" GO ! ANYWHERE OUT OF MY SIGHT 1 ' A Girl of Galway BY KATHARINE TYNAN Author of " The Handsome Brandons" "Three Fair Maids" &c. WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS Bf JOHN H. BACON LONDON GLASGOW AND DUBLIN 1902 URL CONTENTS CHAP. Page I. MOTHER AND DAUGHTER 9 II. PARTING 20 III. NEW FRIENDS 32 IV. A STRANGE COUNTRY 41 V. THE CRADLE OF HIS RACE 51 VI. COROFIN OF THE TREES 61 VII. MORNING 70 VIII. BITTERNESS 80 IX. DANGER 89 X. THE WOODS OF COROFIN 100 XI. A NEW PURCHASE 121 XII. A DREAM AT DAYBREAK 132 XIII. BETTER ACQUAINTANCES 141 XIV. THE DISGRACE OF THE GRACES 152 XV. HER OWN PEOPLE 163 XVI. BERTHA FINDS A WAY 172 XVII. OLD WOUNDS 183 XVIII. A SOUND IN THE NIGHT 193 XIX. AUNT MARCELLA 202 XX. BAWN ROSE 213 XXI. OUT OF THE PAST 223 5 VI CONTENTS. CHAP. Page XXII. OLDER HEADS 235 XXIII. THE DAUGHTER OP POVERTY 242 XXIV. FOLK AT THE RECTORY 253 XXV. DAYDREAMS 262 XXVI. THE CRICKET MATCH 273 XXVII. A WALK IN THE WOODS 285 XXVIII. THE BETTER MAN 297 XXIX. THE REAL BULQER 307 XXX. TURNED OUT 318 XXXI. THE EARTHLY PAKADISE 328 XXXII. THE BETRAYAL OP THE WOODS 337 XXXIII. THE GREAT STORM . 347 XXXIV. FROM THE DEAD 357 XXXV. OUT OF THE PAST 369 L'ENVOI , .379 ILLUSTRATIONS Page "Go! ANYWHERE OUT OF MY SIGHT". . Frontis. 320 "BERTHA LEANT TO HER AND KISSED HER" 17 "SHE FELT THE EARTH BENEATH SLOWLY BUCKING HER IN" . 94 "COAL AND GOLD, MlSS, COAL AND GOLD" 126 "So THIS is BERTHA?" 202 "SHE PLAYED ON DREAMILY" 228 "SHE HAS COME TO BE FORGIVEN" ... 307 " BERTHA STOOD SILENT BETWEEN FATHER AND SON " . . . . 360 7 A GIEL OF GAL WAY CHAPTER I. MOTHEK AND DAUGHTER IT was four o'clock in the morning, an exquisite June morning. Only a little while ago the nightingale had dropped asleep, and already the blackbird was beginning. Inland it would be a drowsy day of cuckoos. Here by the sea there was the quiet wash of the waves on the shore and the monotonous cooing of a pair of stock-doves in a cage outside the window, scarcely less dreamy. Early as it was, two people were already up and dressed, and watching the golden first flood of sunshine on the sea from the little eastward-looking window. The cottage was built of wood, and was so near the sea's edge that one felt as though one were on shipboard overlooking the waste of waters. At the back of the cottage was a garden full of carnations and lavender, with beehives in a quiet corner. In the front only 9 10 A GIRL OF GAL WAY a tiny, grassy shelf was between the windows and the sea ; wall-flowers and stocks and such hardy things flourished bravely there where the grass met the shingle. The little house, although it was of wood, had stood many storms, and presented as brave a front to the sea now as though it were really the ship one imagined it. Far out on the water-way a great vessel went by with an easy, gliding motion, as though it remembered the burden of sleepers it carried. " There is many a sad heart on board there, Bertha," said Mrs. Grace, pressing her young daughter close to her side. " None sadder than ours, mother," answered the girl, with a sob she could not repress. " Perhaps not, little daughter ; and yet we have hope and faith." " The years will be so long, mother." " Long to look forward to ; they will be nothing to look back to when we are once more together." " I can only look forward ; and five years is an eternity." " Your father has been alone five years, Bertha." " Ah, poor papa ! And five years before that. It is time you went to him, mother." "That is like my Bertha. Yes, I think my place is with him now." " If you had not had me, you two need never have been parted." MOTHEE AND DAUGHTEK 11 " Do yon think we would have been without you, child the only one spared us of our four ? Do you think we would have been without you ? " " I suppose not. And yet you must have had a divided heart all these years." " It has been easier for me. I have had you ; now I shall have him. I wish I could have taken his burden of loneliness as I wish now I could take yours, my Bertha." " Let us go down to the garden," said the girl. " I want to be out of sight of this sea that will take you from me. Everything is ready, I think. We can have these morning hours the last of our happy time in this quiet place together." She looked round the room heaped with many packages and trunks. Everything was ready the last label affixed, the last trunk strapped. " It is not the end, after all, Bertha," said the mother, when they had seated themselves on the little bench by the beehives facing the chalk cliffs, where clumps of wild mignonette and splendid orchis hung in every cranny. " We have yet ten days, dear." " In the Euston Hotel, at the shops, with all the hurry of flight about us ! I had almost rather we parted here." She drew the fleecy shawl closer about her mother's shoulders. " Ah, no," she said, " I would not. I am a miser over those ten days. I shall grudge every hour I sleep 12 A GIRL OF GAL WAY as an hour stolen from you. "Who will take care of you when we are parted ? Will you be careful ? Will you remember never to sit on deck without your shawl, lest it grow chilly ? I shall be tortured about you among those lonely bogs, lest you should be imprudent, forgetful. You are too delicate and too precious to be travelling alone. If only we might have gone together ! " " I shall be careful, Bertha. After all, it is a postponement only. In five years we shall come home." "An eternity!'" cried the girl passionately. "Why need we have these partings ? If Sir Delvin, if my grandfather, were not unjust, obstinate " ~ "Hush!" Her mother's soft finger was on her lips. " He has been alone always," she said. " By his own choice. But for him you would not have only me. The other children would have lived. Papa need never have gone to India. You and he need never have been so poor. Why, we nearly lost him the last time he came home, because he rushed back so breathlessly lest he should lose his promotion. Child as I was, I remember your sighs, your face, when you knew he was ill. How did you stay away from him, mother ? " Mrs. Grace's face brightened through its sadness. " He had bidden me stay. You are a girl now, Bertha, quite a girl eighteen years old and wise for your age, and you will understand. He had placed me at MOTHER AND DAUGHTER 13 my post. He had bidden me stay, no matter what happened. Only for that I should hardly have had the courage." " I understand," said Bertha, leaning forward with her chin on her hand, and her intent eyes on her mother's face. " How well you have kept faith with him ! " " We had lost the others, you see, Bertha Allen and Maurice and little Elfrida. One by one they withered in the fierce heat and the dank dews. We were left with only you, and you were delicate. Then your father decreed the parting between him and me. I don't mind telling you, Bertha, that it would have been easier for me to send you home alone. I had always wondered at other women who could go home with the children to seaside places and the green country, and leave the man to endure the exile and the loneliness and the cruel, terrible climate. I never thought I should be forced to do it. But he made me go. He would not take the risk of our leaving you to strangers." Her face lit up. " I can tell him I have fulfilled my trust, that you are straight and strong and tall. I have given you every chance, Bertha. The long years after we came home, when you lived in the open air, when I would not hear of school for you or anything that would keep you indoors or tax your slowly growing strength . . . How slowly it grew at first ! Then I sent you to day-schools, and kept a home for you while your mind grew to 14 A GIRL OF GALWAY suit your body. I have put aside all my natural fears, so that you should be what your father wished you. I have made you an outdoor girl. You are strong, and delight in your strength ; and yet you have the qualities for the fireside as well. I shall be able to tell your father that I have kept faith with him." " At what cost to yourself ! " the girl said, touching the thin, flushed cheek. " It will all be forgotten presently, when in the provi- dence of God once more we are together. Now it is your turn, Bertha. ' Keep Fayth.' You will remember that it is the motto of your father's family. I look to you to reconcile father and son, to heal that old, bitter quarrel of which I was innocently the cause. You have five years to do it in." " I had rather give it all up and go with you." The mother looked at the set young face anxiously. " It is a mood that will pass, Bertha. Remember that I trust you. It is the place of women to make peace. You must forgive as you hope to be forgiven. That is our Lord's own precept, child. Poor old Sir Delvin ! You will be sorry for him, for you are my own generous girl, when you see him a lonely old man. I, who have known what it is to be bereaved, I can feel sorry for him. After all, it was very hard on him " " That papa should have married you ! Why couldn't he have seen you and judged ? He shut the door in papa's face his only son ! " MOTHEK AND DAUGHTER 15 " He had his heart fixed on a marriage for him that would have befitted his heir and bought back the lands they had lost. He had selected the wife he thought the one out of all the world for him. He loved her like a daughter. Then . . . that his boy, out of mere generosity and soft-heartedness, should have chosen a poor governess, without beauty even, without anything but love that he should have chosen a life of hard work and sorrow with her rather than the kind destiny his love had prepared for him it was very hard." " That he could cast his only son on the world without a penny almost, after bringing him up to do nothing, to be one of the golden youth ! Papa told me, when he came home the last time, when we took our long walks together. He said he was fit for nothing but a game- keeper till you helped him while he read and worked for India." " He told you that ? You never told me before, Bertha." The delicately pretty colour came again in Mrs. Grace's cheek. " It was a confidence, mother. He told me to take care of you as you were taking care of me. He said those years of hard work, privation even, while you helped him, had left their marks." " Glorious marks!" said Mrs. Grace, smiling her faint, spiritual smile. " He suifered too, but we never talked about our sufferings to each other. He read twelve hours a day, and what I could give him was so little. 16 A GIRL OF GAL WAY You know what he was when I saw him first. You remember the miniature he had painted for me before that time when he went over to break the news to his father. Perhaps he never looked quite like that again." She drew a miniature suspended by a thin gold chain from the bosom of her gown. The girl looked at it in its old-fashioned setting of beaten gold. The face in it had had indeed little acquaintance with the storms of life. A gay, boyish, smiling face, with inherent strength in the firm lips and candour in the grey eyes, like her own, that looked back at Bertha. " I am very glad you resemble him, and not me," said Mrs. Grace, as her daughter looked at the miniature. " It is most fortunate. When you are merry, Bertha, you are so like your father as he was then. You have his grey eyes, his fine black eyebrows, his fair hair. His father will not be able to resist you." " He will forgive me for not being a boy, you think ? " said the girl, as though the praise irked her. "When he knows what you can do. You cannot forgive him, Bertha, because he was disappointed when he heard we had no son living." " There is so much to forgive ! Did he think while he sat in his den and sulked all those years that the world was being made according to his liking, and that just as soon as he chose to accept it, all good would be his ? Why, even now he has not the grace to send for papa and to ask you to forgive him at last." (M83 ) ' BERTHA LEANT TO HER AND KISSED HER' MOTHER AND DAUGHTER 17 " Even if he could do that, your father would not come. During these years of loneliness you know how he has been climbing. He is very high on the ladder now. In five years he will retire, leaving a reputation behind him that will not soon be forgotten. And he will still be a young man. There are things he can ask for and have for the asking here. He will not long be content with idleness, and I think the country he has served will yet need him. Even if his father called him, I think he would hardly come home now." " He shall call him ! " said Bertha, with an air of grim determination, " when it is time, since you have set your heart upon it, and you tell me it will make papa happier. Only that you two people wished it, he should not have had me when he asked for me. I should have refused to go." " You will be patient with him ? " the mother pleaded, a tone of deep anxiety in her voice. Bertha leant to her and kissed her. " Don't be afraid," she said tenderly. " I shall ' Keep Fayth.' If I had not meant to do it, should I endure this ? " She stood up and straightened her young shoulders as though she felt a burden there. The mother drew the shawl closer about her own thin shoulders, the dew was on the flowers, and the morning fresh, and looked at her girl in love and admiration. " We might have sent him a delicate boy," she said. l( Let him see you, and he will be proud. How glad I (M835.) B 18 A GIKL OF GAL WAY am that yon can ride and swim and climb and play games thongh things were different when I was a girJ 1 " "I grudge those things now because they took me from yon," said Bertha. " How do yon suppose I shall feel it I, who have never known a night away from your side when thousands of miles are between us ? " She dashed the sndden tears from her eyes, and a smile came to her lips. " There 1 " she said. " I wonder what my father would say to me ? He would wonder at me for your daughter, you heroic mother ! I'll tell you what I shall do. When I get to those Irish wildernesses I shall make a calculation of the days that are to divide us. Five three hundred and sixty-fives it is too much for me at this moment ! But every night I shall mark a day off. How good it will be to see them going I Then there will be your letters, and my letters to you." " And your grandfather to take care of. He is an old man. Watch over him till his son and he are reconciled." Bertha made a mouth. "It will be the least pleasurable of my duties. I had rather be watching over you. But I shall do it, so far as he lets me and needs me. I am sure he is as strong as the old English oaks that have seen so many tender and beautiful things born and die since they grew old." ** You will take care of him, and, doing that, you MOTHBK AND DAUGHTEE 19 will grow fond of him/' said the mother, smiling. " I know my Bertha." " I shan't promise so much as that ; but I shall be patient, even if he tries me hard." "He may do that, Bertha. He was always hot- tempered and intemperate of speech." " Then I shall remember that you put me at my post. ' Keep Fayth,' I shall say to myself, if I am ever tempted to be impatient. Now let us go in, and I shall make you a cup of tea. It will be our last time here." She looked around her at the frowning white cliffs and the little garden, so homely and peaceful in the stillness and the dews of morning. They had come here together, mother and daughter, when Bertha was finally done with her schooldays, for a pause and a respite before Mrs. Grace should sail to India to rejoin her husband, and Bertha should turn her face westward to her unknown grandfather in his Irish wilds. Often and often would mother and daughter see the place as it looked in that hour. " My poor Bertha," said Mrs. Grace, as they went up the steep little cottage stairs after that one lingering look, " your father is waiting for me at the end of the journey. If only I might have the loneliness, and not you I " " Ah, but you can't, you see. I wonder what papa would say if he saw only Bertha, and heard that you had gone to Sir Delvin at Corofin. I know whom he has wanted most during all these years." 20 A GIRL OF GALWAY " I suppose he has wanted me indeed ! " said Mrs. Grace simply. " I am not of the women who put the children first, though you know how dear you are, Bertha. After all, the husband and wife cleave together it is God's ordinance ; but the children leave the father and mother and make other ties." " How can they ? " cried Bertha. " I shall never want anyone but you and papa ! " "Ah, we shall see we shall see," said Mrs. Grace, gmiling. "You will be twenty-three when we return, Bertha." " And you will find me the very same Bertha," said the girl, bending over the little spirit-lamp on which she was setting the tiny kettle. CHAPTER II. PARTING IT was a hot and bright June, and London was a-glare and a-glitter, softened only by the deepening foliage of the trees in the parks and squares. The West End streets through which Bertha and her mother drove on their shopping-expeditions were as gay as though there were no such things as sorrow and parting, sickness and death, in the golden world : such a blaze of scarlet and blue in the window-boxes, such fine stuffs in the big shop-windows, so many PARTING 21 women in summer gowns walking, so many others in flashing carriages with champing horses ! A world bent on enjoying itself! That is how Bertha saw London for the first time ; and, being but eighteen, there were moments when she forgot the great stone in her path, the long parting, and grew exhilarated, in tune with the world and the weather. Then, was it possible to avoid being pleased with her mother's purchases for her ? Bertha had hitherto worn the strait, demure frocks of the schoolgirl, which had indeed consorted very well with her slender, pliant figure. The girls of the High School at Lowminster had shown like young saplings walking when they came down the old-world streets, three a-breast, young vestals in their summer gowns of white, brightly be-sashed, or in their severe winter serges, excellently suited for all weathers and many games. It cost Mrs. Grace a pang when the beautifully dressed young woman in the Regent Street shop took a long, exquisitely cut travelling-cloak of fine grey cloth from her assistant's shoulders and placed it on Bertha's, with a flattering suggestion that it was not often they had clients who so well adorned their garments as the young lady. The schoolgirl frocks were put away, neatly folded in one of Bertha's many trunks. They might suit her in the new life for weather-bound hours, when she would be obliged to practise her music or her painting. The serges would do for out of doors when Bertha 22 A GIRL OF GAL WAY walked in winter. Mrs. Grace had folded them, smoothing them down with her long, thin fingers, and dropping a tear here and there amid the folds for the girl she would never see again as she saw her to-day. " Never mind," she whispered to her own brave spirit ; she might have lost her in the years when the affections take root, during tender childhood. How many women she knew had had to endure that, had had to tear themselves from clinging little hands and wet faces like rosebuds in the dew, knowing that no one could be to the child as they were, and that when they met again the child would be cold. She had often thought that death were less bitter. Now, in the elegant Bertha that Regent Street turned out for her she tried to imagine the Bertha of five years hence. After all, between eighteen and twenty-three is no such great difference, and her girl was not likely to forget her. " Mr. Grace had been generous in the draft he had sent for Bertha's outfit. He was proud, doubtless, of his girl, as her mother represented her and as he saw her in her latest photograph a bright young creature, reminding him strangely of a face he well knew, breathing the very air of youth, with her fair hair blown about her calm brows, her frank eyes, the beautiful curve of her firm young mouth. Perhaps he liked to think of her going like a young princess to the home which had been his and which he loved, despite its long inhospitality. No doubt he wanted PASTING 23 his father to realise to the full the beauty and the preciousness of the gift with which he had repaid the old love and the old injury. Anyhow, his letter to his wife had run : " Spare nothing on the child, Camilla, that is befitting her youth. Let everything be of the best. We need think of money no longer, you know. And for the rest, make what use you will for her of the stuffs I send." Mrs. Grace had smiled and shaken her head over some of those stuffs, bought in the bazaars with a man's reckless generosity. Some she had laid aside gold and silver stuffs stuffs diapered like the peacock's tail, thick, inlaid with gold stars like the purple summer heavens. " I can't see my Bertha in these," she said. " Some time, perhaps, many years hence, they might serve for a vest or panel in a teagown, if you -go into smart society." "Too fine for mortal woman," was Bertha's verdict. " Why should I rival the beetle or the dragon-fly ? We shall cover chairs with them." Other stuffs there were in which she buried her face and her hands, laving them as in perfumed water, for pure delight in their exquisite texture and their faint Eastern fragrance. There were muslins ; thin, delicate cashmeres ; silks fine enough to be drawn through a wedding-ring. With young, impulsive generosity she sorted the 24 A GIRL OF GALWAY things in two heaps, while her mother watched her with pleased eyes. She liked the girl's natural delight in the beautiful things. Bertha was as feminine as heart could desire, if in other ways she had the qualities Sir Delvin would desire in his heir. " There ! " she said, pushing the dimmer, richer heap towards her mother, " they are for you ! I shall not know what to do with what is left. Am I going to Court ? Is it my first season ? Or what shall I do with these in the midst of Connaught bogs ? " " I should not know what to do with them, Bertha. I have my outfit, and I should be crushed by all this finery. We shall put away what you do not need at present. They will be safe from moth and rust in your camphor-lined boxes." She sighed a little. Perhaps she thought of the precious human texture that was more perishable than silks and woollens, and of how sorrow and parting will fret its defences thin. Perhaps she thought of the chances of the five years. Well, it was in the hands of God, and she could trust His love both for herself and her child. Only she knew what inroads the years had made in her naturally delicate health. Still, though she parted from Bertha, she would be setting her face towards her husband. What rest it would be to be back again with Everard. No one had ever taken such care of her, though Bertha was thoughtful beyond her years. With Everard to take care of her once more, she might, in the providence of God, grow strong PARTING 25 enough to stay with them a while after they shonld be reunited. She watched Bertha with a wistful smile. The girl had flung about her some of the gorgeous native stuffs, which she carried with the natural grace of the East. She had loaded her slender neck with circlets and necklaces of topaz and turquoise set in rough gold, and strings of brilliant beads. She had drawn many bangles over her hands. There were anklets too ; and she looked down at her feet, laughing. It was too much trouble to carry the masquerade so far. " By my feet of clay you will detect me," she said, happy to have made her mother smile. She held against her cheek a fan of peacock's feather and beetle wing, bizarre beside her cloudy hair and grey eyes. " You would never pass for anything but a daughter of the West, Bertha," said Mrs. Grace. "I should like to show myself to Miss Tillotson now," the girl said, looking at the light and colour she made in the glass. Miss Tillotson was the lady principal of the High School, famous for its admirable system and results, where Bertha had spent so many happy hours. " What would she say, Bertha ? " " I wonder ! From her own manner of dress I should have thought her ideal was that women should be in- distinguishable. But if that were so we should all have been given the same face. Dear Miss Tillotson! 26 A GIRL OF GALWAY she might have said perhaps that these should be sold and the money given to the poor." "They are your father's gift to you, and it is his will that you should wear them." "And my first duty is obedience. Miss Tillotson would recognise that, for she laid so much stress on obedience, though she always wanted us to be strong and self-reliant as well. Ah, mother dearest, never was obedience so easy, though I should like to give away a few pieces, if you thought I might. There is Judith Sayle. How magnificently these ambers and scarlets would become her 1 Miss Tillotson has got her a position as secretary to the Countess of Andover. She will have to appear, of course, and she has nothing for evening-gowns." She looked entreatingly at her mother. " Surely I " the mother said, answering her gaze. "Your father has given them to you. You will have plenty for all purposes, including gifts." So Judith Sayle was made happy by the receipt of a parcel containing the most beautiful stuffs she had ever seen, yet simple enough for the countess's secretary to wear, and a slender, uncostly necklet of twisted gold. Miss Tillotson, too, had a piece of embroidered stuff to make an opera-cloak ; and by the time Bertha's giving was done, the heap of stuffs was sensibly reduced. Yet, as Bertha said, there was quite sufficient left to bequeath to her descendants after she should have worn them herself. PASTING 27 In the most beautiful shop in London certain house-gowns and garden-party-gowns and tea-gowns were bought for Bertha, and with an urbane con- descension the great people consented to make up some of Bertha's Indian stuifs in that mode of theirs, quaintly conventional and unconventional, which no more goes out of fashion and is dowdy than the garb of the ladies of Eeynolds or Romney. Five years were to be provided for perhaps longer, if God willed ; so after the frocks and the shoes, and the hats and cloaks, and all the etceteras, there were delicate lingerie and toilet things, and soaps and scents, and all manner of fragrances with which the refined woman loves to surround herself. At last Bertha protested laughingly that she was not going to the Dark Continent. " It will be as hopeless in the matter of shopping, and your grandfather is not likely to give you many Dublin seasons," her mother said. " Besides, I want to think of you as using the things I selected for you." " I might be a bride," said Bertha, with frank, unconscious gaze. The mother said nothing. Perhaps when that time came she would not be by to help and advise. Then, when the needs of the person had been provided for, there were the needs of the mind and the spirit. "You give me too much," said Bertha for the thousandth time as they went into the Oxford Street book-shop, full of dim, rich colour. 28 A GIRL OF GALWA? "The library at Corofin has not been replenished for many a year. I do not know what it may contain perhaps only Parliamentary Reports for the years during which generations of Graces represented their native county in the Irish Parliament. I must take care that you are not starved mentally for perhaps, Bertha, there may be no one there of whom you can borrow books." " I have no doubt," said Bertha, laughing, " that I shall find Shakespeare and the Bible perhaps Miss Edgeworth and Miss Burney, Mr. Steele and Mr. Addison, Richardson, and Fielding. I shall not believe that we Graces were such an unlettered race as to have no library of our own excepting Blue Books and Reports of the Irish Parliament, which are not books at all." " I will give you things, then, that you are not likely to find there," said the mother, taking up a white vellum-bound copy of the Imitation, which she placed on one side. She selected Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, Words- worth, Mrs. Browning's Sonnets, and a volume of Browning's Lyrics. Over a set of Stevenson she lingered irresolutely ; then she selected the Child's Garden, Memories and Portraits, and the Master of Ballantrae. She added Patmore's Odes, and Preludes by Mrs. Meynell. When she had finished, there was quite a respectable heap to add to the boxful of old, well-beloved books which had filled Bertha's book- shelves, increasing with her growth. PARTING 29 Next there was a visit to Parkin & Gotto's, where Mrs. Grace selected the pretty paper and envelopes, the sealing-wax, the pencils and pens and paper-cutters, and many other things needed for the sandal-wood desk which had come from India, with Bertha's initials in silver upon it. Then the last thing of all was a supply of reels, and silks, and needles, and wool, and all the necessaries of a workbox. Mrs. Grace had not brought up Bertha to despise needlework, but rather to find a pleasure in it. Bertha would hardly ever be so exquisite a worker as her mother, whose delight was a seam, and whose little stitches were beautiful to look upon. To Mrs. Grace, sewing had been an anodyne, and many a time she had lulled bodily and mental pain to rest by its aid. When the very last evening came, Bertha reproached herself because the time had slid by almost unnoticed. The unwonted bustle and movement of the days had made her healthy young body tired at nights, and she had slept sweet sleep while her mother had lain watching by the dim night-light the bright head on its pillow a picture of which she must carry in her heart through years to come. Even if she came back if God spared her to come back she would not find the same Bertha. She was a fanciful woman, and she had felt the changes in her child from day to day and year to year like a dying. The little one whose golden head she laid on its pillow to-night was gone 30 A GIRL OF GAL WAY for ever in her thoughts. To-morrow's child would not be the same. All exquisite things passed, were passing. Was it not a part of their exquisiteness that they were so fleeting ? The last night of all, as she leant above her girl's sleeping face, Bertha suddenly wakened and looked at her. In the flickering and dim light the shadows and the transparencies of the delicate face were exaggerated. Bertha sprang up and clasped her in fond young arms. " To think I should have slept this last night of all I " she cried, reproaching herself ; " and I was quite sure I was keeping awake. Dearest mother, you are cold. Get into bed and let me cover you up warmly, and then I shall come and sit beside you, and we shall lose no more of this precious night's hours." " I am very glad you have slept, Bertha," her mother said. " You have a long journey before you." So they talked, and after a time they dressed, and waited for the inexorable hour when the chambermaid should knock at the door to tell them that breakfast was ready. Soon the dawn was in the room the big, comfortable, unhomely room, with its unmistakable look of a hotel, where many travellers come, and none tarry long enough to set a human impress upon it. The dawn rose over everything ready for departure, flooding the mean street below. At the end there was nothing to say, nothing that seemed worth saying in view of the moment that approached ; so they sat hand in hand and were silent. PARTING 31 Then Bertha found herself gulping down some hot, weak tea, and trying to swallow some food that hurt her throat. A little later they were on the platform. They sat together awhile in a carriage soon to be invaded by other travellers looking for places to deposit their coats and rugs. Presently Mrs. Grace had to vacate her seat; and since neither cared to be demonstrative before strangers, Bertha leant from the carriage window, looking hard at the beloved face which so soon would only be a memory. Then things rushed to her lips that she would say, but could not. She could only urge her mother to write, and promise that she would write the first moment to say how she had got over. At the last she forgot everything, even the strange faces about her, with the curious coldness of the early morning upon them, as though Sleep had not yet lifted his mark. She leant towards her mother, and they clung together in one last despairing embrace. The guard's whistle sounded. Bertha pushed her mother back gently. She had had a wild idea of refusing to go even now at the last moment of leaving the carriage, and letting all her trunks travel on to Corofin without her. Now it was too late. The train was gliding out. She caught one last glimpse of her mother's face. Then she dropped back in her seat and drew down her veil ; while her opposite neighbour considerately buried himself in an illustrated paper. 32 A GIBL OF GALWAY CHAPTER III. NEW FRIENDS SHE hardly knew how long it was that she sat there, with her mind working hard all the time, and no relief of tears. Why had she not refused to go ? Why had she not at least insisted on staying till she had seen her mother off at Tilbury? If Sir Delvin had been so anxious for her, he could have sent his housekeeper to fetch her from London as easily as to meet her in Dublin. There must have been some way, if she could only have thought of it, by which her mother might have been spared that long, lonely day in the hotel and the journey to the docks alone. She was too delicate for such trials. What if anything should happen to her ? Her mind went miserably over such things, striking now and again a thought that blanched her face and made her heart for an instant almost stop beating. And still the inexorable train went on, every revolution of the wheels bearing her farther from her beloved. To-morrow the hours would bear them farther and farther apart, since she would still be travelling to the setting, her mother to the rising, sun. She was nearly worn out with her thoughts when the train stopped at a station, and the guard, in whose care her mother had placed her, came to ask if she would like anything. She dismissed him apathetically, NEW FRIENDS 33 and was resigning herself again to her thoughts when her opposite neighbour addressed her for the first time. She had so completely forgotten the world about her that she started when he spoke. It was a pleasant voice, with a rich accent which she recognised as the Irish brogue, since her father had never lost his during all the years of absence from his native country. How sweet it was to hear it, like a friend's voice in a strange land ! It made her heart ache and be comforted at the same time, and for its sake she turned a listening ear to the stranger. " I think I'd be having something if I were you," he said, almost as though he coaxed a child. " Per- haps you don't know that it is three hours since we left Euston, and, sure, your breakfast was only a farce. I am sure of it." Bertha looked up at the stranger. He was an elderly gentleman, with very white hair and eyebrows and a red face, looking so fresh and wholesome, as though he had been acquainted with the sea and the mountains all his days. " You are very kind," she said gratefully. " But I don't feel at all hungry." " Sorrow is a bad breakfast," he said. " See now, I am going to get something for myself, and I'll see what I can do for you. Just a trifle of food, for there'll be lunch on board as soon as we get in. Yes, I see you've a sandwich-case, but you'll want something to help you with the sandwiches. They are dry work, I think." (M835) C 34 A GIKL OF GALWAY Before Bertha could answer him again he had gone, and presently he bustled back with some very hot soup, which, despite its rather thin consistency, the girl found most reviving. When she had finished he made her eat her sandwiches and drink a glass of sherry from a little flask he had fetched from the buffet. She had really been exhausted, though she had not known it ; and she was half-ashamed to find how well she could eat after all, and quite grateful that her friend retired behind his paper while she made her little meal. The only other person in the carriage was a pretty grey-haired lady, who knitted incessantly, and held her head in a bird-like pose, as though she listened for ever. The gentleman seemed to know her, for he attended to her wants as he had done to Bertha's ; and Bertha perceived now that the lady was very deaf, for he talked to her on his fingers, sending her now and then a look of cheerful interrogation so as to be sure that she understood. It was evident that they talked about Bertha, for the lady presently said in a monotonous, loud voice, forgetting, apparently, that Bertha was not as deaf as herself: "Very interesting indeed. I've been watching her since we started. So glad you've roused her at last. An empty stomach is an aggravation of grief." The sentences sounded like so many pop-guns fired NEW FEIENDS 35 off at Bertha's ear ; and while she blushed she could not help smiling, especially as the gentleman looked at her in such a funny way. "It's well it's no worse than that," he said to Bertha aloud. " We never can persuade Miss Caulfield for long not to speak her thoughts. Fortunately they're generally kind thoughts ; yet I've known her, my dear, to say things that have made my hat fall off, positively made my hat fall off with horror." Miss Caulfield again spoke in the loud voice so incongruous with her pretty, fragile looks. " What is she blushing for, Archibald ? " she asked. Her needles flashed in the sun, but she was looking at Bertha when she asked the question. " She looks very pretty when she blushes. Her nose is nothing to speak of, but she has good eyes, and a good mouth, and against her complexion I've nothing to say." She caught sight then of the distressed appeals of her friend's fingers, which he was manipulating with extraordinary quickness before her eyes, and laughed out, a laugh like her speech, strange to hear in its want of modulation. "I've been at it again, I suppose, Archibald," she said. " Never mind, my dear ! You're pretty enough to do without a very good nose. My own was perfect " (she stroked the little peaked organ affectionately), " but I never found that it mattered much. The lovers never got beyond my eyes." Miss Caulfield's eyes were very beautiful a deep blue, 36 A GIRL OF GALWAY undimmed by time, and with a kindly expression which added to their beauty. " She's been deaf a long time," said the gentleman to Bertha ; " but the trouble is she won't believe she's quite deaf, and she will join in the conversation in- opportunely. She got the deafness quite early in life broke the drum of one of her pretty ears diving in deep water from a high rock. Never do that, my dear ; it's a most dangerous thing to do. Oh no, she can't hear me, not a word, though she'd never confess to it." " It's no use bothering her with all that archaeological stuff, Archibald," said the lady suddenly, "and I'm surprised at a man of your sense. She's had quite enough of the Wars of the Roses, and quite lately too, judging by her looks. Ask her where she's going to." " I'm afraid you'll think we have a most unwarrant- able curiosity about you, my dear," said the old gentle- man, ignoring Miss Caulfield ; " but we come from a very lonely part of the country, you see, and we very seldom have anything new to interest and amuse us. Miss Caulfield, now, hasn't been out of Connaught these twenty years ; but she took it in her head at last to see a bit of London life, so she accepted an old friend's invitation given some thirty years ago, and has been spending a few weeks in Eaton Square. She's brought back enough to talk about for the rest of her life." " Talking about yourself and Hugh as usual," said Miss Caultield. " After all, you can't make her realise NEW FRIENDS 37 Hugh from his father's point of view, considering she has never seen him nor is likely to. So she's going to Dublin ? Ah, well, she won't find Merrion Square what it was thirty years ago even. There were fine doings then. But what the English began when they robbed us of our Parliament the Nationalists have finished. I always expect when I get back to Dublin to find the grass growing in its streets." " But I'm not going to Dublin," said Bertha, with a feeling that she had been deceiving her travelling- companions. " At least, I mean, I'm not going to stay there." " Quite right, child," said Miss Caulfield approvingly, " they cannot. It will be beautiful, in spite of them, though they go across the water for beauty when they've no eyes for that at home. Buxton ? I was never there. I wouldn't name it by Lisdoonvarna. Ask Mr. Roper what he thinks of Lisdoonvarna, child." " I was never at Buxton either," said Bertha to Mr. Roper, feeling that she was getting hopelessly entangled with Miss Caulfield. "Never mind, my dear," he replied consolingly. " I'll explain it all to her as soon as I get a chance. She's taken a fancy to you, I can see that, and she'll like a chat." Miss Caulfield listened, with the bright, bird-like pose of her head, as though she understood every- thing. " Don't mind him," she put in again. " He goes to 38 A GIKL OF GALWAY the Kildare Street Club once a year and thinks he's seeing life. Don't believe him, and don't believe them when they tell you they represent Ireland. They don't, any more than this does," waving her hand towards the rich flat landscape through which they were pass- ing. " The glories of the A nglo-Irish departed with Lord Carlisle's viceroyalty. He was an elegant man. Dublin's a sad place to-day. Stale English ideals and a desperate cocksureness." " You've started Miss Caulfield on her pet hostility," said Mr. Roper. " Now you'll hear some eloquence." "It's insulting your country to say so, Roper," said Miss Caulfield. " Let her go to the peasants if she wants that. 'Tis the country herself, not the people, that makes her the unforgettable country. Dublin manners ? Rubbish ! There are none except bad." " You shouldn't have roused her on that, my dear," said Mr. Roper reproachfully. " It's the subject I always avoid with Miss Caulfield." " I'm sure I never meant to." said Bertha, wondering how it all began. " If you want intellect, go to Galway," went on Miss Caulfield. " Galway will be the capital one day. you'll see, when your Dublin friends are played out." "But I haven't any friends in Dublin," protested Bertha. "And I am going to Galway at least, somewhere not far off." "I didn't suppose you would know," said Miss Caulfield ; not unkindly. " Visitors from England never NEW FRIENDS 39 do, though they think they do. It's the one thing in which Dublin resembles England, though it's always painfully striving to get up with her in other ways." " So you're going to Galway, or somewhere near it ? " said Mr. Koper to Bertha, disregarding Miss Caulfield's flow of language, which had been arrested for a second by a dropped stitch in the stocking she was knitting. a How very interesting ! Perhaps we shall be neigh- bours for a little while, for I presume you're only visiting the west?" "A five years' visit," answered Bertha a little ruefully. " You don't say so ! I congratulate you upon my word, I congratulate you ! The handsomest women, the best fellows, the finest hunting, the nicest horses in all Ireland ! For blood, for beauty, for sport, for good fellowship, for everything in the world except money, go to Galway ! " " You're bound to disagree with me," said Miss Caulfield, with an unexpected bitterness. " You wouldn't have done it thirty years ago, Archibald, in the days that you and I remember." Mr. Roper turned to her suddenly with a delightfully friendly smile, and began talking to her at a great rate on his fingers. Bertha could see that he was making his peace and explaining matters at the same time, for the lady kept nodding her head, and the disturbed expression passed away from her face. Suddenly the liveliest interest came into it. 40 A GIRL OF GALWAY "Ask her where she's going to, quick, Archibald," she said, turning expectantly towards Bertha, who answered the question directly. " I'm going to stay with my grandfather, Sir Delvin Grace, at Corofin," she said. " I shall be so glad if we are neighbours." Mr. Roper's jaw dropped, and he stared at her in a kind of consternation. The lady put her hand behind her ear in a vain effort to catch what was going on. Then, not succeeding, her usual pretence of hearing gave way to her curiosity. " What does she say, Archibald ? " she asked. "What are you looking such a fool about? Tell me like a good man, for I didn't catch what she was saying." Mr. Roper flashed something to her on his fingers. It was now Miss Caulfield's turn to stare at Bertha. " Among the bats and the owls ! And they make pleasanter company than Delvin Grace does! What's bringing the child there?" she cried. "Sir Delvin Grace is my grandfather," said Bertha, beginning to share in the consternation of her fellow travellers. "Your grandfather, my dear? Then you will be Everard's daughter ? " Again the message flashed on his fingers. "The old rapscallion ! " said Miss Caulfield. "Per- haps he's coming to repentance at last." " There, there, my dear I " said Mr. Roper hastily A STRANGE COUNTRY 41 to Bertha, " don't mind Miss Caulfield. She wouldn't hurt you for worlds ; she is the kindest creature. It is only that your grandfather is something of a a recluse. And so you are Everard's daughter? I remember your father very well. He was the age of my eldest son. I lost them all, my dear, all except the youngest. And so you are Everard's daughter ? " Again the message went to Miss Caulfield. An expression of real concern and grief came to the lady's face. " I am very sorry, my dear," she said, " to find I have been so inconsiderate. I hope I haven't hurt you. I'm a little bit hard of hearing, as perhaps you've noticed, and I'm rather inclined to forget that I'm not living in a deaf world." The smile was so sweet and winning that Bertha could not help smiling back. Still, though Mr. Roper did his best to distract her and keep the conversation to safe, general topics, the incident had been somewhat disquieting. CHAPTER IV. A STRANGE COUNTRY rS. BUTLER, Sir Delvin's housekeeper, met Bertha at Kingstown, and at sight of her the girl felt reassurance. Whatever was alarming about Corofin it had certainly not affected the housekeeper, who was 42 A GIRL OF GALWAT a thoroughly wholesome and kindly-looking old woman, wearing a big black bonnet and a heavy black cloth cloak, which Bertha thought very unsuited to the fine weather and the time of year. She was hardly prepared either for the demonstrative emotion with which the old woman greeted her when they had left the crowd on the Carlisle pier behind, and were alone in the railway-carriage. " Thanks be to God for this day 1 " said she devoutly. " Sure, 'tis the young master himself come back to ns I Never mind me, dearie," the tears were flowing down her apple-cheeks. " Sure, if I hadn't been chated out of it I ought to ha' been your Nanny. An' to think o' them haythen blacks handlin' the little white babby that my heart was hungry for all the time I " Fortunately for Bertha her Irish blood was sufficiently strong to break down the greater stiffness of her English training, and Mrs. Butler had not her generous warmth towards the child of her dreams chilled in its flow as might well have happened. They spent the night at a private hotel in a dull street which had once been the inner sanctum of Irish aristocracy. The hotel was the very choicest thing in hotels, though only those who were old-fashioned in their notions preferred it to something gayer and more crowded. It was very little like a hotel. The furniture was very old and very beautiful. The walls were magnificently adorned with cnpids and roses in stucco- work, the wood-work was fine old mahogany, and every A STEANGE COUNTRY 43 room had its beautiful mantelpiece with inlayings of coloured marble. It might have been the house of very old-fashioned gentlefolk, with its dim lights and luxurious quietness. Everyone about the hotel seemed to walk cat-foot, and as the street had practically no traffic there was only the distant rattle of outside cars in a busier thoroughfare, the jangling of tram-bells, and the dark shadow of opposite houses, to suggest the city. Quiet as it was, Mrs. Butler would not let her precious charge dine at table d'hote. They had dinner in a private sitting-room, waited upon by a head-waiter who had the manner of a high-priest. Bertha found herself seated at the round centre-table, while Mrs. Butler's small table was set modestly in a very dark corner. The waiter treated the young lady with the most respectful solicitude, himself selecting the dishes she should have from the menu, and explaining his reasons with a choice of language at which Bertha would have smiled if she had dared. She thought of the self-reliance which Miss Tillotson had inculcated, and which had been set before her girls as an ideal at Lowminster, and wondered comically if she had not dropped into another world and earlier days. If things were going to be like this, then she, Bertha, had been wrongly equipped for the life which had been thrust upon her. She had accepted the fearless outlook upon life of the modern girl naturally. She had no timidities, though plenty of reserves ; and unconscious 44 A GIRL OF GAL WAY courage and modesty were in the pose of her fair head and the unflinching look of her eyes. Between the courses the head-waiter conversed in a low voice with Mrs. Butler as with an old friend ; but the topic was Bertha Bertha and Bertha's forbears. " In hoighth an' slinderness," she heard John say, " she's the moral of her grandmother, the crathur ! She was here on her honeymoon. 'Twas the year Queen Victoria kem to the throne, an' all the wimen was wearing coal- scuttle bonnets wid roses inside o' them. Aye, bedad, you couldn't tell which was her cheek an' which was the rose." " Master Everard took after his papa, too," put in Mrs. Butler. " I seen him wance," went on the head-waiter. i( You'd think the sunshine took the side o' the street he walked. Sir Delvin was here wid him. They wor always cosherin' aich other. You'd think they wor boys of an age. 'Twas before the trouble kem betune them. It seemed a terrible pity, seein' they wor so fond of aich other." The voices went lower, and murmured along in some- thing Bertha could not catch. When they became audible again it was the head-waiter speaking. " No woman's worth it, ma'am, to put quarrels between minkind." " Indeed, I'm surprised at you, Mr. John, to be sayin' so!" Mrs. Butler responded in the same comfortable whisper ; " for you always had the name o' bein' very polite to ladies." A STEANGE COUNTKY 45 " I never set them above their proper value, ma'am." " I suppose, indeed, that's what left you an old bachelor, Mr. John ? " " I might have been induced to change my mind if we'd met in time, ma'am." At this point Bertha had an impression that she was listening to a private conversation, and so she coughed discreetly. In a second John was at her side, changing her plate, with his air of respectful urbanity, and the whispered conversation was not resumed. Bertha spent an hour after dinner writing to her mother, pouring out all her thoughts to her, telling her her adventures and impressions of this strange country and people with a gaiety and sparkle intended to cheer up that other dear voyager. But of her fellow travellers' cryptic references to Sir Delvin she said nothing at all. Now that the parting was done there were to be no old, unhappy, far-off things between them, but mutual comfort and encouragement, and a dwelling upon that golden, distant future when they would be reunited. The first letter was to find her mother at Tilbury, where she would be the next day. To-morrow, said Bertha, when both journeys had begun, it would be easier to forget yesterday and to-day, and to look forward beyond many to-morrows. They left the hotel next morning, escorted to the very portals by the careful John. Bertha caught a glimpse of herself in one of the long hall mirrors as she passed a tall young figure in that grey and silver travelling- 46 A GIRL OF GALWAY cloak which had come from the Regent Street house and thought of another figure slipping out of those double doors, with the eyes of a bride under the wreath of roses. She could imagine it all, for her modern education had not made her less imaginative as it will the girl whose nature takes only one trend and is absorbed in the learning while missing the spirit. She commented on the superiority of the head-waiter half-jestingly to Mrs. Butler as they drove to the railway-station. " Quality thinks a dale of him," assented the good woman. " The place wouldn't be the same widout John. Some people do be sayin' it might close its doors. Sure he might be distroyin' it if he'd set up for himself ; but he wouldn't, though they do say 'twill be his one day. He'd want a managin' woman in that kitchen, though. I took a peep in it, an' 'twasn't the same as whin I used to come here in your grand- mother's time, acushla." " He can't have you, though," said Bertha, surprised how easily the affectionate raillery came to her lips, she who had been brought up among English ways. " He can't indeed, then," said Mrs. Butler seriously ; " for as I told him, 'tisn't likely I'd be lavin' Master Everard's child, her lone at Corofin." Again a misgiving smote Bertha's heart. The crazy cab rattled unpleasantly up and down the hilly streets, and it was difficult to keep up conversation. Bertha gazed enviously at the outside cars that passed them A STRANGE COUNTRY 47 in quick succession, their occupants lolling in them with an easy insouciance, though Bertha thought their tenure looked somewhat precarious. " Why couldn't we have had an outside car, too ? " she asked when they were in the train. " Whisht, jewel ! " said Mrs. Butler, looking very scandalised, " you couldn't sit on wan o' them things unless you had your own man in livery to drive you an' your own leather apron buttoned about your knees." " But why not ? " " I know there's ladies that does it, an' rale blood- ladies, too, but I could never think of it for you, Miss Bertha ; an' as for your grandfather, you couldn't hould him if the like was mintioned to him. If your heart is set on it, maybe we'd be afther coaxin' ould Magee, though he's long past his work, to clane up th' ould outside car, an' give you a drive on it, if it's safe an' your grandfather doesn't forbid it, an' you think you could hould on. But don't be thinkin' o' thim public cars, for you'd never be let to do it." Perhaps some time, thought Bertha, she would begin to understand these people and their queer ideas. Fortunately she could follow the maze of their speech, because her father had jested about it, and had seriously put many Irish books into her hands. " Never forget, Bertha," he had said, " that you are Irish, however English your circumstances may have been or may be." 48 A GIRL OF GALWAY Even Mrs. Grace, he had been wont to jest, had " a drop of Irish blood rowlin' about in her," or else he and she had never agreed npon so many subjects in which there is like to be a wide divergence between Celt and Saxon. As they sat in the narrow railway-carriage, Bertha suddenly recognised her travelling-companions of the previous day passing down the platform. They passed without seeing her, Mr. Roper bending from his height to give a courteous ear to what Miss Caulfield was saying, though, indeed, it might be heard from one end of the platform to the other. On the far side of the lady a young man was walking, wearing just the same air of courteous deference. He, too, was tall, ruddy, sunburnt, and clad in country homespuns, like those his father wore for travelling. He was plainly Mr. Roper's son, and was as pleasant and comely in his youth as his father in age. Seeing them there on the dingy platform was like a vision of the country and the sea in the squalor of town. Bertha leant forward a little to look after them when they'd passed. " Them's neighbours," said Mrs. Butler, her eyes taking the same direction as Bertha's. " Mr. Roper, of Roper's Folly, an' Master Hugh, an' Miss Betty Caulfield. Dear, dear ! but Betty's gettin' terrible grey-haired." " I know them," said Bertha, with quite a pleasant A STRANGE COUNTRY 49 feeling in announcing the fact. "I travelled with them yesterday at least, with the lady and Mr. Roper. They were very kind. I suppose I shall often see them." Mrs. Butler looked at her in a scared way. " Listen, now, honey jewel," she said in a coaxing way, as though she spoke to a child "listen now, dear, I wouldn't be takin' fancies to strangers if I were you. And Miss Bertha, love, whatever you do, don't be namin' it to your grandpapa that you had act or part wid them, for I'm afeard if he knew he'd never forgive it." Bertha stared. " But why ? " " 'Tis a long ould story an' a disthressin' wan. Maybe I'll be tellin' it to you some day." " They're quite good people, aren't they ? Nothing against them ? Mr. Roper doesn't look as if he had a stain on his character, and I am sure Miss Caulfield is thoroughly respectable." It was said half-jestingly, but Mrs. Butler took it seriously and lifted up her eyes in horror. " Is it anything agin Roper o' Roper's Folly ? " she said. " Ax that question of man, woman, or child in the county Gal way, an' you'll see what they'll say. Och, indeed, if you wanted to pick a just man, 'tis on him you'd put your finger ! Quality's takin' up wid steadiness and good behaviour nowadays, though well I remember an' th' ould people will tell you 'twas a wild lot they were, but, nevertheless, well (M835) D 50 A GIRL OF GALWAY thought of for that. Some people doesn't like to see Quality gettin' on as it does at the present time, botherin' the life out o' the poor wid teachin' them batter-makin', an' layin' eggs, 'an' dyin', an' weavin', an' embroiderin', an' the like. There's many a hard thing said agin Quality for bein' so improvin'. Even Governmint, that never thought o' such a thing before, has took to the tachin' and improvin'. There's poor Barney Rattigan now, he has strange hins in his place, an' his turkey-cock took away from him that was as ould as Barney's grandfather. He cried that day, the poor man did. He said strange hins and pigs about the place were the lonesomest things." Mrs. Butler paused for breath. The train began to creep out of the station. " And so Mr. Roper's an improver too ? " said Bertha. " Ah, not at all, miss. He has too much respect for the people. But he's always ready to do anythin' for the poor people. He's drawn near as many wills as the priest. An' terrible aisy he is on the binch if a poor man's goat is up for trespassin'. 'Tis often he paid the fine for takin' it out o' the pound. Aye, bedad, you won't find anywan sayin' that he's improvin'. Look at his place now Roper's Folly. 'Tis the grandest place. His father built it in the famine-time to give the people the work. He couldn't pay them in the end ; but, sure, he'd given them all he had." " And Miss Caulfield is she on for improving ? " "Not she. She can sit down an' have a bit of THE CRADLE OF HIS EACE 51 a talk wid a poor neighbour widout keepin' her eye round the corner all the time for a speck o' dirt." " Then on the whole," said Bertha, with an obstinate mouth, " I seem likely to have some very pleasant neighbours." Mrs. Butler's gaze became as anxious as that of a hen who sees her duckling making for the water. " Don't you go to be settin' yourself up against your grandfather, for what chance wo aid a child like you have against a terrible strong-willed ould gentle- man like him ? Sure he's as set as a tree in the way he's been growin' all his years." " Then it's time for him to take a turn the other way," said Bertha fearlessly. " You might as well be tryin' to bend an oak wid them little hands o' yours the same as if it was a rush, Miss Bertha." " I should love to bend an oak," said Bertha. CHAPTER V. THE CEADLE OF HIS EACE AFTER a long drive they reached Corofin by evening light. They had come in the long car from Galway, and had been met at a lonely cross-road in the midst of black and boggy fields by Mick Magee, the old coachman, whose livery gaped in many places, 52 A GIRL OF GALWAY and whose hat with its rusty cockade was ruffled into brownness by the wind and the weather. As they waited at the cross-road for Mick and the landau, an outside car had passed them heaped with luggage. In the two occupants of the side farthest from them Bertha recognised her fellow travellers. The young man was driving a long, lean bay, which went at an astonishing pace on the narrow roads between the rough stone walls. The party looked comfortable and friendly somehow ; and Bertha, turning her face with misgiving to the unknown future and the formidable grandfather, felt like a wanderer on a winter night, who sees a lamp-lit and a fire-lit hearth and a family group through a window-pane. The landau was an unpleasant vehicle. It smelt as though it knew more of feathered than of human occupants, and the lining was protruding through the ragged cushions on which Bertha seated herself gingerly. " The carriage seems very old," said Bertha, as it rattled and creaked along in the summer evening. "Why wouldn't it?" said Mrs. Butler. 4 - Rody Grace bought it new for his wedding seventy-five years ago, an' it hasn't had a hand's turn done to it since your grandfather was married. The hins don't mind, the crathurs ! " Mrs. Butler's gaze travelled to a collection of feathers and other rubbish at the bottom of the coach. " 'Tis them does mostly be inhabitin' it. Sure it hasn't been had out these twenty years. THE CRADLE OF HIS KACE 53 Since no one else wants it, it seems no use to be always shooin' them out of it." " It certainly does not," said Bertha, with a twitching mouth. " I'm sorry I dispossessed them." " They wouldn't mind," said Mrs. Butler, with an unsuspected humour, " if they knew who 'twas for, for they're ould family hins. The flntterin' an' screechin' of them this last week or two while Mick was evictin' them ! He hasn't made a great job of it, the poor man." " I suppose he's too old." " Sir Delvin was talkin' of pinsionin' him the time he got married himself, but Mick wouldn't go, an' after " Mrs. Butler paused " after he wouldn't get the chance. The master got too savin'. There's no knowin' Mickey's age, for there isn't a sowl in the country ould enough to remember him anything but ould. 'T would be a charity, so it would, to kill him off." To Bertha the ways of thought and the speech were irresistible, as they are to a returned and home-sick traveller. It was the Irish blood in her no doubt that made the Irish ways exhilarating to her, despite that she had so many reasons to be sad. " But my grandfather," she said, " what does he use when he goes to church, or out driving, or to see his friends ? " " He doesn't go to church, Miss Bertha, nor out drivin', nor to see his friends, for he's quarrelled with everybody." 54 A GIRL OF GAL WAY The old servant's face took on an expression of grave compassion. " Whisper now, dearie," she said. " 'Twill be a lonesome place will Corofin, for the likes of yon. God send better days ! The poor master's a bit odd and a bit tryin' through lonesomeness an' sorrow. They tell me even the bastes can't stand bein' left there lone ; an' now Miss Marcella's away " " Miss Marcella ? Who is she, Mary ? " "A born angel if ever there was one. Did you never hear tell of Miss Marcella Lloyd ? " The old woman looked at the frank young face from under drooped lids with a suggestion of a hidden meaning. " Marcella Lloyd Marcella Lloyd ! " Bertha groped about in her memory, and at last found the thing she wanted. " I remember," she said " a photograph that used to stand on papa's writing-table at Lahore. I had forgotten it, and the name that belonged to it, but it has come back. Of course it was Miss Lloyd." " I'm not given to talk about my betters, Miss Bertha ; but, sure, I'm like wan o' yourselves goodness forgive me for th' impidence of sayin' the like 1 an' there's no one to tell you things unless I do." The girl at her side gave her a swift little hug, which made the old woman blush and smile prettily. "I won't think you presuming, you may be sure," she said. "Your papa's daughter oughtn't to only, you see, THE CRADLE OF HIS RACE 55 you've been reared away from ns. An' so Master Everard has Miss Marcella's picture done out on his writin'-table ? She'd be pleased to know it, the crathur." " They were great friends, I suppose ? " " The best. Miss Marcella has never forgotten. She isn't the kind that forgets. She's wanted to bring Master Everard and his papa together again all these years. Only for her he'd never have humbled his pride to ask your company, Miss Bertha. He's terrible obstinate ; but Miss Marcella's gentle way of droppin' a word now and again was like the little soft water that wears the stone in time." " And she is away ? " " Many a month now, more's the pity. The master's gone from bad to worse since she's been gone." Bertha's stare recalled the old woman to the fact that she had been speaking her thoughts aloud and revealing more than had been intended. " He's been quarrellin' wid the people about, that's what I mean, Miss Bertha. 