INTRODUCES THE NAME OF AMOS SCOTT.
Great was the consternation at Woodbrook when John Riley announced his
intention of leaving Ireland; greater, if possible, the lamentations
which ensued when he informed his relations that Grace had refused him.
Had it been possible to conceal the fact of his rejection, he would have
done so, but he knew this was impossible, and knowing, made a virtue of
necessity.
The family heart had been so long set upon the match, Grace’s fortune
seemed the solution of so many financial enigmas—the end of such wearing
anxiety—that the news fell upon father and mother and sisters like the
tidings of a bank failure, or the hearing of a will read, from which
their names had been cruelly omitted.
For years the matter had been considered settled. Mr. Moffat had never
troubled himself about his daughter’s future. He considered her as good
as married. Mrs. Riley had treated Grace just as though she were a child
of her own. She was free of the house, came and went without invitation,
or thought of one, as if it belonged to her own father. She and the
Misses Riley lent each other bead and other patterns, made paper mats of
the same design, sang the same songs, exchanged books, played duets
together, and walked about hand linked in hand, or arm twined round
waist. They went to the same little parties, they rode together, they
boated together, they had all been close companions, they had been like
sisters until about a year previously, when Grace took it into her head
to conceive a violent affection for Nettie O’Hara, towards whom she had
never hitherto evinced any extraordinary amount of attachment. Whenever
Nettie had an hour to spare it was spent at Bayview. She could not, it
is true, go out to parties, and ride and drive and boat, and otherwise
comport herself like the Misses Riley, but she could and did occupy a
great deal more of Miss Moffat’s time and attention than those young
ladies approved. And yet what could they say? how was it possible for
them to express their annoyance?
Nettie was their relative—her life not a cheerful one—her future
presented nothing which could tend to make the future brighter. She had
few friends, and those who stood in that position were most of them a
few generations older than herself. Grace was very good to Nettie, gave
her presents, and kind words, and kisses, which were exchanged as freely
and effusively amongst school-girls at that period of the world’s
history as they are now. Every person said how kind it was of the
heiress to take so much notice of a portionless orphan. Some people
hoped it would not make Miss O’Hara discontented with her lot in life,
others doubted whether Miss Moffat was prudent in giving Mr. Riley so
many opportunities of meeting such an extremely pretty girl—Miss Moffat,
as has been stated, not ranking as a beauty amongst the Kingslough
authorities—whilst a very small minority, who had sense enough to keep
their opinions to themselves, adopted the theory that Grace was
beginning to weary of the Rileys, that she was getting old enough to
realize what such extraordinarily close intimacy meant, and what it must
end in some day; that she had taken Nettie into favour as a sort of
counteracting influence, and that if Mr. John Riley, without an
available shilling, should choose to fall in love with Miss Nettie
O’Hara, who had not a penny available or otherwise, Grace Moffat would
not prove inconsolable.
In all of which ideas the majority was partly right and partly wrong.
Grace had no definite scheme of transferring Nettie to Mr. Riley, but
she found her presence at Bayview an intense relief. She liked John
Riley, but she did not want to marry him; she was tired of every one
taking for granted that she would eventually marry him; it was a
pleasure to have a willing listener like Nettie, who believed, or who,
at all events, seemed to believe her, when she said she would never
marry anybody,—never. It was perhaps a still greater pleasure to find
that Nettie’s beau ideal of a hero and hers were identical, so far as
words could make them so.
Till the locket and the ring discoveries excited Grace’s suspicions, she
had not the remotest notion that Nettie owned a lover; but Nettie knew
perfectly well that her friend was in love in a simple, innocent,
romantic, foolish, inconsequent manner with Mr. Robert Somerford; knew
when and where, and how Grace had first seen him, and was intimately
acquainted with the dress Miss Moffat happened to be wearing on that
eventful day.
Miss Moffat had never communicated those particulars in any intelligible
and consecutive manner, but Nettie spelt and put together one thing and
another till she was mistress of the position, then she surreptitiously
conveyed to Bayview an album, some fifty years old or thereabouts, which
contained a vile watercolour daub of a simpering and sentimental-looking
young man, which nevertheless bore an absurd likeness to Mr. Somerford.
It was a picture of nobody in particular, but the eyes were dark and
dreamy, and the hair soft and waving, and the nose well formed, and the
mouth full and undetermined—altogether, a face likely to please girlish
fancies in an age when ladies were always represented with button-hole
mouths, opened just sufficiently to display two pearly teeth and a
morsel of tongue.
Grace asked Nettie if she might copy this work of art, to which Nettie,
who considered nobody would ever be the wiser, replied by cutting out
the page and presenting it to her friend.
Some days later, after they had refreshed their memories with another
look at the inane handsome face, Nettie asked Grace if she did not think
it bore a slight resemblance to “that nephew of Lord Glendare?”
