As winter drew near, with its dark and leaden skies, and days and nights
of storm and hurricane, so did the worldly prospect of Lady Eleanor and
her daughter grow hourly more gloomy. Bicknell's letters detailed new
difficulties and embarrassments on every hand. Sums of money supposed to
have been long since paid and acknowledged by Gleeson, were now demanded
with all the accruing interest; rights hitherto unquestioned were now
threatened with dispute, as Hickman O'Reilly's success emboldened others
to try their fortune. Of the little property that still remained to
them, the rents were withheld until their claim to them should be once
more established by law. Disaster followed disaster, till at length the
last drop filled up the measure of their misery, as they learned that
the Knight's personal liberty was at stake, and more than one writ was
issued for his arrest.
The same post that brought this dreadful intelligence brought also a few
lines from Darcy, the first that had reached them since his departure.
His note was dated from the “'Hermione' frigate, off the Needles,” and
contained little more than an affectionate farewell. He wrote in health,
and apparently in spirits, full of the assurance of a speedy and happy
meeting; nor was there any allusion to their embarrassments, save in
the vague mention of a letter he had written to Bicknell, and who would
himself write to Lady Eleanor.
“It is not, dearest Eleanor,” wrote he, “the time we would have selected
for a separation, when troubles thicken around us; yet who knows if the
incident may not fall happily, and turn our thoughts from the loss of
fortune to the many blessings we enjoy in mutual affection and in our
children's love, all to thicken around us at our meeting? I confess,
too, I have a pride in being thought worthy to serve my country still,
not in the tiresome monotony of a depot, but in the field,--among the
young, the gallant, and the brave! Is it not enough to take off half
this load of years, and make me fancy myself the gay colonel you may
remember cantering beside your carriage in the Park--I shame to say how
long ago! I wonder what the French will think of us, for nearly every
officer in command might be superannuated, and Abercrombie is as
venerable in white hairs as myself! There are, however, plenty of young
and dashing fellows to replace us, and the spirit of the whole army is
admirable.
“Whither we are destined, what will be our collective force, and what
the nature of the expedition, are profound secrets, with which even the
generals of brigades are not intrusted; so that all I can tell you is,
that some seven hundred and fifty of us are now sailing southward, under
a steady breeze from the north-northwest; that the land is each moment
growing fainter to my eyes, while the pilot is eagerly pressing me to
conclude this last expression of my love to yourself and dearest Helen.
Adieu.
“Ever yours,
“Maurice Darcy.”
As with eyes half dimmed by tears Lady Eleanor read these lines, she
could not help muttering a thanksgiving that her husband was at least
beyond the risk of that danger of which Bicknell spoke,--an indignity,
she feared, he never could have survived.
“And better still,” cried Helen, “if a season of struggle and privation
awaits us, that we should bear it alone,' and not before _his_ eyes, for
whom such a prospect would be torture. Now let us see how to meet the
evil.” So saying, she once more opened Bicknell's letter, and began to
peruse it carefully; while Lady Eleanor sat, pale and in silence, nor
even by a gesture showing any consciousness of the scene.
“What miserable trifling do all these legal subtleties seem!” said the
young girl, after she had read for some time; “how trying to patience
to canvass the petty details by which a clear and honest cause must
be asserted! Here are fees to counsel, briefs, statements, learned
opinions, and wise consultations multiplied to show that we are the
rightful owners of what our ancestors have held for centuries,
while every step of usurpation by these Hickmans would appear almost
unassailable. With what intensity of purpose, too, does that family
persecute us! All these actions are instituted by them; these bonds are
all in their hands. What means this hate?”
Lady Eleanor looked up; and as her eyes met Helen's, a faint flush
colored her cheek, for she thought of her interview with the old doctor,
and that proposal by which their conflicting interests were to be
satisfied.
“We surely never injured them,” resumed the young girl, eagerly; “they
were always well and hospitably received by us. Lionel even liked
Beecham, when they were boys together,-a mild and quiet youth he was.”
