Cro' Martin was replete with every comfort and luxury. All its
arrangements betokened wealth; not a single appliance of ease or
enjoyment but was to be found within its well-ordered walls; and yet
there was one want which seemed to mar all, and infuse a sense of almost
dreary coldness over everything, and this was--the absence of a numerous
family, the assemblage of various ages, which gives to a home its
peculiar interest, embodying the hopes and fears and passions and
motives of manhood, in every stage of existence, making up that little
world within doors which emblematizes the great one without; but, with
this singular advantage, of its being bound up in one holy sentiment of
mutual love and affection.
This charm is it which gives the whole vitality to home,--this mingling
of the temperaments of youth and manhood and deep age, blending hopes
of the future with memories of the past, and making of every heart
a portion of one human biography, in which many are sharers. To the
stranger, who came to see the house and its gorgeous decorations,
all seemed suggestive of habitable enjoyment. The vast drawing-rooms
appeared as if only waiting for a splendid company; the dark wainscoted
dining-room, with its noble fireplace of gigantic dimensions, looked the
very scene where hospitable conviviality might be enacted; the library,
calm, quiet, and secluded, seemed a spot wherein a student might have
passed a life long. Even in the views that presented themselves at the
several windows, there was a certain appropriateness to the character of
the room, and the same importunate question still arose to one's mind:
Who is there to enjoy all this? What words of glad welcome echo through
this vaulted hall, what happy daughter sings through these gilded
chambers, where is the social pleasantry that circles the blazing fire
of the ample hearth? Alas! all was sombre, splendid, and dreary. No,
we are wrong!--not all! There was one corner of this great house where
cheerfulness was the very type of comfort. It was a small and not lofty
room, whose two windows projected beyond the walls, giving a wide view
over the swelling landscape for miles of space. Here the furniture was
of the most ordinary kind, but scrupulously neat and well kept. The
chairs--there were but four of them--all with arms and deep cushions;
the walnut table a perfect mirror of polish; the cloth curtains,
that closed the windows and concealed the door, massive and
heavy-folded,--all breathed of snugness; while the screen that
surrounded the fire had other perfections than those of comfortable
seclusion, containing a most strange collection of the caricatures of
the time, and the period before the Union. It is but necessary to add
that this was Mrs. Broon's apartment,--the snug chamber where old Catty
enjoyed herself, after the fatigues and duties of the day. Here now
she sat at tea, beside a cheerful fire, the hissing kettle on the hob
harmonizing pleasantly with the happy purring of an enormous cat, who
sat winking at the blaze; and while evidently inconvenienced by the
heat, lacking energy to retreat from it. Catty had just obtained the
newspaper,--as the master had gone to dinner,--and was really about to
enjoy a comfortable evening. Far from devoid of social qualities, or a
liking for companionship, she still lived almost entirely to herself,
the other servants being chiefly English, whose habits and ways were all
strange to her, and all whose associations were widely different from
her own. Catty Broon had thus obtained a reputation for unsociability
which she by no means deserved, but to which, it must be owned, she
was totally indifferent. In fact, if _they_ deemed _her_ morose and
disagreeable, _she_, in turn, held _them_ still more cheaply, calling
them a set of lazy devils that “were only in each other's way,” and
“half of them not worth their salt.”
Catty had also survived her generation; all her friends of former
years had either died or emigrated, and except two or three of the
farm-servants, none of the “ould stock,” as she called them, were in
existence. This brief explanation will show that Catty's comparative
isolation was not entirely a matter of choice. If a sense of loneliness
did now and then cross her mind, she never suffered it to dwell there,
but chased away the unpleasant thought by some active duty; or if
the season of that were over, by the amusing columns of the
“Intelligence,”--a journal which realized to Mrs. Broon's conceptions
the very highest order of literary merit.
Catty did not take much interest in politics; she had a vague, dreamy
kind of notion that the game of party was a kind of disreputable
gambling, and Parliament itself little better than a “Hell,” frequented
by very indifferent company. Indeed, she often said it would be “well
for us if there was no politics, and maybe then, there would be no taxes
either.” The news she liked was the price of farming-stock at fairs and
markets,--what Mr. Hynes got for his “top lot” of hoggets, and what Tom
Healey paid for the “finest heifers ever seen on the fair-green.”