'Tis a terrible pity. The Graces were always well liked." " What do you mean by quarrelling ? You had better let me know all there is to be known." Mrs. Butler looked at the imperious young brows, and obeyed submissively. " He's been evictin', that's what he's been doin'. The people can hardly believe it yet, for they wor used to the ould family an' themselves bearin' hardship together, if hardship there was. There's no denyin' it, 56 A GIRL OF GALWAY the master's got terrible fond o' the money. An' after raisin' the rents on the strong farmers, what does he turn round an' do but evict them crathurs above on Ben Sheelin, that never paid a pinny in the memory of man, an' never looked to do it ? " " But if they didn't pay rent " began Bertha, with a narrowing of her dark young line of eyebrow. " Now don't be talkin' that way, avourneen. You're but young, an' even the young has somethin' to learn. Sure, what would they be payin' for at all, at all ? Wait till you see Ben Sheelin. Let alone that he has no tinants for the little places now at all, but all lyin' empty on his hands, barrin' that he can't get the crathurs out o' them ; an' they're like a flock of rabbits, that's all over the place till ye clap your hands, an' they're gone. They do be tumblin' over aich other before the polis when they goes up to the place ; but whether it is that the sergeant turns the blind eye to them or not, he never can get one o' them in it at all, at all." " Oh, they are very poor 1 " said Bertha disgustedly. " Why can't he let them alone, then ? Nobody ought to take money for such holdings. I've heard of them." Mrs. Butler made such an amazing right-about face as is common among her country people, who can always see more than one side of a question. " Don't you be takin' up wid them newspapers, child," she said quite severely. " You mustn't be believin' THE CRADLE OF HIS RACE 57 everything you read in them, or where would you be gettin' to at all, at all in time ? " Bertha smiled. " And you think Miss Lloyd would have prevented all this ? " " He'd never have touched Ben Sheelin if she'd been here. I'll tell you what, Miss Bertha, there's good angels and bad angels. Miss Marcella is the master's good angel. Bulger's his bad . . . divil ; angel I wouldn't be callin' him ! " " Oh, a new person in the drama ! Who may Bulger be ? " " I don't know about the diorama. I seen one once at the Rotunda. 'Twas John took me. 'Twas all water tumblin' about, the falls of somewhere or other. I wouldn't mind if I saw Bulger rowlin' down in them, goodness forgive me for an ill-wishin' ould woman ! " " Who is this creature ? " " 'Tis the right name for him. Bulger is a power o' things. He does write his master's business letters. Then he calls himself a seckertary. He does his rent warnin', and any bit o' dirty work that's goin'. Och ! I couldn't tell you what he isn't. Sure, he's always at the master's elbow, leastways since Miss Marcella's been out of it. You'll see him soon enough, child, for yourself." " A kind of agent, I suppose ? " Mrs. Butler looked shocked. " An agent's Quality, Miss Bertha. Wait till you see Bulger 1 " 58 A GIRL OF GALWAY Bertha had yet to learn that land-agencies are the appanage of gentlefolk in Ireland, when the agent is often a more considerable person than his employer. She shook her head over this new bit of puzzledom, and concluded that she would learn in time. Despite her Irish blood, she had not yet all the clues. Certainly the prospect wasn't heartening. An old man who had quarrelled with his neighbours that meant an ostracised house. Bertha, for all her wise training, was no more ascetic at heart than other girls of her age. Indeed, not many girls had a keener capacity for enjoyment ; and a little while ago her eighteen years had seemed a plateau whence she could look forward to a great many delightful years of joy and happiness, till crabbed age fell on her at, say, twenty-eight. She fell silent. Into her silence came the regained vision of the pictured face on her father's writing-table a plain face of somewhat heavy features, with large upward-looking eyes, and such a serious, pathetic smile on the lips as recalled to Bertha the winter sun breaking over a rugged landscape. A scrap of conversation overheard and forgotten in the childish days came back into her memory like the refrain of an old song. " Plain, but heavenly ! plain, but heavenly ! " It was her father's voice spoke the words, and it was her pretty, fragile mother who had called the portrait plain. Ah, it all came back now ! Everard Grace, with his wife's hand in his, and his air of tender reproof as he uttered that verdict on the face so much less beautiful than her own. THE CEADLE OF HIS EACE 59 '' Why has she gone away ? " she said, speaking alond, " Miss Lloyd, I mean. If she was grandpapa's good angel, why did she leave him ? Good angels do not leave their charges." " She had to go. 'Twas a young cousin of her own, Miss Muriel, dyin' of a slow decline. They do say that Miss Marcella chated the winter for her all the world over ; but, sure, it's caught Miss Muriel at last, an' she'll never lave the spot she's in. 'Tis Pontis Pontis I've got the name on the tip o' my tongue." " Pontresina ? " " Aye, that's it. Pontiscrena. I suppose 'tis well sheltered. It couldn't shelter Miss Muriel from the chill o' death, God help her ! Miss Marcella will stay with her till the last, an' then she'll come home to them she's forsook too long." " Ah, I suppose this other person's influence has grown while she has been away ? " " It couldn't have stood in her presence." " It may disappear when she comes back." "If it does, it'll have left a power o' mischief for her to unpick." Bertha lifted her intrepid young head. " And meanwhile, what shall I be doing, Mary ? " she asked. " Winnin' your grandfather's heart, I pray, acushla." Mary Butler looked admiringly at the face full of good pride and spirit. " 'Tis a happy day you came to Corofin, anyhow," she said fondly. " Sure, I've had my doubts about it 60 A GIRL OF GALWA.Y sore an' heavy doubts ; an' none by to advise me. I didn't know where even to write to Master Everard to tell him 'twas no fit place for the like of you. Look, dearie, look ! There's Corofin now through the trees ! You can see it plain." Bertha leant forward and gazed after Mary's pointing finger. Where the woods sank momentarily in a gash the upper turrets of a house stood against the blood- red sunset. It was like a house seen in a dream or a story-book. There was something menacing and sinister in its aspect. Suddenly Bertha's young independence forsook her. What had come to her, she who had never known nerves, and had been able to look the one sorrow of her life in the face with clear, courageous eyes ? She put her face down on Mary Butler's soft, ample bosom. " I shall have you," she said. " If I hadn't you I should go straight back this minute." She was frightened of everything of the waste of bogs, and the empty sky with the eagle swinging in it, and the gaunt Pins high in the clouds. She was afraid of the sinister woods and the sunset. The solitude frightened her as it might a child. " Whisht, jewel I " said Mary, soothing her " whisht ! Sure I'll be there to take care of you. And Miss Marcella will be here soon." Bertha clung to her with the unreasoning terror of a child waking frightened from sleep. COBOFIN OF THE TKEES 61 CHAPTER VI. COKOFIN OF THE TEEES ONE blear-eyed old man came out to welcome them as the crazy carriage swept round the grass-grown way in front of Corofin. Behind the house doubtless the glory of sunset yet lingered. In front it was cold. The lower range of windows facing them were blind. The hall beyond the open door was full of a red glare ; but here all was grey and silent, save for the yelping of dogs and the songs of birds. They had driven through woods for some time, woods intersected by glorious avenues of trees which made Bertha, who had got over that first unreasoning terror, cry out in admiration. " They do be greatly admired," said Mrs. Butler, " but to my mind they do make the place lonesome. I don't like too many trees about a place, nor the things they brings wid them bats an' owls an' them melancholy birds. I'd rather see the Pins myself, an' smell the sea wind." " This is good enough for me to-day," said Bertha. " I never saw such trees, so tall, so slender, with so many exquisite greens" " There's a story about the same trees," said the old servant "a quare ould ramaush of a story. I'll be tellin' it to you some night when we're comfortable by a snug fire. Aye, indeed, many's a time you'll find a 62 A GIRL OF GALWAY bit o' fire agreeable, Miss Bertha, even on a summer evenin' ! "Pis not to say much cowlder here in the winter nor in the summer, and them trees breeds damp." " I'm sure you are full of stories, you dear old woman 1 " said Bertha. " You shall tell them all to me, every one." " There might be truth in this wan," said Mrs. Butler. " See, Malachy " (to the old serving man), " what would ye say thim trees were doin' ? " " Curtseyin'," responded Malachy " sayin' as plain as trees can that you're welcome home, Miss Bertha. You're the image of your papa. God bless the day that brings you home, an' down wid all upstarts, say I." Someone else came level with the old man's shoulders, and, advancing down the steps, opened the landau door, and held his hand for Bertha to alight. She looked at him with a question in her face. He was a dark, coarse-looking young man, with an expressionless manner assumed, perhaps, to cover something else. "It is Mr. Bulger," muttered Mary Butler, with a look under her eyes at the man's figure. Bertha, without perceptibly refusing his aid, sprang lightly on to the way that had once been gravelled, and shook out her grey draperies. If she had been looking at him she would have seen that he gave her an angry glance, but the suavity of his tones was unbroken as he said : COBOFIN OF THE TEBES 63 " Sir Delvin asked me to say that he was too tired to receive you this evening, Miss Grace. He hopes to see yon to-morrow morning. I hope you have had a good journey ? " " Thank you, yes," said Bertha, preparing to ascend the steps. At this moment the gates of the stable-yard, which the old coachman had opened, gave egress to a whole pack of dogs of all sorts and sizes, who rushed upon Bertha with exuberant friendliness in so sudden an onslaught that she had almost fallen before it. Bulger's face grew darker. He made a spring up the steps, fetched a heavy whip from the hall, and began to lash around him indiscriminately. " The place is a perfect kennel ! " he said furiously. " I shall have a dozen of them poisoned to-morrow." Suddenly Bertha seized the whip. " How dare you 1 how dare you ! " she cried. " Who are you, sir, that make yourself master of this place ? " The shrieking and velping dogs had fled back to their haven. The man stood before her and faced her hardily. Then his eyes fell, as though some inbred habit in the blood had asserted itself. Muttering something about having wished to protect her from the brutes, he went back into the house. Bertha turned and looked at Mary Butler. Her breast was still heaving and her nostrils dilated. The expres- sion on the old woman's face was made up of intense exultation and a little fear. 64 A GIRL OF GALWAY " Musha, glory be to goodness for this day ! " she said. "An' yet, Miss Bertha, my lamb, I'm afeared you've made Bulger your enemy for life." Bertha lifted her eyebrows in a fine haughtiness. " Let me see the poor things," she said, going towards the stables. " It was a heavy whip, and he used the butt-end of it. Some of them must be hurt." Mary Butler followed her and lifted her hands in wonder when she saw her the centre of a fawning mass of dogs. One was limping badly. " Ah, this one is hurt," said Bertha, going down in the midst of the rough pack to examine the creature's paw ; " and it is an old dog, too." " Old as a man," said the old coachman. " That's Juno. She was a great dog in her day with the gun. Many a day Sir Delvin shot over her." " Poor Juno ! " said the girl softly. " Your master shall hear how you've been ill-treated." The dog licked her hand gratefully. " He's always murdherin' them dogs," said the old man "just as he'd murdher you an' me, Mrs. Butler, ma'am, if he had the power. Sure myself doesn't care about him. Even if he got me out o' the place I'm a-past carin'. I'm as ould for a man as Juno for a dog, an' 'tisn't much I'll want of the world much longer except a bit o' earth to hould me." Bertha looked up at him. " Have confidence, Magee," she said. " You are in my hands now in my hands and your master's." COROFIN OF THE TREES 65 " That 'ud be a good day, Miss Bertha," said the old man gratefully. But Mrs. Butler, Martha-like, brought a note of common-sense into the proceedings. " What would your mama say at all, at all," she protested, " if she was to see them dogs destroyin' your fine cloak an' lickin' your face too? Sure, it's not like a lady at all to be lettin' dogs make so free wid her." Bertha stood up, laughing. " Mother always liked me to have pets," she said. " I was never without a dog of my own till my little Don died two years ago. And I was too sore to put a dog in his place. But I am going to make great pets of all these." " Indeed, then, an' if you do you'll never have a stitch on your back, that I can promise you ! " said Mrs. Butler, shaking a mournfully prophetic head. With some difficulty they left the now happy dogs, and Bertha at last entered the door of the house that had been her father's, and remained so dear that, in its estrangement he had scarcely ever borne to speak of it. It had a wide old hall with a great staircase ascending from the back. The hall was panelled with wood, and keeping guard in the shadowy corners at the foot of the staircase were a pair of knights in armour. The heads of animals, and here and there a branching pair of antlers, were on the walls, and at one side a piece of ragged tapestry flapped in the June wind. A billiard-table (M835) E 66 A GIRL OF GAL WAY stood in the centre of the hall, but it was evident that a long time had passed since anyone had played on it, for the cushions were faded and in tatters. A strip of rug lay under the table, plainly only a remnant of what it had once been. The stone stairs were carpetless ; the great brass-bound wood box by the fire was coldly empty. Into the steel of the grate damp had bitten like an acid. Despite the warm air outside, the place, naked and clean, struck chilly to the newcomer. Mrs. Butler followed Bertha's gaze wistfully. " We does our best, me an' Malachy," she said. "But where nothing new has come these twenty-five years, nor likely to, 'tisn't much we can do. The damp's eatin' up the place, that's what it's doing. With them woods to the door we'd need fires goin' day an' night. But the master won't give us coal nor turf, an' none dare lay an axe to wan o' them trees ; an', ould as they are, there isn't the winter storm can uproot them." "Why, I'm glad of that," said Bertha. "I love the trees." " 'Tis in the blood," said Mrs. Butler enigmatically. " Now, come, my lamb," she went on, " 'tisn't for starvin' you we'd be. Let us see if there's a pick for you to ate. I left Biddy Walsh, my second cousin's sister-in-law's niece, in the kitchen while I was away. If she hasn't got a sweet bit for you, I'll make her lazy bones jump." Bertha was not so hungry that she did not desire first the refreshment of a change and a wash, so they COROFIN OP THE TREES 67 went upstairs to a great dark room on the third floor. So big was the room that the huge curtained bed was like an island in the midst of it. There seemed to Bertha acres of floor, dark and worm-eaten. There was very little furniture besides the bed. A heavy chest, carved and clamped with iron, had an old glass set upon it, cracked in many directions, but in a delicious frame designed like a sea-shell. A tiny dark corner washstand carried the cheapest crockery-ware. There were a couple of high-backed, faded red satin chairs, their gilt mouldings chipped and discoloured, and their satin nearly reduced to threads. The high walls had everywhere the stain of the damp ; and the smell of it came to Bertha's nostrils, though someone had filled a cracked punch-bowl with fragrant cabbage-roses. Seen by day the room had a pleasantness of its own, though by night it might be eerie. " What is that ? " she asked, pointing to a little dark door. " That's for your pretty things, honey," said Mrs. Butler with evident pride. " Sure, that's why I put you on this floor instead of below. There isn't a bit o' damp can touch it, an' 'tis the only place in the house I could say as much of. The roof's fallen in overhead, an' all the rooms above are full of lath an' plaster. If it wasn't for the shelter them trees gives, we'd have the place about our ears some night of a storm." The little door gave access to a closet lined with 68 A GIRL OF GALWAY some fragrant wood and containing a great number of shelves and pegs of all kinds. At sight of it Bertha clapped her hands. " I never saw anything so delightful in my life ! " she said. " How did it come here ? " " Sir Raymond built this part when he married the English lady in 1750. This was her bedroom, Miss Bertha. I suppose the little closet is accordin' to English ways." " I am very much obliged to my English ancestress, then," said Bertha. " I think this room is altogether delightful. Wait till I've put up some curtains and decked it out a bit ! " She was thinking with delight of her father's Eastern stuffs, and how her mother had made her overload herself with them, as she had thought at the time. Mrs. Butler fetched her hot water and old soft damask towels, and, being bidden to wait, attended on Bertha with evident pleasure in doing it. " You won't be lonely, dearie ? " she asked anxiously, as she watched Bertha assume her soft white silk blouse a compromise between an afternoon and a dinner toilette. " I'll be near you at night, and a word'll bring me in to you." "I shall have you and the trees. I shan't be a bit afraid. See how the trees look in at the window. I shall feel that they are watching over me at night." " Indeed, then, they'll be friendly," said Mrs. Butler seriously. " They do put their faces very bowld an' COROFIN OF THE TREES 69 impident to the windy ; but, snre, 'tis more then I'd dare to do to lop a branch of them, though they darkens the room too much for my taste." " There's plenty of air, anyhow," said Bertha. " When they move like that they seem to be sending it in, soft and warm and scented. And if I ever feel that they oppress me, I can run up to the tower overhead and get a clean sweep." "Never think of the like, child," said Mrs. Butler, with a scared face. " 'Tis comin' through the ould rotted floors ye'd be, or the roof tumblin' in a-top o' ye. There's nothin' up there but birds' nests an' leaves an' ould destruction of all kinds." " What does my grandfather mean ? " asked Bertha indignantly, " by letting the place go to rack and ruin like this ? Does he forget he's not the only Grace ? " " He's ould, child, an' he's disappointed. Things has always gone agin him. Then the love o' the money's come upon him. People gets terrible unnatural when that comes. It's worse nor the drink even." " How much of the house is in ruins, Mary ? " asked Bertha, hardly heeding this exordium. " The two upper floors, child, an' the left wing is damaged entirely. 'Tisn't safe, so they say ; so it's locked, an' Bulger has the kay, or Sir Delvin has. An' all the fine furniture swimmin' about there in says o' water, I daresay, soppiu, an' destroyed wid the mouldiness. The ballroom runs the lin'th of it. You've heard tell o' the ballroom, Miss Bertha ? " 70 A GIBL OF GALWAY " My father seldom spoke of the house. I am finding out every minnte how little he spoke of it, though he talked of the people and the country freely enough." " He was too fond of it, belike. The ballroom's just bey ant that wall. I'll tell you about it another time. Come, jewel, an' ate ; 'tis famished ye'll be." But Bertha stood silent in the middle of the room. Mentally she was vowing that the house her father loved, the cradle of her race, the house of glorious memories, should be saved from the destruction which threatened it. She had not come an instant too soon if that were to be done. She could see without Mary Butler's assurances that the place was mouldering to its fall. CHAPTER VII. MORNING "QERTHA slept well, the sleep of youth and healthy JD fatigue. The last thing she heard was the susurrus of the leaves against the open window ; the first sound in the morning was their rustling and dancing, as though they called to her to come and play with them. The room, dark of evenings, was now full of the sparkle of sunlight and the dancing of leaf-shadows. MORNING 71 " Awake ! awake 1 " called the blackbird, looking in at her from the boughs. " Come and play ! come and play ! " It was an invitation Bertha could not resist, though when she looked at her watch she saw it was only six o'clock. She jumped out of bed and into the bath which had been left for her overnight. While she splashed in it she thought that somewhere in the woods she must find a pool or a river to bathe in. " Ireland of the Streams " she remembered that her father had told her it was an old name for the country. There must be many a mountain stream stealing through these woods away to the sea. She had forgotten her terrors of the previous day. The parting she had dreaded was over. Three days ago every hour bore her nearer to the dreaded one. To-day the sunshiny hours carried her towards the reunion. And there was so much to do here for her absent ones. When her mother had bidden her " Keep Fayth" she had not known how much it involved no, nor would she know of it till the thing was done. Then her praise would be sweet to Bertha. She put on a loose gown of soft creamy Indian muslin, tied with a yellow sash. The face, the figure, that she saw in the cracked glass when she looked into it were radiantly fresh and bright. She put on a sun-hat, for she was going to explore out of doors, and went down through the quiet house. Somewhere in the back regions she could hear 72 A GIRL OF GALWAY people moving about. In the hall she pansed to open a door in the wood-panelling and look in. The great room beyond was quite dark, save for a few shafts of sunlight through the shutters at the farther end. So far as Bertha could see it was empty and dismantled. She opened another door, and saw that this room was, or had been, a library. The floor was nearly as empty of furniture as that other room ; but the high bookshelves yet stood round the walls, and the peeping sun caught here and there a gilt binding through the glass. The smell of mouldering books was heavy in the air. Bertha shivered a little as she turned away. As she was about to undo the door with its many bolts, and let the sunlight in, a hand was suddenly thrust before her, and a voice said : "Allow me, Miss Grace. These bolts are rusty, not fit for a lady's little hands." Bertha stood upright she had been stooping to a bolt and, silent with astonishment, allowed the man Bulger to open the door for her. " You are early afoot," he said. " You and the morning : it is a happy conjunction. I needn't ask if you are tired you look as fresh as Hebe, Miss Grace." " Do you live here ? " she asked blankly, too dis- quieted at the idea that the man was a permanent inmate of the house to notice even the surprising fact of his compliment. MORNING 73 " Where did yon suppose ? " he asked. " There are nothing bat woods for five miles on every side of us." " I thought you lived in some village, and went home to it at nights." " I am done with villages," he said, scowling at her. " Time was I was well enough acquainted with them. I have gone up a few steps on the ladder since then." She bowed her head haughtily. She was not in- terested in the fact that Mr. Bulger thought her remark about the village derogatory. She would have gone down the steps, but she found he was at her elbow. " A word with you, Miss Grace," he said. " Are we going to be friends or enemies ? " Her eyes flashed at him. "The one thing is as much out of question as the other." " True, I am only Sir Delvin's servant," he said, with a proud affectation of humility. " Still, I might possibly be of use to his granddaughter." " I think it improbable, sir." " You are a beautiful young woman," he said, " well born, the heiress to an old name and an old estate. But you should not be too haughty, nor forget that I have been faithful to the interests of your family." " A strange faithfulness, sir," she responded. " So far as I can learn, your services have been ill ones ill- rendered." " Ah, you have been listening to gossip about me." She flashed one withering look at him and went 74 A GIKL OF GALWAY down the steps, leaving him standing in the sunshine like an ugly black shadow. She would have passed away through the woods, but before she turned down one of the great radiating avenues that went away from the central house like the spokes of a wheel from the axle, a thought struck her. She turned aside to the stable-yard, and, opening the gate, let the dogs loose. They fawned upon her, and she stood in the midst of them, great hounds and little hounds, like a young virgin huntress. As she passed the steps again with her bodyguard, some of the dogs growled at the motionless figure there ; and Juno, who yet limped, lifted her head and uttered a sharp, angry snarl. Bulger stood watching the girl with her dogs till she had disappeared down one of the avenues, flecked with light and shade. There was an admiration in his face that Bertha would have disliked more than his anger. She went a long way from the house. The man had perturbed her so much that at first she was hardly conscious of anything but the disturbance of her spirit. But presently the peace of the woods fell upon her, and she became sensible of the soft whispering of miles and miles of woodland. Now and again a branch of feathery green leaves laid a touch, soft as finger-tips, on her cheek. Sometimes a low-lying branch crept across her pathway, and she stooped and lifted it aside, rather than roughly brush it from her way. The woods were wonderfully planned. Despite their MOENING 75 great extent and their wildness, there was little or no tangled undergrowth npon the pathways. So spacious were the avenues that though the leaves touched over- head, it was no more than the linked hands of dancers forming an arch. The pathways below were covered with rich, velvety grass. Once, in a glade, she came upon some deer feeding ; but they, scenting the presence of her dogs, lifted their slender heads for one startled second and fled like the wind. The dogs did not follow them ; they were too well trained or too used to the deer. Little rabbits scurried everywhere before her feet, with a flash of white tail as they fled into their burrows. The dogs scampered about harmlessly after them, for- getting they were old dogs and no longer keen of scent. Squirrels sat in the boughs and looked down upon her. Partridges fled with their little brown balls of chickens into the cover as the blear-eyed dogs came sedately through the wood. The place was full of harmless and tender life, and wrapped Bertha about with a suggestion of friendliness, for nothing seemed afraid in this new Garden of Eden. After a while Bertha found her bath in the wood. It was a stream that sprang over a rock into a natural basin, where it formed a round brown pool, before it stole away between mossy stones on the downward incline to the sea. She stood there and made her plans. She would have a little tent set up for her own use, or perhaps 76 A GIRL OF GALWAY a little permanent bathing-house, of which she conld keep the key. As she looked into the amber depths, her spirit as undisturbed now as they were, she heard a clock strike seven, though she could not tell the direction from which it came. She began to retrace her steps hurriedly. She had not discovered the night before if she was to have her grandfather's company at meals. Perhaps not, since he seemed to be something of an invalid and to live much in his own apartments. But it might be that he would expect her this morning ; and if that were so, it would be a bad beginning to be late. However, when she arrived she found old Malachy sunning himself on the hall-door steps, and no sign of any preparation for breakfast. He smiled as he saw her approach, and came forward to help her to gather the dogs into their proper place the stable-yard. " Mrs. Butler has all ready for you, Miss Bertha," he said. " An', sure, 'tis the fine hunger ye'll have on ye after bein' out this grand mornin'." " Does my grandfather come down to breakfast ? " she asked. " Lord love ye no, miss ! He hasn't done the like this many years. No, nor lave his room hardly to get the big dirt took off it. 'Twould be a great thing entirely if you could purshuade him to take an airin' now an' agin. Sure, he's a young man, Sir Delvin, maybe five years younger nor meself, an' I but eighty, an' a fine calf to my leg still." MORNING 77 He looked down admiringly at his old-fashioned small-clothes, and Bertha passed in rather relieved to find that she had not broken any rule of the unseen grandfather, who had begun to assume a rather terrifying aspect in her eyes. Malachy hobbled after her to show her the way. She turned, smiling, to him ; and while she remembered that as yet she knew little of the general lie of the house, and had not the remotest idea as to which room she was to breakfast in, a door at the back of the hall opened, and Mrs. Butler came out, carrying a breakfast- tray, and apparently on her way upstairs. Bertha frowned as she saw the tray, and noticed that it was prepared for two. " Never mind," she muttered to herself. The sharer of her grandfather's repast would presently not be Mr. Bulger. " I've your breakfast ready, honey," the good woman said, beaming at her. " Here, Malachy, take the tray ! Sure I wouldn't be lettin' any wan but meself wait on my young mistress the very first mornin' she was ever at home ! " She pushed open a little door and held it for Bertha to enter. " I put together a few bits o' things in here," she said. " I thought you might make your own of it, an' dress it up pretty for yourself. Let alone there isn't another room fit for you to sit down in." She was gone before Bertha could speak ; but while 78 A GIRL OF OALWAY Bertha still looked round the room with a pleased gaze, she returned carrying a most appetising-looking tray spread with a white cloth. The room was panelled like the hall, and very dim. One square window with a deep window-seat looked out on a tangled garden. In the window stood a table prepared for breakfast, with an arm-chair before it and a footstool. At the back of the chair was a little worked screen. Some pretty old china was on the table, and a big wheel of old-fashioned flowers stood in the centre. Around it were honey in a dish brown, heather honey, such as the shops know nothing of a pat of fresh butter on a green leaf, a little jug of cream, a plate of tiny strawberries, and a home-made griddle-cake. It was all very fresh and dainty ; and when Mrs. Butler had added the pot of tea, the grilled trout, the hot cakes, and the little china stand with two brown eggs in flowery egg-cups, the breakfast would tempt the sickest appetite. "You have planned all this for me," said Bertha, " you dear old woman I And how many pretty things you have gathered together for me ! " " I've picked up a bit here an' a bit there about the house. There isn't much left since the master stored it all away in the locked wing. A lot o' use they'll be for anything by the time they come out again ! But, sure, 'tis no use my sayin' anything. 'Tis all I can do to keep my place ; an' I wouldn't if I wasn't set upon MORNING 79 it, an' if Bulger didn't know no one else would take it." Bertha only half heard her. She was looking from the breakfast-table to the panelled walls studded with little cupboards, the diamond panes of which showed a few bits of china behind them. There were some dim old pictures between, with a glimmer of gold and amber in their darkness. A spindle-legged secretaire, a few chairs, a branching candlestick, an old girandole reflecting the garden and the woods beyond, furnished it sparsely. " You'll like this little place for your own ? " said the old woman, watching her lovingly. " I shall love it." Mrs. Butler jangled a bunch of keys in the pocket of her capacious apron. "I'm still housekeeper here," she said defiantly, " an' I've the kays. This was your grandmother's room, Miss Bertha. There's a pair of kays to it. We'll have one apiece, an' then no wan can enther the room but our two selves." " Why, who would enter it," asked Bertha, " unless it might be my grandfather ? " " There's some has impidence enough for anything," the good woman said darkly. " Never mind, darlin' ; you'll keep this little spot to yourself. Proud I am that I thought of it for you. I wish I could have got you a few more sticks into it ; but 'twas little I could find." 80 A GIRL OF GALWAY " But where is the furniture ? " asked Bertha. " Whisht," said Mrs. Butler, listening. " Ah, that's your grandfather's bell ; an' rung twicet, too. If it isn't that fellow's impidence, it manes that the bell's rung before an' Malachy hasn't heard. He's terrible bothered, poor ould man I " She was gone like a flash, and Bertha had to wait for an answer to her question. CHAPTER VIII. BITTERNESS IT was eleven o'clock, and Bertha had just knocked at the door of her grandfather's room. He had sent a message that he was ready to see her ; and Mrs. Butler, who brought the message, had guided her, in a flutter of excitement and good wishes, to the door of the west wing, the second floor of which was sacred to the owner of the house. The corridor within the large double doors was empty and sunny. Passing from it into the room beyond was such a transition that it made Bertha's eyes blink for a moment. The room was spacious, and had a beautiful large window, with just the same enchanting view as that which Bertha's breakfast-table had looked upon. But the windows were darkened by heavy blinds. An BITTERNESS 81 intended fire smouldered in the grate, and the room smelt airless and oppressive. Whatever of light the blinds had not shut out was obscured by the black figure of Sir Delvin's man of business, who sat at a writing-table in the window with his back to the light and an ostentatious pretence of being very busy. There was a pause before Bertha discovered the littb withered old figure in the arm-chair, clad in a warm dressing-gown, and observing her out of a pair of bright, small eyes. " So you are my granddaughter ? " said a thin voice from the arm-chair. Bertha went forward with an outstretched hand. " I am very glad to see you, grandpapa," she began ; " I hope you are feeling well." Then a sleek voice broke into her speech. " I've to see Brian Rearden about the new lease, Sir Delvin," it said. " He is waiting for me no doubt downstairs." "Aye, I daresay. See the fellow see the fellow. Make him understand that he pays the increase or goes." " I shall obey you faithfully," said the man, leaving the room, to Bertha's great relief. " Stand back there where I can see you," said the old voice when they were alone together. He motioned Bertha into the shaft of light that entered the room now the shadow in the window was removed, and, shading his eyes with his hand, he inspected her narrowly. She could feel the steely old (M835) F 82 A GIEL OF GALWAY eyes piercing her through and through, and a soft colour rose in her cheeks, but her eyes never fell under the scrutiny. "Aye," he said at last, "they said you were like your father. So you are when he disobeyed me and cast off my love. But I think you are like her too, though I never laid eyes upon her." Bertha hardly knew what to say in answer to this, but after a second or two he went on : "A fine, well-grown girl 1 What am I to do with you now you are here ? You are an embarrassment to me an embarrassment, that's what you are." " Why did you ask me, then ? " said Bertha, a little nettled. " Aye, like her father like her father," said the old man, talking to himself. " He was never afraid, though as long as we were friends he would do anything to please me." " I asked you, miss," he said, with a sudden sharp change of tone, " because I was over-persuaded. I've been sorry for it ever since. Will you go back to those who sent you ? " " No," said Bertha. " What do you stay for ? Why are you in that fine frock ? Do you know that you'll never see anyone but me, and the old servants, and that poor, faithful fellow of a bailiff of mine ? It's no life for you. If you think I am rich you make a mistake. I am poor, wretchedly poor." BITTERNESS 83 The voice with which he had begun broke off in a whine, and his eyes turned to the two deep safes which stood against the wall either side of the window. " Papa has plenty of money," said Bertha simply. " I don't care about money. I suppose because I have never needed it." " I should think as much from looking at you. Is that a gold serpent you have round your neck ? Yon might lose it in these woods, where I hear you were wandering this morning. Better let me keep it for you.*' " I shan't lose it," said Bertha, unwinding the flexible coils. " See, it clings to my neck ! It is quite safe." " It's a foolish way to use gold. And so your father is rich rich and famous ? He didn't become so to please me it wasn't for my sake. Not that I care not that I care ! The years grow indifference over you as the moss grows over an oak. Nothing but the anger keeps alive." " There wouldn't be anger without love," said Bertha. " Ah, there you err. You are self-opinionated like most young people. I have no love left except for myself, but I have plenty of anger. And now what are you staying for ? " " Because you brought me here. Because you are papa's father and ought to have someone of your kin near you, since you are old. Because I promised my mother " The old man's face darkened. 84 A GIRL OF GALWAY " Don't name her to me ! " he said furiously. " She will never cross this threshold. I can't forgive you because I see your mother in your face. If you stay here I forbid you to talk about her." " You can't forbid my thinking of her, grandpapa." " Ah, like her father like her father ! " he groaned. " Almost his words almost his words when he forgot all the years in which we had been all in all to each other." Something in the forlorn little old figure and the yearning voice suddenly smote Bertha's heart with a generous instinct of pity and protection. " We'll talk about nothing you don't like, grandpapa," she said coaxingly. " Only tell me I am welcome, and I shall do my best not to disturb or trouble you in any way. Can't you like me a little presently, I mean ? " He waved her off. " You can stay," he said, " but I won't like you. I won't love you ; you needn't expect it. I've loved two people in my life, and my love was wasted, flung away. Now I am old. There is nothing alive in the ashes but anger. You can't cheat me into forgetting, and loving yon." " But Miss Lloyd " began Bertha. " Aye, aye ! Marcella Lloyd, she is the one honest woman, or man perhaps. I had forgotten Marcella. Only for her you wouldn't be here to-day." Bertha's eyes grew wistful. She thought of her mother on the white deck of the P. & 0. boat gazing BITTERNESS 85 back tearfully westward. If she might only be with her, never to leave her I " Since I am here," she said, with an air of cheerful- ness, " hadn't you better make the best of me ? " " I couldn't refuse Marcella anything. We had wronged her enough. I wish she would come now and take you off my hands take you off my hands. You're a fine madam ; you'll want to be gadding and showing off your fal-lals. Do you know that it is five miles to the lodge gates, and the woods shut us in from the world? None but Marcella ever comes here, unless people on business ; and Marcella is away." The prospect was certainly not inviting, and Bertha felt her heart hot with revolt, chill with apprehension, at the thought of the life that presented itself to her radiant youth. Why not fling it all up, and follow that ship that was bearing her beloved away to the East ? Then close at her ear spoke the sweet thin voice that was so precious to her : " Keep Fayth," it said. " Keep Fayth." " I shall amuse myself until Miss Lloyd comes back to be my friend," she said aloud. " I shall have the woods and the dogs and my books. I am not resourceless, grandpapa." " That reminds me," he said fretfully, " Bulger tells me that you have been interfering interfering in some way. I can't have you meddling with Bulger. He is a good lad, and I can trust him ; in fact, I can't spare him, and there must be no trouble mind, no trouble." 86 A GIEL OP GALWAY " He flogs the dogs," began Bertha angrily. " If he does if he does, 'tis only a man's way. A man may be fond of the brutes and yet give them a lash or a kick if they cross him. You are like your grandmother, sentimental over them. I shan't hear any tales against Bulger." " You must not let him talk of me, grandpapa," said Bertha, hot with wounded pride. " Bulger doesn't forget his place," responded the old man. "He knows better knows better. He said he had unfortunately offended you, that was all. But I can't have you turning things topsy-turvy. If you stay, you mustn't meddle." " Then I shall stay on sufferance," said Bertha in a low voice. " I certainly shall not meddle if Mr. Bulger will but keep to his work with you. There is no reason why we should ever meet, is there ? " " No reason at all. Bulger knows his place. He would be afraid of a fine lady like you. See how anxious he was to get away when you came into the room ! Good manners ? No, it wasn't good manners. How should he have them, sprung from no one knows where the workhouse probably? Let Bulger alone, and he'll be only too happy to let you alone. How indeed should he cross the path of my granddaughter ? " " How indeed ? " responded Bertha, with a pride equal to his own. "You mustn't expect me to sit with you at meals. I am a sick man, and a sorry one sick and sorry. I BITTERNESS 87 have long given up doing what people expected of me. I shall not alter my ways for yon." " Keep Fayth," whispered the little voice at Bertha's ear ; and she answered her grandfather softly. " I shall stay and I shall not trouble you," she said. A loud knock, the very sound of which indicated an extreme humility on the part of the person outside, came to the door. " There, that is enough that is enough ! Go away now, child, and remember you are not to trouble not to trouble. You won't be asking me for money no? You have plenty of your own. It has grown a hard world to live in a hard world to live in. I sometimes think I shall die in the poor-house after all. Well, have you made it plain to Rearden that he mast go or pay go or pay ? " The latter part of the speech was addressed to Bulger, who passed Bertha as she went out of the room. Poor Bertha, who had always been the apple of somebody's eye, who had been approved by her school- mistresses and beloved by her schoolfellows, being generous, daring, and as honest as she was sunny- tempered, how changed her world was ! In her present state of mind she could not bear even to meet Mrs. Butler, who, she guessed, was awaiting, in a flutter of hopes and fears, the result of her visit to her grandfather. She could not meet the questions in the kind and devoted woman's eyes, the questions which natural good-breeding would not permit to pass 88 A GIRL OF GALWAT her lips, nor the love and pity she would show her if she knew how painful the interview had been to Bertha. Bertha stole downstairs almost on tiptoe, and to her relief on reaching the hall found no trace of anyone, not even Malachy. She took her garden-hat and went out. Even the dumb companionship of the dogs her wounded spirit shrank from ; and their joyous barking, if she released them, might prevent her slipping away as quietly as she desired. The woods leant to her with their sweet shade and their soothing whispers. She plunged into the woods with no definite intention except to get a long way from the place where she had been humiliated and wounded. After a time tears came. Bertha flung herself on a cushion of velvety moss at the foot of a tree and gave herself up to her heart's hunger for her mother and the bitterness of her exile and her loneliness. She was only eighteen, and she had never had anything but love. A little compassionate wind had sprung up suddenly, and all the woods were full of whispers and sighing. The lower branches of the trees beneath which she lay stroked her hair. Those that were out of reach fanned her with their pale green fans, and a delicious, scented air stirred the misty, fair aureole around Bertha's forehead. After a while she sat up with the sense of an invisible comfort about her. She looked up at the sighing trees, that yet were full of the sunshine. " One would say they were sorry for me," she thought ; and then smiled because the thought was so fantastic. DANGER ! 89 CHAPTER IX. DANGER ! AFTER that outburst of grief, over which she felt somewhat ashamed, Bertha walked on sedately. The beauty of the day and the place won her from her trouble. Mere movement was delightful in these green avenues, springy underfoot, shady overhead, full of light, and fragrant air. There were some hours before she need think of turning back to Corofin. How could she spend them more happily than in the woods the magnificent woods which, she realised with a throb of pride, belonged to her home and her race ? How many hundred years had they been there, although they looked so im- mortally young and beautiful ? She wandered on and on, and still the woods drew her. She took the little watch from her girdle and consulted it. She had forgotten to wind it overnight, and it had stopped. She heard nothing of the clock which had told her the hour that morning. Perhaps, indeed, it was far away in another direction ; and as the trees tangled overhead, she could only guess vaguely that it must be somewhere about noon. Her solitary lunch-hour was to be two o'clock, but if she were late she would inconvenience no one but herself. She did not fear that Mrs. Butler would chide her ; indeed, she had found out already that 90 A GIRL OF GALWAY everything she did would be right in the eyes of that motherly woman. She need not think of turning yet, she said to herself, although she judged that she must have come four or five miles through the woods. How friendly they were I Nothing seemed to fear her. Now that she was alone, even the wild red deer only lifted their heads as they scented her presence, and then resumed their feeding. The rabbits popped to the doors of their houses, looked back at her over their shoulders, and returned, knowing she meant them no harm. A hen-pheasant stepped across the path. The blackbird looked at her with an impudent, sidelong gaze. All the woods were full of song ; and it rejoiced her to see how tame were the creatures who are usually so timid. Suddenly she stopped, lifted her head like one of the deer, and inhaled a long breath into her nostrils. A delighted wonder broke across her face. Bertha had smelt the sea, salt and sweet. How delicious it was I After that second's pause she began to run along the path towards that unforgettable fragrance. But what had come to the woods now ? Had the heavens darkened overhead ? Hardly, for the birds still sang in a gold-green tangle ; the forest-floor kept its million of dancing shadows. But a wind of fear had risen in the tree-tops and shuddered downward to the branches below. No longer was the way easy threading. The branches bent before the wind as though they would DANGEK ! 91 have barred her way ; they clashed and cried abont her, and the trailing briars of undergrowth fastened about her thin frock and held her, so that she had to stoop to disentangle their clinging, closer than fingers. Yet when she had set herself free and was hastening on, she had an irrational feeling that someone wanted to keep her. But the fascination of the sea was too strong. Could it really be such a little while ago since she had left that seaside village amid the chalk, bracing with the east wind even when it was June ? That happy time, so irrecoverable, now seemed years and years ago. To smell the sea was a sweetness half anguish, half joy. Closing her eyes, the breath of it brought her mother once more to her side. Now the woods were growing sparse, and there was a new sound in the air a dull, continuous thunder, which made an organ accompaniment to the singing of the birds and the sighing of the woods. Bertha stood with her head on one side and listened, and a smile broke over her face. Those must be the Atlantic rollers breaking on a stretch of beach. How magnificent the sound was ! Oh, to be within sight of the sea ! and oh, to have the one with her with whom she had walked by that stretch of waters, hardly worthy to be called the sea, across which lay the white coasts of France and the lights of Calais and Cape Grisnez ! Boom ! boom ! went the great sound in the distance. The trees grew thinner and thinner. There were great 92 A GIKL OF GALWAY spaces of sky now overhead, and wide stretches of harebells between the lessening tree-trunks. A new voice came into the woods' voices the cry of a curlew, the solitary voice of the bogs and the salt marshes. At last she stood on the very edge of the woods. It was time for her to return home ; but if she were never to taste food more, she thought to herself, she must look upon the sea over yonder, that lay a weltering mass of grey-green waters, hardly stirring its great coils as of a gigantic serpent, in this windless day of flowers and sunshine. The mountains were in sight, but Bertha hardly looked at the mountains. Between her and the sea was a wide stretch of grey, marshy land, sand and mud mingled, the face of it unbroken by any hill or hollow, but just marked faintly in fine dimples, as though but lately the tide had washed over it. So the ocean came to the very edge of the woods ! No wonder they were securely hemmed in at Corofin, for who could come dry foot by such a road? She shivered a little as she realised the isolation of her new home ; then she lifted her head in wonder, for close at hand she heard the yelp of a dog. It was somewhere near her in the woods, and it filled her with surprise as she had been surprised yesterday to hear the clock strike when she had thought herself so far from human habitation. So there were intruders in the wood, despite the fearlessness of its people ? Poachers perhaps. She had heard that the people in the DANGER ! 93 scattered hamlets and outlying cottages had the primi- tive virtues, and that despite great poverty wealth went safe. But the fish of the water and the birds of the air, there might be simple sophistry to excuse the appropriation of these. Yes, doubtless the dog was a poacher's dog, and his master not far away from him. She took a step forward. She would just look down upon that wonderful green water at her feet and then return. Often, often she would see it, both in sunshine and storm. As she advanced a step or two the thought of the possible poacher in the woods had passed out of her mind. The last pale and slender tree-trunk one of those feathery young larches, fine as a palm swayed towards her as she left the woods behind. Now there was slime under her feet, grey slime, that bubbled as her foot pressed it, and for all its yieldingness held her fast. The slime, of the consistency of putty as well as its colour, was slippery. Lift her feet how she would, she could not take a step backward or forward. She was only a few steps from the solid earth, yet when she would have returned to it she was powerless. For a few seconds she did not realise her predicament. What horrible kind of marsh was this that was solid, yet in which one's feet sank ? She looked down at her stout little brogues. The grey slime was gathering over them. Then she screamed. It was from the horrible sense of helplessness, for as she stood so, 94 A GIRL OF GALWAY flinging her arms about vainly in an attempt to release herself, she felt the earth beneath slowly sucking her in. She had heard of quicksands as she had heard of people being buried alive a far-off, intangible terror with which she could never be concerned. Was this a quicksand or a treacherous bog which disguised it- self in mud and slime? She gazed wildly about her. Overhead the curlew, secure in his wings, called his solitary call. There was the screaming of gulls. The eagle above the Pins hung poised on his enormous wings an instant, then floated away into the blue heavens. Nothing but the pitiless sun in heaven and the lonely birds to see her die ; and the lamentations of the woods, that were crying now like a troop of banshees, could bring her no help. She thought then of the dog she had heard barking, and she screamed again and again, hoping someone would hear. The quicksand was over her ankles, yet she could almost touch the solid earth ! It was too horrible to die like that. Only the blue heaven above her, empty and unlistening. "God's in His heaven, All's right with the world." The words danced at her ears as the silver snake of sand dazzled her despairing eyes. Ah, yes, He was there ! He could help her if it was His will. Yet sometimes He willed to let His children die. 'SHE FELT THE EARTH BENEATH SLOWLY SUCKING HER IN" DANGEB ! 95 " But not like this ! " cried Bertha" not like this ! A death on dry land, in any less appalling way, dear God ! " She was on the point of sinking forward to meet the grey face of her grave ! Then suddenly she felt some- thing close and tighten about her. She felt herself lifted, dragged forward, freed from the quicksand. She lay, with her eyes closed, on solid earth, and knew that someone was leaning above her. She heard that someone drawing deep breaths of excitement. Then a dog licked her face. There came the homely, friendly sound of a horse whinnying close at hand. " You are not going to faint ? " said a voice. Bertha opened her eyes and began to struggle to get up. " If you are really equal to it," said the voice again. " There, let me help you. Come out of sight of the place. Let us get into cover." She made no protest as she found herself half lifted, half carried a little way. She was set down on a soft mossy carpet with a convenient tree-trunk to support her. Presently she opened her eyes on the woods at peace, full of songs and sunshine, and on a young man who stood with a horse's reins over his arm and the horse's head by his shoulder, looking down at Bertha with a pallor over his natura 1 ruddiness. " Great heavens ! " he said, " what brought you in that place ? Do you know that but for the chance 96 A GIRL OF GAL WAY of my passing it was one chance in a million the quicksand would have engulfed you ? Where did you come from not to know ? " " I am a stranger," said Bertha faintly. " I suppose they had not thought to warn me. They never thought I would come so far." " And if I had not happened to have the reins " he patted the horse and grew pale again under his ruddiness "if I had been walking, I couldn't have pulled you out. We would have gone in, of course, Grouse and I " (a beautiful red setter who had been watching Bertha with much concern looked up and wagged his tail at hearing his name mentioned) ; " but it wouldn't have done you much good. We should all have gone under." "And now " she began. "And now you are very little the worse," he said, with an attempt at throwing off the horror which still clung about both of them, " except that you have lost your shoes." Her eyes followed the direction of his and rested upon her grey, silk-stockinged feet. She drew them under her skirt a little j but she was not given to consciousness, and it did not seem a moment for so little and personal a feeling. " I shall never go there again," she said, shuddering. " Great heavens, I should think not ! " he replied almost angrily. " I had a feeling I ought not to go, as though DANGEE ! 97 something were whispering at my ears pleading with me." " I should listen to such voices in future," he said grimly. "The woods would have kept me if they could," she went on half-dreamily. " They put all sorts of obstacles in my path." " How do you come in the woods ? " he asked. " You are trespassing, you know ; so am I, for the matter of that. Sir Delvin Grace would have me summoned before the bench if he discovered me, and my own father would have to sentence me as Lynch of Galway did his son." " You are Mr. Roper's son ? " she said, gazing at him in the same half-dreamy way; she was not quite recovered from her terror. " Hugh Roper," he answered, lifting his cap. " Very much at your service. I think you must be Sir Delvin's granddaughter." " Yes. I knew you, though for a time I was too frightened to remember. I saw you at the Broadstone." " Ah ! I didn't see you, but I have heard of you." " How did you come to be here, to save me ? I thought the woods were so strictly kept." " I should never think of invading them, though this rascal, Grouse, is not so scrupulous. But there is a No Man's Laud between the woods and the quicksand, scarcely wide enough for a bridle-path just a ridge of (M835) G 98 A GIRL OF GALWAY solid ground and rock. People are too much afraid of the quicksand to take it as a rule, but it is a short cut for me home, and this Banshee of mine has mountain- blood in her, and is sure-footed." " If you had not come ! " she said, shuddering. " We will not talk about it," he replied gently. " It is too horrible to think of. The quicksand tells no secrets, but now and again somebody has been missing." " I had better be going home," she said, extending a frank hand to him to be helped from her seat on the mossy tree-trunk. Truth to tell, she felt shaken and a little ill. When she had stood upright she looked down at her feet in dismay. "I have thought of that," he said, answering what was in her mind. " I shall have to lead you as near Corofin as I dare on Banshee." " As you dare ? " " Your grandfather might put a brace of bullets in me if he saw me come too close." " You have saved my life." " God's blind instrument," he answered, with a fine reverence. " I am too glad that I was that instrument to protest." " He would thank you my grandfather, I mean." " He would not, Miss Grace. He could not bear to accept such a thing at the hands of one of my name." DANGER I 99 She looked at him mournfully. " My father and he loved one another when they were young," he said. " Love turned bitter is the greatest bitterness of all. Say nothing to him of the quicksand and your escape. He would only be very angry." " I need not. He and I shall meet but seldom." His eyes flashed. " Why did they send you here, the father and mother who were tender to you ? " Then he flushed deeply. " I beg your pardon," he said. " Of course I have no right. Come, Miss Grace, can you manage to keep on by my saddle if I lead Banshee very gently ? " "Couldn't I walk?" " Five Irish miles in silk stockings ! " Without any more protest she allowed him to help her on to the mare, and they took a sedate way in the direction of Corofin. So careful was he lest the least false step on the part of the steed should make her more uncomfortable than she necessarily was that he hardly spoke again during the five miles of woodland. Once, when they passed her pretty glade with its pool, he turned to her. " That is supposed," he said, " to be where Sir Turlough Muskerry, from whom you Graces inherit Corofin, met his evil fate in Lord Kilfenora's daughter." She did not answer him. Robust as she was, she was on the verge of tears, shaken by the terror she 100 A GIRL OF GALWAT had passed through. So it was that she left him, as she felt afterwards, coldly, without thanking him, because she could hardly trust herself to speak. CHAPTER X. THE WOODS OF COEOFIN ONLY to Mary Butler did she breathe her peril in the quicksand. Her mother must know nothing of it because of the shock it would be to her ; and there was no one else to tell. It can be imagined how the good woman lifted her hands in horror. " Sure I might have known," she said, " that you were in trouble, because the woods were in trouble. 'Twas like the night your grandmother died. They do say there is somethin' in it. But there, sure, we couldn't be believin' the like. 