“So I thought him, too,” said Lady Eleanor, stealing a cautious glance
at her daughter. “We saw them,” continued she, more boldly, “under
circumstances of no common difficulty,--struggling under the
embarrassment of a false social position, with such a grandfather!”
“And such a father! Nay, mamma, of the two you must confess the doctor
was our favorite. The old man's selfishness was not half so vulgar as
his son's ambition.”
“And yet, Helen,” said Lady Eleanor, calmly, “such are the essential
transitions by which families are formed; wealthy in one generation,
aspiring in the next, recognized gentry--mayhap titled--in the third.
It is but rarely that the whole series unfolds itself before our eyes at
once, as in the present instance, and consequently it is but rarely that
we detect so palpably all its incongruities and absurdities. A few
years more,” added she, with a deep sigh, “and these O'Reillys will be
regarded as the rightful owners of Gwynne Abbey by centuries of descent;
and if an antiquary detect the old leopards of the Darcys frowning from
some sculptured keystone, it will be to weave an ingenious theory of
intermarriage between the houses.”
“An indignity they might well have spared us,” said Helen, proudly.
“Such are the world's changes,” continued Lady Eleanor, pursuing her
own train of thought. “How very few remember the origin of our proudest
houses, and how little does it matter whether the foundations have been
laid by the rude courage of some lawless baron of the tenth century, or
the crafty shrewdness of some Hickman O'Reilly of the nineteenth!”
If there was a tone of bitter mockery in Lady Eleanor's words, there was
also a secret meaning which, even to her own heart, she would not
have ventured to avow. By one of those strange and most inexplicable
mysteries of our nature, she was endeavoring to elicit from her daughter
some expression of dissent to her own recorded opinion of the O'Reillys
and seeking for some chance word which might show that Helen regarded
an alliance with that family with more tolerant feelings than she did
herself.
Her intentions on this head were uot destined to be successful. Helen's
prejudices on the score of birth and station were rather strengthened
than shaken by the changes of fortune; she cherished the prestige of
their good blood as a source of proud consolation that no adversity
could detract from. Before, however, she could reply, the tramp of a
horse's feet--a most unusual sound--was heard on the gravel without; and
immediately after the heavy foot of some one, as if feeling his way in
the dark towards the door. Without actual fear, but not without intense
anxiety, both mother and daughter heard the heavy knocking of a loaded
horsewhip on the door; nor was it until old Tate had twice repeated his
question that a sign replied he might open the door.
“Look to the pony there!” cried a voice, as the old man peered out into
the dark night. And before he could reply or resist, the speaker pushed
past him and entered the room. “I crave your pardon, my Lady Eleanor,”
said she,--for it was Miss Daly, who, drenched with rain and all
splashed with mud, now stood before them,--“I crave your pardon for this
visit of so scant ceremony. Has the Knight returned yet?”
The strong resemblance to her brother Bagenal, increased by her gesture
and the tones of her voice, at once proclaimed to Lady Eleanor who her
visitor was; and as she rose graciously to receive her, she replied that
“the Knight, so far from having returned, had already sailed with the
expedition under General Abercrombie.”
Miss Daly listened with breathless eagerness to the words, and as they
concluded, she exclaimed aloud, “Thank God!” and threw herself into
a chair. A pause, which, if brief, was not devoid of embarrassment,
followed; and while Lady Eleanor was about to break it, Miss Daly again
spoke, but with a voice and manner very different from before: “You will
pardon, I am certain, the rudeness of my intrusion, Lady Eleanor, and
you, too, Miss Darcy, when I tell you that my heart was too full of
anxiety to leave any room for courtesy. It was only this afternoon that
an accident informed me that a person had arrived in this neighborhood
with a writ to arrest the Knight of Gwynne. I was five-and-twenty
miles from this when I heard the news, and although I commissioned my
informant to hasten thither with the tidings, I grew too full of dread,
and had too many fears of a mischance, to await the result, so that I
resolved to come myself.”