These, and the accidents--a deeply interesting column--were her peculiar
tastes; and her memory was stored with every casualty, by sea, fire, and
violence, that had graced the “Intelligence” for forty years back; in
truth they formed the stations of her chronology, and she would refer
to events as having occurred the same year that Joe Ryan was hanged, or
“the very Christmas that Hogan fired at Captain Crossley.” An inundation
of great extent also figured in these memorabilia, and was constantly
referred to, by her saying, “This or that happened the year after the
Flood,” suggesting a rather startling impression as to her longevity.
On the evening we now refer to, the newspaper was more than commonly
adorned with these incidents. Public news having failed, private
calamities were invoked to supply the place. Catty was, therefore,
fortunate. There was something, too, not altogether unpleasant in the
whistling storm that raged without, and the heavy plashing of the rain
as it beat upon the window-panes. Without imputing to her, as would be
most unjust, the slightest touch of ill-nature, she felt a heightened
sense of her own snugness as she drew closer to the bright hearth, while
she read of “a dreadful gale in the Bay of Biscay.”
It was just in the most exciting portion of the description that her
door was rudely opened, and the heavy curtain dashed aside with a daring
hand; and Catty, startled by the sudden interruption, called angrily
out,--
“Who's there?--who are ye at all?”
“Can't you guess, Catty?” cried out a pleasant voice. “Don't you know
that there's only one in this house here who 'd dare to enter in such a
fashion?”
“Oh, Miss Mary, is it you? And, blessed Virgin, what a state ye 're
in!” cried she, as she gazed at the young girl, who, throwing away her
riding-hat, wrung out the rain from her long and silky hair, while she
laughed merrily at old Catty's dismayed countenance.
“Why, where in the world were you--what happened you, darling?” said
Catty, as she assisted her to remove the dripping costume.
“I was at the Wood, Catty, and up to the quarries, and round by
Cronebawn, and then, seeing a storm gathering, I thought I 'd turn
homeward, but one of Kit Sullivan's children--my little godchild, you
know--detained me to hear him recite some verses he had learned for my
birthday; and, what with one thing and another, it was pitch dark when I
reached the 'New Cut,' and then, to my annoyance, I found the bridge had
just been carried away--there, Catty, now for a pair of your own
comfortable slippers--and, as I was saying to you, there was no bridge!”
“The bridge gone!” exclaimed Catty, in horror.
“All Tom Healey's fault. I told him that the arch had not span enough,
and that the buttresses would never stand the first heavy fall of rain
from the mountains, and there 's not a vestige of them now!”
“And what did you do?”
“I rode for the Low Meadows, Catty, with all speed. I knew that the
river, not being confined there between narrow banks, and spreading over
a wide surface, couldn't be very deep. Nor was it. It never touched the
girths but once, when we got into a hole. But she is such a rare good
beast, that little Sorrel; she dashed through everything, and I don't
think I took forty minutes from Kane's Mill to this door, though I never
saw a spot of the road all the while, except when the lightning showed
it. There now, like a good old dear, don't wring your hands and say,
'Blessed hour!' but just put some more tea in the teapot, and fetch me
your brown loaf!”
“But surely you 'll die of cold!--you 'll be in a fever!”
“Nonsense, Catty; I have been out in rain before this. I'm more provoked
about that bridge than all else. My excellent aunt will have such a
laugh at my engineering skill, when she hears of it. Can't be helped,
however. And so there's a dinner-party upstairs, I hear. Fanny told me
there were three strangers.”
“So I hear. There's a lawyer from Dublin; and a lady from I don't know
where; and young Nelligan, old Dan's son. I 'm sure I never thought I 'd
see the day he 'd be eating his dinner at Cro' Martin.”
“And why not, Catty? What is there in his manners and conduct that
should not make him good company for any one here?”
“Is n't he the son of a little huckster in Oughterard? Old Dan, that I
remember without a shoe to his foot?”
“And is it a reproach to him that he has made a fortune by years of
patient industry and toil?”
“In-dus-try! toil! indeed,” said Catty, sneeringly. “How much in-dus-try
or toil there is, weighing out snuff and sugar in a snug shop. Ayeh!
he's an old nig-gar, the same Dan. I know him well.”
“But that is no reason why you should disparage his son, Catty, who is a
young gentleman of the highest ability and great promise. I never heard
you speak so ungenerously before.”
