Having already acquainted my reader with the source from which I
have derived all these materials of my family history, he will not be
surprised to learn that MacNaghten's imprisonment leaves a blank in this
part of my narrative. All that I know, indeed, of these early years can
be told in a few lines. My mother repaired with me to the cottage in
the Killeries, to which also came De Gabriac shortly after, followed
by Polly Fagan, whose affection for my mother now exhibited itself most
remarkably. Not vainly endeavoring to dam up the current of a grief that
would flow on, she tried to interest my mother in ways and by pursuits
which were totally new to her, and, consequently, not coupled with
painful recollections. She taught her to visit the poor in their cabins;
to see them, in the hard struggle of their poverty, stoutly confronting
fortune day by day, carrying the weary load of adversity, without one
hope as to the time when they might cease to labor and be at rest. These
rambles through wild and unvisited tracts rewarded them well in the
grand and glorious objects of scenery with which they became acquainted.
It was everlasting discovery,--now of some land-locked little bay,
half-hid among its cliffs; now some lone island, with its one family for
inhabitants; or now some picturesque bit of inland scenery, with wood
and mountain and waving grass. Occasionally, too, they ventured out to
sea, either to creep along the coast, and peep into the rocky caverns
with which it is perforated, or they would set sail for the distant
islands of Arran,--bleak and desolate spots on the wide, wild ocean. The
charms of landscape in its grandest features were, however, the least of
the benefits these excursions conferred, at least on my poor mother. She
learned then to see and to feel that the sorrows of life fall uniformly;
that few, indeed, are singled out for especial suffering; and that
the load is apportioned to the strength that is to bear it. She saw,
besides, how the hard necessities of existence formed in themselves
a barrier against the wearing influence of grief: the hands that must
labor for daily bread are not wrung in the wild transports of misery!
It is the law of human nature, and the claims of the living are the
counterpoise to the memory of the dead.
Neither her early education nor her habits disposed her to any exertion.
All her ideas of life were circumscribed within the limits of certain
pleasures and enjoyments. From her infancy she had never known any other
care than how to make time pass swiftly and agreeably: now she had to
learn the more rewarding lesson that life can be profitably passed;
and to this task she addressed herself, I believe, with a hearty
earnestness.
It is only by estimating the change which took place in her character at
this time, and which marked it during the short remainder of her life,
that I am led to speculate upon the cause. Her days were passed in
intercourse with the peasantry, whom, at last, she began to understand,
through all the difficulties of their strange temperament and all the
eccentricities of their habits. There was not a cabin for miles round,
with every one of whose inmates she was not acquainted, and of whose
joys and sorrows, whose hopes and cares, she was not in some shape the
participator.
When the sea was too rough and the weather too wild for the fishermen to
venture out, she was constantly amongst them with some material for home
occupation; and it was curious to see those fingers, which had never
been used to harder toil than the mock labor of the embroidery frame,
ingeniously moving through the mazes of a fishing-net, while in her
foreign English she would relate some story of her Breton countrymen,
certain to interest those who sat admiringly around her.
How singular it is that the experience and the habits which are destined
to guide us through the great trials of life are frequently acquired in
scenes and amongst people the very opposite to those wherein the lesson
is to be profitable! And yet so it was. In exhorting and cheering others
she elevated the tone of her own mind; in suggesting exertion to the
faint-hearted, she imbibed courage herself; and when teaching them to be
of good cheer, she spoke the language of encouragement to herself.
Her bodily health, too, kept pace with her mental. She who rarely had
ventured out if the weather merely were threatening, could now face the
stormiest seasons of that wild west. The darkest day of winter would see
her abroad, braving with an almost childish excitement the beating
rain and wind, or fighting onward to some lone cabin amongst the hills,
through sleet and snowdrift, undeterred!
I have heard but little of the life they led within doors, but I believe
that the evenings were passed pleasantly with books and conversation,
De Gabriac reading aloud, while my mother and Polly worked; and thus the
winter glided easily over, and spring was now approaching ere they were
well aware that so many months had gone by. If my mother wondered at
times why they never heard from MacNaghten, De Gabriac and Polly,
who were in the secret for his mishap, would frame various excuses
to account for his silence. Meanwhile they heard that such was the
complication of the law proceedings which concerned the estate, so
intricate the questions, and so puzzling, that years might pass in
litigation ere any decision could be come to. A reserved offer came
at this time from Sir Carew O'Moore to settle some small annuity on my
mother if she would relinquish all claim to the estate in his favor; but
Fagan hesitated to acquaint her with a proposal which he well knew
she would reject, and the very fact of which must be an insult to her
feelings. This the Grinder commented on in a letter to his daughter,
while he also avowed that as he saw no prospect of anything favorable to
my mother likely to issue from the course of law, he must press upon her
the necessity of her seeking an asylum in her own country and amongst
her own friends.