“How full of kindness!” exclaimed Lady Eleanor, while Helen took Miss
Daly's hand and pressed it to her lips. “Let our benefactress not suffer
too much in our cause. Helen, dearest, assist Miss Daly to a change of
dress. You are actually wet through.”
“Nay, nay, Lady Eleanor, you must not teach me fastidiousness. It has
been my custom for many a year not to care for weather, and in the kind
of life I lead such training is indispensable.” Miss Daly removed her
hat as she spoke, and, pushing back her dripping hair, seemed really
insensible to the discomforts which caused her hosts so much uneasiness.
“I see clearly,” resumed she, laughing, “I was right in not
making myself known to you before; for though you may forgive the
eccentricities that come under the mask of good intentions, you 'd
never pardon the thousand offences against good breeding and the world's
prescription which spring from the wayward fancies of an old maid who
has lived so much beyond the pale of affection she has forgotten all the
arts that win it.”
“If you are unjust to yourself, Miss Daly, pray be not so to us; nor
think that we can be insensible to friendship like yours.”
“Oh, as for this trifling service, you esteem it far too highly;
besides, when you hear the story, you'll see how much more you have to
thank your own hospitality than my promptitude.”
“This is, indeed, puzzling me,” exclaimed Lady Eleanor.
“Do you remember having met and received at your house a certain Mr.
Dempsey?”
“Certainly, he dined with us on one occasion, and paid us some three or
four visits. A tiresome little vulgar man, with a most intense curiosity
devouring him to know everything of everybody.”
“To this gift, or infirmity, whichever it be, we are now indebted. Since
the breaking-up of the boarding-house at Port Ballintray, which this
year was somewhat earlier than usual,”--here Miss Daly smiled slightly,
as though there lay more in the words than they seemed to imply,--“Mr.
Dempsey betook himself to a little village near Glenarm, where I have
been staying, and where the chief recommendation as a residence lay
possibly in the fact that the weekly mail-car to Derry changed horses
there. Hence an opportunity of communing with the world he valued at
its just price. It so chanced that the only traveller who came for three
weeks, arrived the night before last, drenched to the skin, and so ill
from cold, hunger, and exhaustion that, unable to prosecute his journey
farther, he was carried from the car to his bed. Mr. Dempsey, whose
heart is really as kind as inquisitive, at once tendered his services to
the stranger, who after some brief intercourse commissioned him to open
his portmanteau, and taking out writing-materials, to inform his friends
in Dublin of his sudden indisposition, and his fears that his illness
might delay, or perhaps render totally abortive, his mission to the
north. Here was a most provoking mystery for Mr. Dempsey. The very
allusion to a matter of importance, in this dubious half-light, was
something more than human nature should be tried with; and if the
patient burned with the fever of the body, Mr. Dempsey suffered under
the less tolerable agony of mental torment,--imagining every
possible contingency that should bring a stranger down into a lonely
neighborhood, and canvassing every imaginable inducement, from seduction
to highway robbery. Whether the sick man's sleep was merely the heavy
debt of exhausted nature, or whether Mr. Dempsey aided his repose by
adding a few drops to the laudanum prescribed by the doctor, true it is,
he lay in a deep slumber, and never awoke till late the following
day; meanwhile Mr. Dempsey recompensed his Samaritanism by a careful
inspection of the stranger's trunk and its contents, and, in particular,
made a patient examination of two parchment documents, which,
fortunately for his curiosity, were not sealed, but simply tied with red
tape.
[Illustration: 180]
Great was his surprise to discover that one of these was a writ to
arrest a certain Paul Dempsey, and the other directed against the
resident of 'The Corvy,' whom he now, for the first time, learned was
the Knight of Gwynne.