“Well, well, darling, don't look angry with your ould Catty, anyway. It
isn't for the like of Dan Nelligan, or his son either, you'd be cross
with _me!_”
“Never, Catty, never,--for anybody or anything,” said the young girl,
taking her hand with both her own. “But you have n't told me who the
lady is. How did she arrive, and when?”
“I know nothing of her. Peter came to say that the blue bedroom was
wanting to-night, and he wished to torment me into asking who for?--but
I wouldn't, just for that same; and so I gave him the keys without a
word.”
“I wonder if this note, that I found on my dressing-table, will explain
anything,” said Mary, as she proceeded to break the seal. “Of all the
absurd ways of my Lady aunt, she has not a more ridiculous one than this
trick of writing little notes, instead of speaking. She sees me every
day, and might surely say whatever she wanted to say, without embalming
it in a despatch. This, I perceive, is number four hundred and
seventy-six, and I presume she 's correct in the score. Only think,
Catty,--four hundred little epistles like this!”
And with these words she carelessly unfolded the letter and began to
read it. All her indifference of manner, however, soon gave way to an
expression of considerable eagerness, and she had no sooner finished the
epistle than she recommenced and reread it.
“You 'd never guess what tidings this brings me, Catty,” said she,
laying down the paper, and looking with an expression half sad, half
comical.
“Maybe I might, then,” said Catty, shaking her head knowingly.
“Come, out with your guess, then, old lady, and I promise to venerate
your wisdom ever after if you be right,--that is, if nobody has already
given you a hint on the subject.”
“Not one in the world,” said Catty, solemnly; “I pledge you my word and
faith I never heard a syllable about it.”
“About it! about what?”
“About what's in the letter there,” said Catty, stoutly.
“You are therefore quite certain that you know it,” said Mary, smiling,
“so now let's have your interpretation.”
“It 's a proposial,” said Catty, with a slight wink.
“A what!”
“A proposial--of marriage, I mean.”
But before the words were out, Mary burst into a fit of laughter, so
hearty and with such good-will that poor Catty felt perfectly ashamed of
herself.
“My dear Catty,” said she, at length, “you must have been reading fairy
tales this morning; nothing short of such bright literature could have
filled your mind with these imaginings. The object of the note is, I
assure you, of a quite different kind;” and here she ran her eye once
more over the epistle. “Yes,” continued she, “it is written in my dear
aunt's own peculiar style, and begins with a 'declaratory clause,' as I
think Mr. Scanlan would call it, expressive of my lamentably neglected
education, and then proceeds to the appropriate remedy, by telling me
that I am to have a governess!”
“A what!” cried Catty, in angry amazement.
“A governess, Catty,--not a governor, as you suspected.”
“Ayeh, ayeh!” cried the old woman, wringing her hands; “what's this for?
Don't you know how to govern yourself by this time? And what can they
teach you that you don't understand already?”
“Ah, my dear Catty,” said the young girl, sadly, “it is a sad subject
you would open there,--one that I have wept over many a dreary hour!
No one knows--no one even could guess--how deeply I have deplored my
illiterate condition. Nor was it,” added she, ardently, “till I had
fashioned out a kind of existence of my own--active, useful, and
energetic--that I could bury the thought of my utter want of education.
Not even you, Catty, could fathom all the tears this theme has cost
me, nor with what a sinking of the heart I have thought over my actual
unfitness for my station.”
“Arrah, don't provoke me! don't drive me mad!” cried the old woman, in
real anger. “There never was one yet as fit for the highest place as
yourself; and it is n't me alone that says it, but hundreds of--”
“Hundreds of dear, kind, loving hearts,” broke in Mary, “that would
measure my poor capacity by my will to serve them. But no matter, Catty;
I 'll not try to undeceive them. They shall think of me with every help
their own affection may lend them, and I will not love them less for the
overestimate.”
As she spoke these words, she buried her face between her hands; but
the quick heaving of her chest showed how deep was her emotion. The old
woman respected her sorrow too deeply to interrupt her, and for several
minutes not a word was spoken on either side. At last Mary raised her
head, and throwing back the long, loose hair, which in heavy masses
shaded her face, said with a firm and resolute voice,--
“I 'd have courage to go to school to-morrow, Catty, and begin as a mere
child to learn, if I knew that another was ready to take my place here.
But who is to look after these poor people, who are accustomed now
to see me amongst them, on the mountains, in the fields, at their
firesides?--who gain new spirit for labor when I ride down in the midst
of them, and look up, cheered, by seeing me, even from a sick-bed. Her
Ladyship would say, Mr. Henderson could do all this far better than
myself.”
