolishly; you have thrown away your money rather, I should say, my money, in a manner which nothing can excuse or palliate. You might have made the turf a source of gratifying amusement; your income was amply sufficient to enable you to do so; but you have possessed so little self-control, so little judgment, so little discrimination, that you have allowed yourself to be plundered by every blackleg, and robbed by every everybody in short, who chose to rob you. The same thing has been the case in all your other amusements and pursuits ’
‘Well, my lord, I confess it all; isn’t that enough?’
‘Enough, Kilcullen!’ said the earl, in a voice of horrified astonishment, ‘how enough? how can anything be enough after such a course so wild, so mad, so ruinous!’
‘For Heaven’s sake, my lord, finish the list of my iniquities, or you’ll make me feel that I am utterly unfit to become my cousin’s husband.’
‘I fear you are indeed I fear you are. Are the horses disposed of yet, Kilcullen?’
‘Indeed they are not, my lord; nor can I dispose of them. There is more owing for them than they are worth; you may say they belong to the trainer now.’
‘Is the establishment in Curzon Street broken up?’
‘To tell the truth, not exactly; but I’ve no thoughts of returning there. I’m still under rent for the house.’
The cross-examination was continued for a considerable time till the earl had literally nothing more to say, and Lord Kilcullen was so irritated that he told his father he would not stand it any longer. Then they went into money affairs, and the earl spoke despondingly about ten thousands and twenty thousands, and the viscount somewhat flippantly of fifty thousands and sixty thousands; and this was continued till the earl felt that his son was too deep in the mire to be pulled out, and the son thought that, deep as he was there, it would be better to remain and wallow in it than undergo so disagreeable a process as that to which his father subjected him in extricating him from it. It was settled, however, that Mr. Jervis, Lord Cashel’s agent, should receive full authority to deal summarily in all matters respecting the horses and their trainers, the house in Curzon Street, and its inhabitants, and all other appendages and sources of expense which Lord Kilcullen had left behind him; and that he, Kilcullen, should at once commence his siege upon his cousin’s fortune. And on this point the son bargained that, as it would be essentially necessary that his spirits should be light and easy, he was not, during the operation, to be subjected to any of his father’s book-room conversations: for this he stipulated as an absolute sine qua non in the negotiation, and the clause was at last agreed to, though not without much difficulty.
Both father and son seemed to think that the offer should be made at once. Lord Cashel really feared that his son would be arrested at Grey Abbey, and he was determined to pay nothing further for him, unless he felt secure of Fanny’s fortune; and whatever were Lord Kilcullen’s hopes and fears as to his future lot, he was determined not to remain long in suspense, as far as his projected marriage was concerned. He was determined to do his best to accomplish it, for he would have done anything to get the command of ready money; if he was not successful, at any rate he need not remain in the purgatory of Grey Abbey. The Queen’s Bench would be preferable to that. He was not, however, very doubtful; he felt but little confidence in the constancy of any woman’s affection, and a great deal in his own powers of fascination: he had always been successful in his appeals to ladies’ hearts, and did not doubt of being so now, when the object of his adoration must, as he thought, be so dreadfully in want of some excitement, something to interest her. Any fool might have her now, thought he, and she can’t have any violent objection to being Lady Kilcullen for the present, and Lady Cashel in due time. He felt, however, something like remorse at the arrangement to which he was a party; it was not that he was about to make a beautiful creature, his own cousin, miserable for life, by uniting her to a spendthrift, a rou?, and a gambler such was the natural lot of women in the higher ranks of life but he felt that he was robbing her of her money. He would have thought it to be no disgrace to carry her off had another person been her guardian. She would then have had fair play, and it would be the guardian’s fault if her fortune were not secure. But she had no friend now to protect her: it was her guardian himself who was betraying her to ruin.
However, the money must he had, and Lord Kilcullen was not long in quieting his conscience.
‘Tierney,’ said Kilcullen, meeting his friend after his escape from the book-room; ‘you are not troubled with a father now, I believe do you recollect whether you ever had one?’
‘Well, I can’t say I remember just at present,’ said Mat; ‘but I believe I had a sort of one, once.’
‘I’m a more dutiful son than you,’ said the other; ‘I never can forget mine. I have no doubt an alligator on the banks of the Nile is a fearful creature a shark when one’s bathing, or a jungle tiger when one’s out shooting, ought, I’m sure, to be avoided; but no creature yet created, however hungry, or however savage, can equal in ferocity a governor who has to shell out his cash! I’ve no wish for a t?te-…-t?te with any bloody-minded monster; but I’d sooner meet a starved hyena, single-handed in the desert, than be shut up for another hour with my Lord Cashel in that room of his on the right-band side of the hall. If you hear of my having beat a retreat from Grey Abbey, without giving you or any one else warning of my intention, you will know that I have lacked courage to comply with a second summons to those gloomy realms. If I receive another invite such as that I got this morning, I am off.’