“Self-interest, the very instinct of safety itself, weighed less with
him than his old passion for gossip; and no sooner had he learned the
important fact of who his neighbor was, than he set off straight to
communicate the news to me. I must do him the justice to say, that when
I proposed his hastening off to you with the tidings, the little man
acceded with the utmost promptitude; but as his journey was to be
performed on foot, and by certain mountain paths not always easily
discovered in our misty climate, it is probable he could not reach this
for some hours.”
When Miss Daly concluded, Lady Eleanor and her daughter renewed their
grateful acknowledgments for her thoughtful kindness. “These are sad
themes by which to open our acquaintance,” said Lady Eleanor; “but it
is among the prerogatives of friendship to share the pressure of
misfortune, and Mr. Daly's sister can be no stranger to ours.”
“Nor how undeserved they were,” added Miss Daly, gravely.
“Nay, which of us can dare say so much?” interrupted Lady Eleanor; “we
may well have forgotten ourselves in that long career of prosperity
we enjoyed,--for ours was, indeed, a happy lot! I need not speak of
my husband to one who knew him once so well. Generous, frank, and
noble-hearted as he always was,-his only failing the excessive
confidence that would go on believing in the honesty of others, from the
prompting of a spirit that stooped to nothing low or unworthy,--he never
knew suspicion.” “True,” echoed Miss Daly, “he never did suspect!” There
was such a plaintive sadness in her voice that it drew Helen's eyes
towards her; nor could all her efforts conceal a tear that trickled
along her cheek.
“And to what an alternative are we now reduced!” continued Lady Eleanor,
who, with all the selfishness of sorrow, loved to linger on the painful
theme,--“to rejoice at separation, and to feel relieved in thinking that
he is gone to peril life itself rather than endure the lingering death
of a broken heart!”
“Yes, young lady,” said Miss Daly, turning towards Helen, “such are
the recompenses of the most endearing affection, such the penalties of
loving. Would you not almost say, 'It were better to be such as I am,
unloved, uncared for, without one to share a joy or grief with?' I half
think so myself,” added she, suddenly rising from her chair. “I can
almost persuade myself that this load of life is easier borne when all
its pressure is one's own.”
“You are not about to leave us?” said Lady Eleanor, taking her hand
affectionately.
“Yes,” replied she, smiling sadly, “when my heart has disburdened itself
of an immediate care, I become but sorry company, and sometimes think
aloud. How fortunate I have no secrets!--Bring my pony to the door,”
said she, as Tate answered the summons of the bell.
“But wait at least for daylight,” said Helen, eagerly; “the storm is
increasing, and the night is dark and starless. Remember what a road you
've come.”
“I often ride at this hour and with no better weather,” said she,
adjusting the folds of her habit; “and as to the road, Puck knows it too
well to wander from the track, daylight or dark.”
“For our sakes, I entreat you not to venture till morning,” cried Lady
Eleanor.
“I could not if I would,” said Miss Daly, steadily. “By to-morrow, at
noon, I have an engagement at some distance hence, and much to arrange
in the mean time. Pray do not ask me again. I cannot bear to refuse
you, even in such a trifle; and as to me or my safety, waste not another
thought about it. They who have so little to live for are wondrous
secure from accident.”
“When shall we see you? Soon, I hope and trust!” exclaimed both mother
and daughter together.
Miss Daly shook her head; then added hastily, “I never promise anything.
I was a great castle-builder once, but time has cured me of the habit,
and I do not like, even by a pledge, to forestall the morrow. Farewell,
Lady Eleanor. It is better to see but little of me, and think the
better, than grow weary of my waywardness on nearer acquaintance. Adieu,
Miss Darcy; I am glad to have seen you; don't forget me.” So saying, she
pressed Helen's hands to her lips; but ere she let them drop, she
squeezed a letter into her grasp; the moment after, she was gone.
“Oh, then, I remember her the beauty wonst!” said Tate, as he closed the
door, after peering out for some seconds into the dark night: “and
proud she was too,--riding a white Arabian, with two servants in
scarlet liveries after her! The world has quare changes; but hers is the
greatest ever I knew!”