'Tisn't as if the trees had sperits in them." " Some people thought they had," said Bertha. " There were such folk as dryads and hamadryads.' " I never heard tell o' them," said Mrs. Butler, "though many's the ould story I've listened to. I don't think they lived in this part of the country. Maybe it might be the county Clare." " Tell me the story now," said Bertha dreamily. " It is the time to hear your stories and believe in them." THE WOODS OF COROFIN 101 The fire burnt brightly in Bertha's great empty bedroom. She was lying on a sofa before it, and a tea equipage stood at hand. The old servant had in- sisted on making her something of an invalid after her terrible experience, and knelt now by the side of the sofa, chafing Bertha's feet in her warm hands as a mother chafes the cold feet of her little one. And Bertha was glad to be so comforted, for she had looked on the face of living death and been afraid. This is the story that Mary Butler told, but not in her homely words. Long afterwards Bertha, come to be a distinguished woman, wrote the story as it had become familiar to her, and this is how she told it : The woods were the glory of Corofin, and clothed with their magnificent life the old castle, builded with hands, that was crumbling the way of all mortality. Sir Brian had planted them, and had lived to see them in their young beauty when he was old almost out of memory. What wife and children are to some .few of the sons of Adam his woods were to Sir Brian, fie had burdened Corofin for them, planting them thick where there might have been homesteads and crops and cattle. He watched his woods grow with a greater sense of the renewing of his own life than he had had when he looked on his heir. He was satisfied when his thews and sinews grew slack, and his big body fell in like an unsubstantial thing, because the trees had centuries yet to be young in. A madness, people said ; and, at least, it must have 102 A GIKL OF GAL WAY been a possession. He had covered miles of arable land beyond his park with the plantations. He had gone far and near for the trees, and had had the counsel of men wise in such matters when he went planting. The trees had thriven in the sun and the rain and the rich pasture about their feet ; and when old Sir Brian lay dying he could look over the tops of them, farther than eye could reach a sea of warm gold and scarlet and bronze, like the feathers of a heavenly bird, all tossing in the blue autumnal air. He had built himself a lantern-tower high over the gateway of the old castle, so that even lying in bed he could see the woods. The trees radiated from the house doors, stretching away in noble avenues and grassy glades, now and again crossed by the tossing antlers of a herd of red wild deer. The old man watched his trees during the long days he lay dying. "They will outlive the Muskerrys," he said, more eager for his woods than another man for his race ; "and my name will live with them." It was said that he had put a curse on the man who should lay an axe to the root of one of them ; and whether that was so or not, the Muskerrys one after another spared the trees, though they ate into the family prosperity as ivy eats into a ruin. The picture Sir Brian had had painted of himself it had been his whim to hang in the lantern-room, whence the painted eyes could look as his had so THE WOODS OF COROFIN 103 long over the beauty of the woods. A fierce, red-faced, frowning old man, leaning forward in his chair, with his short riding-whip half raised in a threatening gesture. The forgotten artist had done his work well, for the face had life and anger in it, and except when the sunlight fell upon it the eyes looked an almost savage menace. So he sat for ever watching over his woods, and it would have taken a man of coarser fibre than any Muskerry that followed him to disregard that furious old ghost up there in the picture-frame in the lantern- room. The Muskerrys were not coarse-fibred ; and as the years and the generations passed, and their poverty and their pride drew round them close as a mantle, and the woods growing greater and more beautiful seemed to make a barrier between them and the world, they became moody and full of superstitions, like many an ancient race. Sir Miles, the last Muskerry but one, had brought home a young bride to the castle, whose advent at first promised better things. She was young and light-hearted, one of a large family of happy girls and boys ; and for a while her sunny ways seemed to lift the cloud from Sir Miles's moody brow. She was sweet-natnred, too, and seemed to love her husband so dearly that she never craved for the company and the pleasures natural to her youth. Still, the melancholy place must have weighed upon her, for only she and the trees were young the immortal 104 A GIRL OF GAL WAY trees that would be young in the sunshine and the rain many an age after she had lain in the Muskerry vault. It was but natural that she should welcome her cousin, the young captain, who came with his regiment to a town not many miles from Corofin, and at first her husband seemed glad that she should have the pleasure of her cousin's visits. But not for long. In the nick of time, as it seemed, the young captain went to the wars, and after he had gone it was plain my lady fretted. Sir Miles watched her with jealous eyes of suspicion. The poor young thing was not well, and needed all his tenderness ; but the cloud came down between them blacker than the blackest night. What happened when at last my lady discovered her husband's anger against her, only Bride, the old nurse, could tell. It was Bride who lifted her from the floor, where she found her, on to her bed. Before morning the young heir was born. It was Bride who watched the new mother die within an hour of her child's birth. Only Bride and the trees looked on the thickening of the gloom that lay upon a doomed family. All night the trees had whispered about the house and peered in at the black windows. All night they had shivered and leant one to another till the movement and the whispers must have reached the edge of the woods miles away under a sky of stormy clouds. But as the old nurse closed the eyes of the dead, the trees about the house rocked together as though in an intolerable THE WOODS OF COKOFIN 105 trouble, and soon all the woods were crying and bending themselves to the earth, being lashed by a bitter storm. It was this morning of great wind and tempest that little Sir Turlough opened his eyes on the world. The baby was doubly orphaned. Sir Miles was found in his study with a bullet through his head when they went to tell him that his heir was born and his wife was dead. In the gloom of the darkened house the child grew to consciousness. He had a very tender nurse in old Bride ; but the old woman's eyes seemed for ever as if they saw a great horror. The songs that came to her lips to hush him to sleep were songs of death. The trouble had broken her, and she was always muttering of omens. So 'tis scarcely strange that it was long before the little heir even learnt to smile. The first time the smile came to his face his cradle had been drawn near the window, for it was May, and the trees were wearing the green in its first exquisite transparent beauty. The knolls about their feet were carpeted with primroses, and here and there a tall cowslip thrust up its honeyed head. The glades were dappled with light and shade, gold and green, and the trees were all softly leaning and whispering one to another, and swaying about luxuriously in the scented May wind. The woods rocked myriads and myriads of cradles, and the air was alive with the love-songs of the thrush and blackbird, the goldfinch and the linnet. 106 A GIRL OF GAL WAY " Ah," said the old woman, as she watched the baby smile, " he sees the angels." But he did not see the angels only the trees, that were scarcely less beautiful with their massed plumage of gold and green. The trees were leaning towards him and crooning, and the baby smiled and babbled in reply. He grew up a serious child. Bride was too old to play, and a little crazed with the fate that had befallen Sir Miles, the child of her fostering. He had no toys, and not even a little dog to keep him company. Sometimes the rector, who had been his grandfather's friend, would come and sit a while in the cheerless nursery, and look wistfully at the child, and mutter to himself that it was a sad house for a baby, and that the little one ought to have companions of his own age. But where were they to come from in that place where they were all old ? The rector had never married, and his few parishioners they were not half a dozen all told were old. His church, with its little churchyard almost filled up with the great grey Muskerry vault, was surrounded by the woods, for Sir Brian had not found it so easy to evict his ancestors as the peasant-farmers who had made way for his planting. There were few Protestants in that country, and those there were preferred a more stirring service than the rector gave them all except a few old folk who came to him still for old times' sake. But though the rector shook his head, he, no more than the old nurse who loved the child, knew how THE WOODS OF COKOFIN 107 things were to be altered, and so little Sir Turlough grew up a lonely, imaginative child, silent, though not unhappy, and as great a lover of the woods as ever Sir Brian was. That he was born under the shadow of death he did not know. There was no one to tell him except his old nnrse, or the gardener, or the devoted servants, old men and women all, for the yonng servants had left the house after the tragedy. All these loved the child, and looked to him with a strange hope to restore a kingdom they, at least, could never come into, since they crept about like flies on a southern pane in winter and the life was chill in them. But they would not sadden childhood with the revelation of terrible things ; and they and the old rector were the people of his world in which he only was young. But once when Bride was away from the nursery, and he, a tiny boy, with the spirit of adventure stirring in his masculine breast, had climbed the stairs to the lantern-room, he came suddenly upon the threatening figure of the portrait. So frightened was he that he went near to having a serious illness ; and afterwards, when Bride had nursed and comforted him back to life, the fear of the portrait haunted him. Though he climbed no more in those babyish days to the lantern-room, he never forgot the fear it held. In the house he knew fear ; out in the woods he was fearless. Once again in his babyhood he strayed from the 108 A GIRL OF GALWAY side of his old nurse, nodding asleep in the sun, and, wandering away down one of those golden aisles, he was presently lost. There was terror and consternation at the castle ; but the little heir, till hunger came upon him, roamed happily, learning delicious secrets of the woods. When at last he found he was very hungry, and his cries for Bride meeting with no response, he lay down to rest, for his little feet had fared quite a long way for them, it seemed to him that the trees rocked him to sleep. With all those tall benignant figures about him in the moonlight he forgot to fear. He lay where the roots of a great elm made a hollow like a little cradle, and with his hand under his cheek he went to sleep on a cushion of moss starred with harebells. Little rabbits came out of the fern and sat bolt upright staring at him. The squirrels, swinging from bough to bough, forbore to drop the hazel-nuts close to his head lest they should wake him. In the night as he slept the branches of the elms clustered thick above him, to shield him from the dews. The woods were full of quiet and holy calm, and in all the miles of them there were nothing but Innocences. They found the boy in the morning fast asleep and more tranquil than they had often seen him, and carried him home through the young dawn ; nor did he suffer at all from his sleep out of doors. But as he grew older his fear of Sir Brian altered. THE WOODS OF COROFIN 109 He himself would have said he had no fear, but his fascination for the memory of the ancestor who had planted the woods had in it something of a fear. " I'm not afraid of you," he would say to the portrait. " Why should I be ? You and I are one in our love for the woods. They shall never lay axe to them while I am here to prevent it." And yet the portrait watched him with those eyes full of bitter resentment and threatening. As he grew older he took the lantern-room for his own. So great was the fascination the woods held for him that Sir Brian's spirit might have lived again in Sir Turlough. He was never lonely with their voices about him, whether hushing like an old nurse in the summer night, or clashing and crying in the storms of winter. The beauty of them, too, filled his heart with joy. Whether they were clad in the young green of spring or had the darkness of summer upon them, whether they shimmered crimson and gold in autumn or showed but a tracing of boughs against the winter sky, they were beautiful to him. He believed that they sorrowed with him and were glad with him. Once when he had gone near dying in a childish illness, they had moaned day and night like the waves of the sea. And later, when he had come to rejoice in his youth and strength, although he was lonely, the woods in their proud beauty seemed to rejoice with him. He had not grown up a clown, though he was solitary. 110 A GIKL OF GAL WAY The old rector had taught him his Latin and Greek, and he was no dunce. He had learnt, too, to ride and swim, to fish and shoot, though for the latter he had no liking. To kill the birds on the bough or in the cover, or to shoot the beautiful red deer, would have seemed to him like slaying the children of the woods, and these, he said to himself, were his brothers and sisters, for he, too, was of the woods' children. He had a strange beauty of his own as he grew to manhood. The simplicity and innocence of his life, as well as the days, and often much of the nights, spent in the open air, had given him something of the grace and beauty of a younger world. The old rector, as he watched him from under his shaggy brows, would murmur to himself of Hyacinthus, or some such golden boy of Greek poetry. But Sir Turlough was unconscious of these things, for he had no standard of comparison among these old people, and if he had studied his own face in a glass it would never have struck him that it had beauty. He rode out in the woods one golden afternoon of summer when there was scarcely the lightest breath of air. Yet as his horse paced slowly down the long aisles he thought he caught the sound of a low sighing. " Ah," he said, lifting his face to the roof of the tree-branches, " there will be rain to-night." But presently he forgot the sighing of the woods, for a wonderful thing happened. In one of the sweetest glades of all, where a little pool full of water-lilies THE WOODS OF COKOJFIN 111 received a waterfall that sprang over a crag, he came upon a vision so beautiful that he could only leap from his horse, cap in hand, and look without speaking. It was a very young girl with a small pale face, round and childish. The face had grey eyes, almost black in the iris, and shaded by long lashes. Her yellow hair had tumbled to her knee, and as she stood by her pony's side her eyes flashed at him through tears. " Your woods are unmannerly, sir," she said. " I was riding under those limes and a branch struck at me across the cheek. See, I shall carry the mark ! " He looked at her half dazed, and saw across her warm cheek a weal of red. A sudden tremble of anger against the lime ran through him. " It ought to be cut," he murmured ; " they are allowed to grow too free." "It is the first time I have ridden in your woods," she said, with the same half-childish anger, " and they are malignant. I have had to turn many a time to avoid your rough branches, and if Hero had not been the cleverest of beasts the roots would have thrown us a dozen times." " They grow too freely," he repeated ; and the trees heard him and sighed, as one might sigh overhearing the perfidy of a friend. " Let your trees be," she said imperiously. " I am tired of them, and the blow has made me feel faint." " Sit here," he said humbly, indicating a knoll below 112 A GIRL OF GAL WAY an elm-tree the very one, indeed, which had cradled him when he was a lost child. " Sit here and rest, and I will bathe your cheek with this spring water." She suffered herself to be led to the knoll, where she sat like a princess. Then she handed him a fairy- like web of lawn, and directed him to bathe her hurt. To the boy who had known no women except old Bride and the housekeeper, and who had read much pagan poetry, she seemed a young goddess rather than human. While he washed the bruise she sat with downcast eyes, covered with white lids finely veined. As he bathed with the water the cheek finer than rose-leaves he felt her breath on his hand. The wind stirred in her hair, and blew a strand of its gold against his cheek. His heart hammered in his ears as he knelt beside her. Presently she took the handkerchief from his hand, and looked at him with a gentle expression more bewildering than her anger. " Thank you," she said ; " the pain is less. So you are Sir Turlough Muskerry ? " " Yes," he said shyly ; " and you ? " " I am Eileen Fitzmaurice," she said ; " and I am as lonely as you, for my mother died long since, and my father is for ever at the Court in London. They told me I must not enter these woods ; bat I have always wanted to, and to-day Hero and I escaped while old Walter was mending a broken stirrup-leather. THE WOODS OF COROFIN 113 Your gate stood open. I am glad I came, although your woods gave me no welcome." "And I too," he said in an impassioned whisper. " I too am glad." She looked at him with alarm which had a hint of coquetry. "Now bring me Hero," she said, "or I shall not get home in time before Walter has alarmed the house with my loss." " But you will come again ? " he pleaded, as he lifted her into her saddle. " Perhaps," she answered, looking at him from amid the confusion of her hair ; and Sir Turlough turned red and pale. He rode with her to the gates farther she would not have him go. " I am not afraid of the open country," she said, "and I shall scamper home merrily. It is of your woods now they are full of shadows that I am afraid." He followed her eyes to where the woods lay behind them. They had an aspect, indeed, lonely and full of gloom, and the nearest trees leant towards them with bowed heads and veiled faces. " You will not fear them when you know them," he said. " You do not know what they are to me." But though he tried to make her see the woods with something of his own eyes through the golden days of that summer, she would not. She came, indeed, (M835) H 114 A GIRL OF GALWAY to the woods because she was not likely to be sought there when she had escaped from the old groom and her purblind governess ; but she always declared they frightened her. " They are like a belt of death," she cried, " between you and the world. They are as malignant as the quicksand." And all that golden summer the woods wore their strange air of patience and waiting. Only at night, in the moonlight, they trembled as at some wind of trouble far off, and the scent that rose from them was a scent of bruised things. Then there was a day of wind and rain, and though Sir Turlough kept the tryst with his love, he hardly looked to see her. But she came through the rain, and her eyes were red with weeping. With a nameless prevision of evil he drew her within the woods' shelter, into a copse where the trees stood so close that no rain reached them, though they could hear a million drops on the roof of leaves overhead. " The earl, my father, has returned," she said, when he had taken her in his arms, " and he has bidden me get ready to go with him to England. He says I am of marriageable age, and shall wed my cousin, Richard Vaux." "But he does not know that you are promised to me," cried the young man incredulously. "He would laugh if he did. He would treat us as children, and take all our sorrow as a rare jest." THE WOODS OF COBOFIN 115 "I shall go to him, and he will not langh at me. I am a man, and not to be trifled with. He cannot separate us, Eileen." " Ah, but he will I He will ask you where is your patrimony. Cousin Dick is very rich." " And I am poor, my beloved ; but you have given me your love." " Oh, yes, Turlough, I love you ; and Cousin Dick is yellower than an orange, my father says, while you are comely and young and strong. But Cousin Dick can give me the diamonds and the fine dresses that is what my father would say. He thinks a woman wants for no more." " But you are not so light. You would rather Have love than jewels and silks ? " " How can you ask me, Turlough ? Still, jewels and silks are very nice things. If only the woods had not swallowed up all your money ! " The woods shook with a sudden storm, and the rain was blown in their faces like tears. Sir Turlough slept ill that night. He said to himself that it was natural Eileen should care for fine jewels, being a woman and young. And the woods that had never failed him were ill at ease. The air was full of their crying that was like a wind. The next day he saw Lord Kilfenora, and told him that he loved his daughter and desired to marry her. The earl leant against the chimneypiece and regarded Sir Turlough with a not unfriendly smile. He was 116 A GIRL OF GALWAT a tall man with a skin like parchment, and innumer- able fine lines of laughter round his thin lips and his colourless, tired eyes. " A very pretty romance, upon my word I " he said, breaking silence at last ; " and if I were a rich man you should have her. But I have made as pretty a hash of my fortunes with the green cloth as ever your ancestor with his timber." " We can do without wealth," began the lover. But the earl lifted his hand. "You mean you can give her a nest of owls and spiders. I know the repute of Corofin, you see, though I keep out of the place as much as I can. Besides, Dickon has my word. Look here, my lad, forget her. None of her sex is worth a sigh. Come with me to Court, and I shall marry you in a year to a beauty and an heiress." Sir Turlough interrupted him haughtily : " I came to propose marriage to your daughter." 1 To offer her the bats and spiders. She would give me little thanks afterwards if I said Yes. She shall go to England with me and marry Dickon." " She will marry me," said Sir Turlough. " Have sense, my lad. She would lead you a life once she had got over her midsummer madness, if she did not die, indeed, of your mouldering castle. She loves gauds like any other woman. She will be happy with Dickon." " She will never marry him," said Sir Turlough, white THE WOODS OF COROFIN 117 and resolute. " She will marry me, though I had to cross Death to reach her ! " The earl looked at him with an odd light of admiration in his eyes. "Why," he said, "you are a fine fellow, and the little hussy has taste. And Dickon is only the withered rind of a man, and the colour of his guineas. Why, you shall have her. Turn your trees into gold, and the thing is done. They are buying much wood for the king's ships this year. They say we shall go to war with the Dutch." " Sell the woods ! " said Sir Turlough incredulously ; and in his ears there was the sound of their tender cradle-song when he was a child. "Aye, sell the woods, and you shall have her," repeated the earl, not noticing or understanding his agitation. He flung aside an open door and called to his daughter. " Come here, you minx ! You are to have your will after all. Come and talk to your lover." He left them together, and went out, smiling to himself at the thought of Lord Richard's discomfiture. " He was too close with his money," he said with enjoyment "closer than any gentleman ought to be." Then Sir Turlough was silent while Lady Eileen sat by him, but in his heart was the thought of all the glory and joy and the immortal youth he was asked to destroy, that he, a creature of a day, should have his desire. 118 A GIRL OF GALWAY " And you will sell the woods ? " cried Lady Eileen, guessing the cause of his silence. " You will sell them because you love me the best ? " "You are asking me to sell more than flesh and blood," he answered ; and the courage in him rose up to say that he would not buy even her at such a price. But he was young, and she was bewilderingly sweet to him, and she seemed to draw the will out of him as already she had drawn the heart. Before he left her he had given his word that the woods should be sold. When he went out into the night, and the glamour of her presence was withdrawn, he realised what he had done, and he rode home with his head almost to the saddle-bow. As he rode through the betrayed woods he did not dare to listen to their murmurs, that now, as ever, followed him with a more than human tenderness. He heard what they did not : the sound of the axe laid to their roots ; he saw their beauty down and in ruins, the woods gone, the wood-creatures homeless, all that radiant life and innocence vanished like a dream. He went upstairs to the lantern-room heavily and feeling dead tired. The moon had risen, and lay in a broad silver stream on the hand in Sir Brian's portrait clenching the riding-whip. Sir Turlough shivered with a half-superstitious terror, as if a wind of fear had blown to him out of his childhood. THE WOODS OF COEOFIN 119 But he was too mortally tired to remember long. He flung himself on his bed dressed as he was, and as the moon rose higher and flooded the chamber it fell on him as he lay with his arm above his head and his lips faintly smiling. For the last time the woods had sung him asleep. Towards morning there was a break in the fine weather, and the rain was drenching the attics of the castle and flooding the lower floors, while the wind raved and beat about the old house, full of cracks and gaping fissures. Old Bride wakened early to a wild dawn, and heard the trees of the wood crying like mad creatures. Her first thought was for her nursling. Had he come home last night, or was he somewhere safe in shelter ? The wind and the crying of the woods deafened her as she went feebly up the steps to the lantern-room. She found Sir Turlough lying on his back, as he had flung himself down the night before ; but the smile of the dreamer had given way to a look of rigid horror, and the staring eyeballs were an image of fear. He had been dead some hours, and he bore no trace of injury except the livid weal across his face where a riding-whip had struck him. He was the last of the Muskerrys, and when Pierce Grace succeeded, the woods were safe. But the castle had been so shaken by the storm that Pierce Grace levelled it, and built a new house with two fine wings to it, and there he brought home his bride. 120 A GIRL OF GAL WAY When Mary Butler had finished, Bertha drew a deep breath. " And what became of the lady ? " she asked. " What matter, my lamb ? She destroyed poor Sir Turlough. They do say she married her cousin, and was a great lady at the English Court afterwards." " What became of the picture ? " " "Tis in the locked wing wid all t'other fine things." " You've seen it ? " Bertha asked in an awed voice. " Many a time. 'Tis terrible wicked-lookin'." "Well, I shouldn't like to sell the woods, even if I weren't fond of them. I shouldn't like that terrible old man coming down upon me as I lay here some night." The old woman made a devout gesture. " Sure, 'tisn't the like of him you have watchin' over you, my pretty," she said. Then with a change of voice : " I'm misdonbtin' that only for the same Sir Brian, the woods might go, after all." " You mean my grandfather might sell them ? " " I wouldn't put it past Bnlger to be persuadin' him." " What power has he over grandpapa ? " asked Bertha indignantly. " The power them has that feeds our passions," said the old servant solemnly. " You'll forgive me for sayin' it, Miss Bertha, but your grandfather is ate up wid the love of goold, an' Bulger finds it for him." A NEW PUBCHASE 121 "And you think my grandfather believes in Sir Brian's anger ? " Bertha asked in wonder. " Miss Bertha," said Mary impressively, " he has the Muskerry blood in him. Wasn't Pierce Grace a first cousin by the mother of poor Sir Turlough ? There isn't one of the blood doesn't believe it in his heart." Bertha laughed nervously. " I'm not sure that I don't believe it myself," she said. CHAPTER XI A NEW PUECHASE DESPITE the dispiriting circumstances of her arrival, Bertha was not one to remain content without an effort at least at ameliorating her lot. For one thing she was not going to be completely cut oif from the world, even though the avenue of Corofin was five miles in length. She took a few days to recover from the shock of the quicksand. Then when she had succeeded in mastering a tendency to tears on slight provocation a strange thing in a bright, healthy-minded girl like Bertha she once again bearded her grandfather in his den. As before, Mr. Bulger elaborately stood up and went 122 A GIKL OF GALWAY out. Sir Delvin gloomed after him from under his thick brows. " What does the fellow mean by leaving me," he muttered "in the midst of the bank-account, too? And what have you to say, miss?" Bertha smiled back at him undismayed. " I want to say, grandpapa," she replied, " that I am going to get one of your mountain ponies to carry me to church on Sunday, or to the village, or anywhere else I desire to go." " You are, are you ? " the old man said sardonically. " And where do you suppose the pony is to come from, pray? If you want to gad, you can have the landau and the old horse and Mick Magee. The pair of them, himself and his horse, are eating the bread of idleness at present." " I propose to give myself a pony," said Bertha. "You talk big, miss. Give yourself a pony, with Mick and the horse idle, to say nothing of the landau ! Idleness and improvidence idleness and improvidence ! It is easy to see how you've been brought up." " I was very well brought up," said Bertha cheer- fully. " My sense of justice, for example, is too keen to permit of my evicting the present tenants of the landau. And I think it time to give old-age pensions to Mick and the horse." An unexpected gleam of humour shot at her from under the .old man's eyebrows. " Aye, I suppose the landau would be hardly fine A NEW PURCHASE 123 enough for a smart yonng woman like you ! " he said. " And so you want to buy a pony to buy a pony ? Well, if you won't use my horse and carriage, and give me the money instead, may I ask how much money you propose to spend on this animal ? " " That is what I want you to tell me, grandpapa. I thought about twenty-five pounds." " Twenty-five pounds ! You'd get three ponies for that I Ask Bulger to buy you one for a ten-pound note. You'll get the pick of them for that the pick of them for that." " I want you to buy it for me, grandpapa." " I ? Why, I never leave my room ! Do you suppose I'm going to gad for you ? " " I thought that you would know the people who had them for sale, and that you could have some brought here and help me to select one." " And have my gravel cut to pieces ? " Again there was the odd glint of humour, the first human thing Bertha had discovered in her grandfather. "Well, well, you needn't be impertinent, miss," he said. " I know it's years since it was gravelled. I know we're a little out-at-elbows all round, but it will do my time it will do my time." " It won't do many other people's," said Bertha bluntly. " Whom is there that I should consider ? I owe very little to those who will come after me a lonely old man a lonely old man I Why should I consider you ? " 124 A GIEL OF GAL WAY " Me ? " said Bertha. " Yes, you. Corofin must come to you one day. Don't tell me you haven't thought of it, or someone else for you someone else for you. But it is a bankrupt country. It's all I can do to keep myself out of the workhouse. There won't be much left when I am gone." " The house and the trees." " Aye, the trees the trees. If I could turn the trees into money not for what they'd fetch what they'd fetch ! But there's coal under them. Bulger says there is, and brings me bits of it. If only I could evict the trees ! " " You would never do such a thing ! " cried Bertha in pious horror. "Why shouldn't I? why shouldn't I? I haven't bent my knee to God this many a year, since your father left me. Why should I be afraid of an old story and an old picture of a man, dust and ashes long ago ? " " Why indeed ? " said Bertha simply. He gave a sharp look at her. "You haven't been in the world long enough to know that people keep their superstitions and lose their faiths lose their faiths." " It is a pity they don't keep what is worth having," said Bertha. He did not seem to have heard her. Standing up, he hobbled to the table in the window which his man of affairs had left. " Come here," he said. " You know coal when you "COAL AND GOLD, MISS, COAL AND GOLD" A NEW PUKCHASE 125 see it ? This is what Bulger brings me. It keeps me awake of nights awake of nights." Bertha bent her young brows over the lumps of strange material. " I suppose it is coal," she said. " Coal and gold, miss coal and gold. And those idle trees with their roots tangled up in it ! Bulger says there is a seam. Think what it means think what it means ! And those idle trees covering it those idle trees covering it ! Miles and miles of it there may be 1 Think what it means, girl ! " " I can't," said Bertha. " If you had all that money, what would you do with it ? " " Fill my coffin with it perhaps be buried in gold. Some day you will know perhaps that love and beauty and youth will all fail you ; but if you have money, unspent money, you keep your dreams ! To think how I have toiled for what little I have got what little I have got, screwing it out of those wretches as though it was their hearts' blood and seas of it held fast by those greedy woods ! " " It may not be coal at all," said Bertha ; " and if it is, there may be very little of it. You should have an expert. What does that peasant know about it ? " " You talk of an expert as lightly as of your pony. Do you know that experts cost money ? " " So for the matter of that would raising the coal and disposing of it in a distant market." He stared at her thunderstruck. 126 A GIRL OF GALWAY " You talk like an old woman," he said, " or like a man. Girls were not taught to think taught to think, in my days. It was enough if they had a pretty face under their bonnets and a taste for house- keeping." " Ideals of education are different nowadays," said Bertha. " Ah, and you hit people's weak spots. It is the money it is the money that frightens, more than that old man with his riding- whip. Old wives' tales old wives' tales, the whole of it ! But I should have to impoverish myself before I could become rich. I mean " he gave a sharp glance at her " I should have to raise money. That is the pinch that is the pinch. Else, should I leave the gold to the hungry trees?" " I should let it alone if I were you, grandpapa. Probably it is a will-o'-the-wisp. And even if the coal is there, you are so far from any market." " It is what I say what I say, when Bulger asks me to read his long rows of figures. ' Take them away, Bulger,' I say ; ' gentlemen never were taught ciphering in my days. It was thought only fit for a tithe-proctor or a bailiff.' Bulger doesn't like it. Thinks I mean to remind him of his position. You called him a peasant, child called him a peasant. He is none. A devoted fellow, but sprung of a nameless stock sprung of a nameless stock." " I wouldn't let him influence me," said Bertha ; but repented as soon as she had said it. A NEW PUKCHASE 127 " I'm not influenced by my servants, miss," the old man snarled at her. " When I need them, I take them up ; when I don't, I put them down I put them down." Bertha thought of the old man with the riding-whip, as Mrs. Butler's story had described him. " Never mind, grandpapa," she said in a conciliatory way. " I daresay it was a stupid word, and not quite the one I meant." "They should have taught you at your fine school to pick your word s" " About the pony, grandpapa ? " said Bertha, en- deavouring to turn the conversation. " The pony ah ! the pony. You are sure you want it, eh ? You won't change your mind ? If you go to church now you'll find that St. Leger will be asking me next for a contribution to build him a belfry. And I so wretchedly poor ! Then you'll be bringing people about the place that's what I'm afraid of. You'll think you are free to do as you like. But as long as I'm above ground I shall keep my house as I will." Bertha answered his threatening gaze with her candid one. " I shall not ask anyone without your permission," she said. " And that you shall never have shall never have ! A set of wastrels, eating us out of house and home ! Oh, Corofin has rioted in order that a later generation should feel the emptiness of its pockets. There'll be no rioting in my day." 128 A GIRL OF QALWAY " I want the pony for air and exercise chiefly. I shall hardly make friends, and I certainly shall not invite anyone." " Air and exercise ! There are five miles of those useless woods to walk about in ! You're sure you won't change your mind? Well, if you want them I shall write to Patsy Flanagan and ask him to send up some ponies. You think you can ride them, eh ? " Bertha smiled. " You'd be no Grace if you couldn't. Not but what they're safe backs broad as a table, and the surest- footed things alive." The interview ended amiably, even with interest on Sir Delvin's part in the purchase of the pony he was not to pay for. A few mornings later Bertha was summoned to the hall-door steps to see the ponies. Patsy Flanagan, a little, ferrety-faced man, was standing, caubeen in hand, at the foot of the steps. Three or four ragged boys, each between a pair of ponies, as shaggy, as bright-eyed, as intelligent as himself, stared at Bertha over the ponies' manes. Someone else had seen the arrival, for Bertha had hardly reached the steps when her grandfather was hobbling after her. He was wearing a great-coat over his dressing-gown, and he shivered as he met the delicious morning air. Patsy's finger went to his caubeen by way of salutation. A NEW PURCHASE 129 " I hope I see your honour well ? " he said. " As well as a man can be who is housebound all the year, and only finds himself outside because he can't help it. It's a fresh morning for the time of year for the time of year." " Terrible cowld ! " said Patsy, with the readiness to agree of the Celt. " This young lady, my granddaughter, has a fancy for one of your ponies, and is wise enough to ask me to choose for her to ask me to choose for her." " She couldn't do better, your honour. Your honour's a great judge of a baste." " Pretty well pretty well," said the old man, gratified. " What do you want for the brown, with the patch of white on the off foreleg ? " " If I was a gentleman myself," said Patsy, chewing a straw, " an' wanted to make a present to the grand- child, 'tis n't ofierin' less nor fifteen for that one I'd be." " Fifteen ! " said Sir Delvin, apparently nettled. " Do you think we're made of money ? I'll give you eight." " Come home, boys," said Patsy, casting the straw from his mouth. " Ten," said Sir Delvin. " I've brought you the pick o' them, an' you're only humbuggin' me, sir ! I'd rather keep that little pony in fact, I don't think now I'll be partin' from her (M8S5) 1 130 A GIBL OF GAL WAY at any price. I might be sendin' Tim O'Rourke to your honour. He has the lavin's of the country, an' can afford to part wid them chape." " Eleven," said Sir Delvin. "Thirteen," responded Patsy, gazing away to where he could see the top of one of the Pins. " Eleven ten," said Sir Delvin. Patsy's gaze came back to him with unwilling admiration in it. " You're a terrible hard gintleman," he said, " at a bargain. An' only that I'd give the pony for nothin' for the sake of seein' the young lady on his back, I wouldn't be dalin' wid you at all, at all. But, sure, I'd rather give it to you for nothin' than see her on one o' Tim's lot." " Is it eleven ten ? " " It is, then, for the young lady's sake, an' because we've daled before. Sure, it must be thirty years ago since we done that last bit o' business together ! You weren't so hard at a bargain then ; an' Master Everard I remember the joyful face of him when you gev him the pick of the lot I " Sir Delvin lifted the collar of his coat about his ears and shivered slightly. " I've no time for gossip, Flanagan," he said coldly as he went in. Bertha turned to look after him. She saw Bulger meet him in the hall with an air of solicitude ; but the old man passed him and went up the stairs. A NEW PUKCHASE 131 " He's terrible sore about it still," said Patsy, with a sympathetic air, as Bertha ran down to inspect her new purchase " I mane about your papa lavin' him, miss. They was the fondest o' fathers an' sons in them days. Well, well, 'tis hard to lose our childher, after all." Bertha herself led the little pony to his stall in the great, empty-sounding stable, with its rows and rows of cold mangers and hungry racks. The creature was as confiding as a pet dog, and as she leant a cheek to him he rubbed a silky nose softly against her. Bertha wrote rapturously about him to her mother. " This bright-eyed Intelligence," she called him. And in a few days they were on such terms that she could let him roam in the wood, and be sure he would answer to her call. " I am making progress with grandpapa," she wrote also. How little the progress meant the fond father and mother at a distance could not know. She had told them nothing of her strange reception ; and reading the voluminous diary she made for her mother's eye, day by day, she smiled sadly to think what an expert she Bertha had become at concealing some of her thoughts in words. " Less than five years," she wrote fondly, " will bring us together now. We shall be together in this house, among these woods, and the delicious air will make you forget India, and papa will return to his lost youth." 132 A GIEL OF GAL WAY She always wrote with such happy confidence ; yet as the days passed, and the weeks grew to months, she felt the tremendous nature of the task which she had set herself for she made little headway with her grandfather, who sat through the summer and the autumn cooped in his dusty rooms, with Bulger spinning like a spider his great webs of figures and calculations about the old man. CHAPTER XII. A DEEAM AT DAYBKBAK T)ERTHA'S fate had been harder if she had been -D left less free. As it was she might not have existed for all the notice her grandfather took of her ; and except for her own consciousness of him there were days and weeks when the pushing back of a chair in the room overhead and the tread of a foot were all that reminded her of his existence. But as a wholesome, healthy nature will, she made her own interests and occupations. While the days remained fine she was out of doors with the com- panionable woods. When autumn came, and the short afternoons, and the rainy days with magnificent bursts of stormy colour about sunset, there was plenty to do within doors. There was the adornment of the rooms she had taken for her own. Bertha had the feminine A DKEAM AT DAYBREAK 133 instinct for making all her surroundings pretty ; and the big, austere room, which was her bedroom gave her ample scope for her tastes and talents. The Indian things came in handsomely here. A piece of embroidered stuff over the draughty door, gay lengths of linen curtaining the windows and framing that heavenly picture of the woods, a rug laid down here and there, did wonders. Mrs. Butler came in one day to find Bertha on her knees in her holland painting-blouse, beeswaxing the floor, and was slightly scandalised. " Surely to goodness," said she, " 'tis an unbecoming occupation for a Grace ! " But Bertha looked up at her, rosy-faced from the exercise and her hair cloudier than ever, and assured her that the great joy of having a room of one's own was to do everything it required one's self. " Things have come to a pretty pass," lamented the good woman. " Why, if I was a lady I wouldn't know how to do a hand's turn for myself ! What's the good of bein' a lady, else ? " However, she acknowledged when the thing was done that it was very pretty, the beeswax having brought out the ambers and golds of the old oak flooring in a delightful fashion. The powdering-closet was of course excellent for Bertha's many belongings. To open a door into the little dark, windowless place meant an outpouring of fragrance orris, woodruff, lavender into the room 134 A GIRL OF GAL WAY beyond. On the shelves above the almost conntless pegs was abnndant room for boots and shoes and all manner of odds and ends, that had spoilt the symmetry of the room without. Seeing her delight in pretty things, Mrs. Butler brought forth many odds and ends from the deserted rooms of the house. There was a patchwork quilt of tiny pieces of silk, delicately mated and all faded to a soft harmony of colour, which Bertha shrieked over in ecstasy when she beheld it. " I shall sleep in a Field of the Cloth of Gold," she said, to the old servant's bewilderment, flinging the quilt across her bed, where the light revealed a thousand fine veinings of gold and silver through the old brocades. " To think of your fancying the like ! " said Mary " you, that could have the pick of new things." " It is only too good for me," said Bertha. " It ought to be in a museum. If I were public-spirited, I should ask grandpapa to let me give it to the nation." " What would you say if you could see them chairs wid little apples worked in white satin that King James himself sat on, an' all made by Lady Geraldine Grace, that was married to your great-great-grand- father, he was killed at Aughrim, an', sure, they knew his bones, the poor man, by his dog that couldn't be druv away from him ? Or the ballroom curtains ? Or the chandelier, all dancin' an' glitterin' like a field of dew on a May mornin' ? Och 1 I'm thinkin' you'd go cracked about the things if you could see them." A DEEAM AT DAYBKEAK 135 " They are in the locked wing ? " " They are. So is everything in the house that's known to be of vally. If you wor to go talkin' about the quilt, now, I couldn't be sure 'twouldn't be shoved in there too. There's a power o' vally in it ould lace, an' picturs, an' china, an' silver, all rottin' together, I expect, if the truth were told." " I shall ask grandpapa for the key." " Well, then, I don't believe you'll get it, Miss Bertha. He's terrible jealous of any meddlin' wid his ways. I asked him wance, myself, if I mightn't put a fire there to air the things, an' he bid me, terrible proud an' bitter, to mind my own business. Eyah ! if I hadn't been mindin' his, an' lookin' after his stomach these thirty years back, he wouldn't be here to-day, wid the quare ould unnathural life he leads. An' if it wasn't housekeeper's business, I'd like to know whose it was 1 Sure, my heart was near breaking the day I seen the purty things all locked away from me." " I wonder why it was done?" said Bertha thoughtfully. " I've my own suspicions of that, Miss Bertha." Mrs. Butler looked wise, and nodded her head a great many times. " What are they ? " Bertha asked. The good woman hesitated. " Sure, we do be gettin' suspicions, leadin' the kind o' lives we do lead. Me an' Malachy has had many a cosher over it. You'll excuse us, Miss Bertha, for if we aren't a part of the family, I'd like to know what 136 A GIEL OF GALWAY we are, after our years o' service, an' born on the place an' all." " Of course you are a part of the family." "Well, then, 'tis a bit o' the mischief Bulger's hatchin'. He knows the vally o' the things he's got shut up there, an' he'll be for havin' the master sell them. But the mister, bein' a Grace, for all his quare- ness, won't consint. Nor to sellin' the trees, though Bulger has that spite agin' the crathurs that you'd think they'd done him some harm. Yet the master plays wid the idea, an' has half-consinted, an' agin takes back his consint. An' all the time Bulger is lurin' him wid a lump o' gold, the devil's own bait an' black as himself in this case, Miss Bertha." " I know about the coal," said Bertha. " I don't believe it is there, or that it is worth raising if it is there." " May be aye, may be no. But what Bulger wants out of it for himself is what bothers us entirely. Listen, honey, the impidence of him bates all. He has his nose into everything. He stopped me wan day on the stairs to say that this room wasn't fit for you that it was damp. As though I'd put my child in a damp room ! I made a curtchey to him, an' I asked him since when it was the bailiff's business to look afther the rooms the family slept in. He looked at me bitther as sut, an' said he'd report my impidence to Sir Delvin. But 1 knew he wouldn't dare do it. The master keeps him in his place, for all his contrary ways, an' as like A DREAM AT DAYBEEAK 137 as not 'ud kick him out o' the room if he heard of his meddlin'. Och ! I know if he had all his own way, me an poor Malachy wouldn't be restin' our ould bones here to-day." " The man will have to go," said Bertha coldly. " He is too intolerable." " I wish your grandfather could hear you now," Mrs. Butler commented admiringly. " You're the image of himself when you get a tantrum." But in her heart Bertha knew that as things were at present her grandfather would hardly listen to her complaint. He would bid her, as he had once before, not to meddle, not to set the place by the ears. It was Bulger who was indispensable to him at present, she Bertha who was quite unnecessary. The old house yielded up further treasures. In a dark closet off the kitchen, the obscurity of which had saved it doubtless, she found some exquisite old Waterford glass, of a massiveness which was as beauti- ful in its way as the slender grace of the old Venice beakers which stood beside it. There was a quantity of delicate china, too, a little chipped and cracked, but lovely, with its small bouquets of old-fashioned flowers, tied with blue ribbons that trailed daintily between the flowers. Part of this Bertha conveyed to her sitting- room, where it was safe behind cupboard doors. The remainder she carried upstairs to her bedroom, and set out to advantage on shelves, which she ran up with the aid of her little carpenter's chest and stained prettily. 138 A GIRL OF GAL WAY Then her portfolios were bronght out, and a little water-colour here, a crayon head there, a photograph, an autotype, a panel of embroidery, made the gaunt walls homelike. The few pieces of ugly modern furni- ture in the room she discarded, and was able to mend some invalided things she picked out of the acres of empty and mouldering rooms. A corner cupboard, with many panes gone, a three-cornered washstand that bore the sign-manual of Sheraton, but tottered on two legs, a low French fauteuil with its stuffing protruding, were among Bertha's treasure-trove. " Sure, what would you be doin' wid the like o' them ould sticks ? " her faithful Mary asked contemptuously ; but was put to shame by the result of her young mistress's carpentry and upholstering. " Who'd have thought it ? " she said again and again. " It becomes my pretty now, though I was heart-broken, so I was, at the thought of havin' to put her into such an ugly, bare ould place." Another of Bertha's finds were some faded chintz curtains, white and green, with garlands upon them. With these she draped the gaunt four-poster which had seemed so un suited to its slender young sleeper. " What will it be when it is finished ? " cried Mrs. Butler one day. " It isn't going to be finished," said Bertha. " That's the beauty of it. I shall keep on adding to it. If it were finished I should be out of work, unless grandpapa would let me begin on his rooms." A DEEAM AT DAYBEEAK. 139 " That lie won't, acushla ; though, indeed, they're no better thin a hape of ould dust. But sure, he won't lave them to have them claned, and 'twould be as much as my life was worth to lay a duster on them bits of papers the place is littered wid. When I go in to light his fire he watches me as a cat watches a mouse till I am out of it again ; an' the state of his bedroom Miss Bertha jewel, it ought to be matter for the polis. An' I daren't lay my hand on any- thing ! " " I wish he'd come up and peep here," said Bertha, looking around the room she had transformed. " It might give him a taste for better things." A short time after she came a curious incident had occurred. Between sleep and waking she heard a loud and most discordant noise, close at hand it seemed, certainly in the house somewhere. The room was full of the singing of birds and the pale dawn ; the trees whispered against her open windows. It was not a time for supernatural terrors, and when Bertha started awake with the great grating noise still in her ears, as though something very heavy had fallen, she was not conscious of any great alarm. The noise had ceased, though the air still seemed jarred by it, and might have passed for something in a dream. As she lay, half-startled, listening for a recurrence of it, she heard the distant clock strike four. As the noise had ceased and did not come again, Bertha fell asleep. When she awoke she 140 A GIRL OF GALWAY could not be sure if the whole thing was a dream. Some days had passed before she thought of mentioning it to Mrs. Butler. " Were you and Malachy engaged in any great house-cleaning," she asked, " on Tuesday morning last, very early ? " " Why, no, then," said Mrs. Butler. " Tuesday was the very mornin' of all mornin's that I slept it out, for when I came down at six o'clock rubbin' my scandalous ould eyes, who was there at the kitchen door but little Honor Sweeney with her mammy's chickens in a basket wantin' me to buy them. An' Malachy, the poor ould man, sleeps late, an' never shakes a toe till myself knocks at his door on the way downstairs." Bertha listened to this circumstantial account thoughtfully. " I must have been dreaming," she said, " and yet the thing was very vivid." " What was, achora ? " Mrs. Butler watched her anxiously. " Some noise in the house in the empty wing, it seemed to me as though something heavy had fallen." The old woman's roses perceptibly faded. " I don't like that talk about things fallin'," she said with a dissatisfied air. " 'Tis the greatest of ill-luck ; an' no knowin' but 'twas wan o' them ould family pictures in there, an' for wan o' them to fall 'ud be the worst of all." BETTER ACQUAINTANCES 141 " It was a very loud noise," said Bertha, seeing the old servant's concern ; " but it may have been a dream. I know when I awoke the clock struck four ; but it would have been no time for ghosts and hobgoblins, for it was already dawn. By the way, where is that clock ? It's neighbourliness makes me feel less solitary." " At Mr. Roper's, of the Folly. 'Tis the only clock you're likely to hear across all them woods, for 'twas part o' the folly to set up that big clock, for all the world as if it was a chapel-bell. Times you'll hear it an' times you won't, accordin' to how the wind sets." But while she explained, the lines of anxiety were deepening in her face. " You didn't hear anything like the wheels of a coach, now did you, honey ? " she asked anxiously. " I'm sure I didn't ! " said Bertha heartily. "Ah well, I'm glad you didn't," said Mary with a relieved air, " for that 'ud be the unluckiest ould sign of all." CHAPTER XIII. BETTEE ACQUAINTANCES THE end windows of the locked wing looked upon something like a small, walled courtyard, with a spiked gate set in the midst of it, at which Bertha gazed curiously whenever she passed that way. 142 A GIRL OF GALWAY It was the aspect of the house which was most forbidding. Some time the avenue in the wood which fronted that gate in the wall must have been used as a sort of back entrance, for it was yet scored beneath the grass with the marks of cart-wheels and such heavy traffic. The blank windows looked over the high walls forlornly. A rusty bell hung by the heavy door ; but when Bertha pulled it she only heard the tiny jangling of the wire, that showed her it was broken. Cobwebs were everywhere. The house end looked north, and it seemed to receive a cold and bleaklight no matter how kindly the sun shone elsewhere. The courtyard, she learned from Mary Butler, was a kind of entrance to the ballroom, and was surrounded by a little cloister, so that the ladies could have shelter in making their entry. " The ballroom's the grandest you ever seen," said the old retainer. " Sure 'twas like fairyland when 'twas lit up an' the ladies an' gentlemen takin' the floor. 'Tis a sorrowful day that yourself isn't dancin' there wid the best, instead of ladin' the quare, lonely life you do, an' all the beautiful things rotting in the darkness." " I can't associate that wing somehow with light and gaiety," said Bertha. " Indeed, then, it would be hard to do it to-day. 'Tis the quare, ould, lonesome, ghostly place it is ; an' yet, faith, 'twas the place for the stir in its day. Cellars an' cellars there is underneath it, aye, thousands of them if there's one ; an' full to the brim they once wor BETTER ACQUAINTANCES 143 wid wine that never paid the king's duty. But that was before my time." " Ah ! I suppose the wine came in by way of the courtyard ? " said Bertha. " That explains the wheel- marks in the avenue." " Maybe aye, maybe no," said Mrs. Butler oracnlarly. " There'd be many a thing comin' when there'd be a ball given to explain them same ould tracks. Let alone that lonesome as the place is an' was, they'd like a quieter way of conveyin' the things nor walkin' in at the door, as you may say." " But how could they have anything quieter ? " " They say there's a way from the cellars that opens out some place in the woods. I believe 'tis true myself. Wid a proud ould family like the Graces there was sure to be some such a contrivance. But where it opens out bates me. Perhaps 'twas closed up long ago. Anyhow, when I looked into the cellars last the water was in them, an' a lot of ould barrels were bumpin' about, niakin' a most unlucky sort of a noise. Butler may his soul be in glory this day ! was valet to Sir Delvin in them days ; and when I stood on the cellar steps an' heard the bumpin' o' them things in the dark, I just let a screech out o' me that it took all Butler's wit to make me forget the fright of it. Aye, them were pleasant days ! " said the old woman, smiling to herself as at some reminiscence. " Then there are really cellars ? " "I'd show you the flap o' them in a corner o' the big 144 A GIEL OF GAL WAY kitchen, if we could but get in. I daresay it might be hard to open from long misuse ; but there's the door plain enough, an' the big iron ring of it, an' underneath the stone steps of it goes down rale terrifyin' into that dark an' dismal place." " I had no idea Corofin was so interesting," said Bertha. " Is it intherist ? " Mrs. Butler spoke in a slightly offended voice. " Why, it's that full of intherist that 'tisn't novel-readin' you'd want to be I The ould stories of the place 'ud keep you amused from one year's ind to the other. I'm ashamed of your papa, so I am, that you have to be larnin' from poor ould Mary Butler what a fine stock you belong to ! " " You see, papa had lost the place, and he never spoke of it hardly, even to mama. It was too dear to be spoken about." " Ay, that would be it," said Mrs. Butler, with ready contrition. " Well, please goodness we'll see him and herself home in it before we're many years oulder. An' if it'll only keep together and not tumble to pieces above our heads, Master Everard'll give it a new lase o' life, I'm thinkin'." " I can't imagine where in the woods such a passage as you describe would open," said Bertha thoughtfully. " The woods seem to conceal nothing. Unless it might be could it be ? somewhere in that little graveyard where the Graces lie." " You've found that out, Miss Bertha ? " BETTER ACQUAINTANCES 145 " I came upon it long ago. How strange it was to find it there, and so dark and mournful in those bright woods ! " " I wouldn't be goin' nigh it, dearie. 'Tis no place for the likes of you." Bertha laughed. " You needn't be getting anxious about me," she said. " I'm not turning melancholy. I just peeped into the little graveyard one day and saw all its great slabs and crosses, and wondered at the sadness of it, with its high walls and the dark trees round about, and the ivy nearly covering the gate. I was not tempted to stay." "That's right, dearie. Graveyards is not for the young, though when people come to my age I'm not denyin' that there's a pleasure in the contimplation of your last end. 'Tis a thing I'm very much cut off from, an' so is poor Malachy, by rayson o' this place bein' at the back o' God speed. "Why, I couldn't tell you the day that I enjoyed myself at a wake or a funeral, like any other Christian." " Yes, I suppose it is dull for you too," said Bertha, wondering at Mrs. Butler's idea of enjoying herself. "I don't complain so long as I've th' ould family to look after ; an' indeed 'tis not the same since yon put your sunny face into it. There now, dearie, I must run away, for I've a dale o' work to do, though I'm an idle, gossipin' ould woman. Some time that I've a right to my holiday I'll tell you some quare (M835) K 146 A GIRL OF GAL WAY stories about that little graveyard. Many's the fine gentleman was buried there unbeknownst. More thin Graces lies in them vaults." " Tell me now," said Bertha coaxingly. " I likes to take time to my stories," said the good woman, who, as Bertha had noticed, invariably used a set form of words in telling of the old traditions of the house and the countryside. "I likes to take time to my stories. I'll tell you some day about the fine gentlemen that fought in the woods at daybreak after dancin' all night ; and if one got hurt apast the doctor's mendin', 'twas aisy to lay him wid the Graces an' save trouble to anyone else." " Ah, you mean in those horrid duelling-days ? " " Now don't be sayin' that, Miss Bertha ! If your grandpapa heard you he couldn't forgive it. It's what comes of rarin' you out o' the country. Many a fine fellow the Graces stretched, an' many a one o' them was stretched in turn. Of course I know 'twas sinful ; an' yet, bedad ! 'twas better to kill aich other an' end in the greatest of love and kindness thin to go treasurin' up ould jealousies like your grandpapa an' many another does to-day. Sure, in the good ould days I'd like to see Father Pat Malony's face, if he could hear me your grandpapa an' Mr. Roper 'ud have called aich other out, an', if they'd killed aich other itself, the one that lived 'ud spend his life in mournin' for the one that died. There, sure, I've no business to be gossipin' about your grandpapa. He'd BETTEE ACQUAINTANCES 147 order me out of the place if he could hear me. An' now, honey jewel, keep me no longer." This hint of old trouble brought Bertha's thoughts back to her fellow traveller from London to Holyhead. Since she had begun to attend the small church she had sometimes caught sight of him, and had been recognised with a light of genial kindness in the gentle- man's honest eyes. But he had not attempted to pursue their acquaintance further, and on this attitude of his Miss Caulfield had thrown some light. Miss Cauln'eld had, indeed, greeted Bertha with enthusiasm, and had detained her by her pony-carriage for many profitless conversations, or at least they would have been profitless if Bertha had not derived a humorous enjoyment from them. " Well, here you are, my dear," she said when first they met, " and blooming like a rose, for all your imprisonment in that lonely house ! I'm coming to see you, so I am. I've taken a fancy to you, my dear that's what I've done ; and if your grandfather was twenty times the ogre he is, I'm going to deliver you out of that dungeon be a perfect fairy godmother to you, eh?" Bertha murmured something. She knew the hopeless- ness of attempting to communicate with Miss Caulfield. " That's right, my dear," the lady said, as though in answer. " I told Roper that you were a girl of spirit. ' Tut tut ! ' I said when he tried to insense it into me that it would make your situation harder with 148 A GIRL OF GAL WAT your grandfather if we were to try to make friends with you ' tut tut ! I'm going, for one, and I'll see Delvin Grace, and tell him what I think of him more betoken.' I've a sneaking regard for your grandfather, though he is an ogre, for I remember him a pretty fellow, before he quarrelled with Archie Roper over a woman. We're not going to leave you alone, indeed ! And you're quite right to say so. Archie always thinks he knows best, so 'twill be a pleasure to tell him that you have said precisely what I told him you would." Bertha wondered what that might be ; but, rather to her relief, Miss Caulfield had not since put in an appearance. Perhaps Mr. Roper's wiser counsels had prevailed, after all. Hugh Roper, Bertha had also seen at a distance, but he had not made any attempt at bettering their acquaintance a little to the girl's disappointment. Then one day when she was riding by a quiet bog road she met him in the narrow space, and, as it seemed almost without will of her own, she stopped. Then she flushed, suddenly remembering how neither he nor his father had sought her out after charch. But he looked eager and gratified as he gazed up at her, standing by her pony's head. " I have long wished," he said, " to know how you got over your adventure that day. You were not much the worse of it, I hope ? " " Nothing the worse," said Bertha, " and no one knew except my grandfather's old housekeeper. Yet BETTEE ACQUAINTANCES 149 I sometimes dream of it at nights. Is there no way of warning people against the quicksand ? " " That should have been done long ago," said the young man. " It was both our affairs, for the quicksand is equally on Grace and Roper property. Yes, we are really your next-door neighbours, though the woods intervene. When your grandfather and my father were friends, there was a way from your woods into our lawn. Your grandfather closed it long since." " But the quicksand ? It menaces others. What can we do?" " What can be done is done already. I have had notice-boards put up along the edge of the woods. The people about know the quicksand and avoid it, but it takes its toll. Two winters ago a wretched gipsy from Eastern Europe, with a bear Heaven knows how they wandered to this Ultima Thule I was engulfed there. He and his companions had pitched their tent in your grandfather's woods. We should have seen to it then that there was some warning. There, I have shocked you ! " Bertha had turned pale. " It seems such a horrid way to die," she said simply. " And the poor bear I'm sorry for it, too ! " " I realised the fall horror of it that day I found you," he answered her. " Before, one had not thought of one's responsibilities in the matter. The Bosnians could not have read a placard, anyhow. And everyone here knows." 