Lady Cashel’s guests came on the day appointed; the carriages were driven up, one after another, in quick succession, about an hour before dinner-time; and, as her ladyship’s mind became easy on the score of disappointments, it was somewhat troubled as to the multitude of people to be fed and entertained. Murray had not yet forgiven the injury inflicted on him when the family dinner was kept waiting for Lord Kilcullen, and Richards was still pouting at her own degraded position. The countess had spent the morning pretending to make arrangements, which were in fact all settled by Griffiths; and when she commenced the operation of dressing herself, she declared she was so utterly exhausted by what she had gone through during the last week, as to be entirely unfit to entertain her company. Poor dear Lady Cashel! Was she so ignorant of her own nature as to suppose it possible that she should ever entertain anybody?
However, a glass of wine, and some mysterious drops, and a little paint; a good deal of coaxing, the sight of her diamonds, and of a large puce-coloured turban, somewhat revivified her; and she was in her drawing-room in due time, supported by Lady Selina and Fanny, ready to receive her visitors as soon as they should descend from their respective rooms.
Lady Cashel had already welcomed Lord George, and shaken hands with the bishop: and was now deep in turnips and ten-pound freeholders with the gouty colonel, who had hobbled into the room on a pair of crutches, and was accommodated with two easy chairs in a corner one for himself, and the other for his feet.
‘Now, my dear Lady George,’ said the countess, ‘you must not think of returning to Mountains tonight: indeed, we made sure of you and Lord George for a week.’
‘My dear Lady Cashel, it’s impossible; indeed, we wished it of all things, and tried it every way: but we couldn’t manage it; Lord George has so much to do: there’s the Sessions tomorrow at Dunlavin, and he has promised to meet Sir Glenmalure Aubrey, about a road, or a river, or a bridge I forget which it is; and they must attend to those things, you know, or the tenants couldn’t get their corn to market. But you don’t know how sorry we are, and such a charming set you have got here!’
‘Well, I know it’s no use pressing you; but I can’t tell you how vexed I am, for I counted on you, above all, and Adolphus will be so sorry. You know Lord Kilcullen’s come home, Lady George?’
‘Yes; I was very glad to hear we were to meet him.’
‘Oh, yes! He’s come to stay here some time, I believe; he’s got quite fond of Grey Abbey lately.
He and his father get on so well together, it’s quite a delight to me.’
‘Oh, it must be, I’m sure,’ said Lady George; and the countess sidled off to the bishop’s fat wife.
‘Well, this is very kind of you and the bishop, to come at so short a notice: indeed I hardly dared expect it. I know he has so much to do in Dublin with those horrid boards and things.’
‘He is busy there, to be sure, Lady Cashel; but he couldn’t deny himself the pleasure of coming to Grey Abbey; he thinks so very much of the earl. Indeed, he’d contrive to be able to come here, when he couldn’t think of going anywhere else.’
‘I’m sure Lord Cashel feels how kind he is; and so do I, and so does Adolphus. Lord Kilcullen will be delighted to meet you and the bishop.’
The bishop’s wife assured the countess that nothing on earth, at the present moment, would give the bishop so much pleasure as meeting Lord Kilcullen.
‘You know the bishop christened him, don’t you?’ said Lady Cashel.
‘No! did he though?’ said the bishop’s wife; ‘how very interesting!’
‘Isn’t it? And Adolphus longs to meet him. He’s so fond of everything that’s high-minded and talented, Adolphus is: a little sarcastic perhaps I don’t mind saying so to you; but that’s only to inferior sort of people not talented, you know: some people are stupid, and Adolphus can’t bear that.’
‘Indeed they are, my lady. I was dining last week at Mrs. Prijean’s, in Merrion Square; you know Mrs. Prijean?’
‘I think I met her at Carton, four years ago.’
‘Well, she is very heavy: what do you think, Lady Cashel, she ’ ‘Adolphus can’t bear people of that sort, but he’ll be delighted with the bishop: it’s so delightful, his having christened him. Adolphus means to live a good deal here now. Indeed, he and his father have so much in common that they can’t get on very well apart, and I really hope he and the bishop’ll see a good deal of each other;’ and the countess left the bishop’s wife and sat herself down by old Mrs. Ellison.
‘My dear Mrs. Ellison, I am so delighted to see you once again at Grey Abbey; it’s such ages since you were here!’
‘Indeed it is, Lady Cashel, a very long time; but the poor colonel suffers so much, it’s rarely he’s fit to be moved; and, indeed, I’m not much better myself. I was not able to move my left shoulder from a week before Christmas-day till a few days since!’
‘You don’t say so! Rheumatism, I suppose?’
‘Oh, yes all rheumatism: no one knows what I suffer.’
‘And what do you use for it?’
‘Oh, there’s nothing any use. I know the very nature of rheumatism now, I’ve had it so long and it minds nothing at all: there’s no preventing it, and no curing it. It’s like a bad husband, Lady Cashel; the best way is to put up with it.’
‘And how is the dear colonel, Mrs. Ellison?’
‘Why, he was just able to come here, and that was all; but he was dying to see Lord Cashel. He thinks the ministers’ll be shaken about this business of O’Connell’s; and if so, that there’ll be a general election, and then what’ll they do about the county?’
‘I’m sure Lord Cashel wanted to see the colonel on that very subject; so does Adolphus Lord Kilcullen, you know. I never meddle with those things; but I really think Adolphus is thinking of going into Parliament. You know he’s living here at present: his father’s views and his own are so exactly the same on all those sort of things, that it’s quite delightful. He’s taking a deal of interest about the county lately, is Adolphus, and about Grey Abbey too: he’s just the same his father used to be, and that kind of thing is so pleasant, isn’t it, Mrs Ellison?’