“Now you mention it, I think it does, dear,” Grace answered
hypocritically.
“I fancy so,” Nettie proceeded, “though I never saw him close but once,
and that was the day of Miss Agnew’s wedding; but it is not nearly as
handsome as he.”
“I thought it was,” Grace faintly objected.
“Oh, no—not nearly! Why, Gracie, where can your eyes be?” persisted Miss
O’Hara; and Miss Moffat was brought, by slow degrees, to see how
infinitely better looking her living hero was to this portrait of one
dead and gone years and years before; and thus Nettie fooled the girl to
the top of her bent; and thus, surely and certainly, the thought of John
grew distasteful to the heiress, and unconsciously, almost, a fancy for
Robert Somerford took possession of her.
But she never thought of marrying him. No; sometime, perhaps, she might
die—of consumption she hoped, and he would hear of it, and be sorry when
he remembered the girl whose singing had, he said, almost made him weep.
He would marry some great and titled lady, whose loveliness would be
wonderful, as that of the beauties depicted in Heath’s ‘Book of Beauty,’
or in the engravings that adorned ‘La Belle Assemblée.’
At that period of her life Grace read poetry largely. The number of
“Farewells” she copied into a certain manuscript book, knowledge of the
existence of which was kept secret even from Nettie O’Hara, might have
astonished even a modern editor. The sadder and the more hopeless the
tone, the better the verses pleased Miss Moffat.
She did not often see Mr. Somerford, but what then? The pleasure was all
the greater when she did see him; and ill-natured people would have
added, she had the less opportunity of finding out that her idol had
feet of clay.
There is a time of life when it is a positive luxury to be unhappy.
Grace was unhappy, and rejoiced in her sufferings. It seemed to her that
she was experiencing the common doom, that she was in her own person
enacting a scene out of a life tragedy.
No; she would never marry any one; she could not marry John Riley, “dear
John, so good and kind—and ugly!” she always mentally added.
“A bad, ungrateful girl,” said poor Mrs. Riley, whose heart had often
been kept from utter despair by the bare thought of Grace’s thousands,
and who might naturally be forgiven some extravagance of expression
under the circumstances.
“Deceitful monkey!” ejaculated Miss Riley.
“I did not think she would have served us so, I must say,” remarked the
general.
“I will never speak to her again,” declared the youngest daughter.
“Then you may make up your mind never to speak to me,” exclaimed Mr.
John, happy at last to find some one on whom he could pour out the vials
of his wrath, his regrets, his disappointment, and his disgust at the
utterly prosaic view his family took of the affair.
He was most genuinely in love with Grace; he had, as he truly said,
cared for no one else all his life; and he hated to hear lamentation
made concerning the loss of her fortune, whilst he had not a thought to
spare—love being selfish—save for the loss of her dear self.
“I may as well tell you at once,” he went on, “that the person who says
anything against Grace says it against me; that her enemies are mine,
that her friends shall be mine;” he made a moment’s pause after this,
feeling he had not spoken quite truly in that last clause. “The girl has
a right to choose and to reject. If I did not please her, it was my
misfortune, not my fault; and as for her fortune, concerning which you
all talk as though it were her sole possession worth having, I wish she
had not a penny, that I might prove it is for herself alone I love her.”
Then, with a catch in his voice, which sounded suspiciously like a sob,
John Riley ended his sentence, and left the room.
“I will have a talk with her father,” observed the general.
“I can never forgive her—never,” said Mrs. Riley, solemnly, as though
she were uttering an anathema.
“She will be content, I suppose, when she finds she has driven John out
of the country,” added Miss Riley.
“I wonder,” began a young lady who had not hitherto spoken, “whether,
after all, there is nothing to be said in Grace’s favour. I wonder if
any of us except John really liked her—whether it was not her money we
were all so fond of.”
“Lucy, you are wicked to talk on solemn subjects in that sort of
manner,” said Mrs. Riley.
“There is something in Lucy’s notion, though,” broke out the general.
“This confounded money question seems to shadow every act in one’s life
like an upas tree. The girl is free from anxiety now; she would not have
been free here.”
“Will she be free if she marries Robert Somerford? tell me that,”
interrupted Mrs. Riley, almost tempestuous in her vehemence. “And that
is the English of all this, if you must take her part against your own
children. The arts and devices of some people are almost beyond belief.
There is that Lady Glendare driving over almost every day to
Bayview—coachman—footman—lady’s-maid—lapdog, and who can say what
beside?”
“Carriage and horses most probably,” suggested her husband.
“Don’t be absurd,” retorted the lady. “You know what I mean. She walks
with Miss Grace to the Lonely Rock—she bathes; and the facts are
reported in Kingslough, as if there were a court newsman retained for
the purpose. Mr. Moffat, who scarcely ever asked us to have a glass of
wine and a biscuit in his house, entertains her ladyship at luncheon.
