ON THE TERRACE.
If, in the postchaise-and-four days, any record was kept of the number
of runaway couples who were overtaken before the matrimonial knot could
be tied, time has failed to preserve those statistics for us. From all
which can be learned, however, it seems difficult to avoid the
conclusion that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred angry parents and
disgusted guardians might as well have saved their money and spared
their cattle.
Given a few hours’ start, swift horses, and sound linch-pins, who could
hope to overtake the fugitives? Most probably irate elders started in
pursuit prompted by two motives,—one because it looked well to follow,
even though the chase was useless,—the other because it gave them
something to do. No reason, beyond these, presents itself sufficient to
account for all the wild racing and chasing that was carried on at one
period of the world’s history.
To a more matter-of-fact generation, it seems unintelligible why old
gentlemen, and still older ladies, should have risen at unwonted hours,
and started off in frantic and hopeless pursuit of a pair of fleeing
lovers, when they might just as well have had out their “second sleep”
in peace, and awaited intelligence beside the domestic hearth, instead
of posting, at considerable inconvenience and expense, over bleak
moorland roads, to obtain the same identical news.
Riding as fast as his horse could take him, to Kilcurragh, Mr. John
Riley had, like other enemies of “Love’s young Dream,” only two ideas in
his mind—to discover the fugitives, and to punish the male offender.
Riding back, extremely slowly, from that undesirable seaport, after
verifying the fact of two persons answering to the description of Nettie
and her companion having left Kilcurragh the previous evening by “that
fastsailing steamship,” so the proprietors worded their bills, ‘Finn
McCoul,’ he felt much like one who, having gone out fox-hunting, has
seen no fox to hunt—who, having taken his gun to shoot, has started
nothing whereat to fire.
Although no vessel followed the ‘Finn McCoul’ for three days, when the
‘Saint Patrick,’ then peacefully lying alongside a Scotch quay, would
steam in the pleasant eventide down the Bay, on her way to that narrow
channel which divides one people from another, it was quite practicable
for Mr. Riley to have chartered some description of ship—say, even a
collier—to take him, in swift pursuit, to the Land of Cakes. That is to
say, it would have been practicable had Mr. Riley possessed enough of
this world’s wealth to pay his expenses; but the young man had no money
to speak of, and supposing the case different, it is improbable that he
would have thrown away bank-notes so foolishly.
No; the evil was done. All the yachts in creation could not make a
better of it now. She had run away with him; she, an O’Hara, connected
with many and many a good family, with one of those wicked, dissolute,
shameless Bradys, who had for years and years been casting off from them
bit by bit, shred after shred, the mantle of family respectability in
which they had once been proud to wrap themselves.
She had gone off, blue eyes, pink cheeks, golden hair, demure looks,
with a man of notoriously bad character, with whom she had scarcely a
chance of happiness; but that was her concern, and now hers only. They
were gone where, at all events, matrimony was very easy. That, in
itself, was a good feature in the case, since, if he did not intend to
marry the girl, why should he take her to a land where unions, very hard
to break, were very easily formed.
When he returned to the few ancestral acres the extravagance of his
progenitors had left him, it would be time enough to require that a more
binding marriage, according to Irish ideas, than a mere acknowledgment
of Nettie being his wife should take place. On the whole, she having
elected to elope, perhaps it was quite as well things were as they were.
There had been no scene; his horsewhip was available for further
service; society would be satisfied that, so far as a Brady could mean
or do rightly, Daniel of that name had meant rightly by, and done
rightly to, Nettie O’Hara. A grave scandal had been averted by Mr.
Brady’s choice of a honeymoon route; nevertheless, Mr. Riley felt
disappointed.
If a man go out to fight, it is intelligible that he should lament
finding no enemy to encounter. To have ridden all those long miles, and
found nothing to do at the end of the journey, was enough to try the
patience of a more patient individual than John Riley. His common sense
told him it was well; his Irish sense felt disgusted. He should have to
return to his father, and, in answer to his expectant “Well?” reply,—
“They started for Scotland yesterday, and as I could not swim across the
channel, here I am, no further forward than I was when I left.”
Still it _was_ better.
