Repton was standing at his parlor window, anxiously awaiting his
friend's arrival, when the chaise with four posters came to the door.
“What have we here?” said the old lawyer to himself, as Barry assisted
a lady dressed in deep mourning to alight, and hurried out to receive
them.
“I have not come alone, Repton,” said the other. “I have brought my
daughter with me.” Before Repton could master his amazement at these
words, she had thrown back her veil, revealing the well-known features
of Kate Henderson.
“Is this possible?--is this really the case?” cried Repton, as he
grasped her hand between both his own. “Do I, indeed, see one I have so
long regarded and admired, as the child of my old friend?”
“Fate, that dealt me so many heavy blows of late, had a kindness in
reserve for me, after all,” said Barry. “I am not to be quite alone in
this world!”
“If _you_ be grateful, what ought not to be _my_ thankfulness?” said
Kate, tremulously.
“Leave us for a moment together, Kate,” said Barry; and taking Repton's
arm, he led him into an inner room.
“I have met with many a sore cut from fortune, Repton,” said he, in the
fierce tone that was most natural to him; “the nearest and dearest to
me not the last to treat me harshly. I need not tell you how I have been
requited in life; not, indeed, that I seek to acquit myself of my own
share of ill. My whole career has been a fault; it could not bring other
fruit than misery.” He paused, and for a while seemed laboring in strong
emotion. At last he went on:--
“When that girl was born--it was two years before I married--I intrusted
the charge of her to Henderson, who placed her with a sister
of his in Bruges. I made arrangements for her maintenance and
education,--liberally for one as poor as I was. I made but one condition
about her. It was that under no circumstances save actual want should
she ever be reduced to earn her own bread; but if the sad hour did come,
never--as had been her poor mothers fate--never as a governess! It was
in that fearful struggle of condition I first knew her. I continued,
year after year, to hear of her; remitting regularly the sums I
promised,--doubling, tripling them, when fortune favored me with a
chance prosperity. The letters spoke of her as well and happy, in humble
but sufficient circumstances, equally remote from privation as from the
seductions of a more exalted state. I insisted eagerly on my original
condition, and hoped some day to hear of her being married to
some honest but humble man. It was not often that I had time for
self-reproach; but when such seasons would beset me, I thought of this
girl, and her poor mother long dead and gone--But let me finish. While I
struggled--and it was often a hard struggle--to maintain my side of the
compact, selling at ruinous loss acquisitions it had cost me years of
labor to obtain, this fellow, this Henderson, was basely betraying the
trust I placed in him! The girl, for whose protection, whose safety
I was toiling, was thrown by him into the very world for which I had
distinctly excepted her; her talents, her accomplishments, her very
graces, farmed out and hired for his own profit! Launched into the very
sea where her own mother met shipwreck, she was a mere child, sent to
thread her way through the perils of the most dissipated society. Hear
her own account of it, Repton. Let _her_ tell you what is the tone of
that high life to which foreign nobility imparts its fascinations. Not
that I want to make invidious comparisons; our own country sends its
high tributaries to every vice of Europe! I know not what accident saved
her amidst this pollution. Some fancied theory of popular wrongs, she
thinks, gave her a kind of factitious heroism; elevating her, at least
to her own mind, above the frivolous corruptions around her. She was a
democrat, to rescue her from being worse.
“At last came a year of unusual pressure; my remittance was delayed, but
when sent was never acknowledged. From that hour out I never heard of
her. How she came into my brother's family, you yourself know. What was
her life there, she has told me! Not in any spirit of complaint,--nay,
she acknowledges to many kindnesses and much trust. Even my cold
sister-in-law showed traits for which I had not given her credit. I have
already forgotten her wrongs towards myself, in requital of her conduct
to this poor girl.”
“I'll spare you the scene with Henderson, Repton,” said he, after a long
pause. “When the fellow told me that the girl was the same I had seen
watching by another's sickbed, that she it was whose never-ceasing cares
had soothed the last hours of one dearer than herself, I never gave
another thought to him. I rushed out in search of her, to tell her
myself the tidings.”