Sometimes my lady breakfasts at Bayview! Miss Moffat accompanied her
ladyship back to Rosemont on Saturday, and returned to Bayview on
Monday! Oh! it makes me ill to think of it, and we cherished that viper
as if she had been a child of our own.”
“Grace may be a fool. Very likely she is, but I do not believe her to be
a viper,” said Miss Lucy stoutly. “It is a fortnight since she refused
John. He told us so himself, and Lady Glendare could not then even have
seen her.”
“But she had seen Mr. Somerford.”
“Well, girls, and which of you but might like to have a chance of
setting her cap at an earl’s nephew,” observed the General. “In my
opinion the earl is a very unprincipled man, and the nephew but a sorry
sort of fellow. Nevertheless, we must not be too hard upon Grace, though
I think” (speaking very slowly and distinctly) “she has broken my
heart.”
And having so spoken—he, like his son, rose and left the room.
And all this time, though Kingslough was well aware that Miss Moffat had
given Mr. John Riley his _congé_—though Kingslough and Glenwellan and
Kilcurragh and many another place in addition were speculating
concerning Mr. Somerford’s chances of winning the heiress—concerning
Miss Moffat’s chances of wedding an extremely good-looking sprig of
nobility—all this time, I say, Mr. Moffat remained in ignorance of his
daughter’s assertion of independence.
As has before been said, he was not hospitable. He disliked the customs
of a country where every man had the run of his friends’ tables. He did
not visit anywhere unless solemnly and ceremoniously invited, and very
seldom then, and he wanted no chance guests in a house the domestic
routine of which might have been wound up and set going by clockwork.
Nevertheless he had been accustomed to see John Riley about the place—to
meet him in the avenue, or on the terrace, or strolling through the
grounds with Grace and Nettie, and after a time it occurred to him that,
spite of Lady Glendare’s frequent presence, there was something or some
one absent who had filled up a gap in his experience.
He thought the matter over with that curious thoroughness which is the
attribute of slow and abstracted natures, and then said, “Grace, what
has become of John? Is he from home? I have not seen him for more than a
fortnight past.”
For a moment Grace paused—then she said, very evenly, “I do not think
you will see John Riley here again at present. He asked me to marry him,
and I refused; that is the reason he has not visited Bayview for a
fortnight past.”
“But, my dear Grace—your mother—”
“My dear papa,” interrupted Grace, “I deny the right of any mother, how
much more the right of a mother who is dead, and who can know nothing of
the feelings of the living, to select a husband for her child. It was
all a mistake; and if mamma were alive, she would, I am sure, be the
first to acknowledge it to be so.”
“At your age, Grace,” began Mr. Moffat.
“At my age, papa,” once again interrupted Miss Grace, “it is of great
importance to know one’s own mind, and I have long known I would never
marry John Riley.”
“But remembering for how long a time it has been considered a settled
matter that you and he were to become man and wife eventually, I think
you ought at all events to have consulted me before rejecting him.”
“I had not any time to consult you, papa,” answered Miss Grace demurely,
“it was just ‘Yes’ or ‘No,’ and I said ‘No.’ I never thought you really
liked the Rileys,” went on the girl, “and I do not see why I should
marry John merely because my grandfather had a friendship for the
general. I have always declared I do not intend to leave you or
Bayview,” and she rubbed her cheek caressingly against his sleeve.
“Ah, Gracie, that is all very well _now_,” said Mr. Moffat.
“It is very well for ever, papa,” she replied. “How should I learn to
care for any other home than this? How should I endure such a life as
that the girls lead at Woodbrook. If I am fastidious, papa, remember who
has made me so. It is your own fault if I am as people say I am, proud
and reserved; I, who have not, to quote some of the plain-spoken
Kingslough people, a desirable thing about me except my money.”
“What does Mrs. Riley say to all this, Grace?” asked Mr. Moffat, totally
ignoring his daughter’s last sentence.
“I can only imagine,” the girl replied. “Mrs. Riley and I have not seen
each other since; I do not suppose we ever shall see each other again.”
“Do you mean that because you have refused John, all intimacy between
the families is to cease?” asked her father somewhat anxiously.
“I mean that as he has not been here for more than a fortnight, nor his
sisters, nor his mother, nor his father, it is very likely they all
intend to cut me—but I can bear it,” finished Miss Grace with a toss of
her pretty head.
“I had regarded this marriage as a settled thing,” said Mr. Moffat
thoughtfully.
“So did a great many other people, I believe,” answered his daughter.
“When a girl has a large fortune,” went on Mr. Moffat, “it becomes an
anxious question whom she shall marry.”
“I should have thought that an anxious question whether a girl have a
fortune or not,” Grace remarked.