John could not help acknowledging this as he gave his horse to Colonel
Perris’ man, and in answer to the Colonel’s inquiry whether he had any
news of his cousin, answered,—
“Oh! it is all right. They left by the Scotch steamer last night. She
might have written, though, I think, and saved me the ride.”
And the same to Mrs. Mynton and Mrs. Lefroy, whom he met on his way to
the Parade, and to Miss Riley, who said she “never could have believed
it of Nettie, never!” adding, “it is very hard on me at my age,” to
which, with a shake of her poor old head and brown front—people had not
then arrived at that pitch of modern civilisation, grey false hair—she
appended,
“Ah! girls were very different when I was young—very.”
Considering the miles of time that stretched behind the period of her
youth and of her age, John Riley might be excused if he muttered to
himself that it was improbable she could have the smallest memory of
what girls had been like at the remote epoch referred to.
Somehow the intense dreariness and patched poorness of that sad house
had never impressed the young man with such a feeling of compassion for
Nettie as he experienced when he found himself once more on the Parade,
with the sea glittering and dancing at his feet. The faded carpets, the
dingy paint, the darned table-covers, the spindle-legged tables, the
dark, high-backed chairs, were fitting accessories to the picture which,
years and years afterwards, remained in his memory of a feeble, palsied,
half-doting old woman, who kept mumbling and maundering on, concerning
the girls of her far away youth, and the ingratitude of Nettie, who had
made, in her desperation, such a leap in the dark.
“It was a miserable home for any young thing,” said John compassionately
to Mrs. Hartley, “and no future to look forward to except that of being
a teacher. I never was very fond of Nettie, but upon my word I do not
think I ever felt so sorry for anybody as I did for the little girl
to-day—thinking of what a life hers must have been.”
“I was always fond of Nettie,” Mrs. Hartley remarked, “and have always
been sorry for her—I am more sorry for her now, however. She has taken a
step in haste, which I feel certain she will repent at her leisure,
through every hour of her future life.”
This was at dinner—twice in that one day had John Riley to avail himself
of the widow’s abundant hospitality. He knew he could not thus make sure
of that of Mr. Moffat—who although an Englishman, a Liberal, and
abundantly blessed with this world’s goods, liked friends to come after
dinner, and to go away before supper, for which reason his daughter’s
suitor usually paid his visits soon after breakfast, soon after
luncheon—a very meagre meal indeed at Bayview, as in many of the houses
across the Channel even to this day—or immediately after dinner, when he
often had a cup of tea all alone with Grace in that pleasant
drawing-room opening on the terrace-walk which commanded so wide and
fair a view of the ever-changing sea.
He wished to have that cup of tea with Grace this evening—the Nettie who
might have disturbed their _tête-à-tête_ would, he knew, never disturb
another at Bayview. He intended to ask Grace one question, and then, why
then he meant to ride back through the night to his own home—a happy man
or a disappointed according to the answer she made.
The consciousness of the throw he meant to make did not tend to render
Mr. Riley an entertaining guest; and Mrs. Hartley, noticing his
abstraction, said, as he rose from table, remarking it was quite time he
was on the road again,—
“You are going to try your fortune this evening.”
“I am; how did you guess that?”
“Never mind, I did guess it.”
“Wish me success,” he said in a low tone, eagerly seizing her hands.
“I wish you success,” she answered slowly. “If you take care of
yourself, you will develope into one of the worthiest men I ever knew.”
“I will try to be worthy of your good opinion, _however it may be_,” he
said with a certain grateful softness in his tone, and then, suddenly
loosing the lady’s hands, he stooped and kissed her.
“Have you gone crazy, John?” she asked, settling her cap, which the
young man’s demonstrativeness had disarranged.
“A thousand pardons,” he entreated; “I could not help it—forgive me,”
and he went—straight, strong, young, erect out into the evening, leaving
her to think of the boy baby she had borne and lost thirty long years
before—thirty long years.
Out into the evening—round to Colonel Perris’ stable, where his horse
stood, nose deep in manger, hunting after any stray oats he might
hitherto have failed to find.