Mrs Ellison said it was, and at the same moment groaned, for her shoulder gave her a twinge.
The subject of these eulogiums, in the meantime, did not make his appearance till immediately before dinner was announced, and certainly did not evince very strongly the delight which his mother had assured her friends he would feel at meeting them, for he paid but very little attention to any one but Mat Tierney and his cousin Fanny; he shook hands with all the old gentlemen, bowed to all the old ladies, and nodded at the young ones. But if he really felt that strong desire, which his mother had imputed to him, of opening his heart to the bishop and the colonel respecting things temporal and spiritual, he certainly very successfully suppressed his anxiety.
He had, during the last two or three days, applied himself to the task of ingratiating himself with Fanny. He well knew how to suit himself to different characters, and to make himself agreeable when he pleased; and Fanny, though she had never much admired her dissipated cousin, certainly found his conversation a relief after the usual oppressive tedium of Grey Abbey society.
He had not begun by making love to her, or expressing admiration, or by doing or saying anything which could at all lead her to suspect his purpose, or put her on her guard. He had certainly been much more attentive to her, much more intimate with her, than he usually had been in his flying visits to Grey Abbey; but then he was now making his first appearance as a reformed rake; and besides, he was her first cousin, and she therefore felt no inclination to repel his advances.
He was obliged, in performance of a domestic duty, to walk out to dinner with one of Lady George’s daughters, but he contrived to sit next to Fanny and, much to his father’s satisfaction, talked to her during the whole ceremony.
‘And where have you hidden yourself all the morning, Fanny,’ said he, ‘that nobody has seen anything of you since breakfast?’
‘Whither have you taken yourself all the day, rather, that you had not a moment to come and look after us? The Miss O’Joscelyns have been expecting you to ride with them, walk with them, talk with them, and play la grace with them. They didn’t give up the sticks till it was quite dark, in the hope of you and Mr Tierney making your appearance.’
‘Well, Fanny, don’t tell my mother, and I’ll tell you the truth: promise now.’
‘Oh, I’m no tell-tale.’
‘Well then,’ and he whispered into her ear ‘I was running away from the Miss O’Joscelyns.’ ‘But that won’t do at all; don’t you know they were asked here for your especial edification and amusement?’
‘Oh, I know they were. So were the bishop, and the colonel, and Lord George, and their respective wives, and Mr Hill. My dear mamma asked them all here for my amusement; but, you know, one man may lead a horse to water a hundred can’t make him drink. I cannot, cannot drink of the Miss O’Joscelyns, and the Bishop of Maryborough.’
‘For shame, Adolphus! you ought at any rate to do something to amuse them.’
‘Amuse them! My dear Fanny, who ever heard of amusing a bishop? But it’s very easy to find fault; what have you done, yourself, for their amusement?’
‘I didn’t run away from them; though, had I done so, there would have been more excuse for me than for you.’
‘So there would, Fanny,’ said Kilcullen, feeling that she had alluded to her brother’s death; ‘and I’m very, very sorry all these people are here to bore you at such a time, and doubly sorry that they should have been asked on my account. They mistake me greatly, here. They know that I’ve thought Grey Abbey dull, and have avoided it; and now that I’ve determined to get over the feeling, because I think it right to do so, they make it ten times more unbearable than ever, for my gratification! It’s like giving a child physic mixed in sugar; the sugar’s sure to be the nastiest part of the dose. Indeed I have no dislike to Grey Abbey at present; though I own I have no taste for the sugar in which my kind mother has tried to conceal its proper flavour.’
‘Well, make the best of it; they’ll all be gone in ten days.’
‘Ten days! Are they to stay ten days? Will you tell me, Fanny, what was the object in asking Mat Tierney to meet such a party?’
‘To help you to amuse the young ladies.’
‘Gracious heavens! Does Lady Cashel really expect Mat Tierney to play la grace with the Miss O’Joscelyns? Well, the time will come to an end, I suppose. But in truth I’m more sorry for you than for any one. It was very ill-judged, their getting such a crowd to bore you at such a time,’ and Lord Kilcullen contrived to give his voice a tone of tender solicitude.
‘Kilcullen,’ said the earl, across the table, ‘you don’t hear the bishop. His lordship is asking you to drink wine with him.’
‘I shall be most proud of the honour,’ said the son, and bobbed his head at the bishop across the table.
Fanny was on the point of saying something respecting her brother to Lord Kilcullen, which would have created a kind of confidence between them, but the bishop’s glass of wine broke it off, and from that time Lord Kilcullen was forced by his father into a general conversation with his guests.
In the evening there was music and singing. The Miss O’Joscelyns, and Miss Fitzgeralds, and Mr Hill, performed: even Mat Tierney condescended to amuse the company by singing the ‘Coronation’, first begging the bishop to excuse the peculiar allusions to the ‘clargy’, contained in one of the verses; and then Fanny was asked to sing. She had again become silent, dull, and unhappy, was brooding over her miseries and disappointments, and she declined. Lord Kilcullen was behind her chair, and when they pressed her, he whispered to her, ‘Don’t sing for them, Fanny; it’s a shame that they should tease you at such a time; I wonder how my mother can have been so thoughtless.’
