CONCLUSION.
It was September—the loveliest month of all the year in Ireland. On the
hillsides the ripe corn stood gathered into golden sheaves. In the
meadows—whence the small stacks had just been carried, to make the great
ricks that caused many an humble farmyard to look full and
wealthy—cattle browsed the rich pasture in a very ecstasy of content.
Clear and distinct the summits of the distant mountains could be seen
rising to meet the blue cloudless sky. Almost without a ripple, the
Atlantic washed gently into sheltered bays, over sandy and pebbly
shores. With as easy a flight as that of the sea-birds, the white-sailed
vessels in the offing cleft their homeward or outward way; whilst, on
the hill-tops, the purple heather and the yellow gorse mingled their
colours together, and wild thyme gave forth its perfume in solitudes
where there was no passer-by to inhale its fragrance.
On the top of a slight eminence, from which the ground, clad in a robe
of emerald green, sloped down to the water’s edge, stood a
lonely-looking house, which commanded a view—so its admirers said—of the
Atlantic straight away to Newfoundland,—two thousand miles of ocean
without a strip of earth; two thousand miles of water resting quiet and
silent, waiting for the stormy weather, when the billows should rise up
mountains high, lashing themselves like a lion in his fury, and rushing
white crested to devour their prey.
This house had been taken by Mrs. Hartley for the autumn, and to it, by
slow stages, Mrs. Brady and Grace Moffat were brought to regain health
and strength; the former with pale face, and hair cut close like a
boy’s; the latter weak as a child, after the mental excitement and
bodily fatigue she had gone through.
By the time Mrs. Brady was pronounced out of danger, she had begun to
droop; walking about Maryville—so Doctor Girvan said—like one more dead
than alive, till Mrs. Hartley came and put a stop to her exertions.
It was marvellous to see the change that energetic lady wrought in the
aspect of affairs. Before a fortnight was over she had discovered the
house I have mentioned, which the gentleman who owned was glad to let,
“in order to have the furniture taken care of,” was his way of putting
it; she had despatched Marrables, a cook, and her maid to have all in
readiness for the arrival of the invalids; she had disposed of Nettie’s
children by sending them to a lady of limited income, who was
“thankful,” so she said, “to have it in her power to do anything to
oblige dear Mrs. Hartley and, finally, she had established herself and
party at that precise part of the coast where Doctor Murney stated the
air would be most bracing for Miss Moffat.
“Of course,” said Mrs. Hartley to Nettie, “it does not matter to you
where we go, provided we leave Maryville.”
“No,” Mrs. Brady answered; and that morning they drove down the gloomy
avenue, and away from the gates of that house which had proved so
wretched to her. She waved her hand back towards it with a gesture of
farewell.
“Good-bye, Maryville,” she said; “I may see you in my dreams, but never
again with my waking eyes, I trust.”
They had been but a few days in their new abode. Nettie, seated near one
of the windows, was looking out over the sea; Mrs. Hartley was reading
the ‘Times;’ Jet, apparently under the impression there was a fire in
the grate, monopolized the hearthrug; and Grace was lying on a sofa,
wondering when she should be strong enough to bathe, and walk, and climb
to the top of one particular headland she could not lift her eyes
without seeing.
“I think I should get well at once if I could only lie for a few hours
amongst the heather, watching the bees as they hum in and out amongst
the thyme,” she said at last.
“We will get some of the fishermen to carry you up to the top of the
highest hill we can find, in a creel,” suggested Mrs. Brady.
“I wish we could hear of a quiet pony she could ride,” said Mrs.
Hartley, in whose eyes the excursion proposed by Nettie did not find
favour.
“I don’t think a quiet pony was an animal Gracie ever much appreciated,”
retorted Mrs. Brady.
“I am very certain it will be a considerable time before she is strong
enough to manage an unquiet one,” answered Mrs. Hartley.
“You have never told me,” said Miss Moffat, turning towards the last
speaker, “how you heard I was ill.”
“I heard you were ill,” said Mrs. Hartley, taking off her eye-glasses
and looking over the ‘Times’ at her questioner, “from John Riley. He
said if I did not soon come over to Maryville I should hear shortly you
were dead. I should have mentioned that fact before, but thought you
were probably getting as much tired of hearing Mr. Riley’s name
mentioned as I was myself.”