150 A GIRL OF GALWAY " I am very glad yon have put up the warnings." " We could never have forgiven ourselves if anything had happened to you. We thought the woods, now they are so closely kept, were a natural barricade. With the Bosnians it was a case, of course, of going where they liked, and as it happened Sir Delvin had not discovered them. So you see your alarming adventure has resulted in good, after all." " I am glad of that. One could hardly grudge being nearly engulfed if it saved someone else from being quite engulfed." Still she shuddered as she said it. He paused a minute, absently stroking her pony's shaggy mane. There was a pause between them, a conscious pause such as comes when it is time to say good-bye and yet one is loth to end the moment. At last Bertha held out her hand. " Good-bye," she said ; and then wistfully : " I feel I have made so little of what you did for me ! Yet words are poor to thank you for my life. Some day those who love me better than myself I mean my father and mother will thank you. I have not told them yet of my adventure. My mother is delicate ; it would be a shock." " I understand. But if what I was fortunate enough to do gives me any right, I should like to ask you will forgive me ? if nothing can be done to alleviate your loneliness ? " " Nothing," said Bertha ; and then added brightly : BETTEE ACQUAINTANCES 151 " I make my own alleviations. I don't look unhappy, do I ? " " You look like the morning," he answered, looking np at her as frankly as herself. " But I wish for your sake that Miss Lloyd were come home. She is the one person who is welcome to your grandfather." " And she is all they say ? " " They couldn't say enough of her. You shall see, for I hope, I am afraid you know, she is nursing a young cousin, and the end draws near that she will come soon. Meanwhile, if you wanted anything anything we could do " " Yes, I know, but it is not likely. So you know Miss Lloyd too ? " " She is my godmother. Despite that fact, Sir Delvin more than tolerates her. She is everyone's friend." " Ah, those wretched feuds ! " said Bertha, with a little sigh. " Yes," he responded eagerly. " How different it would be if this one did not exist I It is not my father's fault. He cares for his old friend still." "He does not look as if he had enmities," said Bertha. " No, does he ? " said his son, flushing ingenuously. " You would say that if you knew him. He is the dearest Upon my word, I don't know how I came to be so lucky as to have such a father 1 " "You are very like him," said Bertha half-absently, 152 A GIRL OF GAL WAY looking down at the ruddy, ingenuous face, with its dark blue eyes, that still kept some of the innocence and candour of childhood. CHAPTER XIV. THE D1SGEACE OF THE GRACES MRS. BUTLER was downcast. As she brought in Bertha's breakfast one morning she wiped away a tear, with a pretence at concealing an emotion which yet only craved to have its meaning asked. " What is it ? " asked Bertha, with a sympathetic hand on the old woman's shoulder. " I didn't mean to talk about it " " But now that you have got so far ? " " 'Tis for the family's sake, Miss Bertha. The Graces were always thought well of by rich and poor, and now Sir Delvin an' it only a week to Christmas is goin' to pull down them crows' nests above on Ben Sheelin. 'Tis a scandal, so it is at the blessed Christmas-time too ! An' what he's doing it for bates me ; for rint he'll never get for them, an' he might as well lave them to the crathurs that's misfortunate enough to set their fancies on them." Bertha turned red and then pale. The love of humanity was strong in her, and the two women who had had the most to do with forming her character THE DISGEACE OF THE GKACES 153 her mother and the head-mistress at Lowminster College were touched with the same fine passion and had fostered it in her. " I want to know the rights and wrongs of it," she said. " It is bad when anyone is an oppressor, rich or poor. But grandpapa may be right. I shall ask him." " If you want to know my opinion of it, Miss Bertha, it isn't your grandpapa at all. It is that wretch Timothy Bulger. Now he's got up a bit he hates the class he's sprung from. 'Tis he that's at the bottom of the mischief, depend upon it. To think o' them crathurs bein' hunted ! Why, they live by charity ; an' it makes me cold, so it does, to think of them up in them huts this bitter weather." Bertha turned and looked at the little fire of wood that emitted a sweet odour and filled the room with a delightful warmth. " It makes me feel that we ought to go cold too," she said slowly. Mrs. Butler wiped away her tears hastily. " Now don't be runnin' away with notions, Miss Bertha," she said. " Your grandpapa's within his rights, you know ; only it isn't as if it was some I've heard tell of aye, and know well that can pay an' won't. I'm afraid you've picked up some notions somewhere. Maybe 'tis believing in Mr. Gladstone you are ? There's some sets a deal o' store by him, but the Graces votes Tory ever an' always. I don't know that I'd like to see you different. As for the bit o' fire 154 A GIRL OF GAL WAY there, 'tis only some faggots of wood them trees you're so fond of dropped down in the September storms." Bertha looked out at the bare boughs of her friends, beautiful still with their fine network of branches silvered in the frost. " The poor, who depend on us, ought not to go cold," she said, " even if we had to lose the trees. I'm not thinking about politics, Mary. I suppose everyone's politics are their idea of truth and justice. It is only those poor things, who belong to the Graces." " Aye, indeed, hunted like rabbits they are when the dogs are after them. Tuesday the sheriff's men is to unroof the cabins. Tuesday night'll see them on their cold hearthstones with never a roof over them, only the floor of heaven. They'll die there, an' the Graces need never hold up their heads again. Disgraces is what we'll be called," said the poor woman with melancholy humour. " I shall see for myself," said Bertha. " Afterwards I shall go to my grandfather. I at least shall be clean in this matter." " My mind misgives me it'll be little good, Miss Bertha. An' yet Heaven forbid I'd turn you from what's right, child I If himself knew I'd be talkin' to you, 'twould be as much as my place is worth. Not that he'd find it aisy to replace me no, nor to be rid of me. Running back an' hidin' in the stables I'd be, like them poor things above on the hill." Bertha went to her room thoughtfully, and put on THE DISGRACE OF THE GEACES 155 her habit for a ride. When she was dressed she turned down the swing-glass in its conch-shell frame and looked thoughtfully at herself. The grey cloth habit with its buttons of Indian silver-work was a triumph of simplicity and refinement. Everything, from the hat to the gloves, from the dainty riding- boots to the little whip with turquoises embedded in its gold handle, was mute evidence of the thought and taste which had been lavished on the one well- beloved child, in a case where there was no necessity to think upon money. She turned herself about slowly in front of the glass. If anyone had seen her then they would have smiled at a picture of young vanity. But Bertha's thoughts were not vain ones. What she was thinking was that her body was so adorned, so made fair, and those others, everyone as much the mortal tenement of an immortal spirit, were in such different case. Her eyes looked with dissatisfaction at the charming image in the glass. It had been pleasant to her, as to any other girl, to know herself comely, approved, and well-favoured in dress as in looks. Now the inequality of it smote her sharply as an injustice. From the bow-shaped, Sheraton chest of drawers which had been one of Mary Butler's happy finds she took half a dozen cases and flung them upon her bed. She found a cash-box, and, opening it, shook its contents in the midst of the cases. There were notes and gold pieces in the heap. Frowning to herself, she counted 156 A GIKL OF GAL WAY them over. Her allowance had accumulated since she had come to Corofin. There was no way to get rid of money there. She loved to give, but as yet she had found no outlet for her giving. She counted over the money in the heap thoughtfully. It amounted to something over twenty-five pounds. She had no idea of the indebtedness of the Ben Sheelin tenantry, but she suspected the amount would not be enough. There was no time to ask her father for more, if she were minded to do it ; but she shrank fastidiously from enlisting his aid against her grand- father, seeing that they had once, father and son, been so like-minded and so dear to each other. She opened the first of the cases, and lifted the golden snake, red-gold, with strange Indian workman- ship, almost too heavy, she had found it, for her slender young neck. As she held it up in the light she caught sight, through an opening in the now leafless woods, of the gaunt, peaked hill which was known as Ben Sheelin. The upper part was a cold, slate-grey in the cheerless day. The flanks, green and brown with cultivation, where the boulders had not forced their way, were sprinkled with thin patches of snow. The cabins over there were indistinguishable now from the boulders. She put down the necklet beside the gold and notes. A little watch followed. It was encrusted thickly on the back with pearls and diamonds, and had been Everard Grace's gift to his daughter on her fifteenth birthday. Other cases she opened and rejected. They THE DISGEACE OF THE GKACES 157 held pretty trinkets that had cost a stiff price when they were bought for her, but were not easily realisable. At last she reached the dearest of her inanimate belongings. It was a parure of pearls and diamonds very simple, as befitted the age of her who was to wear them, and yet as expensive as many of those exquisite simplicities are. Bertha had never worn it. It had been her mother's gift at parting. " You will wear it when your grandfather has you presented at the Dublin Court," she had said ; and then had sighed because she could not hope to behold her girl in her snowy presentation-dress. There ought to be enough if these things could be sold, or even borrowed on, to save those unhappy people. But now how was she to do it in the time ? Whom should she ask to transact the business for her ? She had an idea of going to her grandfather and putting the money and jewels into his hand, and praying him to let the people return to their wretched holdings instead. But no, that must be her last resource. Would he take the things or would he not ? She had a kind of horrified memory of the glint of greed in his eye the day he had noticed her wearing the golden necklace. Supposing he were to put out a greedy hand and clutch at her money and trinkets ? She could not endure the thought. The thing must be done some other way if possible. God would surely send her help. As she put back the cases into the chest of drawers 158 A GIRL OF GAL WAY she heard a dry patter of frozen snow against the windows. Ah, those creatures out there on the bleak hillside I Little children were there, old men and old women, the sick and the ailing ; these belonged to the Graces by all the laws of their old tribal system of which so much still survived, and should have claimed as a right fostering and protection from the head of the clan. Now, if worse were to happen them than had already come, Bertha felt that it would indeed be the disgrace of the Graces. Out of doors the wind blew keenly ; but the rapid riding brought a rich colour to the girl's cheeks and a light of exhilaration to her eyes. Her mind worked busily as she rode. Once she pulled up so short that if her pony had not been the wisest and most sure- footed of creatures, he had been flung on his haunches. She had had a generous young thought that she ought to have trusted her grandfather, after all. Perhaps he did not know what was being done in his name. Surely, surely the man he once had been, who had had friends and a devoted son to whom he had been so tender a father, could not be entirely lost in Sir Delvin Grace, the miser and oppressor 1 She had a mind to turn back. Then she remembered that it was an hour when her grandfather's doors were closed against everyone but Bulger. No, she might as well go on now and see Ben Sheelin for herself. Once outside the gates of Corofin she was in sight of that bleak landmark. The road to it wound across THE DISGRACE OF THE GKACES 159 the bog. She herself must be visible to the people of the hillside all the way she took. She could under- stand now how it was that the hillside might be populous as a rabbit-warren till the police came in sight, and silent as a graveyard when they reached it. As she came nearer she saw a thin streak of smoke ascending here and there from what she supposed to be cabins, though at a little distance they were not to be distinguished from the rocks and coarse grass about them. Presently she saw a figure start up on the hillside, look her way for a second, and disappear. She hoped she was not going to frighten them ; she wanted to see them as they were. Where the bog-road widened and the hill began she met another figure on horseback a stout, rosy-faced man in a clerical dress, who was jogging along with a melancholy cast over a face that one was sure had been made for cheerfulness. He lifted his rusty-looking silk hat gravely to Bertha as she passed. She returned the salutation, and before she had time to be curious about him her attention was further distracted. Bight under her pony's feet, it seemed, had sprung up a strange elf of a child. He had the oddest peaked face out of fairyland, and a shock of dirty fair hair over a pair of bright, wistful eyes. As Bertha looked at him he emitted a sharp wail. " Why, what's the matter ? " asked Bertha, pulling up and looking compassionately at the child. " The priest's forgotten my sugar-stick, that's what's 160 A GIKL OF GAL WAT the matter," he said, suddenly ceasing his boo-hoos and looking up at her with an odd resentment. " An' just as I was gettin' up on him he rides away, an' I only sees you an' your ould pony instead ! " " Would it be the same if I gave you sugar-stick ? " asked Bertha gently. " It might be," he answered unbelievingly. "But where is it ? " Bertha looked up at the hillside. " There's no shop here where I could buy it for you," she said, ''is there?" " There's Mrs. Rooney's beyant the bog," he told her, stretching out a grimy little paw. " Give me an' 'apenny, an' don't be keepin' me standin' all day." Bertha began to open her purse. " Who are you, you queer monkey ? " she asked, with a coin poised between her finger and thumb. " I'm Johnny Walsh," he said. " Glory be to good- ness, give me the money, or that ould woman, Judy Kinsella'll be grabbin' me ! " " You're too young to go by yourself all across the bog," said Bertha, hesitating. " Haven't I been doin' the messages for me mammy since I was three ? " he asked ; adding, with conscious pride : " I'm five now." " Johnny Walsh, is this you, you imp of mischief ? " broke a querulous voice on their ears ; and an old woman with a shawl over her head came running round a corner of the road. " Here have 1 been huntin' THE DISGEACE OF THE GRACES 161 yon high an' low, an' yonr poor mammy awake an* callin' for yon ; an' here yon are disconrsin' a strange lady ! " " The mischief bother wimmen ! " said the small boy ungratefully. " You're always after me, Judy Kinsella. An' no sooner does herself here I dnnno whether she's a saint or a fairy come givin' me a bit o' sugar- stick thin you're off with your screeches." The old woman suddenly seemed to become aware of Bertha's presence. She dipped, and a second in- quisitive eye looked round the corner of her shawl, wisped so tightly about her face that hitherto only one had been visible. " I'm sure I beg your pardon, my lady," she said. " I'm mindin' this little boy for his mother that's sick the poor sowl ! an' I'd as lieve be mindin' a Willie-the- wisp .' ' " Will you go back, Judy Kinsella," said the small lord of creation in bitterly offended tones, " an' lave me carackter be ? I've a trifle o' business at Mrs. Rooney's beyant there." Bertha got down from her pony and extended a hand to the urchin, who looked with some distrust at the little grey riding-gauntlet. " Come with me, Johnny," she said, " and we'll see what your mother wants. Afterwards I'll give you a ride on the pony across the bog, and we'll buy the sugar-stick together at Mrs. Rooney's." Allured by the double bait, the child thrust a (M835) T 162 A GIRL OF GAL WAY confiding hand in Bertha's, and turned his face to the hill-road again. "I should like to see the boy's mother," she said to the old woman. " Is she very ill ? " " She'll hardly ever be worse in this world, my lady," responded the old woman, with another dip. " I'm thinkin' she won't stay in it to have the roof tore off her head next Tuesday." " Ah ! " said Bertha ; and her voice was like a cry. " That would be too inhuman ; that must not happen 1 " Again the old woman's eyes shot a curious glance at her. "Unless you wor a saint or a fairy, my lady," she said, " as the poor, foolish child says, you'd be hard put to it to prevint it. Sure, isn't the orders out ? There's no pity for the poor at all at all ! " " Ah ! there is pity," said Bertha. She felt so much grief and compunction in her own heart that she scarcely heard the clamorous protests of Johnny at the description of himself as a poor, foolish child. " Foolish yourself, Judy Kinsella ! " he was still saying when they reached the first miserable cabin on the hillside. HER OWN PEOPLE 163 CHAPTER XV. HER OWN PEOPLE "OERTHA'S company had apparently won for her the -D confidence of the little community which, according to Mary Butler, was so quick in disappearing when danger threatened it. Many a bright eye, many a shaggy head, many a little face peering from behind protecting skirts, loomed in the dimness of interiors which revealed nothing beyond the doorway but the reek of smoke. " She's my lady, because I found her," Johnny Walsh kept protesting to all and sundry, " an' she's goin' to buy me sugar-stick ari 1 gingerbread at Poll Rooney's shop." At the very first cabin the child suddenly let go Bertha's hand and made a dart within the door, so overhung by scraws and rotting thatch that it was like one of the ingeniously-concealed entrances to certain birds' nests, designed to baffle all intruders when the occupier is not at home. Bertha fastened her pony to an upright boulder like a cromlech, and then stood uncertainly at the threshold, not knowing whether to enter or not. But Judy Kinsella, with " God save all here ! " stepped briskly into the gloom, and invited Bertha to the occupation of a little stool, which, as soon as she could make out things, she discovered to be one of the very few articles of furniture the place possessed. 164 A GIKL OF GALWAY She felt curiously shy of coming in contact with these strange people, who yet should be so near to her. But the awkwardness was bridged over by Johnny, who was making vociferous explanations to someone who lay obscurely in a corner of the room. As Bertha entered she heard a weak, dulcet voice : "What has he at all, Judy, about the lady he met coming out of the bog ? " Then the voice altered its tone to one of apology. " Sure, you're welcome, my lady ; an' grateful I am to you for bringin' me home this bowld little boy of mine. 'Twas I was frightened when I heard he'd gone, for he's that venturesome that you could never tell but 'tis roamin' the four continents he'd be once the fit was on him." " I think it was really he that brought me," said Bertha, advancing farther, and becoming conscious of a pair of large sad eyes in a pale face looking at her from some sort of a pillow in the dim recess. At the same time she saw that her friend Johnny had his tow head close to that dark one, and was looking very much and fondly at home in that position. " The lady was to buy me sugar-stick, an' I thought, maybe, you'd be atein' a bit, mammy, whin that ould heart-scald of a Judy Kinsella comes skulkin' around like a parcel of ould hins." " Ah, Johnny dear, you mustn't be so impident about poor Judy," said the mother, " or what will the kind lady think of you at all, at all?" HER OWN PEOPLE 165 " I like Johnny very much indeed," said Bertha. " Sure, he's a good little son," said the yonng mother, " for all that he do be so wild an' free with his tongue. 'Tis only his way, miss ; an' a fonder, more faithful child than Johnny it 'ud be hard to find." " I quite believe it. I am very much obliged to Johnny for bringing me here." " Sure, what brought you, achora, into this dismal place ? An' what could you want with the like of us at all, at all ? " Bertha brought her stool farther into the cabin, though the smoke made her eyes ache and got into her throat. A very few paces indeed, and she could Bee the pathetic face of the sick girl quite clearly, when at a little distance there had been only a glimmering. The tiny window was high up in the wall, and the door, though it stood open to let the smoke out, was darkened by a crowd of silent figures that had suddenly sprung up on the bare hillside. But that Bertha did not know, since she sat with her back to the door. Presently Judy Kinsella, who had been standing humbly in the background, went out and closed the door behind her, with a murmured rebuke to the neighbours for their bad manners. " I heard you were very poor up here," said Bertha. " I wanted to see for myself." " An' my little boy, small blame to him, thought you were dropped out of the clouds of heaven or the country of fairyland." 166 A GIRL OF GAL WAY The big blue eyes in their great hollows roamed admiringly over Bertha's habit. The child lay as close and silent now as a little bird under its mother's wing. " He's a very clever little boy to have such ideas," said Bertha. " But though I'm only of earth, and Johnny has flattered me too much, yet I may be able to help a little." ""We require a dale of help," said the girl, sighing. " I often think we're that poor an' wretched that we're a-past any help, except the help of God. Not but what it's good to be in His hands. Sure, we'll have no more than the sky of heaven between Him an' us." " Ah, no ! the roofs must be kept over you this bitter weather ; that is, if you will go nowhere else. This is poor and miserable enough." " 'Tis gone very bad," the sick girl said, following her gaze. " 'Twas a nate, comfortable little place when Michael brought me home to it. I wouldn't have changed it then for the halls of Tara or Dublin Castle. But sure, things have gone from bad to worse since Michael's boat was swamped in a spring-tide, an' the poor boy was drownded in her. An', after, I hadn't the health nor the heart to do much for myself. An' the neighbours God help them ! is that knocked about that they can't be lendin' the helpin' hand they would if they weren't always afeard o' the polis comin'." "You would be better somewhere else, wouldn't HEK OWN PEOPLE 167 you ? " asked Bertha. " How can you get well in this damp, miserable place ? " " There's no gettin' well for me ; an', sure, only for Johnny here, I wouldn't be troublin' myself. But anyhow, where would I be goin' ? You wouldn't have me be goin' to the workhouse me, that came of decent people ? There isn't one here on the hillside that wouldn't rather die nor do it, miss dear." " I wasn't thinking of the workhouse. But if it could be managed that you could leave this ? " " I doubt I'm too far gone, dear. Anyhow, I won't stay long in it once the roof's off. Sure, I wouldn't be mindin', only for Johnny. If I could but take him wid me!" " The roof mustn't come off," said Bertha ; and her eyes blazed. " Sure, who's to hinder it ? " asked the girl patiently. " The gintry's all agin' it ; but there's no law to keep 'a man from doin' what he likes wid his own, and the orders is out. We're very unlucky entirely, an' I suppose 'tis hard for a gintleman never to see a penny year in year out for a place that belongs to him. But what with the bad seasons an' one thing or another, 'tis hard put to it we are to keep ourselves alive at all, at all, much less pay Sir Delvin." " Does he know how poor you are ? " Bertha's voice was quiet, but it was full of emotion. She was troubled for the Graces. " Indeed, then, I don't think he does ! Sure, he's 168 A GIRL OF GAL WAY a great stranger to the place this many a year. The people doesn't believe 'tis him at all. The Graces were always kind an' good. He's old, an' he's sick, an' he laves things to Bulger that's his rint-warner, miss. Bulger's terrible hard on the poor." " Perhaps if Sir Delvin knew he might let you be." " They say he doesn't act for himself at all. E'er a one that does be goin' about a bit o' business, 'tisn't the master they'll see, but Timothy Bulger. He's a terrible oppressor. Sure Quality's different. Quality wouldn't demane itself to drive people, an' walk on them the way that man does that's sprung from the lowest." " Ah, well " (Bertha touched the thin, twitching hand on the grimy quilt softly), " you won't have the roof taken off. In the name of the Babe of Bethlehem, that mustn't be ! " She said it solemnly, with a conviction that God the God of the poor would help her to keep her word, though, humanly, the way was beset with difficulties. "And you shall have some comforts, and clothes, and food," she went on. " Sure Quality does their best. Only for Mr. Roper an' ould Miss Betty Caulfield, of Castle Caulfield, an' Mr. St. Leger, the minister, let alone our own priest, where would we be ? There's a power o' poverty about the country. Twelve families there is on the world this side of Ben Sheelin alone. 'Tis hard to keep us alive. We put in the pitaties last winter ; but, sure, Mr. Bulger HBK OWN PEOPLE 169 had them dug out on us before they wor bigger nor marbles. An' that flung us on the world entirely." " It should be no one's business to help you but the Graces'," said Bertha, in the same voice of quiet, concentrated feeling. " Do the people here only live by farming ? " "'Twould be a bad dependence. I remember the time an' I was only twenty-five Lady Day in harvest when there was great industry on the hillside, spriggin' an' weavin', an' the place full o' business. Then came the bad, wet years, an' there was somethin' about the tariff in Americay that destroyed the spriggin' trade ; an' then one day Sir Delvin, or Bulger for him, dis- trained for the rint, an 'twas seizing the bits o' looms Bulger did be. An' so the people were thrown on the land a poor dependence, dear, as you can see for yourself. There used to be a bit o' fishin' goin', too ; but, sure, we haven't the nets or the boats, an' other people has. 'Twas through goin' out in a leaky ould boat I lost my man. Anyhow, here we are now, helpless and hopeless, so far as this world goes." " Something must be done," said Bertha, almost with despair in her voice. " Why does Sir Delvin's son hould away from us so long ? He wouldn't be led away by Timothy Bulger. They do say, the old people do, that he was the pleasantest young gentleman, an' as kind as he was pleasant. Things 'ud never have gone so bad if he'd but have stayed." 170 A GIEL OF GAL WAY " He will come back," said Bertha. " Too late for a good many of us, I'm thinkin'," went on the sick woman. " Sure, ould Judy that came in with you was his foster-mother. He'd never have her inside workhouse walls if but he could know." " He never would." " 'Twas a pity he didn't marry Miss Marcella Lloyd, an' not go agin' his father. 'Tis she that's an angel to the poor. Och ! sure, we've missed her these bad winters. But, as I was sayin', Sir Delvin was never the same, so the ould people say, since the son went agin' him." " He had to marry where his heart was. He married a lady as angelic as Miss Lloyd could ever be. She would have the heart-break if only she could see the misery here." " Who are you, miss darlin', that knows so much about us ? " The big blue eyes searched Bertha's face curiously. " I am Sir Delvin Grace's granddaughter," she said, " and you are my own people." " God reward you I The Graces were always good to their people. If there was hard times they shared them together. Sure, we don't be blamin' Sir Delvin too much." "He shall know what is being done in his name. The people will be saved. The roofs will not come off. They shall be free to till their holdings again. And something, something must be done to give you all HER OWN PEOPLE 171 work that will keep you alive. The looms shall be restored." She poured out her promises breathlessly, not know- ing all the time how it was to be done. " God reward you ! " said the sick girl again. " It can't matter to me for long ; only for Johnny here." " Johnny shall be my care." " Then I'll die easy. D'ye hear that, Johnny love ? The beautiful lady will take care of you.' " I'm listenin' to you," said Johnny, never stirring from his nest. " 'Tis quare ould talk you have about goin' out of it. But you won't, for I'll hould you in it." " You're a foolish little boy," said the mother softly. Then Bertha stood up to go. There was so much she must do that her thoughts were full of confusion. Yet she never doubted that she would find the way to give the help she had promised. " I must go now," she said, standing over the wretched bed, " but I will come soon again with good tidings." " What about that sugar-stick ? " asked Johnny, sitting bolt upright. " If you wint back to where you came out of, maybe 'tis never seein' you again I'd be." " Let me take him," said Bertha. " The old woman can come too and bring him back safely." " He's very knowledgeable," said the young mother proudly. " If he's bid to come back he will come back. I do often send him of messages, but 'tis when the roamin' fit's on him I'm afeard he'll wander too far." 172 A GIRL OF GAL WAY " You've great foolishness in yonr talk," said Johnny. " Sure, where would I be goin' to that I wouldn't find my way home again from ? " When Bertha went outside, where the humble Judy was feeding the pony with bits of coarse grass, the crowd had melted like snow before the sun. Johnny and his guardian accompanied her across the bog to the village, the child riding the pony, to his immense gratification. At Mrs. Rooney's he received a gift of sweet things that almost reduced him to silence. But be it recorded to his credit that he seemed even more delighted with the few small comforts Bertha was able to procure for his mother in the village. She saw the child and the old woman depart home- ward across the bog with a well-laden basket. Then she looked at her watch, the serviceable one which had survived the hard usage of her schooldays. " I shall speak to my grandfather after lunch," she thought. "If he will not listen to me, then I shall have to think of another way." CHAPTER XVI. BERTHA FINDS A WAY SHE knocked twice before Sir Delvin's querulous voice bade her enter. Evidently her grandfather was not in a propitious mood this afternoon. As a matter of fact he had premonitions of the gout, BEKTHA FINDS A WAY 173 bequeathed him by a more generous age. But Bertha could not afford to bide her time, so she went in without awaiting a more encouraging invitation. The chilly afternoon sun was cold in the room and on the grey ashes of the wood-fire. Her grandfather sat with his foot supported on a footstool, and himself huddled coldly within an overcoat which he wore over his warm dressing-gown. He looked little and old to Bertha's eyes as she came in with the glow of the north-wester brilliant in her cheeks. His factotum was with him as usual, writing busily at his table in the window. " Well, well," said the old man impatiently, " what can I do for you, Bertha ? what can I do for you ? Loathsome weather loathsome weather ! Doesn't seem to affect you much, eh ? " " I've been out on my pony, grandpapa. It's pleasant weather enough if one is warmly clad and taking exercise." At this moment Bulger stepped softly from his seat in the window and handed Bertha a chair. The old man looked at him impatiently. " My granddaughter is not going to stay, Bulger, not going to stay. You didn't come to talk about the weather, Bertha ? I am very busy this afternoon." " I shan't interrupt you very long, grandpapa. No, I didn't come to talk about the weather. Still, it is wretched weather for the poor and miserable. I've ridden to Ben Sheelin this morning." 174 A GIEL OF GALWAT "Ah, poking your nose into what doesn't concern you. Just like a woman just like a woman. When I was getting reconciled to your presence here, too, because you didn't trouble me." " I wouldn't trouble you now but that it does concern me. I am a Grace, grandpapa. The Graces have always been good to their people. That's what a sick woman there said to me this morning." " Too good," interrupted the old man. " That's why the Graces have gone to rack and ruin rack and ruin. What do you want me to do?" " Spare them for the present. Afterwards " she sighed heavily "something ought to be done to put them in a way of earning their living otherwise than by that wretched land." " I daresay you think I have money to sink money to sink in some wretched philanthropic enterprise ! I tell you I'm bled white the poorest of the poor. When I am gone you can do it yourself do it yourself. You seem to have money to spare." " Are you really so poor ? " The old man turned and shook an angry fist at the bare boughs of the trees, that bent towards the house as though they were listening. " That's what impoverishes me," he said " the lazy trees, that take all and give nothing ! Some day I shall get sick of the rascals, and they shall go. Do you know that this was once a wheat-growing valley ? They've been ill friends to the Graces parasites, BERTHA FINDS A WAY 175 parasites ! that's what they've been ; and with maybe more precious things hidden away hidden away." Again a patter of dry snow came against the window, and the trees tossed in commotion. " The storm is coming up," said Bertha. " We shall have snow in a few hours. Do you know that they are going to strip the cabins on Ben Sheelin ? " " The grouse would pay me better pay me better. Let them go to Gal way workhouse, and be snug. 'Tis enough to pay for them there without giving them my money giving them my money as well." " Ah ! " murmured Bertha in a hurt and shamed voice, " I thought you did not know, that the thing was being done perhaps without your orders." " You think I'm the old man in the corner the old man in the corner ! I've my wits about me, miss, for all that. Nothing is done except by my orders. Now, you are interrupting interrupting. You had better go." "In a second, grandpapa. Tell me first, how much do they owe ? " She had a thought of offering him there and then her little hoard and her jewels. But no, a thought of greedy eyes and old fingers clutching held her back. She could not endure it from her father's father the head of her house. " How much, Bulger ? how much ? Satisfy this young lady's curiosity and let her go." " The Ben Sheelin tenantry ? The total amount of 176 A GIRL OF GAL WAY indebtedness is eighty-four pounds seventeen and threepence, Sir Delvin." " What a miserable sum ! " said Bertha scornfully. Her grandfather's face reddened all over with anger. " Miserable sum ! miserable sum ! " he repeated in a choking voice. " You, that have never earned a penny in all your worthless life all your worthless life " The man in the window wrote away busily. The creaking of his quill pen was sharp through the old man's angry voice, that rose gustily as the storm was rising outside. Bertha had turned very pale. " You will excuse me if I go, grandpapa," she said. " You forget that I am your granddaughter." " Yes, go go ! " he said. " I forget nothing. I am used to being defied being defied." But already Bertha had passed through the door, her young head held high, every nerve quivering at the roughness with which her grandfather had spoken to her before his subordinate. She hardly noticed that the man had sprung from his seat and held the door open for her. As she passed out he followed her. At the sound of his voice she turned and looked at him in amazement. " Sir Delvin is irritable this afternoon, Miss Grace," he said smoothly. " It was rather a pity you should have come to him just then, but he is to be excused." " I do not know that he needs your apologies," said Bertha frigidly. BEETHA FINDS A WAY 177 His face contracted an instant. Then he went on as smoothly as before. " It -would be better to come to me in a matter of this kind," he said. " Believe me, I am all-powerful with your grandfather. If you had spoken to me first I could have prevented the roofs coming off, since you take an interest in the matter." Bertha turned and looked at him steadily. " I should never think of going to you about any matter whatsoever," she said. " Take care, Miss Grace," his face had grown dark. " It would be worth your while to be a little polite to me. I can make your position here pretty well what I like." "You had better return to your work, sir," Bertha said, turning away. "I have nothing further to say to you." She would have left him there in the corridor if his next speech had not held her. " You think you have friends here," he said, " and can despise one so humble as I am. If Sir Delvin knew you had made friends with the Ropers, you might pack your boxes." The coarse insolence in the man's voice made her open her eyes. " You were hardly twenty-four hours in the place," he said, " before you were talking with Roper's son and riding his horse. He was insolent to me once, and I don't forget it to him. I didn't tell Sir Delvin then (M835) M 178 A GIRL OF GAL WAY only because it served my purpose to keep it to myself for a time." " My grandfather will " No, he won't," the man interrupted rudely. " I am necessary to him ; and as I say, he will send you back to your father." A roar like that of an infuriated bull reached them from Sir Delvin's room. "Ah, you see he can't do without me," said Bulger, with a grim laugh. " So yon won't be civil to me, Miss Grace ? Don't think the Ropers will help you. You have done the worst you possibly could for your proteges" With a mocking bow he was gone, leaving Bertha trembling with indignation in the corridor. After a minute of stupefaction she went upstairs to her room. After all, the wretch had suggested to her what she should do. Was she to consider her grand- father's likes and dislikes at this moment ? No, a thousand times, no ! If she had to return to her father and mother defeated, the breach widened between father and son because of her, still she would have done right. Her father, if he could know,, would tell her that she had kept faith. She took no notice of the grey sky or the lightly falling flakes as she took the way through the woods, which somewhat shortened the distance to their nearest neighbour's house. She passed the little lonely grave- yard of the Graces with a shiver at its sadness. It BEETHA FINDS A WAY 179 was always twilight in there, with its melancholy evergreen trees and its great growth of ivy ; bnt out here in the friendly woods, stripped bare of their leaves, the light was yet strong, would last another hour, or an hour and an half maybe. She did not let the grass grow under her feet. Guessing at the distance, she had made up her mind that on foot she would accomplish her journey in less time, taking the short way, than if she had to go round the road on horseback. She had explored the woods thoroughly last summer, and she had discovered the quickset hedge that had been planted between Corofin and the Folly, and had noticed its weak points. As she left the woods behind, having found her way out at the cost of no more than a scratch or two to her hands, the clock at the Folly chimed half- past three. She would have time, she thought, to get back by daylight, or by twilight, if only she were fortunate enough to find Mr. Roper at home. She thought of the good, shrewd face as she made her way across the short, sodden grass of the park towards the house amid its trees, and made sure that he would help her. He was at home she was fortunate in that and an old servant showed her into a pleasant room lined with books and bright with firelight. She was standing by the writing-table when Mr. Roper came in. His face showed the surprise he felt, but there was also a kindness in his greeting which 180 A GIRL OF GALWAT encouraged her to tell him what she wanted him to do. She brought it all out at once. " Mr. Roper," she said, " perhaps you know that there are difficulties between my grandfather and his people over there on the Ben ? " He bowed seriously. " The roofs are to come off their cabins on Tuesday unless some one interferes. You know they won't leave the cabins ? " " I know. It is our difficulty about helping them." " So that they must be helped there. The arrears are pitifully little, about eighty-five pounds in all. If this were paid they could go on again." " Who is to pay it ? " he asked, with concern written on his honest face. " There is so little time. I can pay it all if I have time. But my grandfather must not know. That is why I have come to ask your advice. The money must be paid from an outside source." " I see. We could probably accomplish that." " Another thing " Bertha got very red. " I have only a certain amount of money to offer, but I have things worth money to make up the sum." She fumbled hastily at the fastenings of her little bag. From within it she brought out the gold and notes, then the jewels. " I don't know what these may be worth," she said. " I know they cost a good deal. If they could be sold I think they would make up the money." BEBTHA FINDS A WAT 181 " They are yours to give ? I mean, no one would have a right to be angry at your giving them away ? " " Absolutely mine to give. I am sure the givers would approve." Mr. Roper put his hand on hers with fatherly kindness. " My dear," he said, " your pretty things ! How could we take your pretty things from you ? " " I have so little use for them," said Bertha. " But if they were as dear as the trees they would have to go. You will help me to get rid of them ? " He thought for a second. " I have no doubt about disposing of them. But the pearls and diamonds will be enough. Take back the other things." He pushed them towards her, and she replaced two cases in her bag, leaving the third on the table. " I shall not have time to consult a Dublin jeweller before acting," he said, going to a safe in the wall. " We must do that at once. I will advance the money. The proper person to see about it is the priest here. He can be professionally secret about the source from which the money comes. If your grandfather suspected that I had act or part in it he might possibly refuse the money." A cloud came over his kind face as he concluded. " You are too good," said Bertha. " It is all our business, child. But, you see, the one 182 A GIEL OF GALWAY thing we couldn't do was to make them give up Ben Sheelin, and we have no rights there. My dear, I am glad you came to me, though I am afraid your grandfather would be angry if he knew. If he had not quarrelled with me it would be the most natural thing in the world that a child of his blood should come to me in a difficulty." He glanced as he spoke at a portrait over the fire- place, the portrait of a girl with an ardent and tender face, as though there was some connection in his thoughts. " We were great friends once, you know, my dear," he went on, "and it was never my will that he parted from me in anger. Even now, after all that has passed, I have nothing but kindness for my old friend." " I am glad," said Bertha, flushing and finding the words difficult, " that someone remembers him as he was." " The dearest, the gayest, the most generous fellow I He has had great trouble, my dear, and great disap- pointment. But I cannot believe that the old Delvin Grace has vanished utterly. He will come back to what he was ; it is always my hope." Bertha sprang to her feet. " I must go," she said, " or the darkness will over- take me." " But not alone, my dear. I shall send a carriage. No ? Well, perhaps you are right. I am so sorry there should be any necessity for secrecy. Then my OLD WOUNDS 183 boy Hugh must see you nearly home. He must, Miss Grace. I could not possibly let you go alone." The walk with Hugh Roper through the darkening woods was full of companionship. Perhaps only then did Bertha realise how lonely she had been. CHAPTER XVII. OLD WOUNDS T)ERTHA was kept close to home for some days by -L) the snowstorm which broke that night and mantled the country in white desolation. She trusted Mr. Roper implicitly, and she was sure he would keep his word with her ; yet she could not discover from Mary Butler if the Ben Sheelin people had had their respite or yet knew of its coming. Morning after morning as the days turned round to the Tuesday Mary repeated her lamentation over the cabins that were about to be unroofed and the unhappy people to whom they represented home, and Bertha was afraid to comfort her lest there should be any mis- carriage, any new difficulty in the way of saving them. However, on Monday afternoon her grandfather sent for her. She went to him and was rejoiced to find him alone. " Well, Bertha," he said to her, and his tone was kinder than usual, " I sent for you to say that your 184 A GIEL OF GAL WAY friends above there on the Ben are safe for the present safe for the present. Someone has paid their rent for them." " Ah, how glad I am ! " " So am I so am I. Money I never looked to see. I'd leave them in it if I could, if my wretched poverty would allow me. Bulger is all for the grouse all for the grouse. But there's no shooting-lodge, I tell him. I can't afford to build on the chance of letting the grouse. I'd rather have the money in hand, so I tell him. He was for executing the sheriff's warrant all the same." " He's a wretch, grandpapa 1 " " Tut, tut, miss 1 don't be using bad language. An honest and intelligent servant inclined, like most of the breed, to take too much on himself to take too much on himself. I told him I'd deal with the priest. He came round after a bit ; said I was right as usual right as usual. I don't let him forget I'm master." " How did they pay ? " asked Bertha in a low voice. " Through their priest through their priest. They've friends behind them some of their villainous organisa- tions. Bulger always said so said they would pay if we pressed them. Bulger was right. He stiffened my back when I wanted to let the poor wretches stay where they were." " Grandpapa, you are letting this man do wicked and hard things in your name, and the Graces are getting the shame and discredit of it." OLD WOUNDS 185 The old man brought his brows together in an angry Irown. " Hold yonr tongue, miss ! You are too forward ! Your grandmother would never have dared to say such a thing to me, though she was my wife though she was my wife. I don't know how they bring girls up nowadays ! " Bertha did not care the least bit in the world about his rating now that there no longer came in the lement of indignity caused by the presence of a third person. She came nearer to him, and put a hand on the arm of his chair. " You wouldn't have me not solicitous for the honour )f the Graces ? " she said. " What does a minx like you know ? You are too brward too forward ! I tell you, child, if you keep juiet and do not vex me it will be well for you in he end. What I can save from the wreck will be rours will be yours. If some of my dreams come rue, there may be more than anyone thinks." " I don't care a bit about your money, grandpapa I " said Bertha boldly. " There spoke the foolish little hussy ! But I can't alame you I can't blame you. I was the same myself it your age. Money, child, attracts beauty and wit md friendship and love ; it can buy everything everything except youth. But it is best to keep it inspent, for then you feel you have the keys of the world in your hand, and that is better than turning he key and possessing it all." 186 A GIRL OF GALWAT " I had rather have your love," she went on in a low voice. He looked at her thunderstricken. " Love ! I suppose it is your youth makes you talk such folly, and expect that I will believe it ! Am I a person to be loved for myself loved for myself? Don't tell me I am, for I won't believe it. I shall only think you want to make sure of being my heiress." He pulled himself up short and glanced at her. Then he went on again : " Heiress ! Heiress to a tottering house and an old name that has no commercial value. It was a bad choice of a word a bad choice of a word. If you are staying here in the expectation of inheriting anything with the name, you are wasting your time." " I told you I did not care for money," said Bertha indignantly. " Aye I like enough ; your father didn't your father didn't. Nor for love either, love well proved, when it was a question of pleasing himself. Love ! It turns me sick to think of how I loved him how I watched over him in his childhood, so that he should not miss his mother. All the love that had not gone sour in my heart when I was betrayed and deceived betrayed and deceived I spent on him, only to be fooled a second time only to be fooled a second time ! " Bertha looked with amazement at his twitching hands and excited face. A curious rush of pity and tenderness came over her. OLD WOUNDS 187 " Papa has loved you all his life," she said earnestly. "Don't talk of it, girl, don't talk of it!" Sir Delvin's voice was choking with anger or emotion, or both. " You will never force that lie on me you will never force that lie on me ! There, you had better go ; you have upset me. Send Mary Butler to me. It is time Bulger was back. What is he doing what is he doing ? Setting me at naught, like all the rest of the world ? " Thoroughly alarmed, Bertha hurried from the room, and, having found Mrs. Butler, sent her to her master. While she waited uneasily in the corridor, Mr. Bulger appeared through the double doors, with his riding- whip in his hand and his riding-coat flecked with snow. He stopped short at sight of her. " What is the matter, Miss Grace ? " he asked. " My grandfather is not well, I think," she answered. " Mrs. Butler is with him." " Ah, you've been exciting him ! " he said with easy insolence. " I wouldn't do that, Miss Grace. He has a weak heart and an easily-aroused temper. Better leave him to me ! " Her eyes flashed at him. " You don't think that the best thing ? " he said mockingly. " Well, we got on very well together till you came. You haven't changed your mind since our conversation the other day no ? I suppose you know your friends are safe for the present? But now we know they have friends behind them it will be plain 188 A GIEL OF GALWAY sailing in future. There will be no more respites, no more reductions." Bertha turned away from him in cold disgust. " Ah ! " she said, " you are cruel, but your schemes will come to nothing. There is a God in heaven to protect the innocent and punish the guilty." She went away, leaving him so. As she sat miserably in her own little room, filling the pages of the diary that went regularly to her mother, and which contained more of the thoughts than of the happenings of her life, such as they were, Mary Butler found her. " Not fretting, acushla ? " said the old woman tenderly. "The master can't bear to be crossed, but he's as well now as ever he is. He's terrible hot and passionate, an' if he's roused he does put such a strain on that poor heart of his that he does give us a fright sometimes. I wouldn't be crossin' him, dear ; indeed, I wouldn't be crossin' him." " But I didn't," said Bertha. " It was only about papa." " It's the worst thing you could name to him, dear, believe me. All the love in him seems to have gone to gall an' bitterness ; an', indeed, 'tis he was the fond an' attentive father. Aye, I've seen him with your papa when he was a little boy an' sickenin' for the measles, that I had to run out of the room not to make a fool of myself roarin' an' bawlin', he was that fond." " Papa's place is here," said Bertha dejectedly. " I'm troubled that he doesn't know the true state of affairs. OLD WOUNDS 189 Perhaps some day lie will blame me when he knows that his father was subject to these heart attacks, and in the hands of that wretch." " Timothy Bulger ? Aye, a wretch he is, an' yet he has one fond, faithful heart that 'ud folly him the world over. But look here, now, Miss Bertha, don't be reproachin' yourself because you're not burdenin' your papa's heart with things that 'ud only make him sad and sorrowful. He must keep out of it till God changes his father's heart towards him. I do believe, Miss Bertha, that if Sir Delvin were to see your papa walkin' in on the floor to him, 'twould be enough to kill him." " Why did he let me come ? " asked Bertha bitterly. " It was so hard for me to come, to leave all I held dear. And the thing that brought me, the dream of a recon- ciliation between my father and grandpapa, is farther off than ever. I think I had better give it all up and go back to them." Yet in her heart she knew that she would do nothing of the kind. It would be a poor living up to the motto of her family to leave her grandfather, old and ill, in the hands of the man who had obtained so unhappy an ascendancy over him. Perhaps Mary Butler too knew that the threat was a vain one, since she did not endeavour to combat it, but stood there stroking Bertha's hand tenderly with her own hard and discoloured fingers. " You know," said Bertha at last, blinking away a 190 A GIRL OF GAL WAT few hot tears, " yon know that the people on Ben Sheelin are to go back to their homes ? " " Glory be to the Name ! " said Mrs. Butler devoutly, " that's good news. How did it happen, child ? Did the master come to his own good heart, after all ? " " Their rent was paid for them," replied Bertha. " Who paid it ? " " It was paid through Father Malony." Mrs. Butler looked at her curiously. " God bless them that paid it, anyhow ! " she said. Something significant in the speech made Bertha look at the speaker questioningly. "Aye, indeed," the old woman went on. "There's things I've missed belongin' to you, achora. Sure, whin the cases were gone from the drawer first, it put the heart across me. I was near makin' a fool of myself screechin' all over the place. But I waited a bit, an' then I saw you'd returned some of them yourself. They were there after you came back from your walk in the dark on Thursday. Aye, indeed, child ! God reward you for your charity to the poor ! " Bertha blushed as deeply as though she had been detected in picking somebody's pocket. " You must keep it to yourself, Mary," she said hastily. "As though I'd ever betray any of the family's saycrets, Miss Bertha ! " " I didn't suppose you would, Mary, but I wouldn't have my grandfather know this for a great deal." OLD WOUNDS 191 Mrs. Butler turned her honest eyes away. " Sure, he wouldn't be taldn' Master Everard's little girl's little bits o' things ! " she said in a voice which carried no conviction. " Of course he would not ! " said Bertha hastily. " He thinks the money comes from some popular organisation." " I wonder if Bulger thinks the same ? " said Mrs. Butler. " But there, never mind what he thinks. We'll bate him yet. I won't be makin' so bould as to ask, dearie, how yon riz the money, only you'll let me say that I hope the things'll come back." " I hardly look to see them again." " Well, never mind, dearie. Sure, the family jewels is all waitin' for you. Your grandmama's emeralds, they're too grand for a young thing like you yet ; but in coorse they'll be yours one day. An' the di'monds an' pink pearls rows an' rows o' them an' stars an' crosses, an' bracelets, an' a crown for the head. They're all laid away in your grandpapa's safe, or in the bank maybe. I don't rightly know which. He's keepin' them till you're married most like." "Mama shall wear them first," said Bertha. "Of course they are hers by right." ",In coorse, achora, in coorse," said the old servant hastily. " Why wouldn't Master Everard's wife have the right to them ? May she wear them many a year ! " " Amen ! " said Bertha devoutly. 192 A GIRL OF GALWAT " Perhaps if yon get your grandpapa in a good hmnour, one day he'll show them to yon." " I don't suppose he has them here. They are so very valuable. I have heard papa say so especially the emeralds. He would hardly keep them in a private house, however safe and secluded it might be. They are sure to be in the bank, I think, especially as they are not in use." "Aye, aye, most like they are. Perhaps, after all, the master wouldn't like to be spoke to about them. He wouldn't like people to think he had anything so vallyable. He has a fancy to be thought poor ; most like he believes it himself." " I can wait to see them till mama wears them," said Bertha, with an onward lifting of her thoughts over the years to that desirable consummation. " But tell me now, Mary, let the Grace jewels be ! who is the little dwarf I met in the woods yesterday ? If it had not been broad daylight I should have thought it was an apparition, or that my senses deceived me. Near the little graveyard of the Graces it was." "A dwarf? A little broad-backed fellow, with his hands and arms nigh to his feet, an' a walk like a duck ; the hair of him growin' down low on his eyes, an' a quare ould soft hat?" " That is him exactly." "'Tis James Bulger, Timothy's brother a harmless poor crathnr, for all his quare ould looks. 'Tis the wan bit o' good in Timothy that he's kind to Jim ; an' well A SOUND IN THE NIGHT 193 he might be. Jim rared him from the time the mother o' the two o' thim fell by the roadside a poor ould dyin' tramp of a woman ; fed him an' nursed him an' covered him an' gev him his schooling that poor dwarf did, all out o' the labour o' them long arms o' his. Sure, he's as strong as a jackass. An' now Jim lives in a quare ruined ould place all by himself, except when Timothy comes an' goes, and that he does nearly every day that's in it. They do say the worst has some soft spot, an' by all accounts Timothy's very good to the poor brother." Mrs. Butler paused, out of breath. " I am glad he is human to somebody," said Bertha, with a little mouth of aversion. Something hardly guessed at in Bulger's manner to herself had filled her with repugnance. CHAPTER XVIII. A SOUND IN THE NIGHT T)ERTHA had forgotten almost to hope for the return JLJ of Miss Lloyd ; nor because of what it involved would she allow herself to hope for it. Indeed, the thought of her father's old friend who was to make such a difference in her life was somewhat remote that fine February afternoon upon which her grandfather sent for her to announce that the friend had come at last. He seemed at once pleased and slightly perturbed. (M835) N 194 A GIEL OF GALWAY " To-morrow, Bertha," lie said, " you will see Marcella Lloyd. She will come over and have lunch with you. She is very eager to see you and to see me, the one human creature that cares for me that cares for me, and whether 1 be alive or dead." " Her cousin " Bertha began. " Is at rest, poor child. It is as good as any of us could hope for could hope for, to have Marcella with us at the end. I have been afraid I might miss that." Bertha began to feel excited. The woman who could produce such feelings in an old man, crabbed and unamiable as Sir Delvin had revealed himself to his granddaughter, must be indeed a rare creature. " You have fretted and fumed fretted and fumed don't say you haven't, since I shan't believe you at the dulness of your life. I begin to believe you have something in you after all, or you would have given up, after nine months of it after nine months of it. Now you will have Marcella to gad to. Don't tell me you haven't wanted to gad. I'm not so old as not to know better. But you've been a good child on the whole a good child." Bertha went away almost overwhelmed by this praise. How often she had said to herself that if she stayed on year after year her grandfather wonld be the same to her, barely tolerating her, and taxing all her strength of purpose to stay. And now, unexpectedly, came a word of encouragement. Was it because Miss Lloyd was coming, or because her grandfather also felt the A SOUND IN THE NIGHT 195 spring in the air the spring that was breathing about the trees and calling upon them to bud, while already the winter aconite and the snowdrop were in drifts of yellow and white among the mosses ? She was very sorry the poor young cousin was dead, but she hardly realised death as yet, and it was only a vague sadness to her. She went to bed at night with a delightful anticipa- tion of the friend who was to come to-morrow and deliver her from Castle Desolate. As she lay wakeful with anticipation she remembered how Hugh Roper two months ago had told her that Miss Lloyd was his godmother. What manner of woman was she so to reconcile the apparently irreconcilable ? And if she could keep Sir Delvin's love and trust while maintain- ing close relationship with his abhorred enemies, why couldn't she go a step farther and make the enmity cease ? Also, if she had made it possible for Bertha to come to Corofin, why did she not break down the barriers between Sir Delvin and his son ? Bertha had a twinge of jealousy at the thought. That was an enterprise she herself had come to with a high heart. Yesterday she would have been discouraged enough to have let another take up the task in which she had failed. Now, with that " good child good child " of her grandfather still in her ears she had heart enough to try again. Anyhow, Miss Lloyd's coming must have good results. The good angel would take up her duties at the point 196 A GIEL OF GAL WAY at which she had left them, and the bad angel would, if not exactly take to flight worsted, at least find his opportunities for ill much curtailed. There was that threat of his about the Ben Sheelin people, the malignity of which had haunted Bertha. She need trouble about it now no longer. When the time came, the matter would be in better hands than hers. Apparently she was to go and come as she would to Miss Lloyd. Did that mean that Miss Lloyd's friends might be hers ? Did that mean that Her thoughts dovetailed softly into sound sleep, and the trees keeping watch by the window crooned their cradle-songs to an unheeding ear. It had been bright moonlight when she fell asleep. She awoke in pitchy blackness, her heart fluttering like a bird that is caught in the hand. She did not know what had frightened her, and for a few seconds she could hardly distinguish, for the hammering of her pulses in her ears, the unfamiliar sound which no doubt had caught her unaware in her dreams. She started up on her elbow and listened. There was the whispering of the trees outside the open window ; but close at hand, somewhere in the house, drowning that friendly and tender sound, there was a harsh and grating noise. Where was it ? Her hand went out in the dark- ness in the direction of the sound, and touched the wall beside her. The noise came from beyond the wall, from the locked wing. A SOUND IN THE NIGHT 197 Afterwards she could never describe the noise, except as something dragging and grating. While she sat there in bed, indescribably frightened, the noise as of some heavy weight falling caine upon that other. It was followed by a horrible shriek. There was silence for a second. Then the old dogs in the stable-yard began to howl. A night-bird hooted outside the window. There followed the dull and crunching noise of wheels. And suddenly the clock at the Folly struck four. Then Bertha remembered that it had all happened before. It had been summer then, and morning ; and the birds had begun to sing, and she had not been frightened. Now she sat an instant tense and rigid, feeling her brave and bright world falling to pieces about her ears. Her feet had entered an unknown, undreamt-of world. The dark that had been a cover for angels suddenly became a pall, suffocating, terrible. Fear had so taken possession of her that she felt if the noise were to come again she must go mad. She tried to pray, but the words would not form upon her dry lips. The child's unreasoning terror was upon her. She dared not, for the life of her, rise and strike a light. Dead silence had followed the noises dead silence, except for the whispering of the trees, telling that the blessed daylight would soon lighten the pitchy window-space. But for that wistful voice of hope she had no ears. She covered her head up in the bed-clothes, like any child, from sheer 198 A GIKL OF GAL WAY terror. She was afraid of the homely room, so pleasant by daylight, with all her own intimate belongings, like the faces of friends. But now the darkness covered she knew not what. Had the supernatural ever really been disproved ? she asked herself. Her mother had been used to say that if one was entirely in the hands of God, one could have nothing to fear ; that it was only when one put oneself outside that Omnipotence that shadows and the night began to hold terrors. She snatched at such thoughts for reassurance, but her fear was too great. It was not till the daylight was full in the room that she fell into a troubled sleep, in which Mary Butler found her when she brought her bath-water. The good woman did not rouse her darling. It was quite an hour later when Bertha woke to find Mary standing by her bed with a breakfast-tray in her hands. It was so pleasant and reassuring to see the rosy, honest face that Bertha was moved to tell her all her terrors. Mary listened with a face ot consternation. " You couldn't have been dramin' ? " she asked in a voice that said she hoped this might be the right solution. " I was as much awake as I am now." " 'Tis no use tryin' to persuade you to the contrary, an' I wouldn't be ownin' to the truth if I didn't confess that I heard thim unlucky dogs meself, between A SOUND IN THE NIGHT 199 sleepin' an' wakin', an' wondered what had started them." " They howled horribly," said Bertha. " I'd ha' been givin' them somethin' to howl for," said Mrs. Butler sturdily, " if I'd been handy with an ould pot or a pan. It would be a charity to put an ind to thim, the unfortunate bastes ! Did you ever see anythin' as sorrowful in this world, Miss Bertha, as a sick an' melancholy ould dog ? " " I never did ; but I don't suppose your prescription would make them any more cheerful," said Bertha, who was eating her breakfast with more appetite than she could have imagined she would bring to it. " Dramin' of ould glories they do be. Dogs is very uncomfortable things, Miss Bertha. Did you evei know a cat to be puttin' herself out seein' ghosts, or knowin' whin a mimber of the family was goin' to die? I remember the night before your grandmother was taken the poor, pretty lady " She pulled herself up short, and then went on : " Och ! the mischief bother me for ould, foolish talk ! Sure, there's no such things as ghosts an' banshees an' dead coaches, an' pishrogues, an' fairies, an' such onld nonsense. Glory be to God I nothin' at all only Himself an' the blessed inhabitants of heaven ! " She looked at Bertha from under her eyes with a simple and affectionate cunning which made the girl smile. " You know you'd find it a very lonely world without 200 A GIKL OF GALWAT ghosts and fairies, Mary," she said. " And, after all, it would be very hard to disprove their existence. If there's a world of light there's surely a world of dark- ness, and why not a half-world ? " "Thrue for you," said Mary with docility. "You have great scholarship, Miss Bertha, entirely, the way you figure it all out, an' the grandest of words. 