“Take him aisy, Mister John, the first couple of mile,” advised the
groom; “he has been aiting ever since you left him. It’s my belief them
kinats[2] at Kilcurragh niver giv’ the dumb baste bite or sup barrin’ a
wisp of hay and a mouthful of wather. Ride him aisy, giv’ him his time,
or ye’ll break his win’; but, then, what can I tell ye about horse
cattle ye don’t know already? And shure ye have the night, God bless it,
before ye—and thank ye yer honour, and long life to yerself,” and he
pocketed the coin Mr. Riley gave him, and held open the gate for the
gentleman, never adding, as John noticed, a word of hope for Nettie.
Footnote 2:
Anglicè—misers, skinflints.
Courteous were those Kingslough people, courteous and partial to saying
pleasant things high and low amongst them, but any thought or mention of
the Bradys tried their complaisance.
There was no hope for Nettie. John Riley, taking his horse at a walk
past Glendare Terrace, and so, making his way out of the long straggling
town, felt popular opinion had already given up her case as hopeless.
She had chosen her lot; Kingslough felt the wisest course it could
pursue, in the interest of itself and Nettie, was to ignore the
probabilities of what that lot might be.
A great scandal had occurred—a scandal so great that, prone as
Kingslough was to gossip, it felt disposed to maintain silence over the
affair.
In slight illnesses people love to talk over the symptoms and exaggerate
the danger, but when the sickness becomes mortal, there ensues a
disinclination to speak of it. Silence succeeds to speech, when once the
solemn steps of the great conqueror are heard crossing the threshold. It
is the same when a sore trouble menaces. In the presence of that enemy,
even those whose happiness or misery is in no way concerned in his
approach are fain to keep silence—and silence Kingslough maintained
accordingly about the sad _faux pas_ Nettie O’Hara had made.
But as yet Grace Moffat scarcely grasped the length and the breadth and
the depth of the pit her old companion had dug so carefully for her
future.
“Have you found her, have you brought her back?” Grace asked eagerly as
he entered.
“There is only one person who can bring her back now,” he answered, “and
that is her husband. They went to Scotland yesterday.”
“Oh, Nettie! What could you have been thinking of?” exclaimed the girl.
“I suppose it is the old story, and that she was fond of him,” Mr. Riley
replied.
“You have seen Mrs. Hartley,—what does she say?”
“What can she say? what can anybody say? what is the use of saying
anything? Nettie has done that which cannot be undone, and we must only
hope the match may turn out better than we expect. She has chosen Mr.
Brady and left her friends, and she will have to make the best of Mr.
Brady, if there be any best about him, for the remainder of her life.”
“I think you are extremely heartless,” said Grace indignantly.
“I do not mean to be so,” he replied. “If I could help Nettie out of
this scrape, I would spare no pains in the matter. But there is no help,
Grace. We cannot remake Brady, neither can we undo the fact of her
having gone off with a man who has no one solitary quality to recommend
him beyond his good looks.”
At this point John Riley stopped suddenly and walked towards the window,
while Grace busied herself with the tea-equipage.
The same thought had occurred to both of them. Other people besides
Nettie O’Hara might be influenced by good looks, and, as has previously
been remarked, Grace’s lover did not realize her ideal of manly beauty.
“Where is your cousin, Grace?” asked Mr. Riley, after a moment’s pause.
“Gone to spend the evening with Mrs. Mervyn.” It was a matter of common
occurrence for the worthy lady who presided over Mr. Moffat’s
establishment to spend the evening with some one or other of her
numerous friends. She had a predilection also for paying morning visits
and receiving morning visitors, so that Grace’s time was more frequently
at her own sole disposal than might have been considered quite desirable
had Grace happened to be different to what she was.
But although the young lady’s manners were much less demure than those
of her former friend and companion, she was really a much wiser and more
prudent girl than Nettie. She might have wandered alone along the
world’s wide road, and still come to no harm by the way.
Poor or rich, it would not have mattered to Grace. No man could ever
have made a fool of her. She had her faults, but lack of pride and
self-respect were not to be classed among them.