“Mr. Henderson, indeed!” exclaimed Catty, indignantly; “the
smooth-tongued old rogue!”
“And perhaps he might, in England,” resumed Mary; “but not here,
Catty,--not here! We care less for benefits than the source from which
they spring. We Irish cherish the love of motives as well as actions;
and, above all, we cherish the links that bind the lowliest in the land
with the highest, and make both better by the union.”
She poured out these words with rapid impetuosity, rather talking to
herself than addressing her companion; then, suddenly changing her tone,
she added,--
“Besides, Catty, _they_ are used to me, and _I_ to _them_. A new face
and a new voice would not bring the same comfort to them.”
“Never, never,” muttered the old woman to herself.
“And I 'll not desert them.”
“That you won't, darling,” said the old woman, kissing her hand
passionately, while tears swam in her eyes, and trickled down her
cheeks.
“There is but one thought, Catty, that makes me at all faint-hearted
about this, and whenever it crosses me I do feel very low and
depressed.” She paused, and then murmured the words, “My father!”
“Your father, my darling! What about _him?_”
“It is thinking, Catty, of his return; an event that ought to be--and
would be, too--the very happiest of my life; a day for whose coming I
never sleep without a prayer; and yet, even this bright prospect has its
dark side, when I recall all my own deficiencies, and how different he
will find his daughter from what he had expected her.”
“May the blessed saints grant me patience!” cried Catty, breaking in.
“Isn't it too bad to hear you talking this way? Sure, don't I know
Master Barry well? Didn't I nurse him, and wasn't I all as one as his
own mother to him, and don't I know that you are his own born image?
'Tis himself and no other ye are every minute of the day.”
“And even that, Catty,” said Mary, smiling, “might fail to satisfy
him. It is something very different indeed he might have imagined his
daughter. I'm sure nobody can be more ignorant than I am, of what a
person in my station ought to know. I cannot hide this from myself in
my sad moments. I do not try to do so, but I have always relied upon
the consolation that, to an existence such as mine is like to be, these
deficiencies do not bring the same sense of shame, the same painful
consciousness of inferiority, as if I were to mingle with the world of
my equals. But if he were to come back,--he, who has seen society in
every shape and fashion,--and find me the poor, unlettered, unread,
untaught thing I am, unable to follow his very descriptions of
far-away lands without confusion and mistake; unable to benefit by his
reflections from very want of previous knowledge,--oh, Catty dearest,
what a miserable thing is self-love after all, when it should thus
thrust itself into the foreground, where very different affections alone
should have the place.”
“He 'd love you like his own heart,” said Catty. “Nobody knows him like
me; and if there was ever one made for him to dote on, it's your own
self.”
“Do you indeed think so?” cried Mary, eagerly.
“Do I know it--could I swear it?” said Catty. “He was never much given
to study himself, except it was books of travel like 'Robinson Crusoe,'
and the like; and then, after reading one of them books he 'd be off for
days together, and we 'd be looking for him over the whole country, and
maybe find him in the middle of Kyle's Wood up a tree; or once, indeed,
it was in the island of Lettermullen we got him. He built a mud-house,
and was living there with a goat and two rabbits that he reared himself,
and if he was n't miserable when they brought him away home! I remember
his words well,--'Maybe,' says he, 'the time will come that I 'll go
where you can't come after me;' and ye see that's what he's done, for
nobody knows where he wasn't wandering these last eight or nine years.”
When Catty got upon this theme she could not be brought to quit
it,--nor, indeed, did Mary try,--for though she had heard these stories
of her father's boyish days over and over again, she never wearied of
them; they had all the fascination of romance for her, with the stronger
interest that grew out of her love for one who, she was told, had
so loved herself. Besides this, she felt in her own heart the same
promptings to a life of action and adventure. All the incidents and
accidents of an eventful existence were the very things to delight her,
and one of her happiest daydreams was to fancy herself her father's
companion in his wanderings by flood and field.
And thus they sat till a late hour of the night talking and listening,
old Catty answering each inquiry of the young girl by some anecdote or
trait of him she still persisted in calling “Master Barry,” till, in the
ardor of listening, Mary herself caught up the phrase, and so designated
her own father.
“How unlike my uncle in everything!” exclaimed Mary, as she reflected
over some traits the old woman had just recorded. “And were they not
very fond of each other?”