Fanny persisted in declining to sing and Lord Kilcullen again sat down beside her. ‘Don’t trouble yourself about them, Fanny,’ said he, ‘they’re just fit to sing to each other; it’s very good work for them.’
‘I should think it very good work, as you call it, for myself, too, another time; only I’m hardly in singing humour at present, and, therefore, obliged to you for your assistance and protection.’
‘Your most devoted knight as long as this fearful invasion lasts! your Amadis de Gaul your Bertrand du Guesclin! And no paladin of old ever attempted to defend a damsel from more formidable foes.’
‘Indeed, Adolphus, I don’t think them so formidable. Many of them are my own friends.’
‘Is Mrs Ellison your own friend? or Mrs Moore?’
‘Not exactly those two, in particular.’
‘Who then? Is it Miss Judith O’Joscelyn? or is the Reverend Mr Hill one of those to whom you give that sweetest of all names?’
‘Yes; to both of them. It was only this morning I had a long t?te-…-t?te
‘What, with Mr Hill?’
‘No, not with Mr Hill though it wouldn’t be the first even with him, but with Judith O’Joscelyn. I lent her a pattern for worsted work.’
‘And does that make her your friend? Do you give your friendship so easily?’
‘You forget that I’ve known her for years.’
‘Well, now, I’ve not. I’ve seen her about three times in my life, and spoken two words to her perhaps twice; and yet I’ll describe her character to you; and if you can say that the description is incorrect, I will permit you to call her your friend.’
‘Well, let’s hear the character.’
‘It wouldn’t be kind in me, though, to laugh at your friend.’
‘Oh, she’s not so especially and particularly my friend that you need mind that.’ ‘Then you’ll promise not to be angry?’
‘Oh no, I won’t be angry.’
‘Well, then; she has two passions: they are for worsted and hymn-books. She has a moral objection to waltzing. Theoretically she disapproves of flirtations: she encourages correspondence between young ladies; always crosses her letters, and never finished one for the last ten years without expressing entire resignation to the will of God as if she couldn’t be resigned without so often saying so. She speaks to her confidential friends of young men as a very worthless, insignificant race of beings; she is, however, prepared to take the very first that may be unfortunate enough to come in her way; she has no ideas of her own, but is quick enough at borrowing those of other people; she considers herself a profound theologian; dotes on a converted papist, and looks on a Puseyite as something one shade blacker than the devil. Now isn’t that sufficiently like for a portrait?’
‘It’s the portrait of a set, I fear, rather than an individual. I don’t know that it’s particularly like Miss O’Joscelyn, except as to the worsted and hymn-books.’
‘What, not as to the waltzing, resignation, and worthless young men? Come, are they not exactly her traits? Does she waltz?’
‘No, she does not.’
‘And haven’t you heard her express a moral objection to it?’
‘Well, I believe I have.’
‘Did you ever get a letter from her, or see a letter of hers?’
‘I don’t remember; yes, I did once, a long time ago.’
‘And wasn’t she very resigned in it?’
‘Well, I declare I believe she was; and it’s very proper too; people ought to be resigned.’
‘Oh, of course. And now doesn’t she love a convert and hate a Puseyite?’
‘All Irish clergyman’s daughters do that.’
‘Well, Fanny, you can’t say but that it was a good portrait; and after that, will you pretend to say you call Miss O’Joscelyn your friend?’
‘Not my very friend of friends; but, as friends go, she’s as good as most others.’
‘And who is the friend of friends, Fanny?’
‘Come, you’re not my father confessor. I’m not to tell you all. If I told you that, you’d make another portrait.’
‘I’m sure I couldn’t draw a disparaging picture of anybody you would really call your friend. But indeed I pity you, living among so many such people. There can be nobody here who understands you.’
‘Oh, I’m not very unintelligible.’
‘Much more so than Miss O’Joscelyn. I shouldn’t wish to have to draw your portrait.’
‘Pray don’t; if it were frightful I should think you uncivil; and if you made it handsome, I should know you were flattering. Besides, you don’t know enough of me to tell me my character.’
‘I think I do; but I’ll study it a little more before I put it on the canvass. Some likenesses are very hard to catch.’
Fanny felt, when she went to bed, that she had spent a pleasanter evening than she usually did, and that it was a much less nuisance to talk to her cousin Adolphus than to either his father, mother, or sister; and as she sat before her fire, while her maid was brushing her hair, she began to think that she had mistaken his character, and that he couldn’t be the hard, sensual, selfish man for which she had taken him. Her ideas naturally fell back to Frank and her hove, her difficulties and sorrows; and, before she went to sleep, she had almost taught herself to think that she might make Lord Kilcullen the means of bringing Lord Ballindine back to Grey Abbey.
She had, to be sure, been told that her cousin had spoken ill of Frank; that it was he who had been foremost in decrying Lord Ballindine’s folly and extravagance; but she had never heard him do so; she had only heard of it through Lord Cashel; and she quite ceased to believe anything her guardian might say respecting her discarded lover. At any rate she would try. Some step she was determined to take about Lord Ballindine; and, if her cousin refused to act like a cousin and a friend, she would only be exactly where she was before.
The next three days passed slowly and tediously for most of the guests assembled at Grey Abbey.