“I am speaking seriously about a serious matter,” replied her father in
a tone of rebuke. “A portionless girl is at all events certain not to
fall into the hands of a fortune-hunter. There is nothing I should have
such a horror of as seeing a child of mine married to a mere adventurer.
Till now I have never felt a moment’s uneasiness about your future. The
match proposed by your grandfather seemed in every respect suitable, and
now, without even mentioning the subject to me, you have unsettled the
plans of years. So independent a young lady as you aspire to be,” he
added bitterly, “will no doubt choose a husband with as much facility as
you have discarded a suitor, and some day you will come to me and say, I
have accepted Mr. So-and-so, with as much coolness as that with which
you now tell me you have rejected John Riley.”
“You are unkind, you are not fair to me,” said Grace, who was by this
time in tears. “I never thought you much liked the Rileys; you did not
ask them to the house.”
“No,” interrupted Mr. Moffat, “I certainly did not encourage promiscuous
visiting, because I like to feel my house and my time my own, and detest
the practice of living any where except at home, which prevails so much
in this country. I am not a man who delights in general society, and I
do not pretend to say the Rileys are congenial to my taste, but—”
“You think they ought to be to mine,” said Grace, laughing even while
she cried.
“I think they are a family with whom you might have got on extremely
well,” answered Mr. Moffat. “I think John Riley is a young man in whose
hands any girl might safely put her happiness. There is no drawback I
can see to him except the fact of his father’s property being so heavily
encumbered, and your money would have paid that mortgage off, and the
estate might in my opinion then have been doubled in value. I have often
thought how it might be managed.”
“So have the Rileys I am quite sure,” added Grace.
“I believe John’s affection for you to be perfectly disinterested,” said
her father.
“Perhaps it may,” she replied, “but the worst of being an heiress is,
one never thinks anybody is disinterested.”
“Do not talk in that manner, my dear, or you will make me wish Mr. Lane
had never left you a shilling.”
“I have often wished he had left it to those poor slaves he made it out
of,” answered Grace. “Papa, I am sick of money: I should like to feel,
if it were only for an hour, that somebody cared for me for myself
alone.”
“I think many somebodies care for you alone,” he remarked; “myself, for
instance.”
“You—yes of course; but then, you are nobody,” she said, squeezing his
hand.
“Thank you, my dear, for that compliment. What say you then to Lady
Glendare?”
“I do not know what to say, except that I am afraid I am getting
horribly tired of her. I shall be so glad when this detestable election
is over and her ladyship’s bathing at an end. How she does hate the very
sight of the water!” added Grace, laughing at the recollection of Lady
Glendare’s terror. “I asked her one day if she did not enjoy it, and she
repeated the word ‘Enjoy!’ with a shudder more expressive than any form
of speech could have been.”
“Then you have no ambition to live amongst the nobility?” asked Mr.
Moffat.
“No, I should dislike it as much as Lady Glendare does sea-bathing. She
cannot feel more out of her element on the Lone Rock than I did at
Rosemont.”
“I am glad to hear it, Grace,” said her father; “I do not think much
good comes out of girls associating with those in a higher rank than
themselves.”
Conscious that this remark was capable of a more particular application
than the speaker suspected, Grace hung down her head and made no answer.
When next she spoke it was to say,—
“Papa, you are not angry—not really angry, I mean, because I could not
care for John?”
“I am not angry,” he answered, “but I am sorry. Any person may want to
steal you away now.”
“But if I am not to be stolen?” she asked.
Mr. Moffat smiled gravely and said,—
“Ah! Grace, you do not know much about these matters yet—I wish you
could have liked John. But there,” he added speaking more cheerfully,
“perhaps you may change your mind, and marry him in spite of all this.”
“No,” she answered. “And if I wanted to marry him ever so much he would
never ask me again—never.”
“You think that, Grace?”
“I am certain of it—certain—positive. I did not refuse him nicely, papa,
not at all as young ladies do in books; I was rude and said what I ought
not to have said. He vexed me and I vexed him.”
“I trust you did not express any idea of his being influenced by
mercenary considerations,” said Mr. Moffat sharply.
“Yes I did,” confessed the girl penitently.
“Then, Grace, I am angry with you; I shall make a point of going over to
Woodbrook, and apologizing to him for your rudeness. I would not for any
consideration, this had happened. I wonder how you could so far forget
your own dignity as to insult a man who had done you the great honour of
asking you to be his wife, for, whatever you may think, a man can confer
no higher compliment on a woman than that.”
The girl made no reply; she only withdrew her hand from her father’s
arm, and walked slowly away towards the house. That day Lady Glendare
found Miss Moffat in an unusually lively mood. Never before had her
ladyship heard Miss Moffat talk so much or so well.