“I never intend to speak of John again,” remarked Nettie. “I thought,
Mrs. Hartley, you were his friend; but I am sorry to find I was
mistaken.”
“My dear,” said Mrs. Hartley calmly, “I hope I am Mr. Riley’s friend,
but still I can imagine many things more interesting and amusing than to
hear his virtues recited every hour in the twenty-four.”
“But you do not know all, or half! Neither of you know how good he has
been to me,” exclaimed Nettie.
“If we do not we must be exceedingly dull of apprehension,” replied Mrs.
Hartley—at which Grace laughed, and remarked if they did not know, it
was certainly not for want of being told.
“I never expected anything better from you,” said Mrs. Brady, turning
quickly towards her; “you never did appreciate John, and it seems as if
you never would.”
“Well, do not let us lose our tempers about him,” entreated Mrs.
Hartley, “more particularly as he is coming here next week.”
“Is he coming?” asked Grace.
“Yes, to give us what I earnestly hope may prove the conclusion of the
Scott romance. It seems to me that since I set foot in Ireland I have
heard of nothing but the Scotts, the Glendares, the Rileys, the Hanlons,
and the Bradys; interesting people all of them, no doubt, but I confess
I like an occasional change of person and incident.”
“So do I,” said Grace. “Much as I like the Scotts, I shall be very glad
when I hear they all are on their way to America.”
“As if they could not have gone there as well at first as at last,”
observed Mrs. Hartley.
“I was willing for them to stay on at the Castle Farm, but Amos would
not hear of it,” explained Mrs. Brady.
“The moment, in fact, he saw he could go the way he wished without
opposition, all desire to do so ceased,” remarked Mrs. Hartley.
“Still, I think it very natural he should wish to leave Ireland,” said
Grace.
“Yes, but would not it have been equally natural for him to wish the
same thing eighteen months ago?”
“I cannot see it exactly,” said Scott’s apologist; and disdaining
further argument, Mrs. Hartley resumed her perusal of the ‘Times.’
From the foregoing conversation it will be inferred, and rightly, that
influence had been at work in the Scott and Hanlon affair. The former
was already at liberty, the latter beyond the reach of justice; at
least, so far away that justice might be excused for not finding him.
Nettie had made her statement, but this was so managed that those parts
of the story which might have compromised her were kept in the
background, and as no one wished to bring Mr. Hanlon to trial, it was
extremely unlikely they would ever be elicited in Court.
To the wretched parents at Hanlon’s-Town John Riley had broken the news
himself. He had taken all care and trouble off Nettie, and she clung to
him in her distress as a child might have done.
To him, nothing in Ireland seemed so unreal as the sight of Nettie in
her widow’s cap and black gown trimmed heavily with crape to express her
mourning for the worst man and the worst husband, as Mr. Riley believed,
who ever existed.
About Nettie herself, however, there was no pretence.
“I cannot say I am sorry,” she confessed; “I cannot feel sorry. I wish I
could, for oh! John, with all my heart and soul I loved him when I was a
girl.”
“Poor Nettie! poor little woman! I never repented but once making him
marry you,” he answered, stroking her thin face, “and that has been ever
since.”
“You did it for the best,” she answered, “and in the worst of my trouble
I never doubted that.”
Why was it, Grace Moffat asked herself, that when she saw the cousins
talking confidentially together—saw John carry Nettie in her first
convalescence from room to room, her head resting on his shoulder, her
arm thrown around his neck in her helpless weakness—a pain went through
her heart such as had never struck it before?
“Am I jealous?” she thought, with an uneasy laugh, “jealous of John!
Absurd! Am I jealous of seeing another woman prove more attractive than
myself? Yes, my dear Grace, that is what is the matter. You are growing
old, and have got lean and ugly, and you cannot hear that your friend
should, notwithstanding the troubles she has passed through, keep her
good looks whilst you are losing yours. That is the secret of all this
dissatisfaction. Time was when you would have laughed such an idea to
scorn, in the days
“When I was young,
And had suitors, a full score.”
Meanwhile Mrs. Hartley looked on, but said nothing; not to Nettie, not
to John, not to Grace did she speak on the subject.
Only to Lord Ardmorne did she open her mind.
“I think if we have patience, my lord,” she remarked uttering her
oracle, “we shall see what we shall see.”