Captain Cokely, and a Mr Battersby, came over from Newbridge barracks, but they did not add much to the general enjoyment of the party, though their arrival was hailed with delight by some of the young ladies. At any rate they made the rooms look less forlorn in the evenings, and made it worth the girls’ while to put on their best bibs and tuckers.
‘But what’s the use of it at all?’ said Matilda Fitzgerald to little Letty O’Joscelyn, when she had spent three-quarters of an hour in adjusting her curls, and setting her flounces properly, on the evening before the arrival of the two cavalry officers; ‘not a soul to look at us but a crusty old colonel, a musty old bishop, and a fusty old beau!’
‘Who’s the old beau?’ said Letty.
‘Why, that Mr Tierney. I can’t conceive how Lady Cashel can have asked us to meet such a set,’ and Matilda descended, pouting, and out of humour.
But on the next day she went through her work much more willingly, if not more carefully.
‘That Captain Cokely’s a very nice fellow,’ said Matilda; ‘the best of that Newbridge set, out and out.’
‘Well now, I really think he’s not so nice as Mr Battersby,’ said Letty. ‘I’m sure he’s not so good-looking.’
‘Oh, Battersby’s only a boy. After all, Letty, I don’t know whether I like officers so much better than other men,’ and she twisted her neck round to get a look at her back in the pier-glass, and gave her dress a little pull just above her bustle.
‘I’m sure I do,’ said Letty; ‘they’ve so much more to say for themselves, and they’re so much smarter.’
‘Why, yes, they are smarter,’ said Matilda; ‘and there’s nothing on earth so dowdy as an old black coat, But, then, officers are always going away: you no sooner get to know one or two of a set, and to feel that one of them is really a darling fellow, but there, they are off to Jamaica, China, Hounslow barracks, or somewhere; and then it’s all to do over again.’
‘Well, I do wish they wouldn’t move them about quite so much.’
‘But let’s go down. I think I’ll do now, won’t I?’ and they descended, to begin the evening campaign.
‘Wasn’t Miss Wyndham engaged to some one?’ said old Mrs Ellison to Mrs Moore. ‘I’m sure some one told me so.’
‘Oh, yes, she was,’ said Mrs Moore; ‘the affair was settled, and everything arranged; but the man was very poor, and a gambler Lord Ballindine: he has the name of a property down in Mayo somewhere; but when she got all her brother’s money, Lord Cashel thought it a pity to sacrifice it so he got her out of the scrape. A very good thing for the poor girl, for they say he’s a desperate scamp.’
‘Well, I declare I think,’ said Mrs Ellison, ‘she’ll not have far to look for another.’
‘What, you think there’s something between her and Lord Kilcullen?’ said Mrs Moore.
‘It looks like it, at any rate, don’t it?’ said Mrs Ellison.
‘Well, I really think it does,’ said Mrs Moore; ‘I’m sure I’d be very glad of it. I know he wants money desperately, and it would be such a capital thing for the earl.’
‘At any rate, the lady does not look a bit unwilling,’ said Mrs Ellison. ‘I suppose she’s fond of rakish young men. You say Lord Ballindine was of that set; and I’m sure Lord Kilcullen’s the same he has the reputation, at any rate. They say he and his father never speak, except just in public, to avoid the show of the thing.’
And the two old ladies set to work to a good dish of scandal.
‘Miss Wyndham’s an exceedingly fine girl,’ said Captain Cokely to Mat Tierney, as they were playing a game of piquet in the little drawing-room.
‘Yes,’ said Mat; ‘and she’s a hundred thousand exceedingly fine charms too, independently of her fine face.’
‘So I hear,’ said Cokely; ‘but I only believe half of what I hear about those things.’
‘She has more than that; I know it.’
‘Has she though? Faith, do you know I think Kilcullen has a mind to keep it in the family. H’s very soft on her, and she’s just as sweet to him. I shouldn’t be surprised if he were to marry now, and turn steady.’
‘Not at all; there are two reasons against it. In the first place, he’s too much clipped for even Fanny’s fortune to be any good to him; and secondly, she’s engaged.’
‘What, to Ballindine?’ said Cokely.
‘Exactly so,’ said Mat. ‘Ah, my dear fellow, that’s all off long since. I heard Kilcullen say so myself. I’ll back Kilcullen to marry her against Ballindine for a hundred pounds.’
‘Done,’ said Mat; and the bet was booked.
The same evening, Tierney wrote to Dot Blake, and said in a postscript, ‘I know you care for Ballindine; so do I, but I don’t write to him. If he really wants to secure his turtle-dove, he should see that she doesn’t get bagged in his absence. Kilcullen is here, and I tell you he’s a keen sportsman. They say it’s quite up with him in London, and I should be sorry she were sacrificed: she seems a nice girl.’
Lord Kilcullen had ample opportunities of forwarding his intimacy with Fanny, and he did not neglect them. To give him his due, he played his cards as well as his father could wish him. He first of all overcame the dislike with which she was prepared to regard him; he then interested her about himself; and, before he had been a week at Grey Abbey, she felt that she had a sort of cousinly affection for him. He got her to talk with a degree of interest about himself; and when he could do that, there was no wonder that Tierney should have fears for his friend’s interests. Not that there was any real occasion for them. Fanny Wyndham was not the girl to be talked out of, or into, a real passion, by anyone.