I have never been able to ascertain why my mother herself did not at
once determine on returning to France after my father's death. Perhaps
the altered circumstances of her fortune deterred her. There might have
been reasons, perhaps, on the score of her birth. My impression is, that
De Gabriac had quitted the Continent overwhelmed with debt, and dared
not return there, and that, as his counsels greatly swayed her, she was
influenced by whatever arguments he adduced.
So little was my mother acquainted with the details of her altered
condition in life, that she still believed a small but secure income
remained to her; and it was only by a few lines addressed to her, and
inclosed in a letter to Polly, that she was at length brought to see
that she was actually without means of support for a single day, and
that hitherto she had been a dependent on Fagan's kindness for a home.
I believe that this communication was not made with any harshness or
want of feeling; on the contrary, that it was conveyed with whatever
delicacy the writer could summon to so ungracious a task. It is more
than probable, besides, that Fagan would not have made it at all, or
at least not for a considerable time, had he not at that moment been
involved in an angry correspondence with Polly, who had flatly refused
to quit my mother and return home. Irritated at this, and driven to
extremities, he had determined in this last course to accomplish his
object.
My mother was so much overwhelmed by the tidings that she thought she
could not have understood them aright, and hastened to Polly's room,
with the letter in her hand.
“Tell me,” cried she, “what this means. Is it possible--can it be
true--that I am actually a beggar?”
Polly read the lines with a flashing eye and heightened color, but never
uttered a word.
“Speak, Polly, dearest, and relieve me of this terrible fear, if you
can,” cried my mother, passionately.
“I understand what this means,” said Polly, crushing the note in her
hand; “this is a question that requires explanation. You must leave it
to me. I'll go up to town this evening, and before the end of the week
I 'll be back with you. My father is mistaken,--that's all; and you have
misunderstood him!”
And thus planning, and excusing and contradicting herself, she at last
succeeded in allaying my mother's fears and assuring her that it was a
mere misapprehension, and that a few days would suffice to rectify it.
My mother insisted that Polly should not travel alone, and that Gabriac
should be her companion,--an arrangement to which she acceded with
comparative ease and willingness. Had Polly Fagan and Gabriac merely met
as people meet in society, with no other opportunities of knowing each
other than are presented by the ordinary intercourse with the world,
the great likelihood is that they should have conceived for each other
a rooted dislike. There was scarcely one single subject on which they
thought in common. They differed in ideas of country and people. Their
tastes, their prejudices, their ambitions, all took opposite directions;
and yet such is the effect of intimacy, such the consequence of daily,
hourly communion, that each not only learned to tolerate, but even
to imbibe, some of the notions of the other; and an imperceptible
compromise was at length entered into, by Which individuality became
tempered down, and even the broad traits of nationality almost effaced.
The Count came to perceive that what he had at first regarded as coarse
and inelegant was in reality the evidence of only a bold and vigorous
spirit, exulting in its own energy, and confident of its power; and
Polly began to recognize that remarkable truth, that a coxcomb need
not necessarily be a coward, and that the most excessive puppyism
can consort with even a chivalrous courage and daring. Of these
qualities--the very first in Polly's estimation--he had given several
proofs in their adventures by sea and land, and under circumstances,
too, where the very novelty of the peril to be surmounted might have
suggested some fear.
There is a generous impulse usually to exalt in our esteem those whom we
had once held cheaply, when on nearer intimacy we discover that we had
wronged them. We feel as if there was a debt of reparation due to them,
and that we are unjust till we have acquitted it. It may chance that now
and then this honorable sentiment may carry us beyond reasonable bounds,
and that we are disposed to accord even more than is due to them.
I have no means of knowing if such were the case here: I can but surmise
from other circumstances the causes which were in operation. It is
enough, however, if I state that long before Gabriac had passed the
limit of admiration for Polly, she had conceived for him a strong
sentiment of love; and while he was merely exerting those qualities
which are amongst the common gifts of his class and his country, she
was becoming impressed with the notion of his vast superiority to all
of those she had ever met in society. It must be taken into account that
his manner towards her evinced a degree of respect and devotion which,
though not overpassing the usual observance of good manners in France,
contrasted very favorably with the kind of notice bestowed by country
gentlemen upon “the Grinder's daughter.” Those terrible traditions of
exorbitant interest, those fatal compacts with usury, that had made
Fagan's name so dreadfully notorious in Ireland, were all unknown to
Gabriac. He only saw in Polly a very handsome girl, of a far more than
common amount of intelligence, and with a spirit daringly ambitious. As
the favored friend and companion of his cousin, he took it for granted
that the peculiar customs of Ireland admitted such intimacies between
those socially unequal, and that there was nothing strange or unusual in
seeing her where she was. He therefore paid her every attention he
would have bestowed on the most high-born damsel of his own court; he
exhibited that deference which his own language denominated homage; and,
in fact, long before he had touched her affections, he had flattered
her pride and self-love by a courtesy to which she had never, in all her
intercourse with the world, been habituated.