'Twas afraid of frightenin' you I was spakin' like that. It would be lonesome without them, so it would." " I'm not frightened now," said Bertha, " though I was horribly frightened when the thing happened, 1 confess. What do you think it was, Mary ? " "I couldn't tell indeed, acushla. There are quare stories about the same wing. I never seen anything in it meself. There was the two brothers o' the Graces that fought over Miss Mary Barry of Inverbarry ; an' Master Con flung a glass o' wine in Master Dominick's face just whin he was ladin' the lady out to dance, an' the two o' them fought in the mornin' an' killed aich other, so they did. Sure, there was so much trouble an' jealousy in the same ballroom that 'tis well it might be hanted. Yards of ould stories I could be tellin' you about it. 'Tis a quare place now in there in the dark with the Graces' pictures all stannin' round, an' the ould grinnin' haythen gods an' goddesses, that wor brought from abroad whin the Graces wor travellers, lookin' out at every corner. There was a fellow blowin' on somethin', an' the feet of a baste on to him, that I never could abide. 'Tis as like as not he'd be up to A SOUND IN THE NIGHT 201 some divilment. I'd like to put the priest on to him with a few words of Latin, so I would." " I don't believe now that it was anything super- natural," said Bertha sturdily. " Sure, I thought you wor arguin' all for it a few minits ago," said Mrs. Butler, looking much disappointed. " No, it was only that I am not like some people I have heard of, who can only believe in one world. Very foolish people they are, Mary ; and there are many of them who believe in a world of darkness, but not at all in a world of light." " You don't say so, Miss Bertha ; they must be quare ould omadhawns. Anyway, I wouldn't be talkin' about the noise, especially to Sir Delvin. It might annoy him." " I shall try to find out what it was first." The old woman shook her head sorrowfully. " I know you think it means all kinds of evil, Mary." " Tis them wheels I don't like at all, Miss Bertha. I may as well be tellin' you the truth, an' I don't." " Oh, Mary, Mary, you think it was the dead coach ! I think it was something much more substantial, and so would grandpapa." " Don't be too sure of it, Miss Bertha. , He's one of the rale ould stock, an' the beliefs is in his bones. They should be in yours, too, for all you have an English mama. Anyhow, acushla, I wouldn't be tellin' him. He's ould an' aisy bothered." " I shan't tell him anything about it," said Bertha ; " but I shall find out the cause." 202 A GIKL OF GALWAY CHAPTER XIX. AUNT MARCELLA " A ND so this is Bertha ! " said Miss Lloyd, holding JLA. the girl at arm's length. " And so this is Bertha ! " Sir Delvin looked with a spark of pleasure in his old eyes at his granddaughter and the woman, no longer young, who was gazing at Bertha as though she would recover the features of a face long dead. " It is Bertha," he said. " A fine, well-grown girl she is too ! A good girl, and can ride like a man like a man. Plenty of other things as well, I daresay ; but she doesn't trouble me with them. I hardly know she's in the house. If she'd been different she would have packed she would have packed." " Poor little Bertha ! " said Miss Lloyd softly. The room had been swept and garnished. The fire burnt red in the grate. A little bit of a window was open, admitting the soft air and the robin's song ; a bowl of wall-flowers stood amid the debris of papers and other things on the table. The chair by the window was empty of its usual occupant. Sir Delvin had apparently dismissed Mr. Bulger for the day, since the table had a tidy, holiday look. Was that welcome absence significant, thought Bertha, of the better days that were coming ? " Ah, you think I am a selfish old wretch, Marcella ? " "SO THIS IS BERTHA?' AUNT MARCELLA 203 said Sir Delvin. " What was 1 to do with her ? what was I to do with her ? I should never have consented to have her, but you over-persuaded me. I thought at first she was a thing of fal-lals and follies that she would have been for having her own way her own foolish way whatever I might do." " And you were agreeably disappointed ? It was a wise Bertha, after all. Yet if there had been foolish- ness, Bertha might have been excused. You are very young, Bertha ? " Every repetition of the name sounded like a caress. Bertha looked up brightly at the woman who was yet holding her hands. " I am nineteen." " So much ? Quite a woman. Still, nineteen has its follies, Sir Delvin. It is well we have got such a wise nineteen." " I remember you at nineteen, Marcella. You were as wise as you are to-day." " Perhaps I had not Bertha's excuse to be foolish." She drew Bertha down beside her on the couch. " Now we shall share the responsibility, Sir Delvin, shall we not?" she said. "You will trust her to me a great deal, and I shall relieve you of this terrible granddaughter with her troublesome youth." " You go too fast, Marcella, you go too fast. I told you I was afraid of Bertha at first. But she has, as you say, turned out better than I could have hoped. Why, I have hardly known she was in the house, and weeks 204 A GIEL OF GALWAY have sometimes elapsed between our meetings. It hasn't been so bad it hasn't been so bad. What would I have done if she had played the piano ? " His face of consternation was so comical that Bertha felt inclined to smile, but Miss Lloyd listened gravely. " There has been no piano to play upon, grandpapa," said Bertha. " Ah, I forgot I forgot. 'Tis put away, very luckily. If it hadn't been, I suppose you'd have deaved me. I couldn't have stood it, I tell you I couldn't have stood it." " Bertha shall play all she will at Bawn Rose," said Miss Lloyd. The luncheon-bell clanged through the house. " There, there, run away ! " said Sir Delvin. " Take your food while 'tis hot. Mary Butler will bring me mine on a tray. I've given up going downstairs, Mar- cella, while you've been gone while you've been gone." " Surely not ! " said Miss Lloyd, with an uplifting of the fine brows which were one of the few actual beauties she possessed. " Yes, yes. Old age has come upon me with a rush with a rush. I seldom leave this room." " That's why the old age has come, then ; for there is no other reason. But you always shall lunch downstairs with me." "Now, you have Bertha, you will not miss me. A curmudgeon, Marcella, a curmudgeon. No one would have put up with me except yourself." AUNT MAKCELLA 205 " Oh, but I want you as well as Bertha. I have always been accustomed to have you. Besides, I am going to carry Bertha home with me this evening, so to-day I must have you. You will lean on me, as you have always done. Come, or I shall ask Mary Butler to send me my lunch up here." " What a woman, Marcella ! " Though Sir Delvin protested, his face wore a more pleased expression than Bertha could have believed possible. " You always have your way you always have your way. Lean upon you, indeed ! I have always leant upon you. You should have been my daughter no, my son ; my daughter, I mean. Ugh ! " His face twitched with sudden pain. " It is the gout," he muttered " the gout. It is never far away from me." Then he looked up at Miss Lloyd, who stood watching him with tenderest compassion in her eyes. " Well, well, Marcella, I suppose I must please you, especially as it is your first day your first day. But send me Mary Butler, or that fellow Malachy. I must change my coat. Can't sit down with ladies in this." " We shan't mind, shall we, Bertha ? " Miss Lloyd, with a tender gesture, brushed a little snuff from a lapel of the faded coat. " Besides, I was thinking how smart you were. Come now, we have tried Mary's patience too long." They went downstairs in a little procession, Bertha carrying the old man's rug and footstool, and Miss 206 A GIRL OF GAL WAY Lloyd helping him like a daughter down the stairs, which were so polished by age that it had been easy to slip on them. Malachy, standing behind Bertha's chair in the little wainscotted parlour which had been her grandmother's, so far forgot his conventional good manners as to lift his hands in amazement at the sight of Sir Delvin. " You didn't look to see me, Malachy, eh ? Miss Lloyd persuaded me. There's life in the old dog yet," said Sir Delvin, positively chuckling. " Sure, you're as welcome as flowers in May, your honour I " answered the old servant, beaming all over his ruddy face. " The rascal's glad to see me glad to see me, Marcel la. Hasn't got used to my being shunted yet." " 'Twas terrible lonesome without you, your honour," replied Malachy, holding the silver claret-jug in his hand with all the air of the well-trained servant. " The young lady takes no attendance at all, your honour. Sure, Mrs. Butler has put me out o' my place entirely with her." " Aye, claret, I'll have claret. I'm supposed to have whiskey and soda. It's no drink for a gentleman. This claret's mild as milk mild as milk. I remember the year I laid it down. You remember, Malachy?" " It was the year Hop-Scotch won the Prince of Wales's Plate for your honour," said Malachy, his eyes glowing with enthusiasm. " 'Twas a lucky year I Och, the good ould times ! I wish they'd never gone away." AUNT MAKCBLLA 207 " And you've poor Rosamund's parlour, I see, poor Rosamund's parlour, Bertha ? " Memories were crowding thick and fast upon the old man. " Where's her spinet gone ? I see you've got her desk still. I remember, poor thing, the time she was work- ing the covers for those chairs. Ah, poor Rosamund I 'Tis pleasanter here in her little parlour than in the dining-room. You were wise to choose it, Bertha, wise to choose it. The dining-room was only fit for a big party. Two were lost in it. Why, at one end of the table you could hardly see the other end unless there was a face at it. It wanted the chandeliers and the faces and the bottles and the good stories. You remember the year we had the Lord-Lieutenant for the Salthill Races, Malachy, and we had the gold service out ? " Is it forgettin' it I'd be ? " said Malachy. " Sure, 'tis dramin' o' them times I do be, just like an ould huntin'-dog apast his work that yelps in his drames." " Aye, they were good times good times. You don't remember them, Marcella, you were too young then. And your father, Jonathan Lloyd, he was a good fellow a good fellow ; but he had the Quaker drop in him still ; he never forgot that he had the Quaker drop." "That Quaker drop dies hard," said Miss Lloyd, refusing the claret. Bertha listened with amazement. Was this the chilly, grey, bitter old man who had received her so badly on her first coming, and had left in her mind an 208 A GIEL OF GALWAT almost ineffaceable impression of harshness and anger ? This was a revelation of Sir Delvin as he might have been if at the turning-point of his life he had not taken the wrong turn. And Miss Lloyd ? So Miss Lloyd was part Quaker. That accounted, somewhat, for the almost unearthly peace and innocence that sat on her wide brows and made her lips so sweet. Bertha thought Miss Lloyd the most beautiful person she had ever seen ; yet she was quite conscious that it was not an earthly beauty, but a heavenly. The features were irregular, the nose of no particular shape, the mouth too large, the complexion colourless. But the face was heavenly all the same, uplooking, and with a light on it as of one who sees heaven opened. Bertha understood afterwards how it was that Marcella Lloyd had had many lovers, though her own love had been given but once. After lunch Miss Lloyd easily persuaded Bertha to accompany her home for a few days' visit. Sir Delvin seemed pleased at his beloved Marcella's evident liking for his granddaughter and at the obvious admiration of the girl for the elder woman. "Aye, aye," he said, "take her make her happy, Marcella. But you will do that you will do that. It will be better than Corofin." To her own surprise, Bertha found herself turning to her grandfather and saying with quite genuine feeling that she was happy at Corofin. " If you are if you are, 'tis because you ask little AUNT MARCELLA 209 yon ask little. Bawn Rose will be better, all the same- fitter for a girl than Corofin. What do I know about girls or about young people ? Tis a long time that we have all been old at Corofin." " I shall love to be with Miss Lloyd," said Bertha frankly ; " but no matter how happy it is, I shall be glad to come back to you again, grandpapa." "Aye, aye, she has sense, Marcella. She can value you. But why she should care to come back to me to come back to me ! " He passed his hand over his face in a bewildered fashion. " I didn't want her. I'm not sure I want her yet. You've put back the clock, Marcella, you've put back the clock. Yet I am busy ; there are so many things I must do." As they drove placidly through the woods behind the mouse-coloured donkey, who was as sleek as good living and happiness could make him, Bertha told Miss Lloyd how glad she was she had come home. " Mary Butler said you were grandpapa's good angel," she said. " He has needed you." " I know. I would have come before if I could. I have been told everything, or nearly everything. I have faithful correspondents here. I know, for instance, that you have been doing a little angel's work on your own account among my poor friends up there on Ben Sheelin." Bertha blushed. " I suppose Mr. Roper must be one of your cor- respondents ? " she said. (M835) 210 A GIEL OF GAL WAY " I have heard about poor Mary Walsh and all," Miss Lloyd answered. " Mary is no better ? " " She is no worse. She has had such privations, so much exposure. Now that spring is coming I want to get her away somewhere where she will be nursed. We mustn't let her die. I can't believe she is hopelessly ill." " Will she leave Ben Sheelin ? " " I have persuaded her to, for Johnny's sake. You know Johnny, Miss Lloyd ? " Marcella Lloyd smiled. " I know Johnny," she said. " She has the will to live now, for Johnny's sake. She has seen a doctor. He does not consider it a hopeless case. So much of their consumption, he says, is a matter of bad food potatoes and stewed tea damp, and hardship of all kinds. I am determined that Mary shall live, for what would I do with Johnny ? " Bertha dimpled all over her face. " With Johnny ? You weren't thinking of adopting Johnny ? " " I promised his mother I would, if she kept to her determination of not living. She is more cheerful now, since she has seen the doctor and has had some good food. The best thing to do for Johnny is to keep his mother alive." " We shall do our best, God helping us. But now, Bertha, you are to call me Aunt Marcella ; ' Miss Lloyd ' sounds so cold and stiff from your lips." AUNT MAECELLA 211 " Aunt Marcella comes much easier." " I am glad of that." Miss Lloyd was silent for a moment ; then she spoke, and her voice had a wistful sound. " My name is not new to you, Bertha ? you had not to come to Corofin to hear of me ? " " I have known your face all my life. A photograph of you stands on my father's writing-table always." A wonderful gleam of pleasure flashed over Miss Lloyd's face. " Ah, he would be faithful to his friendships ! I was always his friend, Bertha." " I know. He thinks no woman like you except, of course, mama." " Ah yes, except her, of course. I should like to be her friend, too. I am so sorry I never knew her. I hope that will be remedied one of these days." " They will come home in four years," said Bertha. " Four years.! " Miss Lloyd repeated. The words on Bertha's lips had ended in a sigh. " It is an eternity to you, little Bertha. When it has gone you will be surprised to find how it has flown." " I want them to come back to Corofin, to find a roof over them and a house still standing when they do come." " We shall do our best, Bertha. It is a ruinous old place. Your father will have to rebuild largely. Sometimes I think it is not altogether a desirable residence ; it is so choked by the trees." 212 A GIRL OF GALWAY " Yet what would it be withont tbein ? " Miss Lloyd looked up at the arches above their heads, the slender tracery already growing thicker with the coming of innumerable buds. " You love the trees, Bertha ? " " Every one is a friend." " Ah ! you are a true Grace." " I don't suppose the trees would really want to strangle the house if they could know." " They have nearly strangled it already. I believe in time the house will have to come down." " I hope not yet, Aunt Marcella, for papa's sake." " That rebuilding would be heavy work, Bertha." " Papa has a good salary a splendid salary as salaries go, and his pension will be good, but he would have no fortune to sink in a bog-hole, I think," said Bertha wisely. " And grandpapa always says he is so poor. I should like to be very rich, to do good with the money." " Your grandfather is not probably so poor as he thinks. But his property is unrealisable jewels and plates and pictures, Bertha." " The Graces would never sell, Aunt Marcella." " I suppose not, Bertha. It is unpractical, but I am glad you are a true Grace. Now " they had emerged on the high road " wake up, Mouse, and show Bertha what you can do." But Mouse, the donkey, only kicked up his heels in recognition of the fact that he was spoken to, and proceeded as before at a lazy little trot. BAWN ROSE 213 " Some day, Mouse," said his mistress, " I shall be obliged to buy a whip for you. That is a threat I use to him periodically, Bertha ; but he never minds a bit. He's a very spoilt Mouse. But you will find out at Bawn Hose for yourself what a bad donkey he is. And to think I bought him from a gang of tinkers who were riding him four at a time 1 " " I suppose he thinks he has earned a respite for the rest of his days ! " said Bertha. CHAPTER XX. BAWN EOSE BAWN Rose was a little white house by the roadside turning its end gables to the road superciliously : approached on one side by a tiny gravel sweep, looking out on the other over an old-fashioned garden. To anyone passing by it presented only the long white garden wall, the house-end with a small window or two, and a little bit beyond the green-painted entrance-gates. " I always lead Mouse from the gate," said Miss Lloyd, alighting, " for he pretends he is so glad to get to his stable that he puts on a great spurt from the gate onwards. Perhaps, too, he knows that Mary Anne has always a carrot in her apron for him." Mary Anne came down the steps of the little house to meet them an elderly woman of a severely respectable 214 A GIRL OF GAL WAY appearance, with her black silk apron, sure enough, concealing something which Mouse knew for a carrot. " He's not to have it till the bit's out of his mouth, Connor Kelly," she said to the urchin who approached out of the darkness to take Mouse to his stable. " An' as soon as you've given him a wipe down, I've got a bit of a warm feed for him in the kitchen that'll be better than carrots an' apples to his stomach this could weather." " Mouse eats everything that a dog will eat," said Miss Lloyd as they went up the steps. " I'm afraid he gets a great deal that's not really fit for him and might be used for something else, as I tell Mary Anne." She turned with a friendly smile to the old woman, who was following them with an armful of rugs. " 'Deed, then, Miss Marcella," she answered, " you wor always a deal too givish. 'Tisn't many o' them you'd give to is as grateful for it as Mouse. I hope he went well, miss ? " "Much as usual, Mary Anne." " See that now, the wit of him ! Whin I seen you settin' out this mornin', my mind misgave me that you'd never get to Corofin at all. He's took it aisy since you went to foreign parts, Miss Marcella, and he's not to say a young ass is Mouse." " I'm afraid you've spoilt him, Mary Anne. He's even worse than he was, as I daresay I shall find out in time. Still, it was very good of him to do as well as he's done, for I suppose he's had no exercise." BAWN HOSE 215 " Just a dandher now an' then to keep him in health. He does be most o' the time, unless he's in the stable or the paddock, lyin' by the kitchen fire." Mary Anne was by this time taking off her mistress's wraps with great solicitude in the hall, while Bertha performed a like task for herself. " Miss Grace will be horrified to hear of your having Mouse by the kitchen fire, Mary Anne," said her mistress. " Such a nice clean kitchen, too, Bertha ! You'd never believe it of Mary Anne ! " Mary Anne made a kind of dip to Bertha. " You're kindly welcome, miss," she said ; and her tone had a little constraint in it which made Bertha wonder. Except for her grandfather's first attitude towards her, she had found it a friendly country. " Beggin' your pardon, Miss Marcella, no wan need object to Mouse in their kitchen. He's a dale claner an' well-conducted than many a dog an' most childher. He's rale pleasant lyin' across the hearth after I've claned up an' can sit to my bit o' needlework." " I must come in and see him," said Bertha. " I should love to see a donkey lying by the kitchen fire." Mary Anne looked gratified. " You'll find, miss, he does the place no discredit," she said. In the little drawing-room, fragrant with many flowers, a lamp was burning under a red shade ; a wood fire was sending out long tongues of blue flame on a wide hearth ; a brass kettle over a spirit-lamp 216 A GIRL OF GAL WAY was hissing away cheerfully. Everything was ready for tea, save only for Mary Anne to bring the hot cakes from the kitchen, which she was very quick to do. Bertha subsided into one of the two easy-chairs which faced the fire, with the tea-table between them. At her left hand was another little table, with some magazines on it and a paper-knife. As she sat down, a tiny dog came out of a basket by the fire and crept towards Miss Lloyd, whimpering and shivering. "Ah, little Fairy," said his mistress, stooping to take him into her lap. " He is very old and quite blind, Bertha, and very nervous of strangers." " I hope he won't be nervous of me long," said Bertha, extending a finger to him to smell. The dog whined and trembled, drew back a little, and then advanced his tongue and licked the finger. " Ah, bravo, Bertha ! " cried Miss Lloyd, looking pleased. " Fairy trusts you." " I never knew a dog that didn't," said Bertha proudly. " And now drink your tea, Bertha." " How fragrantly it smells ! and the cakes, and the honey I " She looked round the softly glowing room, with the music on the piano, the books everywhere, the half-open work-basket, into which had been thrust a piece of needlework. It was all delightfully refined and feminine. " If you could know the comfort of it ! " she added. Miss Lloyd looked at her sympathetically. " Yon have needed comfort, child," she said. BAWN EOSE 217 " Only for Mary Butler, and the dogs, and the trees, and the letters, of course, I should have been chilled to the bone. I have hardly spoken with anyone but Mary for nearly a year." " Poor Bertha ! " " Mary was good, of course ; but I began to feel like forgetting to talk my own language. I missed the piano so dreadfully, too, Aunt Marcel la ! " " Dear Bertha, you shall play all you will. I remember to have heard that your mother played exquisitely." " She does. She has given me her love for music, if less than her perfect art. She has taught me to care for all things good." " Happy Bertha ! And happy mother ! " " I can hardly believe you have only just come home," said Bertha, looking about her with fresh pleasure in all she saw. " I feel now as if I must always have had you. And this room looks as if it had not missed you." " Mary Anne kept it just as I had left it when I went away. She is a faithful soul, Bertha. The magazines of nearly three years ago lay on that table till they were removed this morning. It is Mary Anne's pride to keep the house always ready for me when I am absent. This absence must have tried her patience sorely." She sighed a little as she said it. After tea Bertha went to the piano and began to play. It was a delight to her to find the keys under 218 A GIKL OF GALWAY her fingers again, as it was to talk to a cultivated and refined woman, and to bask in the atmosphere of sweetness and warmth to which she had become disused. At first her fingers were stiff, but gradually they became more pliant. She played in a rapt way, without apparently needing any music before her; while Miss Lloyd watched her across the fire-lit, lamp-lit room, and thought of St. Cecilia. Bertha's hair, cloudier than ever, might well have stood for an aureole to the spirited and speaking face. Once she paused with her hands on the keys and an expression of great delight on her face. " What is it, Bertha ? " asked her hostess softly. " Violets," said Bertha, " and lilies of the valley ! I am only beginning to pick out the different scents in this sweet room of yours." " There are pots of the flowers growing close by you there, at the back of the piano. As the room grows warmer the perfume becomes stronger. You shall see my garden by daylight and my little green- house. Some of my friends have helped Martha to keep both going while I have been away." " I saw you wore violets the minute I looked at you at Corofin. Do you always carry that little scent of them about with you ? " " I wear them when I can. Violets, if one keeps a greenhouse, need hardly ever be out of season." " And you carry the scent of the dead violets with you as well as the living ? It is almost sweeter." BAWN ROSE 219 Miss Lloyd looked down at the bunch of purple in the bosom of her soft grey frock. " They are of the flowers that smell sweeter for being crushed," she said. " Like some few elect souls," said Bertha. " What a clever child you are, Bertha ! " said Miss Lloyd with frank simplicity. " I think you ought to be a writer." Bertha blushed as she bent over the keys. " I have been trying to write, Aunt Marcella, but I burn and burn. Perhaps some day something that lives may rise out of the ashes." She struck the keys, and the magnificent wild notes arose of a battle-song by some Russian composer. The fire and fury of it filled the quiet room. Miss Lloyd was silent. Vaguely she felt that Bertha was hiding in the music. She would say no more till the girl chose to give her her confidences. The time passed magically fast. Bertha could hardly believe that nearly three hours had passed, when a sharp little bell rang through the house. " I will show you your room, Bertha," said Miss Lloyd, depositing Fairy in his comfortable basket. Mary Anne is rather despotic, and will not forgive us if "we are late for dinner. You have given me so much pleasure, child." " And I," said Bertha, smiling at her, " have just been thinking how good it is that I have three and a half days of this visit unspent ! " 220 A GIRL OF GALWAY " You must make the visit as long as you will, Bertha. I am a lonely woman. Most of my friends have warm hearths of their own. Your grandfather will not mind, I think." " It must be something in the nature of a reward," said Bertha, " something to be enjoyed at intervals. I must go back, but I shall not find Corofin lonely now that you are here." "Ah, you think it is right to go back ? " " I think my place is there." Miss Lloyd paused at a door of the little upstairs corridor, and opened it for Bertha to enter. " It is your own room whenever you will come to it," she said. " I have rooms to spare for my other guests. This I made ready for a girl who might have been you. Ah, no, Bertha, not little Muriel. A girl who has been in my dreams a long time." "It is a delightful room, and she is a happy girl to be so thought of." " She has realised all my dreams of her." " Ah, it was me you thought of, then ? " " Your grandfather and your father have been almost my dearest friends. Could anything be more natural than that I should think of you ? " " It is an exquisite room." " You will tell me what is lacking, child. No, I shall find out. I had to furnish it for the girl of iny dreams." The low room lit by firelight was an ideal gill's room, quite modern in its furniture, and so unlike BAWN KOSE 221 Bertha's room at Corofin. Its furniture and its chintz hangings were green and rose-colour. Even the candle- shades on the toilet-table repeated the charming colours. The bed-spread was green linen embroidered in apple-blossom ; the carpet was faint green with wreaths of roses. For quite five minutes after Miss Lloyd had left the room, Bertha walked about, lifting the pretty ornaments and examining them, peeping into chests of drawers and cupboards. Then, remembering that time went, she began to make her simple toilette. Someone Mary Anne, most likely had opened her travelling-case, which held just enough garments for a visit like this, and had laid her simple dinner-dress ready for her. It was white Indian silk, with a good deal of soft, pearly chiffon about it. When she had put it on, Bertha, looking at herself in the glass, gave a little sigh to the memory of the slender necklace of pearls and diamonds which might have accompanied it. She tried the effect of her gold snake against her milky young throat. No, it spoilt the dress. And Bertha was sure that Aunt Marcella was fastidious. She stooped to the plentiful supply of flowers on the toilet-table, and selected a handful of monthly roses, which she pinned in the bosom of her frock. The effect was delightful much better, she said to herself, than the less living beauty of precious stones, however beautiful. 222 A GIRL OF GALWAY She was quite ready when Miss Lloyd knocked at her door on the way downstairs. " You are very smart, Bertha," she said, looking at her with approval. " I thought you would like this frock," said Bertha shyly. " It is one of mama's Liberty purchases." " It is lovely, only almost too lovely for a dull person like me." "As if anything could be too good for yon, Aunt Marcella ! When I selected it to put in my case, I felt so glad of a fitting opportunity to wear it at last." " Don't forget to ring for Mary Anne if you want anything, Bertha. She is a very good lady's-maid ; and though she will superintend my meals, she has assistance in the kitchen, and can be spared." " I think," said Bertha, " that I should be a little too much in awe of Mary Anne at present." "She will be delighted to have you, child, to do things for. It is her complaint of me that I make no demands on her skill. Time was " She gave a little sigh to the memory of that time ; then she smiled her sweet and distant smile. " Nay, time is," she corrected herself ; " and the young are always with us." They were passing the beautiful Sheraton clock-case in the hall. " How quick you were dressing, Bertha ! " she said, looking at the face of the clock. " It is quite seven minutes until the dinner-bell will ring. If I had OUT OF THE PAST 223 known I might have had seven minutes more of your music." " Ah, you will have plenty of it," said Bertha. " I am greedy. You will have to dislodge me from the piano." They entered the little drawing-room together. CHAPTER XXI. OUT OF THE PAST MISS LLOYD uttered an exclamation. " Hugh ! " she said ; " my dear boy Hugh ! " There was a sharp note of consternation in her voice striking through her evident pleasure. Hugh Roper, in evening dress, came forward from the low chair by the fire in which he had been sitting, with Fairy quite at home on his knee, and stooped from his height to kiss Miss Lloyd's cheek. " We heard you were come, Marcella," he said "heard it by accident only. I hope you are ashamed of yourself. So I told the pater I would come over and dine with you. He was engaged to Lord Clongort both of us were, as a matter of fact or he would have come too. How do you do, Miss Grace ? " " Ah, you know each other ? " said Miss Lloyd, with evident relief. " We know each other, Marcella," said the young man. "Accident brought us together first, and we 224 A GIRL OF GALWAY have met since. So it isn't your fault. You won't turn me out, will yon ? I am so very hungry, and I have walked from the Folly." u I won't turn you out, Hugh," said Miss Lloyd, quite as if it had been conceivable that she might. " And you're not a bit glad to see me, though I am so tremendously glad to see you. We have missed you dreadfully. And I have cheated Lord Clongort for your sake. Say you are glad to see me." " Dear Hugh, as if that were necessary." " The pater's gone off in a horrible humour, I can tell you. He wanted to come, too ; but I insisted that it was his duty to appear, since I could not go. He had the cheek to ask me why I shouldn't go instead of him ! " " And why shouldn't you, you spoilt boy ? " " Because because you are my godmother, not his ; that is one reason ; and because he couldn't possibly be as keen about welcoming you home as I am ; and because Clongort would miss him horribly to quarrel with over politics ; and because I might have to take in Miss Oaulfield, and she'd grumble at me, seeing my thoughts wandered, and threaten me with all the pains and penalties of her young days ; and because I am too hungry for any more reasons, Marcella.' " Does Mary Anne know you have come ? " "I should think so. She opened the door to' me herself, and gave me a much warmer reception than yon have done. She thinks I've earned my dinner, I OUT OF THE PAST 225 suppose, considering all the time I've spent looking after your interests." " In what way, may I ask ? " said Misjs Lloyd, laughing. "Well, I used to turn in very often and smoke a pipe in the greenhouse to kill the green-fly." " That coincided, I suppose, with Amy St. Leger's watering and weeding and planting ? " " She was indefatigable, I must acknowledge," said the young man, without a shade of consciousness. " She was determined that you should not miss your favourite flowers when you came home." " Amy is a good child. With all those children on her hands, she can yet spare time to be kind." " She's no end of a brick ! " he assented cordially. " There's the dinner-bell I No, Hugh, you must go in by yourself, and Bertha and I shall go in together. I feel very guilty about your being here. What would Sir Delvin say if he knew that you and his grand- daughter were dining together ? " " We can't be bound by his feuds ! " said the young man impatiently. " Come, Bertha ! " Bertha, who had been listening behind her fan of white feathers to the conversation, of which she was partly the subject, rose and thrust her hand into Miss Lloyd's arm. " I certainly don't think we can be bound," she said. " Perhaps Aunt Marcella will agree when she knows how much cause I have to be grateful to you." (MS35) p 226 A GIEL OF GAL WAY Hugh Roper blushed furiously. It was an ingenu- ousness of his youth. " Ah, that ! " he said contemptuously. " Don't talk about it. It was our fault. If I had got in myself, I should have jolly well deserved it ! " Presently, when Mary Anne, who would allow no one to wait on her mistress except herself, had left the dining-room, Bertha told Miss Lloyd the story of the quicksand. She told it as quickly as possible, but Miss Lloyd heard her with a blanching face. " What a frightful peril ! " she said. " And so you were there to save her, Hugh, my dear ? Ah, well, I think that puts it out of our hands. Even Sir Delvin could hardly ask his granddaughter to ignore one who had saved her from so dreadful a fate." " It was my good luck to be there. I did nothing that anyone wouldn't have done. It was our fault ; we should have had warnings there. All the same, I am glad that Miss Grace thinks it makes her grandfather's inhuman prohibition out of the question." " I wonder what he would say if he could know ? " Miss Lloyd said musingly " If he did not see that we are free to be friends the young man began hotly. " Hush, Hugh ! " said Miss Lloyd. " I beg your pardon, Miss Grace. I was only thinking My father says that the happy accident of my being there would be the last injury to Sir OUT OF THE PAST 227 Delvin. I tell him I can't believe it. Those mediasval hatreds are out of fashion." " Your father ought to know," said Miss Lloyd sadly. " He has made so many attempts to be reconciled with his old friend ! Do your father and mother know, Bertha, about the quicksand ? " " I have not told them only because I feared the shock to mama. I have no doubt of what they would say." " And that ? " Bertha lifted her head proudly. " That I owed gratitude and friendship to him who had saved my life." " I think you had better tell them, my dear." " I shall tell them in this week's letter." "After all," broke in Hugh Roper, "Sir Delvin knows that we are friends, Marcella. He knows you are my godmother. He does not expect you to forbid the Ropers the house because his granddaughter visits it." " I had not thought of that," said Miss Lloyd. " Of course he knows. I have often wondered that he forgave me." " So you will let us be friends Miss Grace and myself ? " said the young man cheerfully. "You don't seem to have waited for my consent. It would hardly be any good my forbidding you." " So we shake hands over the ancient hatred, which was entirely one-sided," he smiled, extending a frank hand to Bertha. 228 A GIRL OF GALWAT She put her hand into his. "It seems to me that since grandpapa has been in the wrong," she said, " it would be worse than folly for us to be in the wrong, too, because of him." " Then the last word is said, Marcella." Miss Lloyd began to shake her head doubtfully ; but just then Mary Anne came in to change the plates, and when the conversation was resumed it turned on more general topics. After dinner, Bertha, who protested that she was not at all tired, went to the piano and played. It was a keen delight to her to have her hands on the keys again ; and she dismissed Hugh Roper laughingly, when he offered to turn her music for her, with the assurance that she needed no music. She played on dreamily, passing from one thing to another, with a few connecting chords between, and seeing the while Hugh Roper's fair head in the firelight bent towards Miss Lloyd's dark one. They seemed to have so much to say to each other, those two. The low talk went on all the time, like an undercurrent to the music. What a sweet and comfortable picture it made ! The plain, spiritual face bent over its seam : the figure just matronly enough for a woman no longer young, in its grey gown with the fichu of white a flash of gems from the white hands that held the seam ; the gracious woman and the comely youth in firelight and lamplight he with his air of tender deference^ she lifting her beautiful eyes now "SHE PLAYED ON DREAMILY" OUT OF THE PAST 229 and again to answer him, with a motherly pleasure in him. At ten o'clock Hugh Roper stood up to go. " You are tired still, Marcella," he said ; " and though I think Miss Grace ought to talk to us a little, I have not the heart to keep you up." " It is time you were going, Hugh. We are an early household, you know." " And Miss Grace will talk to me the next time I come ? " He shot a half-daring, half-merry glance at Miss Lloyd. " Bertha goes home on Saturday, Hugh," she said, refusing to meet his glance. " You will be too busy to come before then." " I promised the pater to fetch him over to-morrow afternoon. It was the only way I could get him to consent to go to the dinner to-night." " Tell him he is to come by himself." " Poor old pater, he hates to be alone. It is one of his amiable weaknesses always to want me with him. Even seeing you, Marcella, will be less pleasant to him if we cannot drive over in the dogcart together. Besides, I thought we had settled it all." " I shall ask your father about it. I have great confidence in his wisdom as well as in his sense of honour." "Aunt Marcella," said Bertha, when the visitor had gone, " why make such a pother about my meeting Mr. Roper ? It made me feel awkward." 230 A GIEL OF GAL WAY Bertha, in spite of herself, blushed. " I know. Hugh is very unconscious. He is a boy still. I am sure if he has any feeling it is for Amy St. Leger. I wish he would marry her." " I have seen her in church. A quiet little brown mouse of a girl, with all that string of rosy and turbulent young folk coming in behind her, and the sisters so unlike her." " She is the mother of them all, my dear. They have never had occasion to miss their own mother. I could wish nothing better for my boy Hugh." She sent a sharp glance at the little bit of Bertha's face that she could see, just the pretty line of the cheek and ear. Bertha was sitting on the fluffy hearthrug, with Fairy's basket beside her, absently caressing the little dog. For a second or two she said nothing in answer. It seemed unbelievable that Aunt Marcella could be irritating, yet Bertha felt vaguely irritated. " There are so many kindly relationships possible between young men and girls," she said. " Why should that always come in ? " " Perhaps because it is the closest kind of friendship," Miss Lloyd replied, feeling a little bit rebuked. "Tell me, Aunt Marcella, don't let us bother any more about Miss St. Leger and Mr. Eoper, tell me why grandpapa and Mr. Roper's father fell out, after being such great friends." " It was over Lady Kitty Hugh's mother. Everyone OUT OF THE PAST 231 thought she would have married yonr grandfather. She was the most dashing rider and the sweetest girl in the county, though not a native of it. She had come to stay with her sister, who had married Mr. Dominick Bellew, of Bellew's Chase. She and your grandfather were always together. It is a long time ago, and no one rightly knows if they were lovers. Anyhow, Mr. Roper, who had been away with his regiment, he was a lieutenant of dragoons, but sold out when his elder brother was drowned and there was no one to look after the place and the mother, came home, and after that Lady Kitty had no eyes for anyone else. They say that Mr. Roper would have gone away while yet there was time, for his friend's sake, but Lady Kitty would not have it. Your grandfather married, some years after, Rosamund Preston, who had always loved him. She might have won anyone by her beauty and her gentleness, so the old people say ; but it was plain to everyone that Sir Delvin was never in love with her. She died young, poor thing." " Ah 1 and I have her pretty room ? " " Yes, I believe that was her parlour. Lady Kitty Roper lived to see her sons about her, but had to see them die. You know, they all died but Hugh. That is why he is the light of his father's eyes." " So they were both left with only sons ? " said Bertha. " Equally adored. But the men were different ! I don't think Hugh's father could have been so unfor- giving to his only son. There, Bertha, perhaps we 232 A GIKL OF GALWAY ought not to talk about the relations between your father and grandfather. We cannot judge, after all." " But I have talked them over with mama often." Miss Lloyd suddenly flushed deeply and then became very pale. " You know, then, the cause of their disagreement ? " " I know he didn't like papa's marriage. Now that I know about grandpapa I can understand that he would have had other plans for his only son. And then, you see, he didn't know mama." Miss Lloyd looked scrutinisingly at the girl's fair, frank face, and there was a note of relief in her voice as she answered : "Ah, that was it, of course. He did not know your mother. And then he had so given himself to his son that it seemed incredible he should leave him for a strange woman. No doubt when he bade him begone he never expected to be taken at his word. Afterwards, perhaps, he believed that Everard would come to him for help, for forgiveness. He might even have accepted the marriage if your father would but have made the first advance. But one was as unyielding as the other, and Miss Lloyd threw out her hands with an expressive gesture. After all, it was Mary Anne who cast the ray of light upon the past that explained many things to Bertha. When Bertha went up to bed she found the old woman standing with a martial and forbidding air waiting to attend on her. OUT OF THE PAST 233 " Miss Marcella bid me brush your hair, miss, and help you get ready for the night." The slight coldness in the voice struck Bertha again and aroused in her a healthy desire to overcome it and win friendliness in its stead. " I'm not used to a lady's-maid," she said brightly. " But since Aunt Marcella has sent you, I won't say no. It is always delightful to have one's hair brushed." The old woman preserved a grim silence till Bertha had donned her dressing-gown and let down her abundant hair. Then she began to handle it with a real artist's evident pleasure and dexterity. " Miss Marcella's hair is as fine," she said ; " but she'll take no care of it, only twisht it up anyhow to get it out of her way ! " " And she sends you to me instead of having you herself?" said Bertha. " Aye, indeed, there never was wan like her for unselfishness ! 'Tis always putting herself in the back- ground she is, an' passed over by them that ought to think the most of her, an' plannin' for the good of them that despised her." " Ah," said Bertha, breaking in on the half-soliloquy of the old woman, " who could pass over and despise her ? I'm sure there never, hardly ever, was anyone like her. Everyone must worship her. I'm sure my grandfather does, and Mr. Roper, and you, Mary Anne ; and I am sure I do." " I'm not sayin' against it," said Mary Anne, with 234 A GIRL OF GAL WAY a mollified air. " But 'tisn't pettin' an' makin' much of other people's childher an' them that laste deserves it from her she'd be doin', if her goodness had its reward in this world." A sudden light broke upon Bertha. Why, how dull she had been ! Speeches of Mary Butler's half-heard and forgotten returned to her. The picture on her father's writing-table, even the slightly jealous, exact- ing voice of her pretty young mother when she had called her husband's friend plain, came to her out of the dim memories of childhood. She hung her head in a slightly ashamed way, and the childish appeal of the attitude suddenly struck the old woman. " I'm a terrible ould chatterbox," she said. " An', sure, yez all love Miss Marcella, I know. Maybe the Lord left her free to do all the good she does in the world. His way isn't our way." " She must be happy," said Bertha ; " she looks so peaceful." "Aye, indeed, 'tis plain to see she has the blessin' of Heaven upon her. An', sure, I wouldn't be blarnin' th' innocent for any ould sorrow she might have had. There, child, forgive my impident ways. She has me spi'lt, Miss Marcella has." She laid a rough, trembling hand gently on the smooth masses of Bertha's hair. " Be good to her, child," she said. " 'Tis the laste you can do." After that Mary Anne showed no more hostility to Bertha. OLDEE HEADS 235 CHAPTER XXII. OLDER HEADS HUGH ROPER did not come the next day with his father, and Bertha did not ask the reason of his absence, though she would have found it pleasant to see him. After waiting a while, perhaps to see if she would ask, Miss Lloyd herself opened the subject with Bertha. It was in the evening, when they were alone. " Hugh did not come, after all, Bertha ? " she said. " Perhaps he did not mean to." " I think he did. But he is a dear boy, my Hugh, and I am proud of him. No matter who approved of a friendship between you and him, he knew that I should be disquieted at your meeting here without your grandfather's knowledge. I lay awake last night thinking about it. I thought of letting your grand- father know ; but then I was frightened lest he should prohibit your coming, and I have been wanting you for so long. And now that you have come, I find you equal to my fondest hopes. It would have been hard to give you up." " He could not exact that." " There are ties of great affection between him and me, Bertha. I am the one creature he has faith in. No matter how wrong, how unreasonable he is in this matter, I could not bear that he should lose faith in me, or to do anything that, if he knew, would shake 236 A GIRL OF GAL WAY the happy affection between ns. Hugh knows, the dear boy. He feels also that he should put no obstacle between you and this house, and that my uneasy conscience would not long rest satisfied. I should have had to give you up, Bertha, or to have told your grandfather. My dear boy's delicacy and kindness make the way clear." She did not tell Bertha that Mr. Roper had confided to her his suspicion that Hugh had been more than commonly attracted by Sir Delvin's granddaughter. " Those children ! " he said, shaking his white head ; " before them our old fabrics of hatred go down like so many houses of sand. They look at each other as the young Adam looked at the young Eve. There are no serpents under the flowers of their Paradise." "I used to think, Archibald, that Hugh and Amy St. Leger would make a match of it." "Amy St. Leger that good little motherly thing whom he has always known ! I don't think so, Marcella. When Hugh falls in love it will be headlong, like his father before him." " You don't think the attraction for Bertha has gone very far?" " How can I tell ? Frankly, I do not even know whether I wish it or not. Without my old friend's enmity it would have been an ideal thing. And the girl is a frank and fair creature after my own heart and loves her kind. If I were Hugh I should not relinquish her for twenty grandfathers." OLDER HEADS 237 " I hope you won't say that to Hugh," said Miss Lloyd in an alarmed voice. " No, because I want the lad's love-affair, when it comes, to be all brightness. I don't want it over- shadowed by an old man's malediction. If he would but relent ! " "That is in the hands of God," she said, turning away from the eyes that asked her for hope. " Why should we not be satisfied that He will make the anger cease in His good time ? " " It has endured for forty years, Marcella." " And you have never ceased to hope, Archibald ? " " Nor shall cease while both of us are above ground." " He must melt he must melt ! " said Miss Lloyd, almost tearfully. " He cannot remain flint for ever." " The girl has not softened him ? " " I fear not." " Because another influence has been at work the most searing and wasting of all the love of money. I wonder if it is true that there is coal under the woods ? " "That would interest you as well." " The seam would finish before it reached us. Money and the Ropers seem antipathetic." " Because you give it away. Look at the Folly with its miles of underground rooms ! " (i A monument of folly." " Of charity, the divine foolishness. Every brick meant bread in the hungry mouth." 238 A GIKL OF GALWAY " Let my father's deeds be. If there were coal and it were opened, what would the result be ? " " I suppose it would bring prosperity ? " said Miss Lloyd in a doubtful voice. " There would be grimy rails and roads where the mosses of the wood are now. A pall of smoke would hang over the valley. The shriek of engines would be in our ears for the songs of birds and the sound of the sea. There would have to be a little harbour and a landing-stage out there beyond the sea-flats. It would bring us the world." " Where we have already the other world ? " "A little of this world's prosperity would do us no harm. God did not put us here so that we might be starved prematurely into the other." " It would mean employment for the poor where there is none now, for the land gives none." " It would mean employment for the poor. Yet I do not think you need be afraid, Marcella. You may keep your other world. I do not think that, even for money, Delvin Grace will destroy the woods. The love of the woods is in the blood and bone of the Graces." " One can almost believe the old story, seeing Bertha's feeling for them." " She is the child of the woods, straight and supple like them ; and her head, like theirs, always in the sunshine." " You talk like a lover, Archibald." " Perhaps, like the old fellow in the song, I shall go courting with my boy." OLDER HEADS 239 "You are young enough for it," Miss Lloyd said, smiling at the handsome, ruddy face and the blue, sparkling eyes. " Who could believe that you and Delvin Grace were friends in young manhood ? " " Only six years between us. I shall be sixty-eight come Michaelmas, and Delvin must be pushing up to seventy-four." " There might be twenty years of difference." " Poor Delvin ! he has led an ageing life. He has flung away the things that keep one young." " I wish we could give them back to him before he dies." " We shall hope we shall hope. That fellow of his bailiff, rent-warner, man-of-business, I don't know what to call him seems to have got an extraordinary hold over him." " He ministers to his unhappy passion for money." " I wonder it is worth his while to stay," said Mr. Roper musingly. " He is a clever fellow. One would imagine he conld make more of his time ; for I am sure Delvin pays him a poor wage. Seeing how he has educated himself, he ought to do well if he were out of this, in some place where the circumstances of his birth would not be remembered against him." " Perhaps that poor creature, his brother, keeps him. He would hardly bear transplanting." " Surely not ? People say he is hard, and an oppressor. Conceivably the poor cripple is devoted to him. Indeed, everyone says he is. But I can't think 240 A GIKL OF GALWAY that such a man as he can regard such a brother as anything but an incubus." " I don't know. I have a ijueer memory of the time of the small-pox. Timothy Bulger was then, of course, only a young lad. But when I went to nurse James Bulger, because the regular nurses were all employed, I can never forget the frantic grief of the boy when it was thought his crippled brother was dying, and his joy when the illness took a good turn. I've never thought Timothy Bulger as irreclaimable as other people think him, since." " You wouldn't be likely to, Marcella, in any case." " I don't know. I hate the oppressor. You know he frightened Bertha by a threat that he would, after all, evict the Ben Sheelin people when they got in arrears again, which they are safe to do. There is always the hanging gale, too, of course." " Her poor little necklace and tiara. I have them in my safe still." "What will you do with them, Archibald?" " Under happier circumstances I should hope to make them a present to my son's wife." " Ah 1 " Mr. Roper heard the sigh. " You would like those two to come together, Marcella?" " If it were consistent with my loyalty to my old friend. You don't think Bulger will carry out his threat, Archibald ? " OLDER HEADS 241 "There are many things against it. There is yonr influence with Delvin Grace for one thing. If that did not prevail, we should avert it somehow." Bertha came in at this point, and was greeted with almost fatherly warmth by Mr. Roper. He seemed to take a curious pleasure in watching her as she moved about the room, and handed him his tea, or sat in a low green velvet chair with her fair head against its duskiness, and allowed herself to talk as freely to this friend of three meetings as though she had known him all her days. Miss Lloyd, who saw everything, noticed that his regard was wistful as well. " Ah," she said to herself afterwards, " poor Archibald ! What a difference it would make if he had a daughter I He is one of the men who always need a woman about them." Some weeks later Bertha brought Miss Lloyd a page of her last Indian letter. " My darling child," it said, " yonr father and I are overwhelmed at the peril you tell us you have escaped, and deeply grateful to the Giver of all good things for your safety, and to him who was the means of saving your life. Some day we hope to thank Mr. Hugh Roper ourselves. Meanwhile, give him all thanks for us. Your father remembers the unhappy estrange- ment between his father and his old friend Mr. Roper, which he hoped was over long ago. In any case, even if this had not happened we could not keep up the feud ; but since this has happened, we must regard his (M835) Q 242 A GIKL OF GALWAY son with the most grateful friendship, if he will permit us to do so, and his father for his sake." " You see how mother looks at it ! " said Bertha, with an appeal in her eyes which went straight to Miss Lloyd's heart. " It is the only way any sensible person could regard it," she answered, feeling like an ogre who laid waste the beautiful gardens ; " and yet I can't promote a friendship between you and Hugh." " But why not ? " asked Bertha, with unconscious eyes. "You don't forbid my being friends with Mr. Roper, that dear old man, and if you did I must love him just the same. Wouldn't that be a greater offence to grand- papa, if he could know it ? " A sigh half of relief, half of something else, escaped from Miss Lloyd's guarded lips. She put her hand fondly on Bertha's bright head. " With all your cleverness, you are a child, little Bertha, and God keep you so ! " she said. CHAPTER XXIII. THE DAUGHTER OF POVEETY BUT though Bertha and Hugh Roper met but seldom at Bawn Rose, nothing could keep them from meeting elsewhere in a place where the society was so limited. For since Miss Lloyd had come home Sir THE DAUGHTER OF POVERTY 243 Delvin had pnt no obstacle in the way of his grand- daughter going to see people. " I want no one here," he said, " eating me out of house and home ; but if they want you, you must gad you must gad. Only don't ask me for money to do it with." The immediate occasion of this ungracious permission had been Miss Caulfield, who, having invited Bertha fruitlessly many times to partake of her hospitality at Castle Caulfield, had at last announced her intention of asking Sir Delvin the reason why. " It isn't natural," she had said at the top of her voice one Sunday when she had invited Bertha to come home to lunch with her after church, "it isn't natural for anything with your looks to be unfriendly. And though they tell me I'm a bit hard of hearing, there's nothing against me in the way of liking me, now is there ? " Bertha smiled at the sharp little face. " I knew there wasn't," Miss Caulfield said trium- phantly, watching for the movement of the young lips. " Then you needn't tell me. I know what you're going to say that it's your old wretch of a grandfather is at the bottom of it. Tell him I'm coming over to see him, to have it out with him. Tell him that if you won't lunch with me next Sunday, I'll come over to lunch with him instead." Bertha faithfully transmitted the message. There was some business going on that kept Mr. Bulger away for days at a time, and when he returned his arrival 244 A GIRL OF GALWAT synchronised with the visits of certain important-looking gentlemen in befurred coats and with very heavy watch-chains. During the intervals it became a common thing for Bertha to be summoned to her grandfather's room, and to be asked to read aloud to him the news of the money-market, or articles from the Mining World, or some such dull matter, as she held it. " Betty Caulfield," he said," Betty Caulfield. The woman would drive me mad. You must go to her, Bertha, like a good child. She mustn't come here she mustn't come here. And if she once came here, she would get in, if I barricaded the doors and windows. I know Betty I know Betty. Heaven deliver me from Betty Caulfield ! " So Bertha accepted the next Sunday's invitation quite gladly. She liked Miss Betty. She was going to learn the finger alphabet, that she might be able to communi- cate with her without those misunderstandings which became too common to be amusing. After all, it was easy enough to get on if one only allowed Miss Betty to interpret as she would the language of friendly eyes and smiling lips. Castle Caulfield was a somewhat imposing place, much more pretentious than Bawn Rose, and without the warmth and fragrance the odour of sanctity Bertha translated it of Miss Lloyd's little house. They ate their lunch, which consisted of one very skinny chicken, at a big table in a dining-room divided into three parts by pillars, and with flat pillars built THE DAUGHTER OF POVERTY 245 into the decorated walls. There were two fireplaces, but in one only burned a fire much too small for the requirements of the room. " I hope you're not a cold person, my dear," said Miss Caulfield, when they had finished lunch. " I've no patience with chilly people. There are so many things in the world to make one bustle about and be interested, that I have no sympathy with people whose circulation is bad." Apparently the magnificent and tarnished room was used by Miss Caulfield as both sitting- and dining- room, for, after lunch was over, having drawn up her chair, with its seat of stamped and gilt Spanish leather, close to the embers in the grate, she invited Bertha to do likewise. Bertha was warmly clad in cloth and fur, and she noticed with a throb of pity how cold the little spinster looked in her well-worn silk, with the fragments of cobwebby lace at throat and wrists. Her nose was red, her eyes watered ; her little fingers looked quite frozen as she held them over the brass dogs, upon which a few thin pieces of wood were carefully laid. It was a brilliant day of north-west wind the kind of day that is apt to be chilly in the house, though out of doors it makes the young and strong tingle with the delight of exercise. " I can't bear to see people huddled in a shawl," Miss Caulfield went on, " unless they are old. I wonder what it feels like to be old and cold?" 246 A GIRL OF GALWAT Bertha congratulated herself inwardly. She had been about to write on a page of her note-book a suggestion that Miss Canlfield should ring the bell and ask for a shawl. " I have a cousin in Dublin who is married to Chief Baron Malony," the old lady went on. " The last time I stayed there I was nearly baked. Roaring fires in every room it was a hard frost and eiderdowns on the beds, and, if you'll believe me, my dear, hot- water bottles in them as well. I call it downright unhealthy. I don't like Dublin, my dear. They always gave me too much to eat, too. I have the French taste in feeding : something little and delicate no gross abundance ; that is what I like." At that moment there was a thin jangle of the hall-door bell. The visitor was Hugh Roper. Miss Caulfield beamed on him, and, having greeted him : " Ah ! " she said, " I like a ready fellow, Hugh, my dear, I like a ready fellow. I was wondering now if you'd act on my hint. If you hadn't I couldn't have forgiven you." Hugh Roper blushed and walked across the room to look at a picture. "What are you staring at my grand-uncle Terry for ? " asked Miss Caulfield in surprise. " I'm sure you have known that picture long enough ; and Terry was no beauty, if the painter did him anything like THE DAUGHTER OF POVERTY 247 justice. As I was saying, Hugh, come over and sit down by us ! " "You don't know how to keep a fire going," Hugh said on his fingers, "or at least you don't know how to do it for cold people, for you say you keep so warm yourself." He stooped to the wood-basket in the corner and took up an armful of faggots. Miss Caulfield watched him a little anxiously as he piled them on. " You'll roast me out of the place ! " she protested. " You can sit farther away, Miss Betty. Besides, I want to make room. The wind has brought down the trees in the cherry-coppice, and we've been cutting them up into logs. It's grand exercise." He moved his arms as though he wielded an axe. " You remember that you expressed a preference for sweet-smelling woods ? My father remembered, and bid me ask you if you could find room for a couple of loads. We've more than we can house, so it will be a kindness to help us." " You are sure there are no poor people in need of firewood who would take them off your hands ? " Miss Caulfield asked anxiously. " No one. There's plenty of turf this year, you know, and no interference with the rights of turf-cutting. Don't refuse to help a neighbour at a pinch." " Oh, if that's the way with ye ! " For all her protests, Miss Betty looked as though she enjoyed the added warmth very much. Hugh Roper, 248 A GIRL OF GALWAY who seemed at home in the house, fetched from some- where a faded screen, finely painted with hunting- scenes on leather, a conple of easy-chairs, and two footstools. With these he made a cosy corner by the fire, and shut out the bleakness of the bare, hand- some room. " Upon my word, Hugh, you're a good boy ! " said Miss Caulfield. " You're just like your father a man made to take care of a woman. You'll make a fine husband one of these days, Hugh." Again he coloured at Miss Caulfield's praise. " Aren't you going to give me some tea, Miss Betty ? " he flashed to her. " Of course of course ! I've never got accustomed to the idea of afternoon tea. A breakfast cup is well enough. But of course I give it to those who care for it. It was another thing I didn't like about Dublin manners. Afternoon teas and late dinners are things I can't endure. I've always been accustomed to my dinner at two and my supper at seven." Hugh's fingers flashed at her again. " All your obstinacy, Miss Betty," they said. " Other people lunch at two and dine at seven. It's only calling the meals by different names." The tea came in, hot and fragrant, with the most ethereal little white and blue teacups imaginable, and fairy-like slices of bread and butter. " How deliciously it smells ! " said Bertha. Hugh Roper conveyed what she had said to Miss THE DAUGHTER OF POVERTY 249 Caulfield, who was sitting with her hand behind her ear and her head very much sideways, trying to hear. " So it ought," she said " so it ought. 