“She really has something in her,” decided the countess, “and Robert
might do worse; besides Mrs. Somerford does not like her.” For all of
which reasons Lady Glendare determined to promote the match.
Meanwhile another and not an adverse influence was at work.
When Mr. Moffat arrived at Woodbrook, great were the expectations raised
in the bosoms of Mrs. Riley and her daughters by his unlooked-for visit.
He had asked for Mr. John Riley, but the servant ushered him into the
general sitting-room, where Mrs. Riley, surrounded by the Misses Riley,
was engaged in works of industry.
“This is an unlooked-for pleasure,” said that careworn matron, giving
Mr. Moffat both her hands to shake, as though one would not have been
more than enough to satisfy him. “We did not hope to see you here: I
think it very kind of you to call, and to show us we are still to be
friends, although it seems we are not to be relatives.”
Mrs. Riley was not a favourite of Mr. Moffat’s. He liked everything
soft, and quiet, and graceful about a woman—voice, manner, mind, dress,
movement. Mrs. Riley had a pronounced accent, and was neither quiet nor
graceful; a good woman, no doubt, but one who would have made Lady
Glendare shudder. She caused Mr. Moffat to draw back a little farther
into his shell, as he answered,—
“No one can regret Grace’s decision more than I,” (then she has not
changed her mind, thought Mrs. Riley). “It is usually an anxious thing
for a widower to be left with a daughter, more especially if that
daughter have a large fortune, but I never felt anxious about Grace
until now. I was so certain your son would make her a good husband.”
Yes, it was Mrs. Riley’s opinion there were not many young men like John
in the world, and she expressed it.
“But one cannot control a young girl’s fancies,” said Mr. Moffat, who
felt vaguely that the virtues of his daughter seemed to be forgotten in
Mrs. Riley’s praises of her son.
“I am very sorry to hear you say so,” said that lady, pursing up her
lips, “very sorry for Grace’s sake.”
“Do you think I can _make_ Grace like your son?” asked Mr. Moffat, a
little hotly, misinterpreting her meaning, and considering Mr. Riley
would at least gain as much advantage from the match as his daughter.
“Certainly not, Mr. Moffat, but it might be just possible to keep her
from liking other people.”
“If your remark contain any hidden meaning, I am stupid enough not to
perceive it,” said Mr. Moffat, answering her tone rather than her words.
“There is no hidden meaning so far as I am aware,” replied the lady. “We
know the reason why John—”
“Mamma,” interposed Lucy entreatingly.
“Nonsense, child, don’t dictate to me,” said her mother angrily, while
Mr. Moffat added,—
“Pardon me, Miss Lucy, but I think your mother is right. If she is aware
of any reason for Grace’s decision beyond those with which I am
acquainted, I certainly ought not to be kept in ignorance of them.”
“But it is only mamma’s idea, and I do not believe there is anything in
it; I do not, indeed,” persisted Lucy.
“And pray how does it happen you are so much wiser than your elders?”
asked Mrs. Riley snappishly. “The fact is this, Mr. Moffat; Grace
refused John because she likes some one else better.”
“And who is the some one?” asked the perplexed father.
“Mr. Robert Somerford,” said Mrs. Riley, with slow triumph.
“Mr. Robert Somerford! you must be”—crazy, Mr. Moffat had nearly added,
but he substituted “mistaken” for it. “Grace has not seen him
half-a-dozen times in her life.”
“That makes no difference,” was the calm reply.
“I think it makes every difference,” said Mr. Moffat. “Believe me, Mrs.
Riley, you are quite mistaken about this matter.”
“Perhaps so, but if you ask your daughter, I think you will find I am
not mistaken.”
“I should indeed be sorry to mention the subject to my daughter, and I
hope no one else will,” said Mr. Moffat rising. “I have not the least
desire to put such a ridiculous idea into her mind. There is nothing I
should have such a horror of, for her, as an unequal marriage. There is
scarcely a man I know I should less desire to see her husband than Mr.
Somerford. As you say John is at the stables, I will, if you will allow
me, go to him. I entreat of you,” he added earnestly, “not to harbour
this delusion. I am certain Grace is not a girl to give her affections
where they have not been asked, where they are not wanted.”
“Oh! we shall say nothing,” hastily replied Mrs. Riley, who had already
imparted her views on the Somerford question under the seal of secrecy
to at least half-a-dozen friends; “we have our own affairs to attend to,
and find that sufficient, without meddling in the affairs of other
people. I only wish the General was of my mind. What he can be thinking
of to turn knight-errant at his time of life, I cannot imagine.”
“Papa wants to see Nettie’s ‘marriage lines,’ Mr. Moffat,” said Lucy,
noticing their visitor’s perplexed expression, “that is all mamma means.
John and he are going over to-day to Maryville to ask for a private
view.”
“You ought not to speak about such subjects at all, Lucy,” said her
mother; “certainly not in so flippant a manner.”