Perhaps my reader needs not one-half of the explanation to surmise
why two young people--both good-looking, both attractive, and both
idle--should, in the solitude of a country cottage, fall in love
with each other. That they did so, at all events,--she first, and he
afterwards,--is, however, the fact; and now, by the simple-hearted
arrangement of my poor mother,--whose thoughts had never taken in such
a casualty,--were they to set off together as fellow-travellers for
Dublin. So far, indeed, from even suspecting such a possibility, it
was only a few days previously that she had been deploring to Polly her
cousin's fickleness in breaking off his proposed marriage in France, on
the mere ground that his absence must necessarily have weakened the ties
that bound him to his betrothed What secret hopes the revelation may
have suggested to Polly's mind is matter that I cannot even speculate
on.
It was with a heavy heart my poor mother saw them drive from the door,
and came back to sit down in solitude beside the cradle of her baby. It
was a dark and rainy day of winter; the beating of the waves against
the rocky shore, and the wailing winds, made sad chorus together; and
without, as well as within, all was cheerless and depressing. Dark and
gloomy as was the landscape, it was to the full as bright as the scene
within her own heart; for now that she began to arrange facts and
circumstances together, and to draw inferences from them, she saw that
nothing but ruin lay before her. The very expressions of Fagan's letter,
so opposite to the almost submissive courtesy of former times, showed
her that he no longer hesitated to declare her the dependent on his
bounty. “And yet,” cried she, aloud, “are these the boasted laws of
England? Is the widow left to starve?--is the orphan left houseless,
except some formality or other be gone through? To whom descends the
heritage of the father, while the son is still living?” From these
thoughts, which no ingenuity of hers could pierce, she turned to others
not less depressing. What had become of all those who once called
themselves her husband's friends? She, it is true, had herself lived
estranged and retired from the world; but Walter was everywhere,--all
knew him, all professed to love him. Bitter as ingratitude will ever
seem, all its poignancy is nothing compared to the smart it inflicts
when practised towards those who have gone from us forever; we feel then
as though treachery had been added to the wrong. “Oh!” cried she, in her
anguish, “how have they repaid him whose heart and hand were ever open
to them!” A flood of recollections, long dammed up by the habits of her
daily life, and the little cares by which she was environed, now swept
through her mind, and from her infancy and her childhood, in all its
luxurious splendor, to her present destitution, each passage of her
existence seemed revealed before her. The solitude of the lonely cottage
suggesting such utter desolation, and the wild and storm-lashed scene
without adding its influence to her depression, she sat for some time
still and unmoved, like one entranced; and then, springing to her feet,
she rushed out into the beating rain, glad to exchange the conflict of
the storm for that more terrible war that waged within her.
Like one flying from some terrific enemy, she ran with all her speed
towards the shore. The sea was now breaking over the rocks with
tremendous force, and sending vast clouds of spray high into the air,
while whole sheets of foam were wildly tossed about by the wind. Through
these she struggled on; now stumbling or falling, as her tender feet
yielded to the sharp rocks, till she reached a little promontory over
the sea, on which the waves struck with all their force; and there, with
streaming hair and dripping garments, she sat braving the hurricane,
and, in a wild paroxysm of imagined heroism, daring fortune to her
worst.
Physical ills are as nothing to those that make the heart their
dwelling-place; and to her there seemed an unspeakable relief in the
thundering crash of the storm, as compared with the desolate silence of
her lonely house.
[Illustration: Self-same spot]
The whole of that day saw her on the self-same spot; and there was she
discovered at nightfall by some fishermen, propped up in a crevice of
the rock, but cold, and scarcely conscious. They all knew her well, and
with the tenderest care they carried her to her cottage. Even before
they reached it, her mind began to wander, and wild and incoherent
words dropped from her. That same night she was seized with fever; the
benevolent but simple people about her knew not what to do; the nearest
medical aid was many miles off; and when it did arrive, on the following
morning, the malady had already attacked the brain.
The same sad, short series of events so many have witnessed, so many
have stood by, with breaking hearts, now occurred. To wild delirium,
with all its terrible excesses, succeeded the almost more dreadful
stupor; and to that again the brief lucid moment of fast-ebbing life;
and then came the sleep that knows no waking--and my mother was at rest!