A girl to be greatly desired for a wife; a girl who would develope into
a woman safely to be trusted with a man’s happiness and a man’s honour;
a girl loyal, faithful, true. She was all this and more; and John Riley
knew her worth, and would have served as long as Jacob did for Rachael,
to gain her in the end.
“Grace,” he began after a moment’s pause, “will you finish your tea and
come out into the garden? I want to speak to you.”
“What do you want to say?”
“I have something particular to ask.”
“What is it?”
“Come out and I will tell you.”
“Tell me now.”
“Cannot you guess?”
She looked at him steadily for an instant, then her eyes dropped, and
her colour rose.
“Yes,” she said quietly, “I can guess; but do not ask. Let us remain
friends, as we have always been.”
“That is impossible,” he said, “we must either be more than friends,
or—”
“Or,” she repeated.
“Strangers,” he finished, and there ensued a dead silence which he
suddenly broke by exclaiming vehemently, “Grace, you cannot, you must
not refuse me; I have loved you all my life. I never remember the time
when I did not love you. I do not ask you to marry me yet, not until I
have something to offer you besides myself, I only want you to say,
‘John, I will be your wife some day, and I will care for nobody else
till you come back to claim me.’”
She was as white now as she had been red before.
“Let us go out,” she said, laying her hand on his arm and leading him
through the French window on to the terrace-walk. There was no hope; he
knew it, he felt it, felt it in the touch of her hand, saw it in the
expression of her face. “Why did you thrust this pain upon yourself and
me?” she asked reproachfully. “Did not you know I could never marry you?
Have not you heard me say a hundred times over, that I should never
marry anybody? We have always been good friends, why cannot we remain
good friends still? I will forget what you said just now, and you must
try to forget it too.”
“Must I?” he answered, “well, the time will come when I shall forget
even that, but not until I am dead, Grace. So long as life and memory
remain, I shall never forget you,” and he took the hand which lay on his
arm, and held it tightly for a moment, then suddenly releasing it, he
went on,—
“It was not always so; there was a time, and that not very long past,
when you could not have stabbed me to the heart as you have done
to-night. I do not say you ever loved me much, but you were young, and I
believed you might learn to love me more; but there is no use in talking
about that now, the new love has ousted out the old. You can never be
more than a friend to me; that is the phrase, is it not? But somebody
else may be nearer and dearer than the man who has cared for no one but
you—no one else, Grace, all his life.”
“I do not understand you,” she began, but he interrupted her.
“You understand me perfectly. Until Mr. Somerford——”
“Mr. Somerford and I are nothing to each other,” she interposed eagerly.
“Are not, perhaps, but most probably will be hereafter,” he retorted. “I
know he is the sort of fellow girls go wild about.”
“I have not gone wild about him,” said Grace indignantly. “Are you mad,
John, or do you think I am, to imagine Lord Glendare’s nephew could ever
possibly want to marry me?”
“I imagine your fortune would be extremely acceptable to a man who has
not a sixpence, at all events,” was the almost brutal answer.
Disappointed lovers are not usually over careful about what they say,
and this one proved no honourable exception to the rule.
“The same remark might apply to other men who have not a sixpence
either,” observed the young lady bitterly; “to Mr. John Riley, for
instance.”
He was calm in a moment, hating himself for the words he had uttered,
almost hating her for the retort those words induced.
“Say no more, Grace,” he answered; “you need not drive the knife any
farther home—it has gone deep enough already,” and he turned, and would
have left her, but Grace followed, crying out,—
“I did not mean it—I did not, really; only you provoked me.”
“You meant, however, that you would not marry, that you would not engage
yourself to me,” he said, stopping, and looking mournfully and
reproachfully at her in the gathering twilight.
“I am very sorry,” she was beginning, but he interrupted her.
“Never mind being sorry. I shall be sad and sorry enough for both. You
did mean it then, Grace; you meant truly that you could never come to
love me, never while the winds blow and the dews fall.”
“I do care for you,” she said softly.
“Ay, but not as I want to be cared for,” he replied. “Well, you cannot
help it, I suppose, and I—but that does not matter.”
It was over; he was gone: she stood alone on the terrace. Strewed around
were cistus leaves; through the silence she could hear the sobbing of
the waves as they washed in upon the shore.