'Tis the last of a canister I had sent to me as a present from the China Seas, ^ffould you believe it, my dear, my consin, Mrs. Chief Baron Malony, drinks tea at one- and-six a pound ? When she told me what I was partaking of, I very nearly threw the cup and saucer under the grate ; but, fortunately, I remembered my breeding in time, and that much wasn't to be expected of poor Emily, whose mother was Dublin. So I drank it to the last drop." Bertha nodded and smiled her approval. " Upon my word," said Miss Caulfield, " you're a most intelligent young woman ! I haven't had as much reasonable conversation for a long time, for even Archie Roper quarrels with me. I'm True Blue, and I find a tinge of Jacobinism in his opinions. Now, it's time for you to be going, if you're to get back to your ogre's castle by daylight ; and though Hugh will see you through the woods, you'd better not be out after dark." " Don't let me take you away," Bertha protested, turning to the young man. " It will be a very great pleasure," said Hugh Roper, "if you will let me ride with you all or part of the way. I saw you had ridden your pony to church." " Yes, I drove back with Miss Caulfield, but a 250 A GIRL OF GALWAY boy led the pony after ns. It would be a long step from here to Corofin." " Now what are you palavering about ? " Miss Caulfield asked, looking from one to the other. " Get away, Hugh, my boy, while the light is good. You can't say but I've done the handsome thing by you. Though why you wouldn't have eaten your dinner with us like a Christian, instead of bolting your food at home, and rushing off like a madman in order to escort Miss Grace, is beyond me. Don't say after this that I am not better to you than your own godmother ! " Hugh said something to her too quickly for Bertha to follow it. Miss Caulfield laughed. " I suppose I am," she said. " Most women are indiscreet, but few have two ways of speech in which to double their indiscretions. Never mind ! Bertha won't mind, will you, my dear ? There'll never be anything in my mind to slip my tongue that Bertha need feel afraid to hear. I was Everard's friend in the old days before he " Miss Caulfield pulled up abruptly. "'Tis as well you jerked that look at me in time, Hugh," she said. " Now be off with ye, or Delviii Grace will be accusing me of abetting a love-affair." Hugh Roper shook her hand affectionately. " You've been indiscreet enough for one day, Miss Betty," he said aloud. " Come, Miss Grace, I think our horses have been brought round." THE DAUGHTEK OF POVERTY 251 Miss Caulfield stood on the doorstep to see them depart, and followed them with farewells shouted in her high, unmodulated voice, till they were out of hearing. "You've won Miss Betty's heart," said Hugh Roper, turning to smile at his companion. " I never saw such a conquest ! What had you been saying to her ? " " Nothing. She made all the conversation. I essayed a phrase or two on my fingers, but she didn't listen to me. She gave me credit for all sorts of nice things I didn't say." " Ah, you see, she took your good will for granted." " She might do that. Though I never know what she is going to say next, I like her immensely." " She is the bravest creature. Poor as a church mouse, yet wrapping herself away in delicate reserve and secrecy. We are always afraid she may injure herself by her privations ; but we can do nothing, for she has never breathed to a soul that she is poor. She has plenty of friends, of course, besides those moneyed relatives of hers in Dublin, who would do anything for her ; but we have to help her, when she will let us, by using the utmost diplomacy." " As with the cherry-wood blocks ? " " Yes. We shall put in enough this time to last the winter through. Next winter we shall have to find another excuse. Fortunately old Sullivan, her butler did you notice how straight the old fellow is ? he was her father's soldier-servant aids and abets 252 A GIRL OF GALWAY us, or I do not know what we should do. Do you believe in white lies, Miss Grace ? " " They must be very white." "Sullivan is always having the greatest luck at all, picking up a rabbit or even a hare in the thin covers about Castle Caulfield. And though the grouse and the pheasants have long died out of it, to find a fat cock-pheasant trailing his tail-feathers across Miss Betty's lawn is the commonest of occurrences." Bertha laughed. "Ah, I see," she said. "And the white lies don't burden Sullivan's conscience ? " " Nor anybody else's concerned. You see, it's no wonder Sullivan should be a good provider, seeing that when hard times come at Castle Caulfield he shares them. He does everything for Miss Betty. The once big staff has dwindled to Mick Sullivan. You should hear Mick talk about his savings. He can talk most picturesquely, I assure you. Yet everyone knows that his wages have been in arrears for the last dozen years at least. Mick is a thoroughly bad lot, I'm afraid." " I think the Recording Angel will drop a tear on Mick's white lies, and wash them out," said Bertha. " Upon my word, I'm inclined to take your view of it, Miss Grace," said the young man. FOLK AT THE RECTORY 253 CHAPTER XXIY. FOLK AT THE RECTORY MR. ST. LEGER was one of those patient, un- obtrusive scholars, common enough in Ireland happily, who are content all their lives to work upon some monumental subject of no great interest to the world at large without hope of fee or reward other than the mere pleasure of the work itself. His benefice was not one of the stepping-stones to promotion. To tell the truth, it was not a very populous one, and he had hardly a single parishioner who was not well-to-do for his humble station, or very ill-to-do for a more exalted one, but in the latter case far too proud to let the world know of privations gallantly borne. A good deal of the rector's stipend found its way to the peasants who were not his parishioners. As is often the case in Ireland, he was on brotherly terms with the parish priest, and only that excellent man knew how ready the rector's ear was to turn to the appeal of charity. Father Malony was excellent company. He too was interested in the Early Irish Church History, which was the rector's hobby, though, needless to say, they held different views on the subject ; and the priest used to complain merrily that he had to leave things to be misrepresented by the rector because his big, scattered, poverty-stricken flock left him no leisure for the scholarly life. They rallied 254 A flIRL OF GALWAY each other incessantly. They dealt each other, when the discussions were of doctrine, what might have seemed to an outsider some very hard knocks ; but they were brothers at heart, and had a brotherly respect and affection for each other. His thinly populated cure of souls really suited the rector extremely well. He could devote himself to his hobby with a clear conscience, especially since he had, in the person of the Rev. Algernon Fairfax, the most devoted curate in all Ireland. The curate was but lately from college, where he had imbibed theological views which would have been low in England, but were considered high in Ireland. However, as the rector, who had been brought up in very low views, confided to Father Malony, what did it matter whether a man's views were high or low so long as his heart was right ? And there was no doubt about the Rev. Algernon's heart. His toleration was of the broadest, while he had a certain narrow conviction that only his special shade of highness was the right hue in matters ecclesiastical. But while he could not believe that any other could be the right opinion to hold, his gentle and loving spirit made it easy for him to believe in the many mansions of his Father's house ; and his belief in his own infallibility only made him. humble and fearful lest he should betray the light that shone so bliudingly clear for him while the rest of the world stood in shadow, more or less varying in depth. FOLK AT THE HECTOR Y 255 " He is a saint, Malony, that's what he is," Mr. St. Leger would say to the priest, who never ceased to be amused at the odd pride the rector took in the curate's sanctity. " I thought we had a monopoly of saints," the priest would chuckle, his blue eyes disappearing in fine lines of laughter. "Not at all not at all ; only we don't imitate your errors regarding them," Mr. St. Leger would respond cheerfully. " Take care of the lad, St. Leger, take care of him," Father Malony said one day, " or he'll be giving you an opportunity of saying your prayers to him. I found him visiting some parishioners of mine in the Inish the other day. It was a bad case a bad case, St. Leger. Diphtheria it is, and already there is a row of little graves in the churchyard. He was talking sanitation to them with a grain of human comfort thrown in. His pockets bulged with a couple of little chickens for the convalescents. Oh, I can trust him I can trust him, even though he does think we're all in the night of Roman darkness." " Dear fellow," said the rector, his hand going involuntarily to his own pocket. " He did tell me there was sickness in the Inish, and as he had been in com- munication with some of the sick he'd better keep away from us for some weeks. He has kept away, but I think he'll be going to the Inish again if he thinks he is needed. I met him yesterday coming back from a 256 A GIRL OF GALWAY. fifteen-mile tramp over the mountain, where he had been visiting old Crowley, the schoolmaster, who is dying at last. He Fairfax, I mean had that colour in his cheeks I don't like to see. Yet I can't forbid him, can I ? " " Better find him a hobby," said the priest, rallying his friend again. " That will keep him quiet at home, you may be sure." Amy, the rector's eldest daughter, was the little house-mother of whom Miss Lloyd had talked to Bertha. She had learnt to be that even in her mother's lifetime, for the late Mrs. St. Leger was a cold, easy-going, rather selfish woman, who had led a semi- invalidish life for some years before her death ; but long before so much delicacy, real or fancied, had set in, she had been more than willing that her competent little daughter should assume her burdens and responsi- bilities. After all, she died in the odour of sanctity, so far as her family was concerned, and remained a canonised figure in the memories of her husband and children. Even the clear-sighted little Amy had never been tempted to arraign that beloved shade for any neglect of duty. Mrs. St. Leger's reputed delicacy covered everything. She was of the not uncommon type of woman who can receive love without being enriched by it or returning it. Paula and Beatrix, her second and third daughters, were not unlike her in temperament. They were quite willing that Amy should do all the housekeeping and FOLK AT THE RECTORY 257 a good deal of the housework, with only such assistance as little Winnie, a serious child of twelve, could lend her. Amy was brown and tiny, with a bright colour in each brown cheek like the glow on a robin's breast. She had a delightful sense of humour, which neither Paula nor Beatrix possessed. It irritated them to be excluded from a joke which Amy seemed to find irre- sistible. Indeed, they often thought her laughter rather foolish, and were inclined to an affectionate depreciation of the mind that could find food for laughter where they themselves were conscious of no such thing. They were tall girls, slight and graceful, with hand- some aquiline features, light blue eyes, small mouths, and a profusion of clustering fair curls. They were exceedingly admired by the few bachelors of the neighbourhood an admiration which was not shared by their young brothers, Jock and David, aged respectively fourteen and sixteen, and little Val, aged ten. " Great geese ! " said the latter young gentleman one day to the Rev. Algernon Fairfax. " They'd do a faint if they fielded at cricket for half an hour. Beatrix says that cricket's unladylike, though that jolly Miss Grace is ready to play any day we can make up a team, and plays as well as a boy. You should see their balls lor ! It's well they don't want to play, for they'd only disgrace themselves. It's laziness and tight lacing is the matter with them, though they call it delicacy." By the time he had come to the end of this outburst of brotherly frankness he had unwound his spinning- (M835) B 258 A G1KL OF GALWAY top, and, watching it with the air of a connoisseur, he had no eyes for the flush that had sprung into the young curate's transparent cheek. " Listen, my lad," said Mr. Fairfax, drawing the child to him ; " that is not the way in which gentlemen speak of ladies. Your sisters are sacred, do you hear ? sacred ; and you must never speak like that again." " Poor old duffer ! " said the young gentleman after- wards to his confidante, Winnie. " It's all very fine for him who isn't their brother, but is only in love with that silly Beatrix. I wonder what men are made of to be so foolish and Fairfax, too, who was one of the 'Varsity Eleven ? I should think the sight of Trix at the wicket and he has seen her would make him perfectly sick." " Perhaps you'll be in love yourself one day," suggested the wise "Winnie. " If I ever am, it will be with a girl who doesn't do a faint when my white mice run up her sleeve." " Oh, but Val, you never know ! Grown-up people are very odd. It might be just that kind of girl you would like." " Look here, Win, old girl, if you ever see me making a fool of myself like that, you'll hit me over the head, won't you ? Not that I ever shall. Of course Fairfax's no end of a good little chap ; for, though his back was rather up about the fair Trix at first, he only laughed when I said to him, < Look here, old fellow, don't you talk ; you're not their brother. I jolly well wish you were I ' ' FOLK AT THE RECTORY 259 A serious amusement came into Winnie's responsible face. " What did he say to that ? " she asked with enjoyment. "He said he wasn't sure he agreed with me, and then spun my top with me for half an hour, and liked it. If it was Amy now ! " " We couldn't afford to lose Amy. What should we do without her, you and I, Val, to say nothing of the boys and little Elsie ? And what would papa do ? " " I know. If any fellow came after Amy, we'd have to do something to him. I only said I could understand if it was Amy." " She wouldn't leave us, you may be sure. She would never be happy. She knows how things are if she goes away for even a single day. No, I don't think we shall ever have to do anything to anybody on Amy's account, Val." " It seems rather rough on her, all the same," said Val. " I suppose girls like that sort of thing, Win, eh ? " " Perhaps, when they're grown up," said Winnie, with a sniff of contempt. " I should hate it myself." " Oh, you're all right. Nobody will ever want you, Win. I'll look after you. I'll have you to do my housekeeping." Winnie hardly heard this handsome promise. She was looking very thoughtful. " I don't suppose Amy will ever think of getting married now," she said " now that she's so tremen- dously old." 260 A GIRL OF GALWAY " She's twenty-six, isn't she ? " said Val. u I can hardly imagine being twenty-six myself, it seems so old though, of course, there are people older." " Of course. Father is, and so is Father Malony. Of course I only meant it was very old for a girl. If it wasn't for that I'd have been just a little bit anxious about that Dr. Clifford, Val." " Don't you bother about him, old girl. Clifford has shot lots of lions and tigers, and wants to shoot more. You can't imagine a man who has been an explorer, and has had himself half chawed up by a leopard, besides no end of sunstrokes and fevers, bothering about girls. Besides, he wasn't thinking about Amy ; he was thinking about me." Winnie looked unconvinced still. " I know he was very nice to you," she said, with an obstinate little tightening of her mouth, " and of course he liked to tell yon about the lions and things in the African forests, because he is really good-natured and knew it delighted you. But his eyes were on Amy all the time, where she sat darning papa's stockings." " I expect he was thinking what rubbish it was for her to be going over and over them, looking for holes when she had stopped up so many already. For a person who has been in jungles it must seem very tiresome to sit darning stockings like that. When I grow up I won't have Amy darning stockings any more. I'll earn money enough to keep the pater in new stock- ings. It's precious hard on him, too, to have to wear them FOLK AT THE RECTOKY 261 so darned that there's hardly a bit of the real stocking left. You may take my word for it, Win, it was wonder- ing how Amy could keep on darning he was." " All I know," said Winnie, " is that he never noticed Paula and Beatrix, though / knew why they had put on their best muslins and were wearing roses in their belts. But he stared at Amy. If I had stared at anyone so hard I should have been told I was rude." " I should have been surprised if he had stared at Paula and Beatrix. I should think he would regard them much as he would" the boy looked about him for a comparison and found one " spiders." " Other people seem to like them well enough," said Winnie philosophically. " There's Harry Pollexfen, and there's Mr. Fairfax, and there was Alvarez, papa's pupil, and ever so many more." " Alvarez the Portugee ! There's no accounting for tastes. I suppose, being a nigger, he liked those great staring things." " Papa told you, Val, that Mr. Alvarez was of a very proud race, ' a much purer blood than we are,' that's what he said. You shouldn't mind what people like Jane Kelly and old Michael Moore say to you." " I only called him a nigger. Moore called Alvarez a black," said Val unrepentantly. " Anyhow, I could tell Bee, only she knows it already, that Alvarez's pocket-handkerchiefs were just as grubby as mine, though she almost faints when she sees mine." " That was because Mr. Alvarez was a foreigner." 262 A GIRL OF GALWAY " Who's prejudiced now, I should like to know ? If he is a nigger he needn't be grubby. Besides, he was grown up, and it was worse for him than me. He couldn't want to keep so many things in his pocket as I do." " I don't blame Paula for objecting to your carrying ground-worms in your pocket, especially when they escaped from the tin and she saw them creeping all over the pew in church." " I don't mind her objecting. She needn't have fainted, though. There's Bertha Grace now. Bertha only laughed. She laughs at everything. She pulled nine pocket-handkerchiefs out of my pocket the day before yesterday ; they were all grubby, too. She only laughed like anything when she found how much I had in my pocket as well." "Ah, Bertha," said Winnie, with a discriminating air, " Bertha's not like a lady at all. Bertha's game for everything." CHAPTER XXV. DAYDREAMS AMY had become Bertha's friend, and it was a friendship that helped the months to fly which had once stretched out so interminably long. Sir Delvin might not go to church himself; he could hardly object to his granddaughter going there. DAYDKEAMS 263 He might say cynically that lie only asked St. Leger to refrain from inviting him to subscribe to the restora- tion of the bit of an ancient cloister which the rector had unearthed in his garden and of which he was inordinately proud ; but he could hardly forbid Bertha's friendly relationships with the rectory people. Eccentric and recluse as he was, his few meetings with Mr. St. Leger had been fairly harmonious ones ; all his comments on the rector's fads were so little ungenial that Bertha shrewdly suspected he had gone as near to liking him as he ever got in these latter days. Amy herself in time came to make the first tiny breach in Sir Delvin's barriers against the world. From his windows he saw the two girls part one day on the windy sweep of avenue before the doors of Corofin. " Why didn't you ask her in ask her in ? " he said, to Bertha's amazement. " If you will walk half over the country, girls were very different in my days, content to stay at home, why send her away without a crust ? We're not beggared at Corofin, though I'm a poor old man a poor old man." On the strength of so much encouragement, Bertha invited her friend within the doors of Corofin at an early date ; and Sir Delvin, having seen Amy arrive in the shabby little governess-cart which was the rectory's only carriage, summoned the two girls to his room. As usual Mr. Bulger disappeared from the room, after holding the door wide for them, with a bow too low for ordinary courtesy. 264 A GIKL OF GAL WAY Remembering her own trepidation about her formid- able grandfather, Bertha was amazed at Amy's gentle and modest ease with him. If he was a bogey for the country-side, he had no terrors for Amy St. Leger. "Ah," said Bertha afterwards, when the two girls were enjoying the dainty and plentiful tea Mary Butler had spread for them downstairs in the wainscotted parlour, " if you had been in my place, the siege of his heart would not have been so long and so slow. He is delighted with you." " You have been months years sapping and mining it," said Amy, with her quiet smile. " The walls went down easily enough before me. I think him a most delightful old gentleman." " He was to you. I envied you, sitting there like a very bold and perfectly modest robin, quite at your ease with him. I never saw him so friendly with anyone except Aunt Marcella." " You have seen him with very few people." " True only with myself. He was dreadful to me at first, you know, Amy." " Poor Bertha ! You hadn't enough confidence." " I had too much." " Then it wasn't the right sort." Amy knew the story of the quarrel between Sir Delvin and his son. She had an intuition that Bertha's bright fearlessness might have reminded the old man too sharply of that hour when he had driven his heir from him. Bertha listened to her with a sigh. DAYDREAMS 265 " I am different now," she said. " I thought then I had only to blow my trumpet outside the walls and they would fall down. They did not fall down. My sapping and mining, as you call it, left no sign for months and years. I am humbler now ready to creep in where once I would have walked." " ' You must creep before you can walk,' " quoted Amy sedately. " You crept and walked too," replied Bertha. After Amy St. Leger had gone that day, Bertha received another summons to her grandfather's room. He was looking quite pleasant. " You can have your little friend as often as you like as often as you like," he said. " A good little girl a good little girl." " You wish I were more like her, grandpapa ? " said Bertha, with a sudden flash of audacity. Sir Delvin looked at her sharply. Something of pride, of approval, gleamed momentarily in his sunken eyes. " You are a Grace," he said, " a Grace. I like St. Leger's daughter as St. Leger's daughter. Perhaps perhaps I like you as you are. But don't build on it, hussy, don't build on it." Bertha's colour brightened. She was amazed at herself that so much softening towards her should have such power to delight her. But she was silent, though she had to bite her lips to refrain from speech. She felt as if anything she could say might scare away this new favour. 266 A GIRL OF GAL WAY To Marcella Lloyd she recounted the incident with joy, to have it received with equal joy. To her mother, underneath whose eye her girl's life was lived, save for the tender suppression of things that had been bitter and painful, she imparted how at last someone other than Marcella Lloyd had been made welcome at Corofin. She talked it over with Amy, ever ready to rejoice with her, telling her also the parting words of the interview which had left behind them after all a little trail of trouble. " I'm no ogre," the old man had said, " no ogre, no tyrant. I put no bar on your friendships except in one direction one direction." He had turned away as he spoke, adding half under his breath and to himself: " I needn't fear it I needn't fear it. It would be unnatural for my granddaughter. She will pass them by as I would as I would." "If he had spoken directly to me," said Bertha to her friend, " I think I should have had courage to speak out, to tell him that Mr. Roper had saved my life, and that I must renounce his hatreds. But he had already dismissed me. Amy dear, I couldn't risk making him furiously angry with me just when he had begun to like me a little bit." Amy answered the appeal in Bertha's honest eyes with a reassuring smile. " You are not called upon, I think," she said, " to inherit his hatreds. Besides, your father and mother know and approve." DAYDEEAMS 267 " My mother's heart is full of gratitude towards him who saved me from a horrible death." " And you still have scruples ? " " Not exactly, Amy. It is only that my grandfather doesn't know and is so quite sure that he can trust me. Perhaps I shouldn't mind so much if he were still harsh and forbidding towards me. But his goodwill is like a little plant that I have cherished. Must I destroy it just when it has put forth the little green leaves I had almost given up hoping for ? " " I think not," said Amy. " Let it be. He is not in his right mind about the Ropers. He will come to his right mind, and you shall lead him." Bertha sighed her relief. It was not the first time she had brought her difficulties to this wise tribunal ; and she was certain to ask advice only where she knew she could trust it and accept it. Amy a few years older than Bertha had the wisdom of twice her age, together with a tender conscience. They were sitting in Amy's little square, light room, in the pepper-pot turret with which an imaginative builder had decorated the ugly grey stone house. It was a room which Amy had somehow stamped with her own personality an austere little room with a small bed pushed into one corner, a tiny looking- glass, half a dozen hooks for dresses, and the most unobtrusive washing-arrangements. But there was quite a good-sized shelf of books, a work-box ever ready, a business-like pile of account-books, and a 268 A GIRL OF GALWAY prie-dieu in which her knees had worn places. Also, for her visitors, she kept an easy-chair, her own favourite seat being the business-like one in which she sat to the table to ply her sewing-machine or write her letters. Privately she had confessed to Bertha that her idea of ease was to sit on the floor. " If I ever had time for daydreams," she said, " my ideal would be to have a fire of turf in the grate, and sit there on the hearthrug looking at the pretty sparks that fly after each other like a trail of ascending birds, and dream dreams." She shook her head over her own speech. " But there never is any time for daydreaming," she added, " what with keeping the little ones decent, and patching those boys' clothes, and thinking about the dinners and the bills that have to be paid and the little money for doing it, and all the rest of it." " If you could look into the turf and dream, what would you see ? " asked Bertha. Amy had a rare impulse to confession. Her cheeks reddened, her eyelids fluttered an instant over eyes eager and shy. Then she spoke. " A vision I have given up long ago, Bertha," she said ; " not a bit like other girls' daydreams. I used to want to be a nurse somewhere where nursing was needed dreadfully badly. But of course I had the sense to see that my nursing must be done at home ; and I am happy." " It was a very nice daydream, and very like you," said Bertha ; " only almost too unearthly." DAYDREAMS 269 Her voice had the faintest note of disappointment in it, and Amy, understanding, smiled. " Your daydreams would be something quite different, of course, dear Queen Bertha," she said. " It is quite fitting they should be different from mine." " I wish you wouldn't talk as if you were qnite old, Amy. For the matter of that, mine would be to see grandpapa reconciled with papa, and mama chatelaine at Corofin." "The years will surely bring that, Bertha. But is there nothing else ? " " I do not want to look further," said Bertha steadily. Amy let Val's small tronsers, which she was patching generously, rest a moment in her lap. " There would be other reconciliations, Bertha," she said wistfully. Bertha said nothing. From the high window they could see amid its trees the turrets of the Folly. Gazing that way, Bertha was quite conscious that Amy's gaze was in the same direction, and that their thoughts were on the same subject. " Hugh Roper is a dear fellow," Amy went on. ' % I have known him all my life. He could hardly be better as a lover than he has been as a friend. I should like to see him happy, Bertha." " Why didn't he fall in love with you ? " asked Bertha. " It would be the surest way to happiness." " I have told you that I am not the kind of girl men fall in love with. I am used to being overlooked for 270 A GIEL OF GAL WAY Panla and Trix. No young man has ever liked me better than them, except Hugh, and Hugh is my friend. His friendship is one of the pleasantest things in my life." Amy had made such speeches before ; and for all her cheerful placidity, Bertha had fancied that she had winced ever so slightly when she had spoken of always being passed by for her sisters. Now her expression was different. It at once invited and forbade con- tradiction. For the life of her she could not keep consciousness out of her voice, or her eyes over which the lids fluttered and sank. " It may have been true up to a month ago, Amy," said Bertha, " that your sisters had the lovers. It is not true to-day." " But it has to be true," said Amy. " I never wanted lovers. There is no room in my life for them." She put out her hands with a gesture, as though to push something away from her. " I am very happy," she went on, bending over her patch. " What do I want with outside lovers ? Very few girls have lovers like mine like papa and the boys. The boys would die for me ; so, I think, would Winnie and Elsie. Oh, they repay me, they repay me for giving them all my thoughts." "Someone else gi^es you all his thoughts," said Bertha. " You owe him something for that." " I can give him nothing," said Amy ; and her hands trembled. " At least, not what he wants. Why do you make me talk to you about it, Bertha? I had meant DAYDREAMS 271 to keep my own counsel. I give him gratitude, gratitude for singling me out, for for liking me, who am not used to it." She ended with a little nervous laugh, very unlike Amy. " You will find it hard to get rid of him, Amy." " I know." The trepidation in her voice was oddly mingled with exaltation. " He is the most difficult person to choke off ! If I had not my entrenchments to retire behind, it might be impossible to get rid of him." " Your entrenchments ? " " Papa and the children. You see, it is impossible for me to yield, Bertha. They stand between me and him. I could never push them out of the way, could I ? " " Poor Amy ! and poor Dr. Clifford ! But you will not always be so bound. There are the others." " Paula and Beatrix ? They will be married long before I am free to go. And they could never have taken my place." Her voice was at once sad and proud. " There is Winnie," she went on. " Winnie is very like me. At twenty she might perhaps take my place. It is eight years off. Can I ask anyone to wait eight years, especially one so keen to be up and doing as Dr. Clifford ? Only one thing keeps him in this quiet corner of the world. The jungle calls to him." " And you mean him to go alone, Amy ? I should be afraid of jungle-fevers, and jungle-beasts, and all sorts of things deadly." Amy's eyes reproached her. 272 A GIRL OF GALWAY " Do yon think I am not afraid, Bertha ? " she said gently. " But God will keep him. And without me he is freer." " Perhaps. You, of all women, would not hamper him, I fancy." " I am strong as a little horse, and I have no nerves. I don't think I should ever be afraid of anything with him. But it is out of the question. I have told him so." " And he didn't take No for an answer ? " " He didn't. He said he would wait ; he would go away and come back again. I shall be thirty-four before Winnie can set me free. I reminded him of that, and he said I would be the same to him if I were sixty-four." Again the exaltation trembled in her voice. " And to wait for Winnie is the only way ? " " Unless Aunt Winifred should take it into her head to settle down here. It is the most unlikely thing, though she is very fond of us. She got the habit of travelling while her husband was alive, and they were always flying before the winter on his account. Is it likely she would settle down here after all those southern places ? We are used to the damp and the high winds. She has forgotten them. And her money enables her to order her life as she will." " She is your father's sister ? " " Papa's sister ; much younger than he is. Comfort- able and kindly hearted, as I remember her. Whenever any of us have a new frock or a trinket, it comes from Aunt Winnie." THE CRICKET MATCH 273 " Could she take your place if she would, Amy ? " "Papa is very fond of her. To the children her name suggests all manner of pleasant things ; but it is not to be expected that she would be willing to devote herself to them. No, I don't think we can dream of Aunt Winnie's return. It would be no use building on a chance so slight. There, we won't talk about it any more, Bertha. I shall be the house-mother to the end." She smoothed out the patch, now quite completed, with a pathetic pride. " I don't think Aunt Winifred would ever achieve a patch like that," she said. " Indeed, it would be hardly fair to expect her to try. Patching even a very dear little boy's knickerbockers is no work for a rich woman, and one comparatively young. She couldn't be expected to love Val as I do, either." " You are a cold-hearted creature," said Bertha. " I really believe the devotion of those riotous boys is enough for you." " It is a very rich possession," replied Amy, the bright colour showing in her cheeks. CHAPTER XXYI. THE CEICKET MATCH THE Rev. Algernon Fairfax was captain of the Rectory Eleven, which was playing a cricket match against Corofin and All Ireland, captained by Miss Grace. (M 835) g 274 A GIRL OF GALWAT In order to make up the teams a good many players had to be imported from outside ; and since Miss Grace had the greatest number of outsiders, although she had also Hugh Roper and young Pollexfen, the Corofin team was being " beat scandalous," as Larry Kerrigan from the village shop, who had made a pair of spectacles, put it. The two captains did wonders with their scratch teams. Bertha's fair hair was ruffled by the summer wind, which seemed to love it as fondly as did the woods of Corofin. Her cheeks were flushed with exercise, her eyes bright. She made a picture of youth and health ; and her infectious laughter, carried by the wind across the rectory lawn, made even Mr. St. Leger smile where he sat poring over his manu- script in the study, while the papers drifted on the floor like a wave of the sea. Winnie was umpire for the Rectory team. Poor little umpire ! Every finding of hers was accompanied by a furious row among her men, her brothers pressing about her and disputing her findings and belittling her know- ledge, till the umpire retired from the field in tears. Almost everyone had been pressed into the play. Amy had been exempted " Too old," said her brothers, without the faintest idea of disparagement. Amy sat under the shade of the elm-tree which spread half over the lawn, stitching away at a little smock for Elsie while she waited for the tremendous assault that would presently be made on the tea-table. On these cricketing-occasions social differences van- THE OEICKET MATCH 275 ished, and Larry Kerrigan, Paddy Murphy, Joe Rooney, and the rest of the village boys shared the rectory tea. For the robust cricketing-appetites special provision had been made. Great piles of bread-and-jam, bread- and-marmalade, sandwiches, and cake, awaited the conclusion of the game, and rows of large cups and saucers stood grouped about the vacant place left for the large urn of tea, which was produced when there were likely to be too many calls on the teapot. Paula and Beatrix had not been asked to play. Their cricketing-record was too bad. Paula had retired to the house in some dudgeon because young Pollexfen, whom she considered her special property, had not only been requisitioned to play in Miss Grace's team, but had even seemed to like it. " He shall not find me so easily when he wants me," had been Paula's thought when she vanished into the house ; but that was a long time ago, and the match was nearly over, and perhaps Paula had grown tired of solitude, for the notes of the piano in the distance sounded like an invitation a clue to somebody's whereabouts. Beatrix was watching the game, having just returned from a stroll in the kitchen garden in company with a heavily built, heavily moustached man in the thirties, who apparently admired Trix's fair beauty very much. It made her a little unhappy, when she sat down on the stone bench under the old apple-tree where the kitchen garden met the lawn, that Captain French should have flung himself on the sward at her feet. 276 A GIRL OF GAL WAY It seemed so lover-like an attitude that it rather embarrassed poor Trix, who was conscious, perhaps, of being under the eyes of those keen and contemptuous critics, her brothers. Perhaps it was a more worthy feeling that made her droop her eyelids and blush and look handsomer than ever in the eyes of Captain French. Over there under the elm-tree another figure had joined Amy's. A tall, lean, sunburnt man had taken a chair by Amy's side and was leaning forward, turning his soft hat about in his hands as he talked to her. Somehow Trix felt it indecorous that Captain French should lie on the grass at her feet. What would papa think if he came out ? What must Amy think ? and Dr. Clifford, who was head over ears in love with Amy, and never would have thought of doing such a thing ? What did Mr. Fairfax think of it as he stood there playing his second innings, and making the rout of Corofin overwhelming, little sportsmanlike as he looked in his clerical coat with its flying black tails, that flapped in every wind. " The parson isn't half such a duffer as he looks," said Captain French in lazy approval. Trix shot a curious glance at him from under her black-lashed lids. It was one of her beauties that dark blue eyes and curling black lashes went with the pale gold of her hair. The look in her eyes was half fascinated, half angry. "Mr. Fairfax is a great cricketer," she said in a low voice. " He very nearly topped the averages in THE CRICKET MATCH 277 his last year at college. He played against England in the International match two years ago, the year Ireland won." "I hope he didn't play in his uniform," said the Army man indifferently. " He looks an awful ass, don't you think so ? " " He is very proud of his uniform, as you call it. He will never wear any clothes but clerical. You would not think it ridiculous if you knew him." Her eyes were still down and her cheeks flushed. Captain French looked at her with amusement, leavened with something else. "I shall be jealous of Fairfax, Miss Beatrix," he said deliberately. Beatrix flushed more deeply than before, and in her eyes, which were hidden from the man before her, delight and fear strove for the mastery. " Come," he said, " your friend is going to have a long innings. Let us go down there into that old orchard by the river's edge ; it looks delightful." Beatrix was in that indeterminate state of mind in which she did not know whether she liked Captain French very much or disliked him in equal measure. But she could not sit there any longer with those ridiculous red cheeks and Captain French in that lover- like attitude at her feet. The cricketers might be too far away to see the crimson of her blushes, but the man's attitude must be unmistakable even to Mr. Fairfax, who was a little short-sighted. 278 A GIRL OF GALWAT Dr. Clifford at the other side of the lawn watched the two vanishing figures with a slight frown. "Your sister and French seem great friends," he said. " I don't much like French." " Nor I," said Amy. " The girls like him ; and, what is more important because they can't really know any- thing about him is that Hugh Roper says he is really a good fellow, despite his rather unlikable manners." "Ah! that is all right, then. But I am sorry for little Fairfax." Amy looked startled. " It means nothing," she said. " Paula and Trix always have lovers. It is a kind of family joke. He has been here a good deal lately; but presently his regiment will be moved, and he will disappear like the rest of them." " I don't think he means to disappear alone," said the doctor significantly. " Your sister seems to like him, eh?" " I have been thinking Trix was different of late. She has seemed to value Mr. Fairfax more. How could anyone help being fond of him ? She seemed so much softer and kinder towards him before, before Captain French came." " Doubtless in the long run French will suit her better," said the doctor bluntly. " Fairfax is a saint. Perhaps saints oughtn't to marry. Anyhow, as your sister seems to like French, I am glad to hear a good account of him and from Roper. Roper would know." " If he hadn't been a friend of Hugh's he would never THE CKICKET MATCH 279 have been here so much," said Amy, holding the smocked yoke of the little frock at a distance the better to observe its effect, "for I didn't much like him, and I am the mother of the family. But I think you are right. He would suit Trix better than Mr. Fairfax, if she likes him ; and he is very well off." " What a worldly speech, Miss St. Leger ! " " Yes, I am like the mother in Tennyson " ' With a little hoard of maxims Preaching down a daughter's heart.' " " You are not very worldly," said the doctor, and his voice was tender ; " other-worldly, perhaps, but not this- worldly." " Ah," Amy shook her head wisely, " you haven't found out my bad points yet." " There are none to find out," he answered sturdily. " You think too well of me," she said, with her eyes on her work. "I shall always think well of you the best in the world." " But you mustn't." " You don't forbid me sincerely ? But if you did I should have to go on thinking so, all the same." " Do I not forbid you sincerely ? " she said, turning on him eyes of the utmost kindness. " You are right, Dr. Clifford. I like you to think well of me. Any woman might be proud. But you must think better of someone else." " I shall never think better of anyone else. No 280 A GIEL OF GALWAY one will ever come within miles of you in my regard. Why should they ? " " You are obstinate." Amy's brown head went a little higher in an unconscious pride and pleasure in this lover who would not be denied. " But eight years of waiting. You will never endure it." Try me." " How can I ? Even if I could let you wait, I could not endure the chances of your absence in those dangerous places." " There will still be the chances even if you send me away from you without hope." " Do you think I do not know that ? Do you think I have not thought of them ? " " You have, because you love me. How do you suppose, Amy, that, knowing your love, I will go without your promise ? " " You think to wear me out ?" " I shall stay till you say Yes. I think your father would be on my side. He would tell you that it was a mistaken idea of duty that would send me away from you. I have never asked you to be untrue to yourself. It is not that I am not impatient, Heaven knows ! But I see what you are to them. If you could leave them for me, you would not be Amy. But here come the cricketers." The straggling crowd of boys were coming across the lawn, carrying their bats. A little in advance Bertha Grace, with an arm half about Winnie, walked THE CRICKET MATCH 281 between young Pollexfen and Hugh Roper, turning from one to the other brightly as they discussed the game with great animation. Behind strolled Mr. Fairfax with a couple of boys. He had gathered his long, clerical coat tails over his arms. The straw hat, which was the only departure he ever permitted himself from professional attire, was pushed back from his forehead, where a line of white showed itself above the sunburn and under the rings of curling fair hair. He looked a little thin, a little harassed, and the wordy war between the boys passed him by unheard. Things he had forgotten in the excitement of the game were coming back to him. Amy was already making the tea by the time the players reached the table. " Well," she said, " which team won ? " " You don't mean to say you don't know ? " asked Jock, staring. " Considering all you had to do was to look on, you might know more than that ! " " I'm afraid I'm rather a duffer at cricket, dear boy," said Amy, vaguely ashamed of her faux pas, since the eyes of a score of boys were fixed upon her in wonder. " Well, as you were the only spectators we had, you and Clifford, you might have been interested. Why didn't you ask Clifford ? I daresay he knew all about it that is, if you let him watch the game. It's a thing women never will let men do. You need never ask me to take you to see a match played, Win, for I won't." " I shouldn't think of asking you," said tall Winnie, 282 A GIRL OF GALWAY sticking her knuckles into her eyes babyishly. " You're horrid, rude boys, that's what you are ! " " Why, what have you been doing to Winnie ? " asked Dr. Clifford, rather glad of a chance of escaping possible inquiries as to his interest in the game. " They were awfully rude," said Winnie tearfully, "disputing all my findings, and saying they'd never have a girl again as umpire. As though I wanted to be one, and have all those rude boys down my throat every word I said I They'd better play without an umpire in future. I wouldn't have minded if the Rectory was losing, but it was winning hands down. I think brothers are the rudest boys in the world." " Never mind, Win," said Amy, " I'll be umpire next time." There was a shout of derisive laughter from the boys, in which Amy joined cheerfully. tl Come," she said, " give up quarrelling and drink your tea." " They always said they were in when they were out," said Winnie, still nursing her grievance. " Only for Mr. Fairfax, Jock and David would have remained in all the time. I may be only a girl, but I'd be out when I was out ; and I'd be ashamed to bully the umpire, so I would." Winnie's three brothers asked her in furious excite- ment all at once if she were aware that girls always played unfair at everything, and declared that they'd like to see themselves playing a girls' school, so they THE CEICKET MATCH 283 would, not if they knew it. They were going on to cite various instances of the perfidy of the athletic girl, when Amy, observing the small rustics staring round-eyed at her angry brothers, began to fear the scene was disedifying, and brought it to an end by thrusting a plate of sweet things to be distributed into each of the belligerents' hands. " It is always like this," she whispered with a smile to Clifford. " They are really dreadful boys, aren't they ? " " As soon as I've satisfied my hunger I'll come and take your place at the urn, Amy," said Bertha Grace, who was drinking large cups of weak tea and eating brown bread-and-butter with an enjoyment which made Dr. Clifford gaze at her approvingly. " Pollexfen has sneaked off," said little Val, at Amy's elbow. " I wanted to ask him what was the best fly for fishing the Barrow. I hear it's full of trout." " You are too little a boy to go fishing, Val," said Amy, with a look of tender alarm at the small bullet- head. " You wouldn't think of going by yourself, would you ? " " No," said the young gentleman ironically ; " I'd take a train of sisters along with me to frighten the trout into the deepest holes they could find in the river." " I wonder why your brothers are such confirmed women-haters, Amy ? " asked Bertha. " It's born in them, I suppose," answered Amy with resignation. " I couldn't imagine a time coming when I'd sneak 284 A GIRL OF GALWAY off like Pollexfen because Paula was playing the piano," said Val, his mouth full of cake. " Take care, old fellow ! " said Hugh Roper, " you never know what may happen." " The only girl I ever could think of marrying would be Bertha," went on Val, with a grin alluring and impudent. " I'm going to wait for you, old fellow," said Bertha, nodding at him gaily. Val opened his mouth. What he was about to say no one ever knew ; but Amy apparently scented danger, for she took the little boy by the shoulders and hustled him off. " Go and fetch Mr. Fairfax's cup," she said ; " seeing that he is the captain of the winning team, he is making a very bad tea." Mr. Fairfax was lying on the grass at a little distance, with his hands clasped under his head. Now that the flush of exercise had faded from his face he was quite pale. " No, thank you, Val, I don't care for any more tea," he said. " To tell you the truth, I'm afraid the game has given me a headache." " A bad one ? " asked Val sympathetically. " A little bad," replied Mr. Fairfax, smiling at him. " I've often had headaches myself," said Val, " and I feel sorry for you. Supposing I drink my own tea here beside you, just for company ? I shan't talk, and as soon as I've finished we'll go away into the garden. Those boys are making a great noise, and that can't agree with your headache." A WALK IN THE WOODS 285 " It would be nice to go into the garden with you, Val," assented Mr. Fairfax rather eagerly. He had seen two figures coming slowly from the direction of the orchard, which lay a little way down the hill that stretched below their feet. " Supposing we go now, old fellow ? " " It would be very nice," said Val, with a longing look backwards at the tea-table, the contents of which had vanished, and were about to be replaced by fresh supplies. " Supposing we take Win too, and you will tell us about the fight between Hector and Achilles, and about the king's daughter that used to wash the clothes. Win likes that." So by the time Beatrix and Captain French had joined the group on the lawn the curate and the two children were sitting under the big cherry-tree in the kitchen garden, Val quite forgetting, in the delight of the heroic stories, that he had still accommodation for the contents of some of those heaped plates left behind ; for Val had a generous little heart of his own, and in a dim way he knew that all was not well with his friend Mr. Fairfax. CHAPTER XXVII. A WALK IN THE WOODS T)ERTHA was on her way home with a grave face. JU It was now midsummer, and the woods of Corofin were wearing their darkest leafage, as though it 286 A GIRL OF GALWAT behoved them to make deepest shadow for the squirrels and hares, the birds and beasts that trusted to them. Someone came up beside her. " I am trespassing, I know," said Hugh Roper's voice ; " but you will not bid me begone. I seem to see less and less of you. When I saw you in the distance on the road before me, I could not choose but follow." " How did you know it was me ? " " How did I know ? No one walks like you, Miss Grace. No mistake was possible." " Ah, but you are trespassing. If we should meet Mr. Bulger now he shares a good many of my grandfather's thoughts he might possibly warn you off, and perhaps report me to my grandfather." The young man's hands closed and unclosed. "He'd better not," he said, "and I don't think he would. I've had a difference with Mr. Bulger before now. However, don't let us talk about him. Why are you avoiding me so much of late, Miss Grace ? " Bertha turned her candid eyes upon him. " I have thought it out for myself," she said. " My grandfather grows kind to me. He will have me now of evenings to sit with him. He has even come to liking to hear me play, and Mr. Bulger has produced a grand piano from somewhere or other. They sit quite still, listening as long as I will play. I can't endanger the happy understanding between grandpapa and myself not even for you, to whom I owe so much." " You owe me nothing, as a matter of fact. Forget A WALK IN THE WOODS 287 that you ever thought you did. But you might like me well enough to want to see me for myself." " A year ago six months ago the task I had set myself to accomplish of winning my grandfather's heart and reconciling him with my father and mother seemed as far away as ever. It seemed as if the time left me to do it in would go on lonely and uneventful as the time that has gone. Now I begin to see light." "And you want me not to stand between you and it ? " asked Hugh Roper gloomily. " One reconciliation may bring about another," pleaded Bertha eagerly. " If he can forgive my father and my dear, dear mother that anybody should have anything to forgive her! perhaps his old friend will be the next." " I should be glad, for my father's sake." The young man's face had lifted, but not quite cleared. " The broken friendship has left a wound. He is always ready to forgive. Indeed, he would say he had nothing forgive, if but his old friend would forgive him." " I can believe it of him. I wonder how my grand- father could ever have quarrelled with him ! " " So do I ; and I know him better than you, Miss Grace. But jealousy is cruel as the grave." " Why couldn't he have been satisfied with the happi- ness that came to him, and not have refused it ? My grandmother was lovely, yet she had to know all her short life that another woman had come before her." " I don't go all the way with yon there, Miss Grace. There can only be the one woman, of course." 