‘Now, tell me the truth, Fanny,’ said Kilcullen, as they were sitting over the fire together in the library, one dark afternoon, before they went to dress for dinner; ‘hadn’t you been taught to look on me as a kind of ogre a monster of iniquity, who spoke nothing but oaths, and did nothing but sin?’
‘Not exactly that: but I won’t say I thought you were exactly just what you ought to be.’
‘But didn’t you think I was exactly what I ought not to have been? Didn’t you imagine, now, that I habitually sat up all night, gambling, and drinking buckets of champagne and brandy-and-water? And that I lay in bed all day, devising iniquity in my dreams? Come now, tell the truth, and shame the devil; if I am the devil, I know people have made me out to be.’
‘Why, really, Adolphus, I never calculated how your days and nights were spent. But if I am to tell the truth, I fear some of them might have been passed to better advantage.’
‘Which of us, Fanny, mightn’t, with truth, say the same of ourselves?’
‘Of course, none of us,’ said Fanny; ‘don’t think I’m judging you; you asked me the question and I suppose you wanted an answer.’
‘I did; I wanted a true one for though you may never have given yourself much trouble to form an opinion about me, I am anxious that you should do so now. I don’t want to trouble you with what is done and past; I don’t want to make it appear that I have not been thoughtless and imprudent wicked and iniquitous, if you are fond of strong terms; neither do I want to trouble you with confessing all my improprieties, that I may regularly receive absolution. But I do wish you to believe that I have done nothing which should exclude me from your future good opinion; from your friendship and esteem.’
‘I am not of an unforgiving temperament, even had you done anything for me to forgive: but I am not aware that you have.’
‘No; nothing for you to forgive, in the light of an offence to yourself; but much, perhaps, to prevent your being willing to regard me as a personal friend, We’re not only first cousins, Fanny, but are placed more closely together than cousins usually are. You have neither father nor mother; now, also, you have no brother,’ and he took her hands in his own as he said so. ‘Who should be a brother to you, if I am not? who, at any rate, should you look on as a friend, if not on me? Nobody could be better, I believe, than Selina; but she is stiff, and cold unlike you in everything. I should be so happy if I could be the friend the friend of friends you spoke of the other evening; if I could fill the place which must be empty near your heart. I can never be this to you, if you believe that anything in my past life has been really disgraceful. It is for this reason that I want to know what you truly think of me. I won’t deny that I am anxious you should think well of me: well, at any rate for the present, and the future, and charitably as regards the past.’
Fanny had been taken much by surprise by the turn her cousin had given to the conversation; and was so much affected, that, before he had finished, she was in tears. She had taken her hand out of his, to put her handkerchief to her eyes, and as she did not immediately answer, he continued:
‘I shall probably be much here for some time to come such, at least, are my present plans; and I hope that while I am, we shall become friends: not such friends, Fanny, as you and Judith O’Joscelyn friends only of circumstance, who have neither tastes, habits, or feelings in common friends whose friendship consists in living in the same parish, and meeting each other once or twice a week; but friends in reality friends in confidence friends in mutual dependence friends in love friends, dear Fanny, as cousins situated as we are should be to each other.’
Fanny’s heart was very full, for she felt how much, how desperately, she wanted such a friend as Kilcullen described. How delightful it would be to have such a friend, and to find him in her own cousin! The whole family, hitherto, were so cold to her so uncongenial. The earl she absolutely disliked; she loved her aunt, but it was only because she was her aunt she couldn’t like her; and though she loved Lady Selina, and, to a degree, admired her, it was like loving a marble figure. There was more true feeling in what Kilcullen had now said to her, than in. all that had fallen from the whole family, for the four years she had lived at Grey Abbey, and she could not therefore but close on the offer of his affection.
‘Shall we be such friends, then?’ said he; ‘or, after all, am I too bad? Have I too much of the taint of the wicked world to be the friend of so pure a creature as you?’
‘Oh no, Adolphus; I’m sure I never thought so,’ said she. ‘I never judged you, and indeed I am not disposed to do so now. I’m too much in want of kindness to reject yours even were I disposed to do so, which I am not.’
‘Then, Fanny, we are to be friends true, loving, trusting friends?’
‘Oh, yes!’ said Fanny. ‘I am really, truly grateful for your affection and kindness. I know how precious they are, and I will value them accordingly.’
Again Lord Kilcullen took her hand, and pressed it in his; and then he kissed it, and told her she was his own dear cousin Fanny; and then recommended her to go and dress, which she did. He sat himself down for a quarter of an hour, ruminating, and then also went off to dress; but, during that quarter of an hour, very different ideas passed through his mind, than such as those who knew him best would have given him credit for.
In the first place, he thought that he really began to feel an affection for his cousin Fanny, and to speculate whether it were absolutely within the verge of possibility that he should marry her retrieve his circumstances treat her well, and live happily for the rest of his life as a respectable nobleman.