“Girls are a great plague,” sighed Mr. Moffat. Whether his remark had
any reference to Miss Lucy’s flippancy it is difficult to say.
“Mine are not,” said materfamilias, proudly.
“The present company is always excepted,” answered Mr. Moffat, mentally
adding, as he left the room, “not that I should except you from being
one of the most ill-bred women I ever met. Perhaps, after all, Gracie
has done wisely. I doubt whether she and Mrs. Riley could ever have gone
on smoothly together.”
In the stable-yard he met John, whose face brightened at sight of
Grace’s father, and then became once again overcast when he found Mr.
Moffat had only called to apologize for his daughter’s rudeness.
“Thank you,” the young man said, simply. “Grace did not mean to hurt me,
I am certain, but there was just enough truth in her words to sting and
to rankle. You know, sir,” he went on, “we are poor, and a man who is
poor cannot help thinking about money; but it is not for her money’s
sake I love Grace. Some day she will know that, perhaps. When I am gone
quite away, I wish you would tell her she could not be any dearer to me
if she had millions, nor less dear if she had not a penny.”
“Are you going away, then?”
“Yes, whenever the election is over, I shall leave Ireland. If Grace had
said, ‘yes,’ I should have left it all the same, only with a lighter
heart. I did not want her to marry a pauper. I meant to do something. I
meant somehow to make a name and money; but why should I trouble you
with all this?” and he broke off abruptly. The past had been fair, but
it was dead and cold. The mental refrain of every sentence was, “Never
more.” For ever he should love her, never she would love him; that was
the burden of that weary song he had kept repeating to himself ever
since the night when he left her standing on the terrace, listening to
the moan of the sea.
They walked on together in silence down the back avenue to a pair of
rusty gates, outside of which Mr. Moffat had left his dog-cart.
“John,” asked that gentleman abruptly, at length, “what is it your
mother means about Mr. Somerford?”
“What about him?” said John moodily.
“She seems to think Grace is fond of him.”
“So she is,” was the reply.
“I am certain you are wrong.”
“I am certain I am right; listen to me, sir. I do not say Grace is in
love with the fellow, heaven forbid; but still, I do say he has, to use
a common expression, ‘put her out of conceit’ with every one else. I am
glad you have mentioned the matter, because I can now explain how Grace
happened to be so spiteful to me. I expected to be refused, and yet I
grew half-crazy with rage and jealousy when I was refused. So like a
fool, I told her the new love had ousted out the old, and then, when she
said I was mad to think Lord Glendare’s nephew would ever want to marry
her, I retorted that he might like to marry her money. The fault was
mine, you see,” finished the young man hurriedly. “Grace was not to
blame, and I should have been the one to apologize, not you.”
“What makes you suppose there is anything between Mr. Somerford and
Grace?” that was the one question of absorbing interest to Mr. Moffat.
“I do not suppose there is anything,” answered the young man. “All I
mean is, that with his singing and playing, his handsome face and his
soft, false manners, he has taken her fancy.”
“That will all pass away,” said Mr. Moffat, but John shook his head.
“If she could know him as he really is,” answered the young man, “know
him for a cold, shallow, selfish, unprincipled vagabond, there might be
some hope; but Grace has made a hero of him. She thinks he is without
reproach, that he is pre-destined to retrieve the Glendare fortunes,
that he is the one good fruit of a rotten tree. There, I would rather
say no more about him. Perhaps I am unjust. For her sake I hope I am. I
will come over to bid you and her good-bye before I go. Though we parted
in anger, I think she would like to remember we parted once again as
friends.”
“Yes, you may be positive about that,” Mr. Moffat assured him, and then
they shook hands and separated, John to proceed to Maryville, and
Grace’s father to return to Bayview, a much more perplexed and harassed
man than he had left it.
Was Mr. Somerford the origin of Lady Glendare’s sudden intimacy with and
professed affection for his daughter? He had said, and said truly, to
Mrs. Riley, that he had a horror of unequal marriages, and that Robert
Somerford was not a man to whom he should like to give his daughter; and
yet, when he came to consider the matter calmly, when he found his
objections to the young man were based greatly on prejudice, he began to
see the match was not in reality so unequal as he had at first thought.
Grace was a gentlewoman, possessed of a large fortune, Mr. Somerford was
the nephew of an earl, and had not a sixpence; so far the beam stood
tolerably even. No one had ever spoken of Mr. Somerford as a rake, or a
gambler, or a drunkard. His sins were those of omission. So far as Mr.
Moffat was aware, no sins of commission had ever been charged against
him. The poorer classes idolized him, and Mr. Moffat did not know enough
of the lower classes to be able to judge accurately the value of that
idolatry.