288 A GIRL OF GAL WAY Something in his voice and gaze made Bertha colour to the roots of her hair. "Yon play to that creature Bulger," he went on, dissatisfied ; " you won't play to me." " Aunt Marcella will not let me. You must quarrel with her. She bundles me forth the minute she hears your horse's hoofs." " Or me, if I happen to be there first, when she hears your pony." " We are like the old man and woman in the little house that tells the weather we are never at home at the same time." " I wouldn't mind if it were the same house," he said audaciously. "I mean, that you might play to me even if I stood outside." " You wouldn't care half as much as Mr. Bulger. Would you believe it he loves Schumann and Chopin ? I have watched his face, and seen the ignobility drop from it like a mask as I played." " Plenty of scoundrels like music. I don't like your being in the house with Bulger, much less playing to him. I shall have to thrash him one of these days." A light glinted in Bertha's eyes. His discontent and anger pleased her somehow. " He has plenty of physical courage, I should imagine," she said. " He isn't a coward" (unwillingly). " But how long are you going to ostracise me?" " I am at the present moment walking through the A WALK IN THE WOODS 289 woods of Corofin with you. By the way, they seem to like yon ; don't you hear how friendly their voices are ? " " I only hear the summer wind whispering in them." " Ah, I hear more than that. The woods are pleased." She lifted her bright head and peered up through the velvety night of boughs which the sun flecked with stars. " They are saying they are glad to see a Roper and a Grace friends once again. I daresay they remember when your father and grandpapa walked here with their arms about each other's necks. They remember, too, of course, that you saved me from the quicksand a danger I went into, though they did all they could to hold me back." " I don't hear them," said the young man simply. "You hear them because you are so awfully clever, Bertha I beg your pardon, I mean Miss Grace." She passed over his lapse as though she had not heard it. " I know what they are saying because I am a Grace," she answered. "Even grandpapa listens to the trees. He told me the other night that the woods were disturbed because of something Mr. Bulger had urged on him." " It is a pagan superstition," said Hugh Roper bluntly, "but a beautiful one." " I suppose there are dryads locked up in them," went on Bertha dreamily. " They are the banshees of the Graces, but, unlike the banshee, they rejoice with us when we are glad." " Don't talk about banshees. What have you to (M835) T 290 A GIRL OF GAL WAT do with them ? You are too young to talk about such sorrowful things." " Ah ! " Over Bertha's face came a swift sorrow and compassion. " I had forgotten. How could I ? And perhaps you do not know about Mr. Fairfax ? " " I have heard nothing. Little Fairfax ! I hope there is nothing wrong." " He has the diphtheria badly, over there on the Inish in a fisherman's cabin. He would not come back to the mainland because he knew he was sickening. There is no way of nursing him. Dr. Clifford has gone to him, and they have sent for day- and night-nurses. It is a very bad case. They are talking of performing tracheotomy." " Little Fairfax I The best little chap alive ! Will he pull through it ? " Bertha shook her head sorrowfully. " God grant it ! He is very ill. And and Dr. Clifford says he has been run down of late." " I know." Hugh Roper was too grieved and angry to choose his words and thoughts. " It is Trix St. Leger. If he dies she will have killed him. Why should he have cared for anything so heartless ? " Bertha put a gentle hand on his coat-sleeve. " Trix takes it bitterly to heart," she said softly. " So well she may. The best friend, the kindest heart, the pluckiest little sportsman alive ! We had need of him in this world." " He is well fitted for the other," she reminded him. A WALK IN THE WOODS 291 "Ah, the other does not need him as we do," he replied almost angrily. " And to think all that courage and kindness and spirit and sense should be sacrificed for a girl who has no soul to appreciate them ! " " You are unjust to Trix," she said quietly. " Trix is breaking her heart." "It is the least she can do. Will she marry him if he pulls through ? That is more important. He might live for that." Bertha shook her head. " Captain French spoke to her father only yesterday. She is wearing his ring." " It is my fault. I ought not to have stood sponsor for French. How was I to know he was going to cut out little Fairfax ? " " He is a good fellow, as you said he was, despite his ways. He wanted to go to the Inish to help Dr. Clifford. But at that Trix cried out and clung to him. There is no reason really why he should go. The diphtheria is almost done with. This seems likely to be the last case." " Clifford is there alone ? " " Till the nurses come. Father Malony will report. He comes and goes among his people. There is hardly a house where comfort is not needed. The children have died like flies." She trembled, and her eyes filled with tears. " Some of us should have been there," he muttered. " We hadn't time," said Bertha pitifully. " It swept through them like the plague. The houses were half 292 A GIRL OF GALWAY empty, and the mothers were still dosing the children with hot tea for the cold in their throats when the sick- ness was discovered. They have been so phenomenally healthy that they hardly know what the presence of a doctor among them is. It died down as suddenly as it came. Then there was this second outbreak. But now they will get it under." " At the cost of such a life ! " " He may live, after all. We are not without hope." " God grant it ! And so French offered to go ? I am glad French did that. He is a good chap. But why he should be preferred before little Fairfax ! Women are odd creatures." " I think I understand " began Bertha. " Oh, yes, I know," he interrupted. " He is too good. The good do not always meet their deserts. Yet Fairfax was a mixture of human and heavenly qualities. I should think any girl might have liked Fairfax." " I believe Beatrix is pulled two ways. Amy told me her grief was really piteous. I could see it in her face. I never liked Beatrix much till now." " Yet she would not let French go." " She is torn between them. I really believe that with one side of her heart and soul she cares for Mr. Fairfax ; the other clings to Captain French the more human side of her. Why should she run the risk of losing him too ? " " I daresay Fairfax could not have cared for her without bringing out whatever good was in her." A WALK IN THE WOODS 293 Bertha stole a shy glance at him. " She has some odd remorse about him because she laughed at him, or Captain French did, or both of them did, the day of the cricket match, when he would not lay aside his clericals. It is such a little while ago, and now he may be dying." " We all laughed at him. He never minded. He was too sweet-tempered. He used to laugh himself. All the same, she oughtn't to have laughed, and it was low of French. Upon my word, I think French ought to be kicked." Bertha understood the seeming illogicality of the speech. " You would forgive Captain French if you saw him. He looks as miserable as a big, unhappy dog." " So he ought to. But tell me, Miss Grace I am going back to the rectory as soon as I have left you ; I want to know, without waiting till then how does Amy take Clifford's being on the Inish ? " " Beautifully. She bade him God-speed when he went. She only thinks of comforting Trix, yet she looks herself like a robin in the bitter cold. She is dimmed, somehow, and yet her eyes are bright as though she were proud that he is there." " Amy is a trump, and Clifford is no end of a trump. Amy can't say No to him after this." " Ah ! " the colour brightened in Bertha's cheek " I forgot to tell you. Things are all right between her and Dr. Clifford. When he told her he was going she could not let him go unJess they were promised to each 294 A GIRL OF GALWAY other. He will be all right, of course. He knows how to protect himself. But it is a virulent type. Mr. Fairfax took it from a sick child who coughed in his face as he leant over it to do something for it." " I am very glad about my friend Amy. She is the best girl in the world, except perhaps one. And Clifford is the right man for her." " ' Steel- true and blade-straight,' that is what Amy is," said Bertha. " I like that. It is like her," said Hugh Roper, who was not a lover of books. " The same lady whom her husband described so had ' eyes of gold and brambledew.' Isn't that like Amy ? " asked Bertha, her own eyes kindling. " Very. It was a poet, I suppose, Miss Grace, who said that ? " But Hugh Roper hardly heard the answer. He was watching his companion's animated face with too vivid an interest. Suddenly she stopped in the midst of the way, flecked with shine and shadow, which played on the golden buttercups of her hat and her white frock sashed with yellow. " I have taken you too far," she said. " Talking of our friends, the time has passed." " I want to go farther," he pleaded, ignoring her proffered hand. " I do not know when I may see you again." "Ah," she said sweetly, "I think we shall meet. A WALK IN THE WOODS 295 I cannot think but that we shall see much of each other, being bound by a common anxiety. But now you must go. I am uneasy that you should have come so far. Aren't the woods whispering warnings ? " "A cloud has passed over the sun, and the wind that has blown it up is moving in the trees ; that is all," he said. " You grow fanciful." He smiled at her with reassuring tenderness. " You grow full of fancies," he said again. " No matter what we do for you, we cannot make up for the days and hours during which you are almost alone in that uncanny, old house." She had an impulse to tell him how she had been frightened at night when she first came. The noise had not troubled her again though she had often lain awake at night dreading it. But the impulse passed as quickly as it had come. She imagined that he would be unhappy if he knew that she had been frightened, and she could not tell whether she would like to see the grieved concern in his face or not. " But it will soon be over," she said. " Think what it will be when papa and mama come home, and the old house is all brightness, and Corofin and the Folly are once more neighbours because their masters are so dear to each other that they cannot bear to be separated ! " " Ah, you think that will come about ? It is a delightful prophecy. But that was not what you were going to say." A GIRL OF GAL WAY She wondered at his sure instinct. The direct way was usually the easiest for him. " No ? " she said, lifting her eyebrows at him. " How did you know ? " Before he could answer her she heard a little sound somewhere in the undergrowth, among the bracken, within the night of the massed trees on either side of the wide avenue in which they were standing. " What was that ? " she asked ; and for some reason her heart sank, though the sound was a mere crackling of twigs such as happened all day, even while the people of the woods walked in fur and feather. " I heard nothing," he answered indifferently. " Did you think you did ? What were you going to say to me ? " " Nothing, only good-bye for the present," she said. " I can see the Folly towers from here. And I am nearly home too. And see, here come the dogs ! " The ragged rout that always scented her coming were scampering down the long avenue, barking with delight as they came. " I can leave you, then," he said reluctantly. " You are safe with the dogs." " And the woods," she reminded him. " I shall come to no harm in the woods. They would not permit it." " God forbid I " he said reverently. He stood to watch her when she had left him till she was out of sight. But after the last gleam of her frock had vanished, and he took the way across the bracken to the dividing fence between the Folly and Corofin, THE BETTER MAN 297 someone came from a cover of trees, and watched him with a malignant gaze as he strode across the glades dappled with sun and shadow, leaping the obstacles that came in his path with a boyish pleasure in the exertion for its own sake. The newcomer was Bulger, Sir Delvin's man of business. CHAPTER XXVIII. THE BETTER MAN IT was a month or more since Algernon Fairfax's death, and the gloom that had fallen upon his circle had not yet lifted. It had affected them in different ways. Mr. St. Leger had taken a journey to comfort the widow whose only son the dead boy was, and had found her sitting bolt upright in her chair, worn with grief indeed, but with a proud light in her eyes. " When I gave him to his duty," she said, " I knew he would do it in the very eye of God. He died giving help and comfort to the stricken. I have borne a saint. Comfort the women who have borne only sinful men ! " Yet, despite this somewhat fierce attitude of hers, she had allowed herself to be comforted, hearing how much he had been loved and how sorely grieved for. It was a grief that had no bitterness for anybody but poor Trix. Trix shut herself away from her lover and everybody, not caring what anyone thought, only giving herself up to a somewhat mysterious remorse. 298 A GIRL OF GALWAY Captain French was still at the rectory, as the prospective son-in-law. Bertha found him wandering about helplessly, with an extinguished cigarette between his teeth, one day she had ridden over to solace her own sadness by the society of the young St. Legers, who welcomed so sportsmanlike a visitor with eagerness in those troubled days. 11 You want the boys ? " said Captain French, lifting his hat. " They are not here. They are gone down to the river with Rory, rat-hunting. They asked me to go, but I knew it was only by way of politeness, so I didn't inflict myself on the poor little beggars." Bertha had rather taken the captain's good qualities for granted hitherto. Now she noticed with quick com- miseration the trouble in his eyes. And were those few silver hairs on his temples there a month ago, or was it that they had come of late ? " Do you know," she said, with sudden sweetness, " I think if I could get someone to take my pony I should ask leave to inflict myself on you for a little while. There doesn't seem to be anybody about. I told Amy I would come to lunch ; but it's an hour to lunch-time yet, and I came so early hoping I should find someone as idle as myself to keep me company." " By Jove ! " said Captain French, " it's very kind of you to want to talk to me, Miss Grace." A simple pleasure had come into his face, redeeming its heaviness ; and looking at him in this new light, Bertha fancied she knew why Trix St. Leger should have THE BETTEK MAN 299 fallen in love with him, and was remorseful for the some- what intolerant speeches she had made regarding it. " Let me take your pony," he said. " I'll be back in a brace of shakes." While she waited, Bertha walked about on the gravel sweep with her riding-habit over her arm, keeping off as well as she could the too-exuberant friendliness of the rectory dogs. The house door stood open, and every summer wind might enter as it would. But no one appeared. Amy, no doubt, was busy with housekeeping cares. The children were apparently all away on that ratting- expedition, for the little girls, after their quieter fashion, were quite as great torn-boys as their brothers. Of Paula there was no sign. She was doubtless engaged on the chiffons, the making of which was the only industry about which Paula was eager. As for Trix, Trix was in hiding these days, and was only to be seen at meals, where she made very poor company. Once Bertha walked round the corner of the house by the border of Shirley poppies, and retired hastily on catching a glimpse of the rector's grey head bent over his writing-table. He was the most punctilious of men, and would never have thought of leaving a guest to be welcomed by the dogs, especially a guest so warmly appreciated as Bertha. And his magnum opus, now in its seventh volume, must not suffer by his having to perform social duties to young women who came before their appointed time. 300 A GIRL OF GALWAY Captain French presently rejoined her with alacrity, and walked by her side down the shady walk which ran round the rectory lawns, and in May was blue with wild hyacinths. A sudden sympathy for him made her rash. " You are not looking very well, Captain French," she said. " I ? Oh, I'm as fit as a fiddle. I always am. No one ever was anxious about me except my old mother. I was always as strong as a horse, from the time I was so high." He sent her a grateful glance as he indicated with his hand a space about a foot from the ground ; and Bertha, meeting and interpreting the glance, noticed with a pang that his eyes were bloodshot, as though he had not slept well of late. " You don't look anything like so festive as a fiddle now," she said, making haste to add, lest she should seem impertinent : " Of course we have all been rather gloomy of late." " It's awfully kind of you to notice it, Miss Grace/' he said. " The fact is, I am rather down on my luck just now. I'm thinking of going away." " Going away ! " " Yes. I don't know why I bother you, except that you are so awfully kind." He turned away his head, and a dark, unhappy colour came in his cheek. " The fact is, I don't think Trix wants any more of me." " Ah 1 " said Bertha, " don't go. Don't do anything THE BETTER MAN 301 rash. It would be cruel to her not to be patient with her just now." " I could be patient with her for a lifetime," he said humbly ; " but I feel like a cur, forcing myself on a girl who can't bear me. I'm sure she hates to know I am lounging about the place like this, hoping against hope that she may grow sorry for me and come out to me. I only make everybody uncomfortable. Everyone sees it and is sorry for me, even those children even the dogs, I think." He broke off with a half-ashamed laugh, and dug his heel viciously in the path, uprooting a small stone as though it had oifended him. " The rector " began Bertha. " Mr. St. Leger knows nothing," he said hastily. " He is the only one who doesn't. He is my difficulty about going away. He might take my part against Trix, poor girl. I couldn't bear that." " He probably would, and he would be right," said Bertha slowly. " If Trix made him unhappy while he lived and that had to be, doubtless it is cruel and selfish of her to make you unhappy now that he is gone." " Oh, Miss Grace I " began the lover in generous disclaimer. " Especially seeing that she cares for you," Bertha went on, disregarding the interruption. " I have no patience with her ! " He looked up eagerly at her. Then his face clouded again. 302 A GIKL OF GALWAY "I'm a dnll fellow, Miss Grace," he said, "but I think she detests me. You aren't here every day. It's what makes me feel a sneak to be still hanging after her. Girls don't behave like that to men they care for." " Girls do very queer things. She is making herself miserable over him. In a way, I think better of Trix for it. But it would be a pity if she threw away her happiness because of her repentance. She cared for you five weeks ago. Amy and I were agreed that she cared as we never had believed Trix could care." " You wronged Trix," began Captain French, with a heat which Bertha found it easy to forgive. " Never mind," she said, " I right her now. But do you suppose that her feeling of five weeks ago can have been destroyed ? Why ? " Again he turned the duskiest red. " I didn't speak without chapter and verse, Miss Grace," he said. " As a matter of fact, Trix has told me she can't forgive me. It seems that I was ass enough to make some jokes about poor Fairfax's appearance at cricket and tennis in his parson's coat, and that she laughed, or pretended to, to please me. She can't forgive herself or me now. Of course I couldn't have known, and I was a bit jealous. Still, I deserved a kicking, of course." "It is making a mountain out of a molehill," said Bertha, though she had winced at the thought of those jokes. " He would have laughed himself." " Oh, I know, poor chap, he would. Still, it was THE BETTEK MAN 303 low, especially when I was cutting him out and he was miserable about it." " You have been punished enough." "Trix needn't have taken it in her hands. He punished me himself made me feel more sickeningly ashamed of myself than I have ever felt in my life." " I know. He left you his breechloader." "It wasn't only that, Miss Grace. Though why he should have taken notice of me when he hardly knew me, and I had injured him " u It was the only valuable thing he possessed." " You don't know the whole of it, Miss Grace. He sent me a message by Clifford that the better man had won, and he prayed Trix and I might be very happy. It has made me feel awful that he should have called me the better man ! " " Dear fellow ! We ought all be the better for having known him. Thank you for telling me this, Captain French. Does Trix know ? " " She gives me no opportunity of telling her anything." " I think she ought to know. It might make a difference." " I won't trouble her any more. It has done me good to tell you these things. I shall take myself off to-night. There is not so much of my leave unspent." A quick spasm crossed his face. " I thought we might have hastened the marriage, and had a few weeks before I need rejoin. They'll be glad to see me again. I'll volunteer for active service. They need men." 304 A GIRL OF GALWAY " Let me tell Trix, Captain French ? " " Whatever you like, Miss Grace ; it will make no difference." " It will save her from having your departure sprung upon her." " She won't give me a chance to tell her myself." "Then I shall tell her. There is yet forty minutes to lunch-time. I will come back and tell you how she took it." She left him standing in the midst of the path, absently striking safety-matches against a tree-trunk in a vain effort to light a cigarette. She reached the house and went upstairs to Trix's little room without meeting anybody on the way. Her knock at the door was answered by a listless " Come in " ; and, entering, Bertha foand Trix sitting with a half-trimmed hat on her lap, which apparently had lain there for long untouched. " I have been entertaining Captain French in your absence, Trix," she said. " Yet you don't seem so busy but that you could entertain him yourself." Trix's lips moved dumbly, and she took up the hat and began to set a ribbon in loops. " You are not very kind to him, Trix." Trix muttered something which Bertha understood to be that she, Bertha, knew nothing about it, and had better let things alone. But Bertha was not that kind. "You'd better go out to him," she said, taking the hat from Trix's fingers. " Oh, Bertha ! " THE BETTER MAN 305 Trix's eyes began to fill with tears. " You needn't tell me about it. I know. And you are making a deal too much of it. Do you think that dear fellow would have wished to leave all this coil of unhappiness behind him, for his sake ? " " Did he did Jack tell you ? " asked Trix ; and her cheeks began to burn, ashamed. " That you were both stupid enough to laugh at him, stupid and vulgar ; it was that, Trix. Yes, he told me. You are making too much of it. Do you remember that he used to laugh at himself and at the boys' jokes about him ? " " It was ill-natured, what Jack said, I mean ; and I wasn't amused, I was hurt. But I was so fond of Jack that I hadn't the courage to show I disliked it." " Captain French thought he was his rival. Men and women will say things foreign to their real nature in such circumstances. Do you know, I think Mr. Fairfax must have seen that Captain French is the good fellow he is ? I have only just found it out for myself ; but he would go straight to the truth. He sent him a message before his illness was too bad, that the better man had won, and that he prayed for your happiness." " Ah," cried Trix, " why should he have cared for me ? I was never worthy of it." Bertha looked closely at Trix, and seemed to see a change in the face that, for all its prettiness, had had something sullen in it. " You weren't," she said bluntly ; " I always thought (M835) U 306 A GIRL OF GALWAT yon weren't. But I daresay he saw yonr possibilities, for I believe you will become worthy. Now go to that poor fellow; he cares for you, too. You have made him suffer enough." " I don't want to go," said Trix a little fretfully. " I don't feel I can forgive Jack yet." " You'd better make up your mind about it, for he talks of going to-night 1 " " Going ! To-night ! " Trix had sprung to her feet, unheeding the ribbons and buckles and feathers and flowers which she had gathered into her lap. " Yes, going. He will give up the rest of his leave and volunteer for foreign service. As he says, they want men." " Jack ! He would never leave me like that ! " " He is going this evening, Trix." Trix's delicate colour had deserted her. As she stood with her lips parted, her hand resting on the arm of the chair from which she had risen, Bertha had a momentary alarm about her. " Keep him, Trix," she said hastily. " There is still time. He is in the Dark Walk, near the dial. Go to him and forget everything, except that you would be miserable without him." Trix began to tremble, and Bertha did not know but that a fit of hysterics might be pending. She was ignorant about such things as hysterics, having a healthy control of her own nerves. " Come," she said, and put an arm about the half- SHE HAS COME TO BE FORGIVEN" THE EEAL BULGEB 307 unwilling girl. " He is a thousand times too good for you ! Don't be a fool, Trix ! " Trix went with her, Bertha's unsentimental tone being the best she could have adopted. At the sound of their footsteps, stifldd by the moss and lichens of the overhung path until they were close upon him, Captain French turned. Trix had had time to see his dejected attitude, and Bertha read rightly the meaning of her hand's convulsive clasp. " She has come to be forgiven," she said, pushing Trix towards the delighted and bewildered young man. " Ah no," he said, taking her hands in his, " but to forgive." Half an hour after the luncheon-bell had rung they made their appearance at the table looking very shy and happy. Even Mr. St. Leger, most unobservant of men, noticed that there was something in the air. "French looks," he said to Bertha during the afternoon, " as if I might expect him to talk to me about his en- gagement instead of having got it all over weeks ago." " I think," said Bertha, " he'll be talking to you about his marriage." CHAPTER XXIX. THE KEAL BULGEK summer had been phenomenally dry. Even the JL water-springs of that wet world had not availed to keep the earth cool, and the little pastures crackled 308 A GIRL OF GALWAY under the foot like stnbble. The woods bleached in the gun, and the corn was white before the last day of July. The old people shook their heads over it and prophesied terrible rains in the autumn. The calamity of wet seasons was so familiar as to have lost its terror. The unusual drought, which was propitious to the little harvests, alarmed them more. They felt some great calamity must follow in its train. For once even Ben Sheelin felt the prosperity. The crops were saved, the hay gathered, the corn stacked under a cloudless sky, the potatoes in the farrows were white and sound. If only the calamity did not rush on the heels of the good-fortune, Ben Sheelin would rejoice all the winter to come for once without the shadow of famine. Even the hillside pessimist Barney McGuirk had no worse to say than that there was such plenty goin' wid everybody there'd be no price for the things at all, at all, so there wouldn't, which showed how Ben Sheelin was looking up, since as a rule it did not raise enough to keep the life in the little community, without any question of taking things to the market. There was a breathing-space between the unusually early harvest and the potato-digging. Ben Sheelin, with a hopefulness no one would have expected of it who knew it in its normal state, began to whitewash its cabins and talk of a general thatching next spring. The oldest inhabitant could not remember a year when the approaching quarter-day had cast so slight a shadow. THE HEAL BULGEE 309 Bertha came and went among the people familiarly now. She was delighted with the effect upon them of a little prosperity. They no longer were the hunted, dejected creatures she had known of old. There was talk even of starting again the, weavers' looms on the hillside to replace those which had been seized for Sir Delvin's rent. Government, for once, had done the right thing, and had established a fund which lent money to help in just such cases as theirs ; and Father Malony and Mr. St. Leger, who ran together in so many excellent enterprises, were applying for the grant which would restore Ben Sheelin its old buttress against the wet seasons. The summer had done well for Mary Walsh, and had justified her in not leaving her cabin on the spur of the hill. Indeed, the place in itself was excellent for weak chests and lungs, although the bog spread at its feet. But the spur was high over exhalations of bog and marshland, in a clear, if somewhat piercing, air, and with the sea-wind in its teeth. Most summers the rain smoked about it all day, and the peak above it was incessantly wreathed round with cloud. But this annus mirabilis all was changed, and the people discussed the luxury of dry air as though the reeking damp were something the absence of which made for loneliness. As the days turned round to autumn there was no sign of the deluge. Bertha thought she might leave her proteges where they were for the winter, with the roof fortified and the floor mended, with glass instead of 310 A GIEL OF GAL WAY paper in the little windows. With blankets on the bed and plenty of fuel and good food, the cure of Mary Walsh might be trusted to accomplish itself without removing her from the four little walls she loved. Other eyes, however, had seen and marked the new prosperity which had come upon the people at the Ben. Arriving one day, leading her pony, in the midst of the straggling street of cabins, something struck Bertha with a sudden chill. The dark doorways which had so often framed for her a smiling woman with a baby in her arms were now closed. She had an impression that eyes were watching her behind the smoke-dried geraniums in the little windows. But not a soul was abroad ; not even a friendly dog came to give her a welcome. The only thing of life was an inquisitive pig that came and lifted his sharp nose inquiringly in the air, and scanned her with his little curious eyes, while his tail twinkled its ridiculous curl as hard as ever it could go. Wondering, she lifted the latch of Mary Walsh's door. She was accustomed to enter unbidden, for the invalid was sometimes asleep, and Johnny exploring the wide world about, being as eager "all for to see, and to admire," as any grown-up world citizen could be. Mary was sitting in her comfortable chair of plaited straw doing nothing an unusual thing, for her fingers, when she was not patching or mending for Johnny, or for some of the kind neighbours, knitted incessantly. Bertha had often wondered, indeed, where those yards and yards of knitting could go to, not knowing that THE REAL BULGER 311 so Mary repaid the jobs done for her on her bit of land by the men about, who would have helped her just the same without any such recompense. " Why, what is the matter, Mary ? " asked Bertha, coming in with a vague feeling of alarm. " What has happened ? " " They said you'd come nigh us no more, but I said you would," answered Mary, lifting tear-stained eyes to Bertha's. " Sure, you're not blamable for the misfortune, honey ? " " What misfortune ? " " There, I knew it ! She knows no more about it than the child unborn." " Tell me, Mary," said Bertha patiently, dreading she knew not what. "Everyone said it when the harvest was so good. Sure, 'twas unnatural to be so lucky. The rents is riz upon us, an' if we won't pay we must go. An' what's more, we're to pay for the turf that was free ever an' always in the memory of man. Sure, ten good saysons couldn't stand it." " When did you hear this ? " asked Bertha, trembling like a leaf. " The notices came yesterday. Sure, ill news travels fast. Many's the letter from America wid the bit o' money inside it I knew to be waiting a week at the post-office. We hadn't to wait to know our bad luck this time ; an' we thinkin' poor fools ! that we wor rowlin' in good luck all the time." 312 A GIRL OF GALWAY " And if you refuse to pay the added rent ? " " We'll go. There's the hanging gale over us. Most of us was ready for quarter-day for once in our lives. Sure, we'd forgotten the hanging gale. Och ! where'll we go to at all ? 'Tis the workhouse it'll be for most of us." " It won't be that," said Bertha. " Sure, where else ? Yez all do your best for us, but, sure, Quality in these parts has nothin' much to spare. It takes them all they can do to look after their own." " Listen, Mary, I shall go to my grandfather. I can't believe he knows of this. His man of business has taken too much upon himself. It would be iniquitous. But once he knows, things will be set right." " Maybe so, maybe so," said Mary, unconvinced and hopeless. " Anyhow, dearie, sure no one'll be blamin' you. 'Tis keeping out o' your way they are, not from any blackness agin you, but because they think you'll be takin' it to heart." " I know I know. They are ashamed for me," said Bertha. " Now I must go. I must see what it all means. Be sure of one thing : tell them it will be all right. I will see my grandfather, and he will undo all this." She turned from Mary's unbelieving eyes, and went out with a bowed head into the little empty street of cabins. It was as dead as when she had left it, and her pony turned a mildly inquiring eye upon her, for he was accustomed to much officious petting when he visited the Ben, and much feeding with handfuls of grass, which he didn't need, but was too polite to refuse. THE EEAL BULGEE 313 She had to lead him down the mountain road ; but once out on the bog causeway she let him carry her, trusting his abnormal mountain sure-footedness. She felt stifling until she knew that her friends at the Ben were safe and the Graces washed clean of the stain of this new oppression. In the distance she could see the golden woods massed on the horizon. How beautiful they were ! and yet, and yet, it would be better the woods should go and the people stay, if there had to be a choice between them. Once on the road she gave her pony his head, and he clattered along merrily over the fine roads that were made in the famine-times, and never had had enough traffic since to injure their surface. He soon brought her to the entrance-gates of Corofin, and within the woods. As ever, they seemed to lean towards her to welcome her, stirring softly in the west wind, and full of soft, mysterious voices. Half-way up the great avenue a man stood, a black patch in the midst of the gold. She would have passed him, but a sudden impulse prevented her, and, instead, she drew rein and confronted him. It was Bulger. The obsequiousness she had noted on her first coming had all gone. His expression now was insolent, and as he lifted his hat she was struck for the first time by a certain power in the face which, perhaps, intentional expressionlessness had disguised from her hitherto. This was Bulger with the mask off. Something of wonder, almost of respect, came vaguely into Bertha's 314 A GIRL OF GALWAY anger and indignation. For the first time she realised the man who in face of so many odds had educated himself, who had sufficient strength of character to impress his will upon her stern old grandfather, who in any but the most conservative country of Christendom the one that never forgets the accident of humble or nameless origin might have found a better chance for his abilities. " Mr. Bulger," she said haughtily, ft I have just returned from Ben Sheelin. I have learnt there that you have fulfilled your threat of last autumn, and that the rents are to be raised ; also that their turbary rights are to be interfered with." He shrugged his shoulders and answered her with an assumed softness. " The interests of my employer, Miss Grace " " Cannot demand this oppression," she interrupted him sharply. " You know the Ben Sheelin people pay all they can afford. And they have always had the turf." " Young ladies are not supposed to understand about business," he said with smooth insolence. " Have you my grandfather's sanction for what you are doing ? " she asked imperiously. " Do you suppose I would take so much upon myself? " he answered. " I don't believe you ! " she said bluntly. To her amazement he winced as though she had struck him with her whip. She had given him credit for no such sensitiveness. THE EEAL BULGEB 315 " I am of the class which lies by nature," he said, looking at her with a dull glare of resentment in his eyes. She had an absurd impulse to apologise to him, which passed. " I am going to my grandfather," she said. " You may go. He will not listen to you." " Ah ! there you are wrong." She smiled with a sweetness of security. Hopeless as it had seemed a year ago, her grandfather's heart had softened towards her. She and Marcella Lloyd between them were drawing him back to the good ; they were pushing out this interloper and the evil he had brought with him. " He won't listen to you," he repeated, and seemed as if he would have said more on the point. Then he curbed himself, and went on in a civil voice : "You will not believe that I am acting under my employer's orders. You will know better. If I had my will all these useless trees should go. He is offered great sums for the mining rights here. But he has the superstitions of the Graces. He prefers tinkering at the thing himself, so he wrings pennies from peasants. I don't love them I hate the whole breed indeed ; but as for dragging the wretched coppers from them, I am made for bigger things than that. I leave it to Sir Delvin Grace." As he finished he had forgotten to be smooth, and his voice rose in anger. 316 A GIRL OF GAL WAY " I shall believe this when I hear it from his own lips," Bertha said blankly. " He will not listen to you," the man repeated. Somehow the bare asseveration smote her with dismay. Was it possible that she had been deceiving herself into believing that her grandfather's heart, long thawing towards her, had begun to delight in her ? Why, only last night she had thought to herself that the next step would be to win him a little way towards his old love for her father. Then, that done, he would forgive her mother. The old estrangement would be over. His age would decline in an atmosphere of love and peace. Bulger watched the expressions of her transparent face with a curious satisfaction. " Ah, Miss Grace," he said, " you began by hating me. You've hated me all the time you were here. You were less merciful to me than you would be to the insect in your path. Do you think that any man sees the disgust in a woman's eyes that was in yours for me, and forgives it ? " Bertha stared at him with a face that became a little pale as he proceeded. Curiously enough, I could have been loyal," he went on, " and loyal to you. I flogged the dogs that day. It was my excess of zeal. I belong to a race which does not consider the domestic animals very much, and I swept them from your path as I was prepared to sweep anything else that hindered or vexed you. I shouldn't have asked very much from THE REAL BULGER 317 you, not as much as the one poor creatnre who loves me asks from me bare tolerance, no more than that. And I would have served you faithfully. Now I only want to repay you for the expression your eyes have always held when they looked on me." Bertha said nothing. Her amazement robbed her of words, almost of thoughts. She could only look at him helplessly. So this was the real Bulger. Ah ! they had been right those older, wiser ones, who had warned her young intolerance that evil was seldom unmixed in any man. " "What do I care now," he went on, gaining fuel to his fire, " if I win a few additional curses for the Graces ? Do you know what I hate you for now ? Because when first I saw you I had a glimpse of what you might have done with me if you would, if you had not looked at me like a spider spinning webs of evil because he must. Don't misunderstand me. I'd never have expected you to look at me as you look at young Roper of the Folly. I've seen you many a time when I've stepped aside, because I've an account to square with him too, and bided my time. But if you'd looked at me as a man, as a fellow-creature, I had it in me to rise up to your view of me. Now " He choked with anger, and his words refused to come for an instant. " Now," he went on, " I delight in checking, in frustrating you, in making you unhappy. At least I have so much in my hands." 318 A GIRL OF GALWAT " Ah, forgive me," said Bertha. " I didn't know. I was only a child." Without another word he tnrned on his heel and left her to the perturbation of her thoughts. In the trouble he had caused her she had almost forgotten the Ben Sheelin people ; and what he had said about Hugh Roper, though it had made her cheek flush, caused her no anger such as she would have felt at another time. The revelation of the real Bulger had made her feel, for the time at least, hopelessly in the wrong. CHAPTER XXX. TURNED OUT THAT evening Bertha did nothing. The first thing she heard when she reached home was that Sir Delvin had given a message for her to Mary Butler that he would not see her that night. She could see him after breakfast the next morning. " I don't know what's come to him at all," the old woman said. " He's terrible black an' bitther. I suppose the gout, the weary on it, is annoyin' him ; for what did he do but up an' flung an owld bootjack at Malachy whin he wint in with the tray. Malachy says he wouldn't take it from a Grace, nor from the King of Ireland, so he's locked himself in the pantry, an' is polishin' away at the owld silver fit to put as many holes in it as there's in a cullender. Sure, men are TUENBD OUT 319 terrible troublesome in their way, gentle an' simple. I'm glad I had the strin'th to say No to every man that axed me since himself was took." At another time Bertha had found something to smile at in this narration, but now she heard it with a sinking heart. Was it possible that at this moment of great need she was going to discover that the ground so painfully gained had slipped from beneath her feet, that the word she had given the poor people over there on the Ben must be broken ? She prayed before she slept. Nevertheless, her sleep was broken, and she awoke tired and unrefreshed. She made a poor breakfast, to Mary's great distress ; and it was a Bertha with the brightness dimmed who knocked with unaccustomed timidity at her grandfather's door. A harsh voice bade her enter. As she did so she saw that Sir Delvin had partly turned in his chair, and was regarding her with a look of the utmost dislike and anger. Poor Bertha took a step or two towards him with her heart fluttering. " Grandpapa," she began. " Don't call me by that name ! I am done with you done with you. I wash my hands of you. I sent for you to tell you that the sooner you leave my house the better the sooner the better. There is no room for you and me under the same roof." Bertha turned red and pale. "You are very cruel," she said, her spirit coming 320 A GIEL OF GALWAY to her aid. " What have I done that you should turn me out of this house, the Graces' house I, your only son's only child ? " " Don't dare to defy me ! " he said, stamping his foot at her. Then he uttered a low groan, and clutched at the arms of his chair. He had forgotten the gout in his fury. The pain made him, if anything, angrier. " Don't dare to defy me ! " he went on. " You may come into this house when I am dead : I am master here living. Go to that woman, Marcella Lloyd, whom I believed in, and who has deceived me ! Go to your friends, the Ropers ! Go anywhere out of my sight ! But don't dare name your father to me ! " " You have not told me what I have done yet," said Bertha, pale but firm. "You are not going to drive me out in disgrace like this without telling me the cause. I have done nothing nothing." " You have chosen as lover the son of my worst enemy. I suppose you thought you could cajole me into blessing your union with Archibald Roper's son ? I would have thought my own blood in your veins would have kept you from such a choice. I did not even think of forbidding you or of telling Marcella Lloyd there must be no friendship between you and those people. Seeing how I hate them, it is monstrous, unnatural ! " " It is your hatred that is so," said Bertha in a low voice. " And it is untrue that Mr. Roper is my lover. I have no lover, grandpapa." "You tell me that? You have been walking with TDKNED OUT 321 him, riding with him, in my woods. Why, it began a week or two after you came ! If there had been any truth in the story of the woods, one of the trees "would have fallen upon him and killed him fallen upon him and killed him." " He had saved my life from the quicksand." " Ah, he had done that, had he ? What brought you to the quicksand ? I think I had rather you had died there than be saved by a Roper." Bertha shuddered. " My father and mother would not agree with you," she said quietly. " Ah, I see. It was to be a very pretty arrangement a very pretty arrangement. He saves your life, and you marry him. Yon count without me you count without me. I should come back from the dead if a Roper were to enter the doors of Corofin. Go ! You are all the same baggages, baggages, deceitful hussies even Marcella Lloyd, in whom I trusted ! " His voice broke a little, and Bertha looked at him in sudden pity. " Aunt Marcella is honour itself," she said. " Though Mr. Roper is her godson, she has banished him from the house while I have been there. It was keeping the letter as well as the spirit of her faith to you, grandpapa. It was not her fault, but the fault of circumstances that I met him elsewhere. If you had thought of it, we could hardly have failed to meet." "Aye, I was blind I was blind. Yet if I had (M885) X 322 A GIRL OF GALWAT thought of it I would have been fool enough to believe that among all the men of this world you would not have singled out Archibald Roper for your friend, his son for your lover." " I have told you, grandpapa, he is not my lover." The old man stared hard at her. Then his black expression changed to one of the utmost eagerness. " Are you telling me the truth ? " he asked fiercely. " Absolutely the truth." " If I could believe you ! I was coming to believe in you coming to believe in you, before I heard this." " I have never told a lie," said Bertha simply. His face cleared wonderfully. " Ah, if it was accidental, a fault of your youth and inexperience, I could forgive it perhaps perhaps, in time, forget it. You will see these Ropers no more, or if you meet them you will pass them by, as one of my blood should eh, child ? " " He saved my life," said Bertha faintly. " Anyone would have done it, a peasant, anyone who chanced to come that way. You are making too much of it. There will be no more friendship with the Ropers ? I will believe you, child, and reinstate you where you were in my thoughts." His face worked. The entreaty in it was pitiful. He stretched out trembling old hands to her. For an instant Bertha wavered. Then she looked away. " Can't you give it up," she said in a low voice " the unjust hatred ? Why should you ask me to share it ? " TURNED OUT 323 Sir Delvin's face darkened again. " Ah ! " he said roughly, " you have been fooling me fooling me ; playing upon me because I am an old man and I grow soft. This Roper is your lover, after all, and you will not give him up ? " " He has never spoken to me of love. I have been true to you, grandpapa. If he had spoken I should have bidden him wait, while you were in ignorance of it and so angry. I have prayed that your anger might cease." The old man lifted his clenched hand and brought it down violently on the arm of his chair. " You made me angry once before," he said, " and I was ill. You had better go, or I shall choke. I don't want you under my roof. Marcella Lloyd will take you in till you can return to those who sent you. I was mad mad, to take you from them ! I might have known it was an evil gift an evil gift." He pointed to the door, gasping for breath. His face was dark, and his eyes were starting from the sockets. Without another word Bertha turned and went. Outside she found Mary Butler in the corridor with a bottle in her hands. " He's been upsetting himself; you needn't tell me," she said. " I've got his medicine here. Don't be frightened, honey. I'll come to you as soon as he's better." Bertha went to her own room, the room so bare and forbidding at - her coming, which had taken on the impress of her youth, and was now charming. Her thoughts were in utter confusion. She could 324 A GIRL OF GALWAY hardly realise that she had been turned out of her grandfather's house, that this room which had housed her was hers no longer. Mechanically she began folding things to be laid into her trunks. She must do something till Mary came to listen to her explanations. If she had followed her impulses she would have left everything lying there in dainty, homely confusion, and fled to Aunt Marcella for comfort. But Bertha had learnt to control her impulses. Presently Mrs. Butler came to her. " He's all right now," she said. " An' I've got Malachy out o' the pantry to look after him. He came out like a shot when I called in to him that the master was took bad, an' fell to abusin' me because I didn't call him before. ' I'd rather have himself in his tantrums,' said he, ' than any wan else soft-spoken.' An' that afther the way he'd been gettin' on about packin' his box an' lavin' the silver clane for the new man ! What in glory are you doin', Miss Bertha, darlin' ? " " My grandfather has dismissed me, Mary," said the girl with a pale smile. " I am going to Miss Lloyd. I shall want a few things to take with me. The rest can follow. Perhaps old Magee will fetch them over for me, if Sir Delvin doesn't object." " You goin' ? Out o' Corofin ? Master Everard's daughter ? Sure, 'tis jokin' you are, asthoreen ! " " It is quite true, Mary. My grandfather has bid me begone." TURNED OUT 325 " In wan of his tantrums ? There won't be a sorrier man in the country thin himself in a few hours' time. "Tis a little bit of a disagreement betune yez. But, sure, he never meant that." " He meant it, Mary, and I am going. I only waited to see you. I thought you wouldn't mind packing for me and sending the things after me. Frankly, it is a great trouble, Mary. I don't feel fit to do the packing myself." Her hands were shaking as she fastened the gold buttons of her riding-habit. The old woman noticed it, and came to her aid tenderly. " We'll call it a little visit to Miss Marcella," she said soothingly. " Sure, if it was to be anything else, 'tis askin' Miss Marcella I'd be for a place in the kitchen, though meself an' that girl of hers 'ud be fighting rings round us." "No, no, you must stay with my grandfather, you and Malachy, who are fond of him. He is too old to be left alone. Do you think I would leave him, only that he drives me out ? " A dry sob came in her throat, and she turned away so that the old servant should not witness her emotion. " There, there, child ! don't be frettin' yourself," Mary said. " I'll be back wid you before you can look about you." She went hurriedly from the room, and returned in a few minutes with a bottle of wine on a tray and a platter of cakes. 326 A GIRL OF GALWAY " This is the white seal port," she said. " Malachy wouldn't open it for any wan but the lord-lieutenant or a Grace. He'd left the kays behind him in the pantry, the foolish ould man, whin he ran to the master. Sore, any trampin' body might have been droppin' in an' helpin' themselves ! " Since tramps never penetrated the long way through the woods, Mary's hypothesis was unlikely, and mads Bertha smile faintly. She drank a little of the good wine without protest, and nibbled at a cake. The colour came back to her cheeks. She was able to control the painful trembling of her lips and shaking of her- hands. The ball which had been moving about in her throat disappeared as if by magic. " No, no, you must stay, Mary," she said. " I think Miss Lloyd will take me in at Bawn Eose, and perhaps keep me for a good while." " Is it keep you ? 'Tis glad she'll be to do that same. Doesn't she love you like a mother ? Sure, if everybody had their rights, 'tis maybe your mother she might have been." " I shan't be able to come here, Mary, but you must let me know how things go on with grandpapa." " He'll be sendin' for you. Sure, didn't we see, meself an' Malachy, that 'twas growing to be the apple of his eye you wor ? Yerra, what came betune yez at all, at all ? There, sure, I needn't be askin' ! " Bertha had flushed painfully. " Isn't that sneak and mischief-maker Tim Bulger for ever at his ear ? 'Tisn't likely he was TUBNED OUT 327 goin to see himself out of it widont a struggle. But Sir Delvin'll come round he'll come round, never fear. Isn't it his own flesh an' blood you are ? " Bertha had finished her toilet now, and was ready to go. With a sudden impulse she leant towards Mary Butler and kissed her on the cheek. The old woman blushed brighter than her roses, and the tears came into her eyes. " Ah, then, God bless you, child," she said, " an' be always wid you I Sure, the place'll be dark till you come back to it. There, I'll be trampin' over wid all the news to you. But, sure, you'll be back in it before we'll have time to be missin' you. Don't be botherin' yourself wid any o' them things. Ould Mickey'll skelp over after you wid anythin' you want. You won't be takin' all your things ? You will ? Sure, tis foolishness, for we'll only have to be cartin' them back. Very well very well, child, you must have your way ; though if the place looked as if you wor but gone out of it for a day 'twould be less lonesome-like." An hour later Bertha came in upon Miss Lloyd just sitting down to her solitary lunch. " Bertha ! " she said. " How glad I am 1 I was just feeling that I could not eat alone." " Can you take us in, Aunt Marcella the pony and me, for a time ? We have been turned out of Corofin. At least, I have ; and the pony would never be satisfied to stay without me." Bertha's lips were smiling, but big tears began to gather in her eyes. 328 A GIRL OF GALWAY " Turned out of Corofin ! You are jesting, Bertha ? Ah, my poor child ! " She held out her arms to Bertha, who came to her as she might to her mother for comfort, and was enfolded within that tender embrace. CHAPTER XXXI. THE EAETHLY PAEADISE "OERTHA had been three days an inmate of Bawn -U Rose, and felt as though she had been there for ever, as though the isolation of her two years at Corofin were something of a dream. Here she was in the tenderest atmosphere of love and thoughtfulness for her comfort. Yet she was lonely sometimes for that grey old man of her kindred, and for the woods of Corofin the woods that had sighed sad farewells to her the day she rode away through them with a drooping head. She had talked over with Miss Lloyd what course she would take. Miss Lloyd had driven to see Sir Delvin the day after she had received his grand- daughter, and had come back sad. For the first time he had refused her admittance to his presence. " So, for the present," she said to Bertha, with tears in her kind eyes, " you are to be my child." " How am I to tell them," said Bertha, " my father and mother, I mean ? I am turned out in disgrace. What an end to my dreams of bringing them together ! How badly I have kept fayth, after all ! " THE EAETHLY PARADISE 329 " No one would blame yon, Bertha, least of all those who love you as they do." " I know," said the girl in a low voice ; " but I am afraid about papa when he knows. Will he ever forgive his father? It was mama's scheme that I should come home to him. I ought to have gone out with her. They have a right to their one child. Now, that it should end like this 1 " Miss Lloyd looked at her thoughtfully. a I have been thinking. Let it be for the present that you are on a visit with me, so they will be spared the pain and the anger. Your grandfather may, come to his senses soon ; if not we shall see how things are." Bertha's face lifted out of its gloom. " Aunt Marcella, if you could know how I have dreaded telling them ! Then I need not think about it for a time, at least ? But shall I not be a burden ? " " To me or to Mary Anne ? " Miss Lloyd laughed quite light-heartedly. " I have always wanted you to myself, Bertha, though I knew I couldn't have you. And Mary Anne you are next to Mouse in Mary Anne's affections." " I know because she thinks I make the difference to you. At first she was not quite friendly. Now she knows that I love you, and that for some inexplicable, lovely reason of your own, you love me, Aunt Marcella." " Is that so strange, Bertha ? " " I think it is very strange. I am so undeserving." Miss Lloyd laughed again, the fresh laughter that sounded so young and joyous. 330 A GIEL OF GAL WAY " Then, shall I say, little Bertha that love takes no count of deserving ? Will that satisfy you ? " " It does satisfy me," said Bertha in an intense, low voice. Then she left the subject. " But Pooka, Aunt Marcella ? What are we to do about Pooka ? " " Isn't he very comfortable in his stall beside Mouse, and sharing Mouse's paddock ? " " Yes, but what will Mouse say ? " " Mary Anne called me out this morning to see the two of them together. Pooka had his head laid affectionately across Mouse's shoulder, and Mouse seemed to like it." " Ah, a visitor is all very well ; but won't Mouse quarrel when he finds that Pooka has come to stay indefinitely ? " " He will be glad of his stable-companion. Even Mary Anne agrees that a little animal company will be good for Mouse. He grows too human 'arch,' Mary Anne puts it. You mustn't expect, of course, that Pooka will have a place by the kitchen fire." " He would never rise to it. He hasn't the adaptability of Mouse. What a tale of broken dishes there would be ! " Unexpectedly, while Bertha sat alone in an arbour of the garden darning an exquisite bit of table damask, a shadow was thrown upon her, and, looking up, she saw Hugh Roper between her and the sun. His face brightened and flushed. " I looked for Marcella," he said ; " I had no thought THE EARTHLY PAEADISE 331 to find yon. You have not been to the rectory for days, and Miss St. Leger had no idea that you were here." "She doesn't know yet," answered Bertha, making room for him almost unconsciously. He sat down and looked at her face, bent over the fine work. " I came to tell Marcella," he said, " that I had come to a decision. Never mind about what. How is it I find you here ? You said nothing of it the other day, and here you are darning Marcella's tablecloths like a daughter of the house ! " "I am a daughter of the house," she answered. She had not had time to think whether or not she intended to let himTmow the real state of affairs. " For the present," she added. He put his hand on the tablecloth. " Let it be for the present," he said. " You will wear out your eyes. Tell me, what do you mean by your being a daughter of the house of this house ? " Bertha's colour deepened, and the tears gathered in her eyes. There was no gainsaying the young man's imperious manner. " I have quarrelled with my grandfather," she answered, almost in a whisper, " or, at least, he has quarrelled with me and sent me away. Aunt Marcella is housing me for the present." " He has sent you away ! Why, Bertha ? " She looked at him half timidly. A thunder-cloud sat on his young forehead. His anger became him well. 332 A GIRL OF GALWAY " Aren't you going to tell me ? " he said. He put Ms hand on her hand, which yet held the needle. " Tell me, Bertha," he repeated. " Someone had made mischief," she answered. Her head had drooped so much that under her garden- hat he could only see the outline of a cheek, but that was redder than the rose. He took the needle from her hand, and put it in a deliberate way into the damask, which he laid aside. Then he took possession of her hand, and held it fast in his. " Never mind," he said. " Perhaps you will feel better able to tell me when I have told you about my decision. After all, you have a better right to hear it first than Marcella even. And this has cancelled the loyalty I owe her. I had decided to tell you that I love you, Bertha." He waited an instant. Her face was still averted, but the tide of colour, ebbing, flowing, was enough for him. Standing up in front of her, he lifted her face till he could look into her eyes. There was enough there to satisfy any lover. " Ah ! " he said, " you keep nothing back, Bertha ! Those honest eyes of yours tell me everything. I have not spoken too soon." In her perfect happiness Bertha forgot the trouble that must be looked at presently. In this hour of her soul's flowering, love was enough. Presently he asked her : THE EAKTHLY PAKADISE 333 " Your grandfather's anger was about me, sweetheart ?" " It was about you. He had heard we were friends." " I thought as much. As though anything could prevent it ! It was written in the books before ever we met. Poor old man ! I suppose he had grown fond of you ; and it is long since he has had anything young about him or has loved any creature except, indeed, Marcella, whom all the world loves." " He has banished her also." " I am sorry for that. She has been his constant friend." " Because he thought we met here. I told him she was loyal." " Fantastically loyal. As though anything could stand between us, whom God has sent to each other ! " " I think he would have done her justice, but I would not promise to give you up as a friend ; nor, though I told him you were not my lover, would I let him believe that you never would be." " My brave Bertha ! But I was always your lover. The day God sent me to help you from the quicksand I knew as soon as I looked at your face that you were the wife Heaven destined for me. I was your lover before the mountains were made, as they say here." " I must tell my father and mother," said Bertha, " but I do not want them to know about my grand- father's anger yet." " Your father and mother ? What will they say, Bertha ? " 334 A GIEL OF GALWAT " I think they will bless us. My father does not inherit his father's hatreds. And they know you saved my life. Perhaps they will be for a long engagement till they can come home. But it is not as if you were a stranger. My father knows your father, would have loved him, Aunt Marcella says, if he had dared." " Ah, yes ! there is a story about it how my father found him crying in the woods, a child alone at night, having strayed in sleep from his nursery. The woods were using all their arts to console him, but he was stark with terror. My father carried him to the Folly, warmed and comforted him, and himself took him back to Corofin, where the nurse slept heavily and no one had missed him." " I know." Bertha's voice was bitterly ashamed. " And my grandfather sent him word that if he tres- passed again, the dogs would be put on his track." " Ah ! I am sorry you know that old bitterness. Never mind, sweetheart. My father forgives. He knows it was love gone wrong, and that is a kind of madness." " And papa, who was lonely, as an only child is, used to ask to be taken back to the Folly where the pretty lady was and the other little children, till his father's frowns frightened him from it." " Never mind. My father forgives. It was long before I was born, and I doubt if he ever kept up anger. So we shall have to wait ? Could they not come sooner ? " " They might. It would be to forfeit a large slice of papa's pension. He has enough for us, but the money THE EARTHLY PARADISE 335 will be needed at Corofin. Indeed, if he is to do a hundredth part of what is needed there and what he will desire to do, we shall be quite poor folk, though we should be rich if we lived at Bath or Cheltenham." " We are all poor for what we need or desire to do." " I know how your family has become poor. It is a glorious poverty that comes by beneficence." " Yet we shall miss the money, you and I, Bertha, when we are fain to make this poverty-stricken desert blossom like the rose." Bertha sighed, but the sigh had exquisite happiness in it. " We shall do what good we can," she said. " We shall keep up the traditions of your family." " The Graces, too, were beloved by the people. Yes, we shall do what we can. Only to help them, what should I need with riches ? Having you, I have everything." They went into the house to await Miss Lloyd's return, and Mary Anne, who stepped aside in the hall to let them pass, beamed upon them. Perhaps their joy was written in their faces. Anyhow, Mary Anne in default of sharing it with a human being who was likely to be worthy of the confidence, had to go out to the paddock and have a talk with Mouse about it. " If them two blessed young things," she said, " hasn't made up their minds to forget all th' ould bitther wan- sided quarrel of Ropers an' Graces, you may give me credit for no sinse at all, at all, Mousie achora." But Mouse was only thinking of carrots, and kept 336 A GIRL OF GAL WAY nosing her hands and her pocket in a state of much dissatisfaction that they were not forthcoming. " You're a greedy little brute ! " said Mary Anne, presently discovering his preoccupation. " 'Tis time there was another little baste in the place to tache you manners." When Miss Lloyd came in at last, she did not at first see Hugh in the dark, cool drawing-room. " Well, Bertha, my child, how did you get through your morning alone ? I met Amy and Why, Hugh, I didn't see you ! How long have you been here ? " " Since eleven. I thought I would stay to lunch if you would ask me." " Why, of course ; but " She looked from one to the other of the bright, shy faces. " Ah, children," she said, " what folly have you been up to ? I told you not to come, Hugh." " 1 am absolved, Marcella. Sir Delvin's act has set me free and has set you free. He has given up his claim to Bertha. We have found out that it was time the old feud between Ropers and Graces should cease." " The immemorial way, Hugh ? " " The immemorial way, Marcella." " You have certainly taken it out of my hands. Yet I am sorry, in a sense, that it should have happened here." " Where would it have a better right, Aunt Marcella," said Bertha, coming to her, " unless it was in the woods of Corofin ? Bawn Rose is my second home." THE BETRAYAL OF THE WOODS 337 " And you are happy, Bertha ? " Bertha looked at Hugh, a shining glance that more than answered Miss Lloyd's question. " Ah," she said, " we were foolish, we elders, who tried to put our little obstacles in your way. You were not to be turned aside, Hugh, nor you, Bertha." " We were made for each other," said Hugh Roper, as many a happy lover has said before him. " That being so, Aunt Marcella, what could part us but the Will that brought us together ? Now tell us you are glad." " I cannot help being glad, because you are the two dearest creatures on earth to me," said Miss Lloyd. " If only Delvin Grace would come round ! What will your father say, Hugh ? " " He will rejoice that love has taken the place of hatred." CHAPTER XXXII. THE BETEAYAL OF THE WOODS "mHERE'S a dacent-lookin' body waitin' in the J- kitchen to see yon, Miss Bertha," Mary Anne announced a few days later. " She says she's the housekeeper from Corofin Mrs. Butler. She thinks 'tis the quarest sight ever she seen to have Mouse by the kitchen fire. But I was tellin' her, ' ass ' wasn't the name for Mouse that 'twas to the gintry of his soort he belonged. She's askin' a dale o' questions (M835) y 338 A GIRL OF GALWAY about you, like as if no one else in the world could take care of you but herself." " Tell her to come in here," said Miss Lloyd. " You'll like to see her alone, Bertha dear. I daresay she'll have a deal to tell you. I'm going to the garden to do some work." " She won't have what you hope for," said Bertha, answering Miss Lloyd's wistful look. " He'd never come round so soon, and if he should relent he wouldn't send word by Mary Butler. Most likely she's stolen out to pay me this visit." " Ah, I suppose so I suppose so," said Miss Lloyd, the hopeful expression fading from her charming face. " Never mind, dear. He won't harden his heart long against us." Presently Mrs. Butler came in and took up a position on the extreme edge of one of Miss Lloyd's Hepplewhite chairs. She greeted Bertha as though months had passed since they had met, and was very anxious about her treatment at Bawn Rose. " Miss Marcella would do her best ; but in regard to the atin' an' drinkin' and the comfort of your bed, 'twould depind on that woman in the kitchen, an' she's very iinpident, wid herself an' her ass. Made believe she didn't know who I was, an' we attendin' the same chapel these fifty years back. Eyah ! when Mary Anne O'Connor doesn't know Mrs. Butler, 'tis a quare day." " She has taken a great fancy to me, Mary, and is perhaps a little jealous of you. But now tell me, how is my grandfather ? How are things at Corofin ? " THE BETRAYAL OF THE WOODS 339 " He's well enough, Heaven forgive him ! But there's the quarest o' news. That I should live to see the day I Sure, I wouldn't be here only for it ! An' that woman druv it out o' my head completely wid her impidence, herself an' her ass." " The news the news, Mary ! " cried Bertha impatiently. " I'll begin from the beginnin'. The very night you left, Bulger came an' was shut up wid your grandpapa as usual. I was mournful enough after seein' Mick Magee off wid your things. I wonder where you find room at all to put them in this bit of a house ? Not but what it's a nate little place, barrin' a cobweb at the back o' that picture-frame above Miss Marcella's desk there ! I was thinkin' that woman had too much talk to look after her business. She was ever and always the same since we wor two little urchins burning the map of Ireland into our shins as we sat by the turf-fire at Jerry Linehan's school." " Never mind Mary Anne ! What happened that evening ? " said Bertha. " Sure, I was goin' to tell you. I don't know how she got into the story at all, herself an' her ass. Well, thin the bell rang, Miss Bertha, an' sez I to Malachy " Mary was evidently determined to tell her story her own way and get full value out of it, so Bertha, seeing she was interrupting the flow to no purpose, resigned herself to listen till the thing she wanted to hear should reach her amid all the divergences. She felt very far away that day from any disturbance 340 A GIRL OF GALWAY of mind. The day was sultry, and the air was full of the humming of bees in the sweet-peas and pinks which clustered thickly about the window. She was wearing a new ornament in the shape of a ring on which two hearts in diamonds and pearls were entwined. Hugh had brought it to her the day before. It was as wonderful a talisman to the girl as an engagement-ring usually is in like case. She was still a little shy of displaying it ; and as she sat there facing the old woman, she kept her right hand laid across it to conceal it, being as conscious of it the while as though the stones glowing in the darkness were living things under her touch. The gist of Mary's story was this : After the interview between Sir Delvin and Bulger had lasted some time, the bell had rung for the old coachman to take his horse and ride at once with a telegram to the village. " 'Twas the blessin' of Heaven Mick was back," said Mary, " for the masther was fit to kill all before him the same evenin'." So the telegram was sent, and two days later Mary had orders to prepare for guests, who turned out to be a couple of the fur-coated gentlemen who had visited Sir Delvin before, with a third, a stranger, and a fourth, an inferior person, who carried a black bag and was apparently a sort of clerk. The party had stayed for the night, and had been feasted at dinner on some of the white seal port, to Malachy's indignation. And Mary had sent up a fine dinner for the credit of the Graces, though she had had THE BETEAYAL OF THE WOODS 341 an instinctive feeling that the visitors were after no good, and were perceptibly, to her sense and Malachy's, u not the right sort o' Quality at all." Sir Delvin had taken the head of the dinner-table, and, to the intense indignation of the old servants, Mr. Bulger had sat at the foot, and had been treated with much consideration by the strangers, almost as much as they had shown Sir Delvin himself. "An' the long an' the short of it is, Miss Bertha, honey, the woods is sold away from yez ; an' before we can say Jack Robinson the place'll be all rooted up, an' ould chimneys smokin', an' dirty little trains runnin' hether an' tether, an' unnatural blackamoors o' men swarmin' the place like as if a ha'porth of soup was worth two-and-sixpence. An' the masther's as bitther as sut, an' Malachy, the poor man, goin' in dread o' what he'll get flung at him when he takes in the tray. I never thought I'd live to see it. I only laid eyes on him wance sence, an' then he looked so pinched an' small it made my heart ache to see him. 