For two or three minutes the illusion remained, till it was banished by retrospection. It was certainly possible that he should marry her: it was his full intention to do so: but as to retrieving his circumstances and treating her well! the first was absolutely impossible the other nearly so; and as to his living happily at Grey Abbey as a family man, he yawned as he felt how impossible it would be that he should spend a month in such a way, let alone a life. But then Fanny Wyndham was so beautiful, so lively, so affectionate, so exactly what a cousin and a wife ought to be: he could not bear to think that all his protestations of friendship and love had been hypocritical; that he could only look upon her as a gudgeon, and himself as a bigger fish, determined to swallow her! Yet such must be his views regarding her. He departed to dress, absolutely troubled in his conscience.
And what were Fanny’s thoughts about her cousin? She was much surprised and gratified, but at the same time somewhat flustered and overwhelmed, by the warmth and novelty of his affection. However, she never for a moment doubted his truth towards her, or had the slightest suspicion of his real object.
Her chief thought was whether she could induce him to be a mediator for her, between Lord Cashel and Lord Ballindine.
During the next two days he spoke to her a good deal about her brother of whom, by-the-bye, he had really known nothing. He contrived, however, to praise him as a young man of much spirit and great promise; then he spoke of her own large fortune, asked her what her wishes were about its investment, and told her how happy he would be to express those wishes at once to Lord Cashel, and to see that they were carried out. Once or twice she had gradually attempted to lead the conversation to Lord Ballindine, but Kilcullen was too crafty, and had prevented her; and she had not yet sufficient courage to tell him at once what was so near her heart.
‘Fanny,’ said Lady Selina, one morning, about a week after the general arrival of the company at Grey Abbey, and when some of them had taken their departure, ‘I am very glad to see you have recovered your spirits: I know you have made a great effort, and I appreciate and admire it.’
‘Indeed, Selina, I fear you are admiring me too soon. I own I have been amused this week past, and, to a certain degree, pleased; but I fear you’ll find I shall relapse. There’s been no radical reform; my thoughts are all in the same direction as they were.’
‘But the great trial in this world is to behave well and becomingly in spite of oppressive thoughts: and it always takes a struggle to do that, and that struggle you’ve made. I hope it may lead you to feel that you may be contented and in comfort without having everything which you think necessary to your happiness. I’m sure I looked forward to this week as one of unmixed trouble and torment; but I was very wrong to do so. It has given me a great deal of unmixed satisfaction.’
‘I’m very glad of that, Selina, but what was it? I’m sure it could not have come from poor Mrs Ellison, or the bishop’s wife; and you seemed to me to spend all your time in talking to them. Virtue, they say, is its own reward: I don’t know what other satisfaction you can have had from them.’
‘In the first place, it has given me great pleasure to see that you were able to exert yourself in company, and that the crowd of people did not annoy you: but I have chiefly been delighted by seeing that you and Adolphus are such good friends. You must think, Fanny, that I am anxious about an only brother especially when we have all had so much cause to be anxious about him; and don’t you think it must be a delight to me to find that he is able to take pleasure in your society? I should be doubly pleased, doubly delighted, if I could please him myself. But I have not the vivacity to amuse him.’
‘What nonsense, Selina! Don’t say that.’
‘But it’s true, Fanny; I have not; and Grey Abbey has become distasteful to him because we are all sedate, steady people. Perhaps some would call us dull, and heavy; and I have grieved that it should be so, though I cannot alter my nature; but you are so much the contrary there is so much in your character like his own, before he became fond of the world, that I feel he can become attached to and fond of you; and I am delighted to see that he thinks so himself. What do you think of him, now that you have seen more of him than you ever did before?’
‘Indeed,’ said Fanny, ‘I like him very much.’
‘He is very clever, isn’t he? He might have been anything if he had given himself fair play. He seems to have taken greatly to you.’
‘Oh yes; we are great friends:’ and then Fanny paused ‘— so great friends,’ she continued, looking somewhat gravely in Lady Selina’s face, ‘that I mean to ask the greatest favour of him that I could ask of anyone: one I am sure I little dreamed I should ever ask of him.’
‘What is it, Fanny? Is it a secret?’
‘Indeed it is, Selina; but it’s a secret I will tell you. I mean to tell him all I feel about Lord Ballindine, and I mean to ask him to see him for me. Adolphus has offered to be a brother to me, and I mean to take him at his word.’
Lady Selina turned very pale, and looked very grave as she replied,
‘That is not giving him a brother’s work, Fanny. A brother should protect you from importunity and insult, from injury and wrong; and that, I am sure, Adolphus would do: but no brother would consent to offer your hand to a man who had neglected you and been refused, and who, in all probability, would now reject you with scorn if he has the opportunity or if not that, will take you for your money’s sake. That, Fanny, is not a brother’s work; and it is an embassy which I am sure Adolphus will not undertake. If you take my advice you will not ask him.’
As Lady Selina finished speaking she walked to the door, as if determined to hear no reply from her cousin; but, as she was leaving the room, she fancied that she heard her sobbing, and her heart softened, and she again turned towards her and said, ‘God knows, Fanny, I do not wish to be severe or ill-natured to you; I would do anything for your comfort and happiness, but I cannot bear to think that you should’ Lady Selina was puzzled for a word to express her meaning ‘that you should forget yourself,’ and she attempted to put her arm round Fanny’s waist.
But she was mistaken; Fanny was not sobbing, but was angry; and what Selina now said about her forgetting herself, did not make her less so.