At which his lordship smiled with a gravity befitting his station and
his political opinions, and said, he “earnestly hoped so.”
John Riley came as Mrs. Hartley said he would. He had seen the Scotts
off. He went to Liverpool for the purpose. Amos was disturbed in his
mind because at the last minute Mr. Moody had informed him there were no
long-handled spades to be had in America, and he wished he had taken
half-a-dozen out with him.
Mrs. Scott bade Mr. Riley say, if it cost twenty pounds, she would send
the first cheese she made in the new country to Miss Grace. They had
only one regret—that they could not take Reuben’s grave with them.
“When I promised to put up a headstone and have the grass well kept,”
added Mr. Riley, “they began to cry; but they were tears of happiness,
so Mrs. Scott assured me.”
Before Mr. Riley left, the quiet pony Mrs. Hartley had wished for was
found; and Grace, taken by many devious paths to the top of a very high
hill, where a throne was made for her amongst the purple heather, and
the bees, as if to do her honour, never ceased humming in and out
amongst the fragrant thyme.
But it was not there or then, with Nettie flitting round and about them,
that John Riley spoke.
He waited till the leaves on the trees encircling Woodbrook had put on
their October tints—till Grace was almost strong again—till it had been
decided Nettie and her children were to go to England with Mrs. Hartley,
and inhabit a cottage portly Mr. Marrables was despatched to inspect and
of which he condescended to approve,—waited till the purple had faded
from the heather and the Atlantic was beginning its winter wail of woe;
then as they walked together by the sea, he said,—
“Lord Ardmorne has shown me how to save Woodbrook. It will require
years—energy and hard work—but it may be done. When Mr. Brady found he
could not oust out my father, he wrote to Lord Ardmorne who would, he
concluded, purchase the estate, offering to tell him, for a share in the
profits, how its value might be doubled.
“To this his lordship wrote, declining all communication with him on any
subject whatsoever.
“Since Mr. Brady’s death, it has been ascertained what his scheme was,
and Lord Ardmorne proposes I should take Woodbrook into my own hands,
paying my father a certain sum sufficient to enable him, my mother, and
the girls, to live comfortably, and myself carry out Mr. Brady’s design.
He has also offered me the agency of all his Irish estates, as Mr.
Walshe has been given over by the doctors.”
“And you will accept the agency and do as he so kindly suggests, of
course?” said Grace, wondering why he paused so abruptly.
“It is not of course,” he answered; “for the decision rests with you.”
“With me,” she repeated; “what can I have to do with the matter?”
“Everything,” he said. “Grace, once before you refused me, and I went to
India; if you refuse me again, I cannot stay in Ireland. With you I
could accomplish what I have said—without you success would be
worthless. If you say stay, I stay. If you say go, I go; and when once
my father dies there will never be a Riley at Woodbrook again.”
She hesitated and turned her head away, then with eyes still averted put
out her hand timidly and shyly.
“Am I to stay?” he asked, taking it in both of his.
And she whispered “Yes.”
“I have heard such a wonderful piece of news” said Mrs. Hartley, as John
Riley and Grace entered the house together.
“What is it?” asked the former, thinking it could not be one-half so
wonderful as the piece of news he had to tell; but with which, to do the
lady’s discrimination justice, Mrs. Hartley was already _au fait_.
“Cecil, Earl of Glendare is really married, and Mr. Robert Somerford’s
chances of succeeding to the title are—_nil_. He is so disgusted at the
turn affairs have taken that he has threatened to enlist if his mother
and Mr. Dillwyn do not make some suitable provision for him.”
“He ought to have gone to work and made a suitable provision for himself
years ago,” remarked Grace, running upstairs to take off her bonnet.
“She has promised to marry you?” said Mrs. Hartley.
“She has, indeed!”
It was quite true, and yet he felt scarcely able to realize to himself
that the waves which once sung so sad a requiem to the hopes of his
early manhood, had now murmured an accompaniment to the sweetest melody
he ever heard proceed from human lips.
“Yes.” That was the beginning and middle and end of the song; but it
never ceased to gladden him through all the years that followed. And
when John Riley forgets the sweet music he heard where the Atlantic
washes that northern shore—the music which has made his life one long
continuous harmony—he will have forgotten every sound of earth.
THE END.
PRINTED BY TAYLOR AND CO.,
LITTLE QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.