“How did she hear it?” asked Repton, eagerly.
“More calmly than I could tell it. Her first words were, 'Thank God for
this, for I never could love that man I had called my father!'”
“She knows, then, every circumstance of her birth?”
“I told her everything. We know each other as well as though we had
lived under the same roof for years. She is my own child in every
sentiment and feeling. She is frank and fearless, Repton,--two qualities
that will do well enough in the wild savannahs of the New World, but
would be unmanageable gifts in the Old, and thither we are bound. I have
written to Liverpool about a ship, and we shall sail on Saturday.”
“How warmly do I sympathize in this your good fortune, Martin!” said
Repton. “She is a noble creature, and worthy of belonging to you.”
“I ask for nothing more, Repton,” said he, solemnly. “Fortune and
station, such as they exist here, I have no mind for! I'm too old now
to go to school about party tactics and politics; I'm too stubborn,
besides, to yield up a single conviction for the sake of unity with a
party,--so much for my unfitness for public life. As to private, I am
rough and untrained; the forms of society so pleasant to others would be
penalties to _me_. And then,” said he, rising, and drawing up his figure
to its full height, “I love the forest and the prairie; I glory in the
vastness of a landscape where the earth seems boundless as the sky, and
where, if I hunt down a buffalo-ox, after twenty miles of a chase,
I have neither a game-law nor a gamekeeper nor a charge of trespass
hanging over me.”
“There's some one knocking at the door,” said Repton, as he arose and
opened it.
“A thousand pardons for this interruption,” said Mas-singbred, in a low
and eager voice, “but I cannot keep my promise to you; I cannot defer my
journey to the West. I start to-night. Don't ask me the reasons. I 'll
be free enough to give them if they justify me.”
“But here is one who wishes to shake hands with you, Massingbred,” said
Repton, as he led him forward into the room.
“I hope you are going to keep your pledge with me, though,” said Barry.
“Have you forgotten you have promised to be my guest over the sea?”
“Ah,” said Jack, sighing, “I 've had many a day-dream of late!”
“The man's in love,” said Repton. “Nay, prisoner, you are not called on
to say what may criminate you. I 'll tell you what, Barry, you 'll do
the boy good service by taking him along with you. There 's a healthful
sincerity in the active life of the New World well fitted to dispel
illusions that take their rise in the indolent voluptuousness of the
Old. Carry him off then, I say; accept no excuses nor apologies. Send
him away to buy powder and shot, leather gaiters, and the rest of it.
When I saw him first myself, it was in the character of a poacher, and
he filled the part well. Ah! he is gone,” added he, perceiving that
Martin had just quitted the room. “Poor fellow, he is so full of his
present happiness,--the first gleam of real sunshine on a long day of
lowering gloom! He has just found a daughter,--an illegitimate one, but
worthy to be the rightful-born child to the first man in the land. The
discovery has carried him back twenty years of life, and freshened a
heart whose wells of feeling were all but dried up forever. If I mistake
not, you must have met her long ago at Cro' Martin.”
“Possibly. I have no recollection of it,” said Jack, musing.
“An ignoble confession, sir,” said Repton; “no less shocked should I
be were she to tell me she was uncertain if she had ever met Mr.
Massingbred. As Burke once remarked to me, 'Active intelligences,
like appropriate ingredients in chemistry, never meet without fresh
combinations.' It is then a shame to ignore such products. I 'd swear
that when you did meet you understood each other thoroughly; agreed
well,--ay, and what is more to the purpose, differed in the right places
too.”
“I'm certain we did,” said Jack, smiling, “though I'm ungrateful enough
to forget all about it.”
“Well,” said Martin, entering, “I have sent for another advocate to
plead my cause. My daughter will tell you, sir, that she, at least, is
not afraid to encounter the uncivilized glens beside the Orinoco. Come
in, Kate. You tell me that you and Mr. Massingbred are old friends.”
