Una's Love
"I have been with Father Denis," said De Lacy, next day, "and he will
come to-morrow; and, thank Heaven! you may both make your confession and
hear mass, and my mind will be at rest; and you'll find poor Una happier
and more like herself."
But 'tween cup and lip there's many a slip. The priest was not destined
to hear poor Una's shrift. When she bid her sister goodnight she looked
on her with her large, cold, wild eyes, till something of her old human
affections seemed to gather there, and they slowly filled with tears,
which dropped one after the other on her homely dress as she gazed in
her sister's face.
Alice, delighted, sprang up, and clasped her arms about her neck. "My
own darling treasure,'tis all over; you love your poor Alice again, and
will be happier than ever."
But while she held her in her embrace Una's eyes were turned towards the
window, and her lips apart, and Alice felt instinctively that her
thoughts were already far away.
"Hark!--listen!--hush!" and Una, with her delighted gaze fixed, as if
she saw far away beyond the castle wall, the trees, the glen, and the
night's dark curtain, held her hand raised near her ear, and waved her
head slightly in time, as it seemed, to music that reached not Alice's
ear, and smiled her strange pleased smile, and then the smile slowly
faded away, leaving that sly suspicious light behind it which somehow
scared her sister with an uncertain sense of danger; and she sang in
tones so sweet and low that it seemed but a reverie of a song,
recalling, as Alice fancied, the strain to which she had just listened
in that strange ecstasy, the plaintive and beautiful Irish ballad,
"Shule, shule, shule, aroon," the midnight summons of the outlawed Irish
soldier to his darling to follow him.
Alice had slept little the night before. She was now overpowered with
fatigue; and leaving her candle burning by her bedside, she fell into a
deep sleep. From this she awoke suddenly, and completely, as will
sometimes happen without any apparent cause, and she saw Una come into
the room. She had a little purse of embroidery--her own work--in her
hand; and she stole lightly to the bedside, with her peculiar oblique
smile, and evidently thinking that her sister was asleep.
Alice was thrilled with a strange terror, and did not speak or move; and
her sister slipped her hand softly under her bolster, and withdrew it.
Then Una stood for while by the hearth, and stretched her hand up to the
mantelpiece, from which she took a little bit of chalk, and Alice
thought she saw her place it in the fingers of a long yellow hand that
was stealthily introduced from her own chamber-door to receive it; and
Una paused in the dark recess of the door, and smiled over her shoulder
toward her sister, and then glided into her room, closing the doors.
Almost freezing with terror, Alice rose and glided after her, and stood
in her chamber, screaming----
"Una, Una, in heaven's name what troubles you?"
But Una seemed to have been sound asleep in her bed, and raised herself
with a start, and looking upon her with a peevish surprise, said----
"What does Alice seek here?"
"You were in my room, Una, dear; you seem disturbed and troubled."
"Dreams, Alice. My dreams crossing your brain; only dreams--dreams. Get
you to bed, and sleep."
And to bed she went, but _not_ to sleep. She lay awake more than an
hour; and then Una emerged once more from her room. This time she was
fully dressed, and had her cloak and thick shoes on, as their rattle on
the floor plainly discovered. She had a little bundle tied up in a
handkerchief in her hand, and her hood was drawn about her head; and
thus equipped, as it seemed, for a journey, she came and stood at the
foot of Alice's bed, and stared on her with a look so soulless and
terrible that her senses almost forsook her. Then she turned and went
back into her own chamber.
She may have returned; but Alice thought not--at least she did not see
her. But she lay in great excitement and perturbation; and was
terrified, about an hour later, by a knock at her chamber door--not that
opening into Una's room, but upon the little passage from the stone
screw staircase. She sprang from her bed; but the door was secured on
the inside, and she felt relieved. The knock was repeated, and she heard
some one laughing softly on the outside.
The morning came at last; that dreadful night was over. But Una! Where
was Una?
Alice never saw her more. On the head of her empty bed were traced in
chalk the words--Ultor De Lacy, Ultor O'Donnell. And Alice found beneath
her own pillow the little purse of embroidery she had seen in Una's
hand. It was her little parting token, and bore the simple
legend--"Una's love!"
De Lacy's rage and horror were boundless. He charged the priest, in
frantic language, with having exposed his child, by his cowardice and
neglect, to the machinations of the Fiend, and raved and blasphemed like
a man demented.
It is said that he procured a solemn exorcism to be performed, in the
hope of disenthralling and recovering his daughter. Several times, it is
alleged, she was seen by the old servants. Once on a sweet summer
morning, in the window of the tower, she was perceived combing her
beautiful golden tresses, and holding a little mirror in her hand; and
first, when she saw herself discovered, she looked affrighted, and then
smiled, her slanting, cunning smile. Sometimes, too, in the glen, by
moonlight, it was said belated villagers had met her, always startled
first, and then smiling, generally singing snatches of old Irish
ballads, that seemed to bear a sort of dim resemblance to her melancholy
fate. The apparition has long ceased. But it is said that now and again,
perhaps once in two or three years, late on a summer night, you may
hear--but faint and far away in the recesses of the glen--the sweet, sad
notes of Una's voice, singing those plaintive melodies. This, too, of
course, in time will cease, and all be forgotten.