“That they were: at least I can answer for Master Barry's love; and to
be sure, if having a reason was worth anything, your uncle ought to love
him more than one man ever did another.” Old Catty uttered these
words with a slow and almost muttering accent; they seemed as if the
expression of a thought delivered involuntarily--almost unconsciously.
Mary was attracted by the unwonted solemnity of her accent, but still
more by an expression of intense meaning which gathered over the old
woman's brows and forehead. “Ay, ay,” muttered she, still to herself,
“there's few brothers would do it. Maybe there's not another living but
himself would have done it.”
“And what was it, Catty?” asked Mary, boldly.
“Eh!--what was I saying, darling?” said Catty, rousing herself to full
consciousness.
“You were telling of my father, and some great proof of affection he
gave my uncle.”
“To be sure he did,” said the old woman, hastily. “They were always fond
of each other, as brothers ought to be.”
“But this one particular instance of love,--what was it, Catty?”
The old woman started, and looked eagerly around the room, as though to
assure herself that they were alone; then, drawing her chair close to
Mary's, she said, in a low voice: “Don't ask me any more about them
things, darling. 'T is past and gone many a year now, and I 'd rather
never think of it more, for I 've a heavy heart after it.”
“So, then, it is a secret, Catty?” said Mary, half proudly.
“A secret, indeed,” said Catty, shaking her head mournfully.
“Then you need only to have said so, and I'd not have importuned you to
tell it; for, to say truth, Catty, I never knew you had any secrets from
me.”
“Nor have I another, except this, darling,” said Catty; and she
buried her face within her hands. And now both sat in silence for some
minutes,--a most painful silence to each. At last Mary arose, and,
although evidently trying to overcome it, a feeling of constraint was
marked in her features.
“You'd never guess how late it is, Catty,” said she, trying to change
the current of her thoughts. “You 'd not believe it is past three
o'clock; how pleasantly we must have talked, to forget time in this
way!”
But the old woman made no reply, and it was clear that she had never
heard the words, so deeply was she sunk in her own reflections.
“This poor hat of mine will scarcely do another day's service,” said
Mary, as she looked at it half laughingly. “Nor is my habit the fresher
of its bath in the 'Red River;' and the worst of it is, Catty, I have
overdrawn my quarter's allowance, and must live on, in rags, till
Easter. I see, old lady, you have no sympathies to waste on me and my
calamities this evening,” added she, gayly, “and so I'll just go to bed
and, if I can, dream pleasantly.”
“Rags, indeed,” said Catty. “It's well it becomes you to wear rags!”
and her eyes sparkled with indignant passion. “Faith, if it comes
to that,”--here she suddenly paused, and a pale hue spread over her
features like a qualm of faintish sickness,--“may the Holy Mother give
me help and advice; for sometimes I'm nigh forgetting myself!”
“My dear old Catty,” said Mary, fondly, “don't fret about me and my
foolish speech. I only said it in jest. I have everything,--far more
than I want; a thousand times more than I desire. And my excellent
aunt never said a truer thing in her life than when she declared that
'everybody spoiled me.' Now, good-night.” And kissing the old woman
affectionately, Mary gathered up the stray fragments of her riding-gear,
and hurried away, her merry voice heard cheerfully as she wended her way
up many a stair and gallery to her own chamber.
If Mary Martin's character had any one quality preeminently remarkable,
it was the absence of everything like distrust and suspicion. Frankness
and candor itself in all her dealings, she never condescended to impute
secret motives to another; and the very thought of anything like mystery
was absolutely repugant to her nature. For the very first time in her
life, then, she left old Catty Broon with a kind of uneasy, dissatisfied
impression. There was a secret, and she was somehow or other concerned
in it; so much was clear. How could she convince the old woman that no
revelation, however disagreeable in itself, could be as torturing as a
doubt? “Can there be anything in my position or circumstances here that
I am not aware of? Is there a mystery about me in any way?” The very
imagination of such a thing was agony. In vain she tried to chase away
the unwelcome thought by singing, as she went, by thinking over plans
for the morrow, by noting down, as she did each night, some stray
records of the past day; still Catty's agitated face and strange emotion
rose before her, and would not suffer her to be at rest.
To a day of great excitement and fatigue now succeeded a sleepless,
feverish night, and morning broke on her unrefreshed, and even ill.