Living entirely amongst his books, mixing little with society, as much a
stranger to the feelings and habits of the country as the day he settled
at Bayview, Irish only by connexion and marriage, Northumbrian by birth,
English by feeling, wealthy by a sequence of unlooked-for events,
indolent, refined, reserved, how should he, who had never been able to
win for himself popularity, understand the utter worthlessness of the
beads, and feathers, and gew-gaws of manner, and word, and presence, by
which popularity is to be bought.
The Glendares were a weak, dissolute, extravagant, heartless race; but
then, Mrs. Somerford, Robert’s mother, was a very dragon of piety,
respectability, pride, and austerity; and after all, if Grace’s fortune
were settled strictly on herself and her children, she might do worse.
Hitherto, he had always looked upon Grace as virtually married to John
Riley, and it was therefore a shock and a wrench to imagine her married
to any one else; but if Grace did not like John, and did like Lord
Glendare’s nephew, why then Mr. Moffat decided he would try to accustom
himself to the change.
After all, Lady Glendare and Mrs. Somerford would be more desirable
relatives than poor, bustling, well-meaning, loud-voiced,
many-daughtered Mrs. Riley.
Further, Grace must marry, and that soon. Those were days as has been
already stated, when girls sooner outgrew their first youth than women
do now, and Mr. Moffat disliked beyond all description the idea of
having, as he mentally expressed it, “a score of lovers hanging about
Bayview.”
The charge of a young maiden, the trouble of keeping undesirable
admirers at bay, love complications, secret engagements, scenes, tears,
loss of appetite, and threatened consumption, all these things were as
much beyond Mr. Moffat’s province as they were outside his taste.
He loved ease and the classics, he detested company, he hated having the
even tenour of his life ruffled even for a moment by the intrusion of an
outside current.
He had been vexed with Grace, and sorry for John Riley, but now he
believed John would get over it, and perhaps it was quite as well Mrs.
Riley should not become his daughter’s mother-in-law.
Mrs. Riley’s voice had that day sounded especially disagreeable. The
bitterness, disappointment, and resentment she feared to express had not
added to its sweetness, and had added to the brusqueness of her manner.
After the sweetness of Lady Glendare, the acid of Mrs. Riley had not
appeared good to Mr. Moffat. How handsome her ladyship still remained,
how exquisitely she dressed! The fashions of those days seem astonishing
to us, but they were the mode then, and people admired them accordingly.
How gracefully she moved! As Robert Somerford said, “there was poetry in
her walk.” On the other hand, what a dowdy Mrs. Riley looked, with her
crushed cap and faded strings, her ill-made dress, and yellow bony
hands.
A long course of mortgage had not tended to improve Mrs. Riley’s
personal appearance. She looked like a house in chancery. Every time he
beheld her, Mr. Moffat beheld likewise fresh dilapidations and—
“Jerry,” said Mr. Moffat at this juncture, suddenly roused from ideal
musings to a sense of the real; “see what is the matter with Finn’s
front off foot. He is easing it.”
Mr. Moffat was driving tandem, and his leader’s foot was slightly beyond
his range of accurate vision.
“Cast a shoe, your honour,” explained Jerry, lifting the foot indicated.
“That is bad, what can we do?”
“I’ll walk him home,” volunteered the groom.
“No, I cannot endure driving alone. Cannot we put him up somewhere?”
“Amos Scott would take good care of him. His place is at the top of the
next loanin.”[3]
Footnote 3:
Lane.
“You mean Miss Grace’s friend, the man who has a lame boy, and who wears
a blue coat with brass buttons?”
“Yes, your honour.”
“Open the gates then, and I will drive up.”
“There are half-a-dozen gates.”
“Walk on then and open them all. What a cursed country!” thought Mr.
Moffat as his wheels went down on one side and up on the other, and his
horses gingerly picked their way over huge stones, and gravel, and
pieces of rock. “Jerry, does Scott draw his farm-produce down this
charming piece of road?”
“Every ton of it, sir.”
“And his manure back?”
“Ah, it’s little manure he draws. He has his own heap always rotting at
the door, ready to his hand, and it’s good land he has, God bless it.”
“Who is supposed to keep this road in repair?” asked Mr. Moffat,
unheeding this testimony to Mr. Scott’s admirable management, and the
superior quality of his soil.
“Nobody, sir.”
“Who does it belong to?”
“Nobody, sir; it is a divisional, and nobody can stop it, and nobody
cares to mend it. In the winter there is a fine stream running
sometimes; I’ve seen it in flood times up to the horse’s girths.”
“Who is the landlord?”
“The Earl, sir.”
There was only one earl known at Kingslough, his rival being the
marquis.
“If he knew the state this road was in, he would have something done to
it, I should think,” said Mr. Moffat.
“Likely, sir, but it was always so,” remarked the man.