'Tis like as if the life was goin' out o' him as well as the woods. An' them same crathurs o' trees, you'd pity them, so you would, cryin' an' moanin' o' nights as though they knew they wor goin' to be cut off in their strin'th, an' the hand to do it the hand o' one they loved. Father Malony says 'tis all a foolish ould invintion about the woods o' Corofin. But, sure, I'd like his riverence to be here any wan o' these nights to hear how the wind'll get up all of a sudden an' cry like a banshee ; an' thin the 342 A GIRL OF GALWAY trees'll begin to clap together like some crathurs in sorrow batin' their breasts an' rockin' an' wirras- thruin'. Only for the masther an' that you bid me stay, I'd be risin' out of it. "Tis terrible mournful, so it is, to be listenin' to them these dark nights, an' not a breath of air stirrin' except that unnatural wind." Bertha was much disturbed at the news. Corofin without the woods ! She could not imagine it. Certainly the place could never be the same to her and hers. The doom of the trees hurt her like the sorrow of friends. Then she remembered that she had said not once, but twice, that it would be better the woods should go than the people. It was as though she had been overheard and taken at her word. So she too had urged the death-sentence of the trees. Yet now surely, surely her grandfather would spare the people, and so the whole of her thought would be fulfilled ! " I think I'll be goin', jewel," said Mary, rising to her feet. " I'll wait for Mick Magee at the cross-roads. He druv them directhor lads to meet the mail-car, an' he gev me a lift on the box. I'll be back before the master axes for me." " You'll have some food first, Mary ? I shall ring for Mary Anne." " Not a bite or sup, Miss Bertha. I wouldn't sit to a male wid that woman in the kitchen, not if^I was perishin', nor take a bit from her hands." She cast an anxious eye towards the sky, visible above the garden-trees. THE BETKAYAL OF THE WOODS 343 "I've delayed longer nor I meant to," she said, "for the pleasure of lookin' at your face, an' by rayson of your interruptin' me whin I was tellin' my news the shortest way. I think there's a bit of a storm comin'." A shadow had indeed darkened the room. Looking up now, Bertha saw that masses of purple cloud edged with copper were rolling swiftly up from the westward swiftly in so far as the speed with which they covered the sky ; yet there was no suggestion of movement in that stealthy and menacing growth. " I don't think it will come for some time," said Bertha. " Still, there is certainly a storm threatening. If you won't eat anything then, and have arranged to meet Mick, I suppose you'd better be going indeed. I don't want the storm to catch you among the woods." " They wouldn't harm me, being all as one as the ould family itself by rayson of long sarvice. Still, I'll be gettin' off. I'll take a dandher over again as soon as ever I can, an' see how you're bein' trated. I daresay we'll be havin' them directhors comin' about the place just as if it belonged to them." The afternoon closed in sadly, with the masses of violet cloud banked above yellow all around the horizon. After the early dusk the distant hills were lit with sudden flashes, fleeing and pursuing into the world beyond the hills. The air grew stifling. Not a leaf rustled, not a bird sang, though the second crop of song was in full growth that fine September weather. Through the open windows the breath of the flowers 344 A GIRL OF GALWAY came faint and sweet, as though they suffocated for rain. Now and again there was a little tremor among them, as though they lifted tiny hands in petition, but relief seemed long delayed. All the livestock of Rose Bawn was safe indoors, Mouse and Pooka nestling together in the stable for comfort. They had been trembling under the trees in the paddock when Mary Anne had gone to fetch them in just before dusk. Hugh Roper had come to dinner, and, seeing that the storm was imminent, had been easily persuaded to stay the night at Bawn Rose. It was going to be a big storm, and he had the lover's feeling that he liked to be near Bertha in the hour of the power and menace of the lightning. After dinner Miss Lloyd wrote letters at her desk in the corner by the fireplace a fireplace now banked high with violets in pots. A tall lamp was by her shoulder. It was dark at the other side of the room where Bertha sat at the piano playing dreamily, now and again singing without being asked, and passing naturally from that back to the unaccompanied music. Miss Lloyd looked across sometimes, holding her pen lifted a few seconds. She was an indefatigable letter-writer, with a gift in that way which kept old friendships fresh when the friends were far away, and made many now friends for her. Occasionally a leap of green lightning threw the lovers into prominence. Hugh Roper was sitting with THE BETRAYAL OF THE WOODS 345 one elbow leaning on the piano, his cheek on his hand, his eyes watching Bertha's face. Bertha was pensive to-night. They had been talk- ing of the woods and the spoliation of their happy valley. There was nothing to be done. Sir Delvin was quite within his rights in selling them, and the thought with which Hugh consoled Bertha was that it would bring employment and the much-needed money. As for their spoilt paradise, well, there were miles and miles of country as lonely and lovely. They must flee before the murk and the din ; they must forget the belching smoke, the furnaces and the noise, the black hobgoblins of men fighting with nature to wrest her secrets from her. " We shall plant other woods," he said, " not like the woods of Corofin, their memory shall be a fairy- tale, but woods to shelter herds and men yet unborn, who will bless the names of the founders." But Bertha was not to be consoled for the friends who had been doomed, and so her songs and her music were sad. The young voice was fresh and sweet. What had she to do with the eternal sorrows of the world that she must harp on mournful things ? The woman who had known much sadness listened to the song of grief with its strange, triumphant ending : How shall they meet? I cannot tell Indeed when they shall meet again, Except some day in Paradise. For this they wait : one waits in pain. 346 A GIRL OF GALWAY Beyond the sea of Death Love lies For ever, yesterday, to-day. Angels shall ask them, ' Is it well ? ' And they shall answer, ' Yea.' " When the chords had died away in mournful exaltation Miss Lloyd came behind Bertha and put both hands on her shoulders. " To bed to bed/' she said in a cheery voice, though her eyes were full of tears. " What right have you to sing of such things, you child ? And see, there is a moth flying about your head. He takes it for the sun, Bertha." The green lightning flashed again, and the leaves outside began to shiver. There came a distant rumble of thunder. Hugh Roper stood up and drew down the blinds. " It will soon be upon us," he said, " and it will be a big thing when it comes. You are not frightened, my dearest ? Nor you, Marcella ? " " I am going to take this child into my own room to-night. The curtains will be drawn close, and I shall keep a lamp burning so that the lightning will not be visible," Miss Lloyd said, with a tender look at Bertha's face, which was a little pale. " I was frightened in India when I was a child," she said faintly, " and I have never succeeded in quite forget- ting it. Bat I don't think I shall be very much frightened, being under the same roof with you and Hugh." Miss Lloyd put her to bed like a child, tucking her in and drawing the chintz curtains about her. THE GREAT STORM 347 Half-smiling, Bertha repeated a childish rhyme : " Two angels at my feet, Two angels at my head, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Guard the bed that I lie on." Presently, with the smile still on her lips, she was asleep. CHAPTER XXXIII. THE GREAT STORM THE storm was upon them in its full fury abont midnight. The thunder crashed on the little house, shaking it to its foundations ; rolled upon it with the weight of mountains as though to crush it into the dust ; then passed away to the eastward, where it reverberated with tremendous echoes, tumbling from hills to valleys before the peal was over. The storm was sweeping in from the sea, carried on the west wind across the Atlantic, and breathing a tropical fire and fury. Despite the lamp and the drawn blinds, the lightning was for ever in the room. It seemed to leap and spring without cessation, and at its height the noise of the storm was great enough to wake the dead. Bertha, who had slept through the early part of it, awoke suddenly with a cry, to find Miss Lloyd beside her reading a Book of Hours. It was one of the fragrant, old-fashioned things about Marcella Lloyd 348 A GIEL OF GALWAY that her father, the Quaker squire with a taste for scholarship unusual among his class, had taught his daughter as much of the dead languages and endowed her with as much of his own spirit as made Greek and Latin a perpetual delight to her. " How awful ! " cried Bertha. " Is it the end of the world, Aunt Marcella ? " and she hid her face, shuddering. " Thunder and lightning are as much His angels as those four great angels you invited to be about your bed. Listen to this, child, and forget to be afraid." It was the song of the three children in the fiery furnace that Marcella Lloyd, with the eyes of a prophetess, read through the roar of the thunderbolts. As she read she held her hand compassionately over Bertha's. " Benedicite lux et tenebrce Domino : benedicite fulgura et nubes Domino. " Benedicat terra Dominum : laudet et superexaltet eum in scecula" Her voice rose to the crash and terror of the thunder, and died away as the great peal rolled on its onward path. " What is the lightning, after all," she said, " but the sword of God His weapon against the drought and the heat? If they went on we should have the pestilence and scarcity of water even here, where such a thing has been undreamt of. Soon you will hear the rain. It will come rushing in torrents and waterspouts about us, and every little rill will be full, and His children, the green things perishing in the fiery furnace, will praise His name." THE GREAT STORM 349 Something in her exaltation moved Bertha to uncover her eyes. She had not suspected this vein of inspiration in the gentle and beneficent lady whom everybody loved for the softer virtues. As she opened her eyes there was a great roar of the thunder, accompanied by a strange, heavy, sulphurous smell. " The house has been struck," she cried, wild with fear, "and we shall all perish." She struggled up in bed ; but Miss Lloyd pushed her back, and was silent a moment, with her finger yet marking the place in the Book of Hours. " The house is all right," she said, after a second or two. " The thunderbolt has entered the earth some- where near. The worst of the storm is over with that, be sure." Again her voice rose to the shattering peal : " Benedicite monies et colles Domino : benedicite universa germinantia in terra Domino" As it fell again there was a sound of knocking at the door, and Miss Lloyd laid her book face downward beside her. " It is Hugh, come to see if we are frightened," she said. " Have you the courage to be left, Bertha, while I reassure him ? " " Oh, yes, yes ! I have courage for that ! " Miss Lloyd drew the curtains of the bed about the cowering head on its pillow. " Tell him I am not a coward," whispered Bertha. " It is only because I was frightened as a child. I know 350 A GIRL OF GALWAT the angels are there, and that the thunders and lightnings praise the Lord." Miss Lloyd went to the door. " Ah, Marcella, you are dressed ! I can speak to you," said Hugh Roper's voice. Then he beckoned her out, and as she came he drew the door to after her. " She has been a good deal frightened," she began ; "but I think the worst is over." " Ah, poor child, I am sorry she is frightened. Keep her as quiet as you can, Marcella, for I fear something has happened at Corofin." He drew her to the window of the staircase and pulled up the blind. It was pitchy black without between the lightning flashes. As the next flash travelled into darkness a cry broke from Marcella Lloyd's lips : 11 The woods are on fire, Hugh ? " " Yes, it is the woods. They seem to be well alight too." " And Corofin Sir Delvin is in the midst of them." " I am going to see, Marcella. The fire will travel before the wind away from the house, it may be. Indeed, at this distance it is impossible to see whether the fire is near the house at all or not. Anyway, it will be approachable from one side or another. Some tree may have been set on fire by the lightning and fired the others. They were like tinder." " You are going, Hugh in this storm ? " THE GREAT STOEM 351 " I am going, of course, Marcella. We don't know what may be happening." " That child wonld die if she knew you were out in it." " Don't let her know, Marcella, till I return. That is why I called you, lest my absence should be dis- covered or the fire, perhaps. I will be back for breakfast at latest." " What time do you make it, Hugh ? " " It is two o'clock, Marcella. The night is nearly over. Now go back to her. She will be frightened without you. Give her my dear love, and tell her I am sorry she was frightened." " Her consolation is that you are safe under this roof." " She must not know otherwise. The storm is abating. We shall soon have the rain." "Would it quench the fire if it came in sufficient quantities ? " " It might. The leaves must have carried the fire over those arches of boughs. Leaves make a slender bridge, after all, and are easily broken down." " God grant it may come soon, then, and in torrents ! " "After all, if the house is spared, it will not matter. The woods are only anticipating their fate." " That poor old man ! Hurry, hurry, Hugh ! " "He would surely have time to escape! Good-bye, Marcella. Keep her quiet." " God speed you, my dear boy ! Bring us good news." As she re-entered the room Bertha rose on her elbow. 352 A GIRL OF GALWAY '' I am less frightened now, Aunt Marcella, since I have heard Hugh's voice and know he is so near. Was he very anxious about me ? " " He was distressed at the thought of your being frightened. He thinks, like me, that the worst of the storm is over." " What should I have done if he were out in it the thunders and lightnings menacing his dear head ? " " Be quiet, Bertha. He would be in the hands of God there as much as here." " But he is better here. Hark ! was that the rain beginning ? " It was the sound of a horse's hoofs clattering in the night, and for a second Miss Lloyd's heart stood still. Then mercifully the thunder pealed and drowned all lesser sounds. " Yes, it is the rain, thank God ! " said Marcella Lloyd a minute later. " Do you hear the great drops ? It is a deluge, Bertha, a deluge enough to put out the lightning. Already it is growing cool, and the night begins to smell sweet." " You seem as refreshed, Aunt Marcella, as though you had been parched like the earth. It is tremendous rain certainly. I do not feel nearly so much afraid now. Presently I shall fall asleep, and shall wake up to a world refreshed." " It will be a world much damaged, Bertha. We shall float in water." " Your poor garden ! it will not recover this year. THE GKEAT STORM 353 Shall yon be very sorry for your garden, Aunt Marcella ? " " I shall not mind at all, Bertha. The spouts are beginning to run. Do you hear them, child ? " " I am glad you don't mind about your garden, Aunt Marcella. How I wish I had your courage, your faith ! Your eyes are shining, as the eyes of the flowers will be to-morrow." " As your eyes will not be unless you sleep. Will yon sleep, Bertha ? The storm is over, and a wet wind is stirring the blind. Do you smell the fragrance of all the beaten -down things ? " " I think I can sleep, Aunt Marcella, if you will sit by me and go on reading. How your voice goes with the storm outside 1 " Bertha's voice was sleepy. Her terror had exhausted her. Marcella Lloyd opened her book again and looked for her place. Suddenly through the fall of the rain and the remoter peals of the thunder there came the waking song of a robin, who had slept unharmed through the tempest, and wakened now to a flooded nest. The sound was inexpressibly joyful and innocent amid the night of terrors ; and, hearing it, Marcella Lloyd lifted up her heart : " Benedicite fontes Domino : benedicite maria et flumina Domino. " Benedicite cete et omnia quce moventur in aquis Domino : benedicite omnes volucres coeli Domino" She lost herself and her fears amid the sonorous (M835) Z 354 A GIRL OF GALWAY praises, and when she ceased there was a sound of quiet breathing by her. Bertha was asleep. At last Marcella Lloyd was free to watch the progress of the fire, if, indeed, the rain had not blotted it out. She went to the staircase window and drew up the blind. Over there on the horizon was a blur of light beyond the miles of rain, which was the woods on fire. Now it sprang up in one direction ; again it disappeared, only to spring up anew. The fire must have taken a furious hold on the woods before the rain came to cope with it, and it was making a good fight. She watched it as though it had a deadly fascination for her. When a spot of darkness came where the fire had been, her heart leaped up ; when the flames broke in another place, it sank like lead. What would she not have given to have been there ? To watch the woods of Corofin, perhaps Corofin itself, burn over all those miles of country was terrible ! No Grace could have seen it with a more painful suffering. So much of her heart, so much of her life, was built into the old house. Presently the grey dawn blotted out the fire. It yet rained furiously ; and while the country smoked with rain and mist after its long drought, even the pall of vapour upon the horizon must be invisible. The hours passed leaden-foot. Now and again she went back to her room and looked at Bertha's face, childish in sleep. What would the morning bring her ? Grief it must needs bring would it bring horror too ? She heard Mary Anne pass down the backstairs to THE GEEAT STOKM 355 the kitchen, and knew it was six o'clock. It was now quite daylight, and she saw the old servant stepping carefully across the flooded stable-yard on her way to see how her animal friends had fared during the terrors of the night. How long would it be before the first peasant, eager with the sensational news, should come trudging to Mary Anne's door ? She must warn Mary Anne of what had happened and that the last of the Graces must not know till her lover came back to break the news to her. She was turning to go downstairs when she saw Hugh Roper ride into the stable-yard. The horse was smoking and flecked with foam. Plainly he had been ridden hard. His rider drooped in the saddle as he rode in almost like one who had received a wound, she thought. She saw him lead his horse within the stable, and waited till he emerged. Mary Anne followed him, her hands held high in horror and amazement. Then he crossed to the house door. There was little of hope or reassurance in his air. She went downstairs to meet him with a sinking heart. " Bertha is still asleep ? " he asked, as they met. " She is sound off", and no sign of waking. What news, Hugh ? " " Bad news, Marcella. How are we to tell that child ?" He looked at her compassionately. He knew she loved the sour old man whom the rest of the* world had found it hard to forgive or to bear with. Perhaps, too, he had a fine intuition of some bond with the Graces closer than ties of kinship. 356 A GIRL OF GALWAY " Yon can bear it, Marcella ? " " Anything but suspense. Tell me, Hugh." " Corofin is in ashes, Marcella. Sir Delvin is missing." As her son might if she had had a son, he supported her with his strong young arm. He half led, half carried her within the little breakfast-parlour, looking so cold and strange in the unaccustomed light. Then he rang the bell for Mary Anne, who came with the hot coffee hastily prepared, but smoking and fragrant. " I'll see to the mistress, Master Hugh," she said. " You'd better change ; you're making a pool of water where you're standing." He looked down at his feet, which were staining the rose-wreaths of the Aubusson carpet. All at once he was conscious that he was drenched through and aching in every limb with fatigue, although his mind was awake. He caught sight of himself in the little gilt glass above the mantelpiece. What a scarecrow he looked! His hair straight and every separate hair a rivulet ; his face grimed with smoke and unwontedly pale after the horror of the night. He half smiled ; but it was difficult smiling. " I shall have to come to breakfast in evening-dress, Marcella," he said. " Indeed, I am no figure for a lady's room." Then he went upstairs slowly and heavily, treading softly lest he should awaken Bertha too soon to the telling he would fain have postponed for ever. FROM THE DEAD 357 CHAPTER XXXIV. FROM THE DEAD T)ERTHA had been told, had taken the telling better JD than they could have hoped, with her trembling hands in her lover's and her face hidden against his shoulder. Over there on the horizon was a pall of smoke, beneath which still burned sullenly the woods of Corofin. She had listened with darkened eyes to the story of the night's tragedy how the lightning had fired the trees, and the trees, pressing closely to the house, had set it on fire on the side farthest away from the sleepers. Panelled in wood as it was, with the upper floors bare to the flames and rotten as touchwood, it had burnt like tinder. There had been no one in the house but the two old servants and Sir Delvin. When the servants awoke it was to find that their master's escape was cut off by way of the smouldering staircase. Before other help could arrive there had come Bulger riding a sweating horse, and, as Mary Butler described it after- wards, with eyes like the lightning in a white face. " He shoved us aside," she said, " and the last word 1 heard from his lips was a bad one Lord have mercy on him for that same, and all his sins, for, sure, didn't he die to save the master ? He tore up the burning stairs, and every minit we expected to see him disappear through them as long as we could see him. But he 358 A GIRL OF GALWAY got up safe, and he reached the master safe, for he come to the window with the master rowled up like a tabby in his arms. But 'twas too high to jump, and there was the stone areas below, and, God forgive him, he hadn't left as much as a ladder in the place. Thin he saw 'twas no good that way, and he fell back, and that was the last we seen of him, for the house was like a roarin' chimbley in a few seconds, and soon nothin' that ever lived could live in it." Bertha's first feeling after her grief and horror at her grandfather's fate was one of bitter remorse for her own misjudgment of the man who had purged his life so nobly by the manner of his death. "I wish I could tell him now," she said, "how differently I see him ! " " How differently we all see him ! " said Hugh Roper. " But, after all, our detestation was for his deeds. Being mortal, we can only see partially. Perhaps he had no idea himself of his capacity for good till that one opportunity of his life came, and he took it." " If only it had not been fruitless ! " wailed Bertha. " If only he might have saved his master ! " " I think he saved his owr soul," said Marcella Lloyd softly. They sat to breakfast in the raw cold light of the sodden morning, eating little, and with chill, desultory talk and long silences, as though their beloved dead lay unburied in the house. Afterwards Bertha begged that she might be taken FROM THE DEAD 359 to see the ruins of Corofin. Miss Lloyd tried to dissuade her, but her lover was on her side. "To do something will be good for her, Marcella," he said ; " and it is better for her to ride in the fresh air than brood over her trouble here." So they set out together. The rain had ceased, but half the country was under water. As they skirted the lower levels of the mountains, streams leaped down the inclines and formed little rivers in the road under their feet. The heather looked black and miserable. The hill-tops had wrapped themselves in cloud, and wisps of cloud floated half-way down the mountain-side. A gleam of chilly sun filled all the way with miniature rainbows. The mountain sheep cowered under rocks and boulders. Here and there an unthrifty peasant had left the corn in stacks in the field, and the stacks were flattened to earth, and threshed as though beaten out by a flail. The fire had spared the main avenue that led to the front of Corofin ; and as they rode along in silence the hoofs of their horses splashed in the mosses, sodden like a sponge. Everywhere the heavy and ominous smell of fire was stifling in the air. Blue smoke-mists curled below the trees. But the woods on this side were safe, impenetrable against the fire which was smouldering to extinction among the miles of ruined woodland on the other side of the house. The fire had travelled before the wind, cutting a clear space for itself as the mowing-machine cuts down the 360 A GIRL OF GALWAY grasses, but leaving the trees on either side of its pathway uninjured. As they approached the house, which still burned, a black and smoking heap of ruins, they saw groups of people standing about aimlessly, women with shawls over their heads, coatless men with wet caubeens pulled down over their eyes, silent, or discussing the calamity of the night in awed whispers. Bertha recognised a face here and there mainly of the Ben Sheelin people. They made way for her as she approached, drawing farther back among the trees, and following her as she passed, leading her pony, with a compassionate murmur. Old Mick Magee was there with the tears chasing each other down his ancient cheeks. He hobbled forward when he saw his young mistress, and took the pony from her. " The crather's terrified wid the hate an' the smoke," he said. " Sure, he knows there's more wrong thin we'll ever set right in this world. Let me lade him under the trees out av it." Bertha yielded up the bridle, and a Ben Sheelin man took Hugh's mare. Then someone else came and stood by Bertha's side. It was Mr. Roper, and his usually cheery face looked haggard and suddenly old. " It is my grief, too, my daughter," he said. " He was my oldest friend." Bertha slipped a hand into his, and stood silent between father and son, gazing at the forlorn spectacle "BERTHA STOOD SILENT BETWEEN FATHER AND SON" FROM THE DEAD 361 the house presented, while the peasants stood away, cnrious and sympathetic, with wonder in their eyes at the manifest affection between Sir Delvin's granddaughter and those whom he had hated. Every minute new people arrived on the scene. Presently came Mr. St. Leger and Amy, with Dr. Clifford in attendance. They pressed Bertha's hand in silence and moved away; but in a little while Mr. St. Leger returned. " Do you know," he asked Hugh Roper in a low voice, " if any word has been sent to James Bulger ? He oughtn't to hear this by chance. I suppose Father Malony would be the best one to break it to him." " If you plase, sir," said a bystander, " the priest went over the mountains on a sick call last night, and wasn't back this mornin'. Sure, he couldn't travel in the storm. But somewan's safe to have run to Lame James wid the news." " I hope not I hope not," said the rector anxiously. " There was a great love between the two brothers. L always heard that the poor fellow who has died so nobly was kept here only by his affection for his afflicted brother." Then Bertha remembered the old servants, and asked for them. " They are at the Folly," Mr. Roper answered her. " I persuaded them to go just before your arrival. They were worn out with grief and watching. "Ah," said Bertha, "poor things; they will be 362 A GIEL OF GALWAY homeless and helpless indeed. They had no life except that which was bound np with Corofin." At this moment a little red-haired boy arrived breathless at Mr. Roper's elbow. " If you plase, sir," he said, " Jim Bulger's dragged himself all the way on his hands an' knees, an' he's gone out of his mind intirely wid the trouble. He's below in the little graveyard, scratchin' an tearin' at a big gravestone like a dog scratchin' after a rat. I seen him as I run by, an' came as hard as I could to tell yez." " The poor man ! " began Mr. St. Leger. But Bertha suddenly clutched Archibald Roper's arm. " There's a passage that way, the old people say, from the house, somewhere into the graveyard. Perhaps James Bulger knows the secret. If they should have escaped that way, after all ! " The little group stared at each other for a second, with pale faces. " There was a passage," said Mr. Roper. " I have seen the entrance to it myself. But it was always thought the earth had filled it in, or that it was too foul for exploration." " Let us go," said Bertha, beginning to run. The crowd closed in upon her footsteps. She had a vague sense of hearing the red-haired boy pour a dis- jointed narrative into Mr. Roper's ear about how the trees were blown down, and the graveyard that had been locked in the memory of man was now open through the gaps in the wall to all the wild creatures of the wood. FROM THE DEAD 363 But eagerly as the people went, they allowed her, with Mr. Roper and his son, to go first. Once she looked round and caught sight of Dr. Clifford striding along fast. " Ah," she said to herself, " we may need him if things are as we think." For a wild, irrational flame of hope had sprung up in her breast. If her grandfather was safe by means of the secret passage, she would not mourn Corofin nor anything it had engulfed. The trees were down indeed over the little graveyard, half a dozen of the greatest of them prone across the gravestones, and the place where the wall had stood. The storm had torn them out by the roots, and had flung them there as though they were so many straws. A great elm lay across Pierce Grace's tombstone. Someone shouted as they came within view of it. Then Hugh Roper left her side and began springing frantically over the tree trunks and the stones, calling to his father to keep her back. But it was too late to prevent her seeing what he had seen. Some creature a mere pile of human wreckage, coated with mud and slime, contorted out of human shape was face downward by the stone, mumbling over something. " Keep her back ! " shouted Hugh Roper again to his father. But Bertha had seen what he had seen. A coarse, knotted human hand a hand she knew and part of 364 A GIRL OF GALWAY a coat-sleeve protruded from under the huge gravestone. It was no secret to her who, what, lay there, pinned down by the weight of stone and the weight of the trees. She let herself be drawn away among the women by Archibald Roper's compassionate hand. She must not hinder the men at their work ; that was the argument which reached her through the horror and fear. Then she found Amy St. Leger at her side. " Go, go ! " she said to Mr. Roper. You will want to be there. Amy will stay with me." The two girls stood hand in hand, silent and with white faces watching the group of men. First they saw James Bulger carried away by a couple of men and laid on the ground below the trees, where Dr. Clifford knelt by him. " Tom will call me if he needs us," Amy St. Leger said quietly ; and even at that moment Bertha wondered at the familiar " Tom." Fortunately ropes and crowbars were forthcoming. Part of the range of stabling yet stood, and such things lingered among the rubbish. From their distance the two girls in an agony of suspense saw the long line of men tugging at the rope that had been fastened about the elm-tree which lay across the gravestone. Slowly, slowly it yielded, and its immense bulk was dragged to one side. Then the strongest, armed with crowbars Hugh Roper was among them began to lift the stone itself. The crowd had closed in now, and the girls could see nothing. FKOM THE DEAD 365 Then the doctor, hastily summoned, approached the group, and was admitted within it. For a few seconds there was the dead silence of suspense. Bertha could endure it no longer. " I shall not disgrace myself by fainting," she whispered to Amy, who tried to keep her, " but I must see what is happening." The people let her pass. In a minute she was at the graveside. One human figure had been drawn out of the grave. She gave a shuddering glance at it. The dark face she remembered was half turned from her. It was contorted in a dreadful expression of pain, and a frown on the heavy brows gave it some- how a look of Olympian anger and determination. The body lay limp and awry, twisted round as though it hardly belonged to the face. Lifting her eyes, she saw Mr. Roper gazing down into the grave. One side of it was open, hollowed, and dark the secret passage. She could see Hugh nowhere. She put her hand on the arm of the nearest man. " What are they doing down there ? " she asked. The man started. It was a Ben Sheelin man, and he had not apparently noticed her presence till she spoke. "They've gone back a bit lookin' for the masther," he said. " 'Tisn't likely that man there " he indicated the figure at the grave-head " 'ud forsake him after entherin' the flames for him." There was a shout from somewhere in the bowels of the earth, as it seemed. Then a man came out of 366 A GIRL OF GALWAY the passage, holding a lantern and blinking at the light of day. " 'Tis the masther," he said; "they've found him. But he's kilt dead wid the bad air." But for the friendly arm beside her, held to steady her, Bertha would have fallen. As it was she saw Archibald Roper kneel at the graveside to receive the little wizened old figure, wrapped up in a blanket, the face of which was hidden from her. In a second her lover was by her side. " He is probably only overcome by the bad air," he said. " It wasn't so bad either. The passage must have been used in recent times to be so little foul ; and of course some air reached it, for that poor fellow had the gravestone a little lifted before the tree broke his back, as well as the machinery that was used to lift the stone." Dr. Clifford had left Timothy Bulger, and was feeling for Sir Delvm's heart. " He is alive," he said. " Where can we take him to ?" " Where to but to the Folly ? It is the nearest house," said Mr. Roper. The old landau which was in the range of unburnt buildings was dragged out. The horse which Mr. Roper had ridden was put between the shafts. In this Sir Delvin was placed, and Timothy Bulger beside him, with the cushions set on each other to make as comfortable a bed as possible. " Poor Bulger feels nothing," Hugh Roper whispered. " His spine is broken. He will feel nothing any more." FROM THE DEAD 367 " He is alive, then ? " " There is just a flicker of life in him. It will be gone in a few hours. Come, my dearest. Let us get on before and see that preparations are made to receive them." They rode fast to the Folly, and had all things in readiness before the landau arrived. James Bulger was following in a peasant's cart, having eome out of the epileptic fit which had seized him at the graveside. The two brothers were as tenderly cared for, as willingly housed, as Sir Delvin himself. But Timothy Bulger did not last very long. At the end Bertha had her wish granted, and saw him. He had lost the power of speech, but his eyes were terribly eloquent. " He can hear what you say," Dr. Clifford assured her, " though he cannot answer you. It is the leaping up of the light before its extinction." " Let me see him alone," pleaded Bertha ; " there is something I must say to him." " She is doing too much," protested Hugh Roper. " She has been comforting his unhappy brother when she has not been watching by him or her grandfather." " She must make up for it afterwards, Roper," said the doctor. " She may help him to die in peace, and we must remember what he has done for her family." So Bertha had her will, and was left a few minutes alone with the dying man. She knelt down beside him. " James has told me everything," she said as distinctly as though she were talking to a child " I know how 368 A GIRL OF GALWAY by degrees the things were carried from the locked wing, and distributed about the world where we should have little chance of ever tracking them. "What matter? The fire would have had them ; and we have no regrets. James has given up the jewels, which were yet in his hands. For anything you did, anything you intended doing, you have nobly atoned. As for me, I beg your forgiveness. It is not for you to beg mine." She saw by his eyes that he understood. Yet there was something more that he wanted. She thought for a second ; then she understood. " You are anxious about James ? " she said. " He will be the object of our tender care so long as he remains on earth." His eyes thanked her. Peace had replaced the appeal in them. Suddenly, by an impulse for which she was grateful all her life afterwards, she stooped and kissed his hand, the hand covered with coarse hair which used to revolt her, but now lay so pale and piteous on the counterpane. A light sprang into his eyes, as though his soul, a ransomed soul, looked out of them. Then a film shut down upon the light as though someone had drawn a blind. She had been just in time, for after a few hours of unconsciousness his life went out. " He would have destroyed the woods," said Mary Butler, who was helping at the nursing, " and they had their revinge upon him. I suppose the spirit'll be gone out o' them now wid themselves half burnt off the face OUT OF THE PAST 369 of the earth, an' ould Sir Brian's picture ate up in the flames. Well, glory be to goodness, 'twas all for the best, as it turned out, for he died in paice wid God an' man. 'Tis meself is sorry enough for the hard words I often daled him." CHAPTER XXXV. OUT OF THE PAST SIR DELVIN opened his eyes on the quiet dusk of an autumn evening. There was firelight in the room, and he gazed about him wonderingly at the chintz curtains of the bed, at the unfamiliar walls and ceiling, at the table by the bedside with its sick-room appurtenances. " Who is there ? " he asked weakly. " Is that Bertha ? " Bertha's heart leaped up as she came forward from the table where she had been writing. She had not expected this easy recognition of her. Dr. Clifford had warned them that the illness in a man of his age might leave the mental powers impaired. "Yes, it is Bertha, grandpapa," she said, looking down at him. His eyes were gentle, with an expression she had never known in them. For the first time she noticed that the lines and furrows of his face seemed to have been smoothed out by his illness, as though it had been a long, refreshing sleep. " I've been ill, have I ? " he asked. (M835) 2 A 370 A GIEL OF GAL WAT " You've been ill, grandpapa. It is so good to see you better." " And I am in the Folly, is it ? I seem to remember this room, though it was finer then." "Yes, this is the Folly." Bertha dreaded the next question. But when Sir Delvin spoke it was with a quietly musing voice which reassured her. " I used to sleep in this room once," he said. " That was before I married Rosamund poor Rosamund ! And Archie Roper and I were always together. It is a long time since I have seen Archie. Where is he, Bertha ? " " He is not far away, grandpapa ; he is somewhere in the house indeed, he has been very anxious about you while you have been ill. He will be very glad to come and talk to you presently." " Ah, he must come he must come. I don't know how it has happened that I have seen so little of Archie. We are neither of us as young as we were as young as we were. We should not be parted." His eyes wandered about him with a searching look, as of one who has lost a clue. " Where is Everard ? " he asked suddenly. " He was a beautiful boy. He ought not to have left me he ought not to have left me." " He went to India, grandpapa. Don 't you remember ? ' ' " Ah, he went to India, did he ? Tell him to come back tell him to come back." The old head nodded to slumber, and Bertha drew the OUT OF THE PAST 371 curtain a little closer to keep the light from his face. She was glad his questions had gone no further, for she wanted to have time to think of how she should answer him. It was evident there was a lapse of memory, though the eyes, so reasonable, so gentle, suggested no blurring of the mental powers. Would the lapsed memory return ? Most likely it would. Yet Bertha could not help feeling that this state was mercy indeed a memory from which apparently the passion and the trouble were blotted out, and only the good survived. How well it would be if such were vouchsafed to us all ! A little later Marcella Lloyd came to sit by the invalid a while. Bertha met her with a finger on her lips, and drew her outside the door to tell her what had passed. " I want to tell Dr. Clifford about it," she said. " He was to be here about five o'clock. He will be able to tell us if this state will pass." She left Miss Lloyd sitting in the firelight, doing without light for her fine seam, lest she should awaken the sleeper, whose sleep, no longer the stupor of illness, was too precious to be broken. On the staircase she met a maid coming to tell her that the doctor had arrived and was in the drawing-room. She found him standing with his back to a roaring fire, his face ruddy with the frost an outdoor, wintry-looking figure in his riding-clothes and leather gloves and high boots. " Well, Miss Grace," he asked, " and how is the patient to-day ? " " He has been awake and has talked a little," she told 372 A GIEL OF GAL WAY him, " but he is asleep again. There is no hurry about your going up, as Miss Lloyd is on guard, and will ring if he wakes again. You will have some tea, doctor ? " " I should like it. There's a roaring frost outside." "Yon needn't tell me. You've brought it into the room with you. Now, sit down. I want to talk to you about my grandfather." While they waited she told him what had happened. He listened gravely. " Of course I can't say," he said, " if this happy forgetfulness will last. We shall know that later. But I think your father should come home, if it be possible. Sir Delvin is an old man." "Not so much older than Mr. Roper," said Bertha a little piteously. " They have led such different lives. Mr. Roper is, to all intents and purposes, twenty years his junior. Is there anything to prevent your father coming home ? " " I believe he has only stayed because of the pension. He was to have had two and a half years more of it. Of course it was important to us then." " He need not care now. He is a rich man, I understand, through Sir Delvin's transaction with the coal syndicate. Mr. Roper tells me his last act before the fire was to conclude the sale of the land." "Ah, yes. Mr. Roper has read me their letters. We could not draw back now if we would. The poor woods ! it is too late to save their beauty." She looked towards the window. A full moon was OUT OF THE PAST 373 silvering the park outside. In the distance one could see the woods of Corofin, what was left of them. On this side the great belt of woodland gave no hint of the blackened miles of country beyond. " There is yet enough woodland to satisfy anyone except the man who planted those trees," the doctor said, following her gaze. " Your father can build himself another house if he will, well enclosed by trees from the grimy world of the coal-fields. It was curious that the trees should have anticipated their fate that the fire should have cleared the ground which had been acquired by the syndicate, and spared this part." " I am very glad so many are safe. Without a portion of the woods the Graces would be bare indeed. It would be Corofin no longer. Ah, here is the tea. I hope I shall make it to your liking hot, strong, and sweet." Her eyes laughed at him shyly. " I am beginning to learn how men's tastes go." " Roper is a lucky fellow," said the doctor, stretching his hand for the cup. " I am very glad of it. He deserves the best of luck." " Tell me now," said Bertha, " talking of luck, I have not asked for Amy for days. How is she ? " " She has asked for you every day. You know her Aunt Winnie is here ? That is what has kept her from coming." " Her Aunt Winnie I I've heard nothing of her coming." " She has come. She had so long been eyes and ears to her invalid husband that she could not endure being 374 A GIRL OF GAL WAT no longer the slave of a thousand exactions. She arrived one day last week at the vicarage, quite unexpectedly, on a terribly rackety outside car, two others following laden with her luggage. She begged them to take her in, and could hardly believe in the warmth of her welcome. She is the slave of them all, except Amy and Winnie, who are incapable of exactions. She has plenty of money, infinite good-nature, a great capacity for loving, and withal native common-sense, and the wit added of one who has been up and down the world. I foresee that Aunt Winnie is going to shorten the term of my servitude by six or seven years." He stretched his broad shoulders like one who remembers an old burden and delights in the regained ease and lightness. " How glad I am ! And Amy will give up her post of duty, and rest at last ? " " She will make me happy." A bell rang in the distance, and Bertha stood up. " He must be awake again," she said. " Let us go to him." They found Sir Delvin lying on his pillow looking at Marcella Lloyd with gentle satisfaction. " He has been awake some minutes," she said, " and he has had his jelly. He is a very good patient, but I tell him he is not to talk. What do you say, doctor ? " " He can talk all he will after a few days, but not just yet," the doctor said. " You see, you've been ill, Sir Delvin. We've got to get your strength up." OUT OF THE PAST 375 The old man acquiesced mildly, and as the days passed seemed to pick up the threads of memory one by one, speaking one day of this, the next of that event or personage in his old life, but utterly passing over the long stretch of time in which he had been alienated and unforgiving. Quite early in the convalescence Archibald Roper had come in and sat down in a chair by the patient's bed, as though he had been accustomed to do the same thing every day, although it was with a quaking of the heart that he waited for Sir Delvin's recognition of him. " Well, Delvin ? " he said. " You've grown an old man, Archie," said the man who had last seen him when they were both in their prime "an old man. Where have you been all this time? It must be many a year many a year." " It is a good many," said Mr. Roper. Tears had gathered in his kindly eyes. " But what does it matter, Delvin, if old friends meet at last, with the old love between them still unchanged ? " " Ours is not likely to change at our time of life our time of life," said Sir Delvin, watching him dreamily, " though I have dreamt of trouble between us between us, as if that could ever be. Do you remember the day of the otter-hunt, Archie, when you slipped from the big boulders in the midst of Corofin river ? " He was off on a tide of half-sleepy reminiscence. After that his old friend sat with him every day, and they talked their quiet, drowsy talk that was as soothing 376 A GIEL OF GALWAY to listen to, as the lap-lap of waters in a green place on a summer's day. But of the old trouble there had been between them not a trace seemed to live in Sir Delvin's memory, nor did he ever speak of the lady whose love had come between him and his friend, nor again of his wife, that poor Lady Rosamund who had been so lovely and so unbeloved. "It seems too good to last," Marcella Lloyd said to the doctor one day. " When he gets well, won't he remember?" "I don't think he ever will get well," Dr. Clifford answered her. " There, my dear lady, I know your affection for him, but would you have him as he was for the sake of a few years added to his life ? I do not mean that he is going to die at once. He may linger till summer, possibly even till autumn, but he gains no strength. I hope he will remember no more than he does now, and I do not think he will. We shall keep him here long enough, I hope, for him to have some little time with his son before the inexorable call comes." "Everard will be here by spring. He would have come at once, but there was his successor to be appointed, and so much to be done." " The old man will stay with us till he comes, I have no doubt. Presently we shall get him on to a sofa. It will be less trying for him than perpetual bed. If we have a mild spring the balcony outside his room will come in pleasantly." Once between sleeping and waking another scrap of OUT OF THE PAST 377 memory floated into Sir Delvin's mind. He was on the sofa by this time, and gazing at the fire and at his granddaughter's face bent low over a book. " There was Bulger, my man of business," he said. "Where is Bulger now? It is a long time since I have seen him." " He has gone on a journey, grandpapa," said Bertha, with her heart in her mouth. "Ah, I suppose he has taken himself off at last. He was never satisfied here never satisfied here. They wouldn't forget what he came from what he came from, the child of a nameless woman taken ill by the roadside, and dead in the workhouse before she could speak, and that poor twisted brother of his too young to tell too young to tell. He always thought he ought to have a chance ought to have a chance. Why, they'd never forget it to him here, not if he was Prime Minister. They'd never forget, not they." There was a gleam of amusement in the old eyes that had been so fierce. In a minute he went on again : " So he's taken his journey taken his journey, Bertha, my dear ? I hope he'll have a better chance. He was a clever lad a clever lad, only his heart got twisted, like his brother's limbs, and he took too much on him- self in latter days. He wanted me to sell the woods, the woods of Corofin, as though gold would tempt me ! It is time he was gone ; yet I wish him nothing but good nothing but good. He had done wonders for himself already." 378 A GIRL OF GAL WAY " I'm sure we all wish him nothing but good," said Bertha softly. " Ah, that is right that is right. There was some- thing about your not liking the poor fellow. But he should not have asked me to sell the woods. Wanted me to have the purchase money in gold, too, a lot of it, as though I could ask men of business anything so foolish anything so foolish." It was that day that Bertha found Malachy, who was acting as butler at the Folly, shaking with sobs outside Sir Delvin's door. " Never mind me, miss," he said, as Bertha laid a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. " I thought I'd get to the pantry before I'd make a show of myself this way. Loughs of tears I do be cryin' on the same silver, an' the glass not fit to be seen. Sure, I wouldn't be long kep' in any situation through destroyin' the things that way. I'm as stupid as an owl, too. Didn't I hand Mr. Roper the pickles for the red-currant jelly last night ? I misdoubt but I'm gettin' a-past my service." " Is that what is grieving you, Malachy?" asked Bertha. " 'Tis what's the cause of it, miss, is killin' me entirely wid the trouble. Sure, I'm the lonesomest man alive for the masther's ould ways. To see him so quiet an' soft-spoken is more thin I can bear. It's Malachy here, an' it's Malachy there, an' there used to be no name too hard for me ; an' if I hadn't come of a thick-skulled people, 'tisn't here I'd be to-day. A Galway man 'ud have had no chance ; but my mother bein' Tipperary, an' L'ENVOI 379 they great at the factions, what 'ud split another man's skull 'ud no more nor tickle me in a manner o' spakin'. D'ye think he'll ever rightly come to himself, miss ? " " I think, perhaps, Malachy," said Bertha, answering the anxious question, " that perhaps he has come to himself. Perhaps he was never meant to be angry and violent " " You don't know a thing at all about it, miss," said the old fellow, interrupting her. " 'Tis all very well to have the room like a church, an' the masther so soft-spoken ; it may plase some people, but it doesn't me. I'd feel a happy man again, so I would, if only he'd let fly a shout at me, an' folly it up by the nearest bit o' furniture handy. But, there, sure, Heaven forgive me, I wasn't satisfied whin I had it. We never know whin we're well off in this world, Miss Bertha." L'ENVOI. SO Bertha's probation, after all, lasted not five years, but scarcely three. In the spring of the year her father and mother came home in time for Bertha's wedding, in time for Everard Grace to have his old father with him for yet a few months. The meeting between father and son was very touching. It was as though the golden-haired youth who had left the doors of Corofin in bitterness and sorrow had been gone but a day. His father was insatiable for his society. " Don't leave me, Everard," he would say. " You left 380 A GIRL OF GALWAY me once before, and I waited long for you to come back. It was years before I gave up hoping for you years before I gave up hoping for you. That pretty woman you married, we must take care of her, my lad, we must take care of her ; but now she has her daughter and Marcella Lloyd to see to her, and you must stay with me. You will have years for her and Bertha after I am gone." " If I had only known I need not have stayed away ! " cried Everard Grace in a passion of unavailing repentance. " Ah, that was the worst of all the worst of all, that you could believe I had shut my door against you for ever, no matter what I said. I know there was trouble between us, I forget what it was about now, but you should have known better you should have known better." Already a space had been cleared in the woods, and the foundation had been sunk for a new Corofin, brighter, wholesomer than of old, without the terrifying associa- tions of the old house. Sir Delvin never asked a question about Corofin, or why he should find him- self in Roper's Folly, and stay there so long. But Everard was impatient to have a roof-tree to cover him once again, though it was hardly likely Sir Delvin would live to see his son's house rise amid the woods. Bertha, after the first few days with her parents, returned to Bawn Rose, which had become to her the most homelike place she knew. There she was making the quiet preparations for her wedding, which was not to be postponed later than midsummer. There her mother came almost daily while Everard was so much with his L'ENVOI 381 father, driving herself across from the Folly in a little basket phaeton which had been the first of her husband's gifts to her after they were established at home. At first Bertha's heart had been full of misgiving about her mother's delicacy, but it was wonderful what the reunion and a mind at rest, combined with the reviving airs of the Atlantic, did to restore Mrs. Grace's health. Day by day her face seemed to recover its youthful softness, and a wild-rose flush mounting in the cheeks brought back some of the beauty of her prime. Bertha, rallying her mother one day in the joy of her heart, told her that she was going to be a beautiful matron, after all, despite the evils with which India had threatened her complexion. " I used to think," said Mrs. Grace, with happiness in her fine eyes, " that I should never come back alive. When I bought you those things in London before I sailed, I believed they would be my last purchases for you ; that some other woman " she glanced uncon- sciously at Miss Lloyd's face " would dress you for your wedding, would rejoice in the grown-up little daughter who would look so different from the Bertha I knew. That was bitter, though I tried to reconcile myself to the Will that we must all love to obey." "The Will that has dealt so differently by us," said Bertha, stroking the yet thin cheeks in wistful happiness. " It is so good, for everyone's sake, to be growing strong," said Mrs. Grace, with the sudden brightening of her face which was one of her charms. " I shall 382 A GIRL OF GALWAY have to help Everard in his stewardship of all this money which has been forced upon us." " I see you a delightful Lady Bountiful driving about among your people," said Bertha. "Between us we shall make the wilderness blossom like the rose." " Marcella will help me," said Mrs. Grace, turning to the woman to whom she had grown tenderly attached. Marcella Lloyd smiled back at her, the rare, fine smile that transfigured her plain face. " We shall spend it we shall spend it," said Bertha joyfully. " There is so much for us to do now we have the means." " And the will," put in Marcella Lloyd. " But yon must let us do most of the ministering, Bertha. You must see the world while you are young ; you must be gay and go into Society. We cannot have you buried in this quiet corner of the world." " Where all I love grows. And there are some people cannot do without me. Poor James Bulger, for example, and Mary Walsh ; and I have to look after Johnny's progress in wisdom and virtue myself. They cannot do without me." " You will have to make us your viziers. At least, you must wander while the Folly is being done up for you." " My heart will be at home all the time," said Bertha. After all, Sir Delvin lived long enough to bless his granddaughter on the morning of her marriage. He was as proud and pleased at her union with the son of his old friend as though he himself had gone match- L'ENVOI 383 making for her. Quiet as the ceremony was, Bertha was apparelled as though princes came to her wedding. She wore the diamonds and pearls which Mr. Roper had kept for her, and they became her youth and her golden head charmingly. ' /Mrs. Grace wore the Grace emeralds ; and the wedding tyeakfast, cooked by Mary Butler, who graciously per- mitted Mary Anne to assist they had long agreed to bury the hatchet was served on the Grace gold plate, which had miraculously escaped the fire how, was a secret between Bertha and the Ropers, father and son. There is not now a more prosperous corner of the world than that of which Corofin is the centre. The poor have so much done for them that they would be in danger of spoiling if it were not that it is done so wisely ; and every day the sphere of the Graces' beneficence widens. Mickey Magee, who drove Bertha to the church on her wedding-day, has grown so young that he declares he will live to drive Bertha's daughter on a like happy occasion ; and since pensioners live long, this may well be true. He finds as much occupation as he needs in the care of a kennel of old and sick dogs and in the exercising of a number of youthful ones. Bertha came back from her honeymoon to find that Mary Butler had become Mrs. Malachy Malone. The pair were installed at the Folly as butler and house- keeper ; and Mary imparted to Bertha, in an ashamed way, her reason for having taken pity on Malachy at 384 A GIRL OF GALWAY last. It was one day she found him with his head I the sink of the butler's pantry crying over Sir Delvi changed ways that the well of compassion in her told her what her real feelings for Malachy were. " An', after all," she said, " sure, I might have ha^ own hotel an' received the Quality above in Dublin if listened to that man John ; but, sure, I couldn't live o' this place an' out o' sight o' ye all the days o' my life. The woods of Corofin are yet something of a marvel Though they have been reduced to about half their ol dimensions, they suffice to make an enchanted worl between Corofin and the reek of the coal-mines. " Beautiful as fairyland," said a visitor from tb outside world to Bertha one day. " And with the harps of fairyland all singing," she said. " Did you ever hear woods with so many voices ? " I don't think I ever did," said the visitor, listening curiously. " Is it from them you get your beautiful thoughts, Mrs. Roper ? " Bertha had become by this time a writer of beautiful poetry and delicate poetic prose. " Why, I believe," she said, " that they have taught me all I know, though I hear things from them I never can put into words. How immortally young they are ! " " And immortally happy," said the visitor. " The, seem to have trapped all the sunshine and all the birds. THE END UC SOUT HERNREGIONALUBRARVFAauTY lllllll li" Hi" ""' ' -7 rv -1 Q Q 1 3 University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. 01 APR 1 8 194