Massingbred started as he heard the name, looked up, and there stood
Kate before him, with her hand extended in welcome.
“Good heavens! what is this? Am I in a dream? Can this be real?” cried
Jack, pressing his hands to his temples, and trembling from head to foot
in the intensity of his anxiety.
“My father tells me of an invitation he has given you, Mr. Massingbred,”
said she, smiling faintly at his embarrassment, “and asks me to repeat
it; but I know far better than he does all that you would surrender by
exile from the great world wherein you are destined to eminence. The
great debater, the witty conversationalist, the smart reviewer, might
prove but a sorry trapper, and even a bad shot! I have my scruples,
then, about supporting a cause where my conscience does not go along
with me.”
“My head on't, but he 'll like the life well,” said Barry, half
impatiently.
“Am I to think that you will not ask me to be your guest?” said Jack, in
a whisper, only audible by Kate.
“I have not said so,” said she, in the same low tone. “Will you go
further, Kate,” muttered he, in tremulous eagerness, “and say, 'Come'?”
“Yes!” said she. “Come!”
[Illustration: 410]
“I accept!” cried Jack, rushing over, and grasping Martin's hands
between his own. “I 'm ready,--this hour, this instant, if you like it.”
“We find the prisoner guilty, my Lords,” said Repton; “but we recommend
him to mercy, as his manner on this occasion convinces us it is a first
offence.”
We have now done with the Martins of Cro' Martin. Should any of our
readers feel a curiosity as to the future fortunes of the estate, its
story, like that of many another Irish property, is written in the
Encumbered Estates Court. Captain Martin only grew wiser by the especial
experience of one class of difficulties. His indolent, easy disposition
and a taste for expense led him once again into embarrassments from
which there was but one issue,--the sale of his property. He has still,
however, a handsome subsistence remaining, and lives with Lady Dorothea,
notable and somewhat distinguished residents of a city on the Continent.
We cannot persuade ourselves that we have inspired interest for the
humbler characters of our piece. Nor dare we ask the reader to hear
more about Mrs. Cronan and her set, nor learn how Kilkieran fared in the
changes around it.
For Joseph Nelligan, however, we claim a parting word. He was the first
of an order of men who have contributed no small share to the great
social revolution of Ireland in late years. With talents fully equal
to the best in the opposite scale of party, and a character above all
reproach, he stood a rebuking witness to all the taunts and sarcasms
once indiscriminately levelled at his class; and, at the same time,
inspired his own party with the happy knowledge that there was a nobler
and more legitimate road to eminence than by factious display and
popular declamation.
We do not wish to inquire how far the one great blow to his
happiness--the disappointment of his early life--contributed to his
success by concentrating his ambition on his career. Certain is it,
no man achieved a higher or more rapid elevation, and old Dan lived
to receive at his board the Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench in the
person of his own son.
Poor Simmy Crow! for if we would forget him, he has taken care that
oblivion is not to be his fate. He has sent from the Rocky Mountains,
where he is now wandering with Barry Martin, some sketches of Indian
Life to the Irish Art Exhibition.
If it be a pleasure to trace in our friends the traits we have admired
in them in youth, and remark the embers of the fires that once wanned
their hearts, Simmy affords us this gratification, since his drawings
reveal the inspirations that first filled his early mind. The Chief
in his war-paint has a fac-simile likeness to his St. John in the
Wilderness; and as for the infant the squaw is bathing in the stream, we
can produce twelve respectable witnesses to depose that it is “Moses.”
We are much tempted to add a word about the Exiles themselves, but
we abstain. It is enough to say that all the attractive prospects of
ambition held out by friends, all the seductions of generous offers from
family, have never tempted them to return to the Old World; but that
they live on happily, far away from the jarring collisions of life, the
tranquil existence they had longed for.
THE END.