‘No,’ she said, withdrawing herself from her cousin’s embrace and standing erect, while her bosom was swelling with indignation: ‘I want no affection from you, Selina, that is accompanied by so much disapprobation. You don’t wish to be severe, only you say that I am likely to forget myself. Forget myself!’ and Fanny threw back her beautiful head, and clenched her little fists by her side: ‘The other day you said “disgrace myself “, and I bore it calmly then; but I will not any longer bear such imputations. I tell you plainly, Selina, I will not forget myself, nor will I be forgotten. Nor will I submit to whatever fate cold, unfeeling people may doom me, merely because I am a woman and alone. I will not give up Lord Ballindine, if I have to walk to his door and tell him so. And were I to do so, I should never think that I had forgotten myself.’
‘Listen to me, Fanny,’ said Selina.
‘Wait a moment,’ continued Fanny, ‘I have listened enough: it is my turn to speak now. For one thing I have to thank you: you have dispelled the idea that I could look for help to anyone in this family. I will not ask your brother to do anything for me which you think so disgraceful. I will not subject him to the scorn with which you choose to think my love will be treated by him who loved me so well. That you should dare to tell me that he who did so much for my love should now scorn it! Oh, Selina, that I may live to forget that you said those words!’ and Fanny, for a moment, put her handkerchief to her eyes but it was but for a moment.
‘However,’ she continued, ‘I will now act for myself. As you think I might forget myself, I tell you I will do it in no clandestine way. I will write to Lord Ballindine, and I will show my letter to my uncle. The whole house shall read it if they please. I will tell Lord Ballindine all the truth and if Lord Cashel turns me from his house, I shall probably find some friend to receive me, who may still believe that I have not forgotten myself.’ And Fanny Wyndham sailed out of the room.
Lady Selina, when she saw that she was gone, sat down on the sofa and took her book. She tried to make herself believe that she was going to read; but it was no use: the tears dimmed her eyes, and she put the book down.
The same evening the countess sent for Selina into her boudoir, and, with a fidgety mixture of delight and surprise, told her that she had a wonderful piece of good news to communicate to her.
‘I declare, my dear,’ she said, ‘it’s the most delightful thing I’ve heard for years and years; and it’s just exactly what I had planned myself, only I never told anybody. Dear me; it makes me so happy!’
‘What is it, mamma?
‘Your papa has been talking to me since dinner, my love, and he tells me Adolphus is going to marry Fanny Wyndham.’
‘Going to marry whom?’ said Lady Selina, almost with a shout.
‘Fanny, I say: it’s the most delightful match in the world: it’s just what ought to be done. I suppose they won’t have the wedding before summer; though May is a very nice month. Let me see; it only wants three weeks to May.’
‘Mamma, what are you talking about? you’re dreaming.’
‘Dreaming, my dear? I’m not dreaming at all: it’s a fact. Who’d ‘ve thought of all this happening so soon, out of this party, which gave us so much trouble! However, I knew your father was right. I said all along that he was in the right to ask the, people.’
‘Mamma,’ said Lady Selina, gravely, ‘listen to me: calmly now, and attentively. I don’t know what papa has told you; but I tell you Fanny does not dream of marrying Adolphus. He has never asked her, and if he did she would never accept him. Fanny is more than ever in love with Lord Ballindine.’
The countess opened her eyes wide, and looked up into her daughter’s face, but said nothing.
‘Tell me, mamma, as nearly as you can recollect, what it is papa has said to you, that, if possible, we may prevent mischief and misery. Papa couldn’t have said that Fanny had accepted Adolphus?’
‘He didn’t say exactly that, my dear; but he said that it was his wish they should be married; that Adolphus was very eager for it, and that Fanny had received his attentions and admiration with evident pleasure and satisfaction. And so she has, my dear; you couldn’t but have seen that yourself.’
‘Well, mamma, what else did papa say?’
‘Why, he said just what I’m telling you: that I wasn’t to be surprised if we were called on to be ready for the wedding at a short notice; or at any rate to be ready to congratulate Fanny. He certainly didn’t say she had accepted him. But he said he had no doubt about it; and I’m sure, from what was going on last week, I couldn’t have any doubt either. But he told me not to speak to anyone about it yet; particularly not to Fanny; only, my dear, I couldn’t help, you know, talking it over with you;’ and the countess leaned back in her chair, very much exhausted with the history she had narrated.
‘Now, mamma, listen to me. It is not many hours since Fanny told me she was unalterably determined to throw herself at Lord Ballindine’s feet.’
‘Goodness gracious me, how shocking!’ said the countess.
‘She even said that she would ask Adolphus to be the means of bringing Lord Ballindine back to Grey Abbey.’
‘Lord have mercy!’ said the countess.
‘I only tell you this, mamma, to show you how impossible it is that papa should be right.’
‘What are we to do, my dear? Oh, dear, there’ll be such a piece of work! What a nasty thing Fanny is. I’m sure she’s been making love to Adolphus all the week!’
‘No, mamma, she has not. Don’t be unfair to Fanny. If there is anyone in fault it is Adolphus; but, as you say, what shall we do to prevent further misunderstanding? I think I had better tell papa the whole.’
And so she did, on the following morning. But she was too late; she did not do it till after Lord Kilcullen had offered and had been refused.