“Always so, always so,” repeated Mr. Moffat to himself, “ay, and
everything always will be so while Ireland is Ireland, and the Irish
remain Irish,” forgetting that he, an Englishman, had fallen into Irish
ways; that the grass on his lawns was suffered to grow long like that in
a meadow, that his hedges and borders were unclipped, that his walks
were unrolled, and his grounds, though beautiful exceedingly, were left
in a state which would have driven an English gardener crazy to behold.
Yes, he was Irish in his ways, without the Irishman’s excuse, for he had
plenty of money, plenty and to spare. He might have given employment to
many and many a labourer, had he transplanted the trim civilization of
his native land across the channel.
If a man have wealth and do not spend it, he may as well be an absentee
as a resident. Some idea of this truth had already dawned upon Grace
Moffat. All the evils Ireland groaned under she heard ascribed to
non-resident landlords, to the rent the land yielded being spent out of
the country; but the girl, thanks perhaps to the comparatively lonely
life she led, and to her intense love for and sympathy with the people,
was beginning to understand that non-residence was only a part of the
evil.
For example, she and her father lived at Bayview; but for all the money
they spent, or good they did in Ireland, they might as well have lived
at Jericho. The Rileys again, who was the better for their presence?
They lived off the soil; they killed their own sheep, they ate their own
poultry, they grew their own vegetables, they wore the same clothes, so
it seemed to Grace, month after month, and year after year. All this
certainly might be their misfortune, indeed Miss Moffat knew no choice
was left to them in the matter; but the man who held the mortgage on
their property, and for whose sake the Woodbrook tenants groaned under a
yoke scarcely less severe than that laid upon the necks of the farmers
who rented land from the Glendares, lived at Kilcurragh alone, with an
aged servant, in a large dilapidated house, giving nothing away, living
upon as little as he could.
If he expended a hundred a year, it was the extent of his outgoings.
Then Grace thought about Mrs. Hartley. She, though English, resided in a
land where the exigencies of society did not require a large expenditure
of money, and accordingly Mrs. Hartley did not live up to her income;
did not, in fact, use a fourth of it.
The poor, Miss Moffat could not fail to see, were the real benefactors
of their country. They gave their labour, and out of their poverty they
were liberal; they gave the ready handful of meal, the bannock of
griddle bread, the sieve-full of potatoes, the drink of milk, the
abundance of their sympathy, the cheerful courtesy of their manners, the
smiling promptitude of their charity; and Grace, who was a little shy,
whom neither the lower nor the higher classes exactly understood, seeing
everything, laid it to heart, and made a trembling vow that when she
came to her own, when she attained the advanced age of one-and-twenty,
she would try to use her wealth aright, and see whether even a woman
might not do something to regenerate the country she loved so dearly.
If Mr. Moffat had ever entertained any romantic ideas of the same
description, they were dead and buried years before this story opens.
Taking the world round, no matter how many persons a man begins with
being attached to, he generally ends in liking himself better than any
of them.
To this rule Mr. Moffat proved no exception. Grace and himself now
formed the only prominent figures in his life’s design, and at that time
Grace stood a little behind himself.
Not a bad man, not a dishonourable, but yet he buried his talent in the
ground, and returned no interest for all wherewith his Lord had trusted
him.
The people, by which phrase I mean those whose rank was socially lower
than his own, liked him very well indeed.
He was a “foreigner,” and consequently could not be supposed to
understand their ways; but they found him always civil. He was a
“gentleman,” if a very quiet one. He rarely addressed them, but when he
did, “he was civil and well-spoken.”
“He never made free.” On the whole, Mr. Moffat was popular, allowances
being readily made for his love of books and solitude.
Specially he was liked amongst the Glendare tenantry. Once or twice he
had spoken to the “Aggent,” as Mr. Dillwyn was generally styled, and
effected good by his mild interference.
With beaming face, Mrs. Scott, a middle-aged woman, whose face was
framed in the universal white frilled cap, and who wore a blue-checked
apron, came out to meet him.
“Is your husband at home, Mrs. Scott?” asked her visitor.
“No, sir; he has gone to Rosemont, to see th’ Airl. We’ll get our lease
promised now, plaize God.”
“My leader has cast a shoe,” explained Mr. Moffat. “May I leave him here
for an hour or two?”
“An’ welcome, sir; shall I unloose him?”
“You, Mrs. Scott! certainly not; Jerry can attend to him. There, easy
man, easy. Mind how you pull off that bridle.”
Afterwards it occurred to Mr. Moffat, with a feeling as near remorse as
he was capable of experiencing, that if he had not been quite so wrapped
up that summer’s day in himself and his leader, he might have uttered a
word of warning to the farmer’s hard-working wife.
They were as innocent as children of the world’s ways, those men and
those women, and happy as children in their innocence, till they had to
pay the penalty of such ignorance.