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ROSSMOYNE.
BY THE AUTHOR OF
"PHYLLIS," "MOLLY BAWN," "PORTIA," ETC.
"Who set this ancient quarrel new abroach?--
Speak, nephew, were you by when it began?
"Here's much to do with hate, but more with love."--
ROMEO AND JULIET.
NEW YORK AND CHICAGO
BUTLER BROTHERS
TROW'S
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY,
NEW YORK.
ROSSMOYNE.
CHAPTER I.
How a Dove-cot was fluttered in Rossmoyne.
The old-fashioned clock is ticking loudly, ponderously, as though
determined to betray the flight of fickle time and impress upon the
happy, careless ones that the end of all things is at hand. The roses
knock their fragrant buds against the window-panes, calling attention to
their dainty sweetness. The pigeons coo amorously upon the sills
outside, and even thrust their pretty heads into the breakfast-room,
demanding plaintively their daily crumbs; but no one heeds.
A deadly silence has fallen upon this room at Moyne, albeit life is
fully represented here, and two eyes, in which the light of youth is
quenched, are looking anxiously into the two other eyes that have also
seen the best and the sweetest of their days.
Hopelessly the golden roses scatter their petals. In vain the white and
tawny birds entreat backsheesh. To no purpose does the elderly clock
count out its numbers. The urn is hissing angrily, the two cups of tea
so carefully prepared are growing cold. So are the crisp little hot
cakes, so is the----
No! by the bye, it isn't! Honey can't. What a chance I was near giving
the reviewers!
One bird, growing annoyed at the prolonged quiet, flies from the open
window to the back of Miss Penelope's chair, and settles there with an
indignant flutter and a suppressed but angry note. This small suggestion
of a living world destroyes the spell that for the last few minutes has
been connecting the brain with a dead one.
Miss Penelope, raising her head, gives words to her thoughts.
"Poor, poor Katherine!" she says, gently smoothing out the letter that
lies upon her knee. "How her happiness was wrecked and what a sad ending
there has been to everything! Her children coming home to us,
fatherless--motherless! Dear child! what a life hers has been! It is
quite twenty years ago now, and yet it all seems to me as fresh as
yesterday."
"She shouldn't have taken things so easily; she should have asserted
herself at the _time_," says Miss Priscilla, whose voice is always a
note sharper than her sister's.
"It requires a great deal of thought and--and a great deal of moral
courage to assert one's self when a man has behaved abominably to
one,--has, in fact, _jilted_ one!" says Miss Penelope, bringing out the
awful word with a little shudder and a shake of her gentle head, that
sets two pale lavender ribbons on her cap swaying mildly to and fro.
"Why was she so fatally silent about everything, except the one bare
fact of his refusal, at the last moment, to marry her, without assigning
any cause for his base desertion? Why didn't she open her whole heart to
me? I wasn't afraid of the man!" says Miss Priscilla, with such terrible
energy and such a warlike front as might well have daunted "_the man_,"
or indeed any man, could he have seen her. "She should have unburdened
her poor bruised spirit to me, who--if my mother was not hers, and if I
was many years her senior--had at least a sister's love for her."
"A true love," says Miss Penelope, with another sigh.
"Instead of which," regretfully, "she hid all her sorrows in her own
bosom, and no doubt wept and pined for the miscreant in secret."
"Poor soul!" says Miss Penelope, profoundly affected by this dismal
picture. Tears born of tenderness spring to her eyes. "Do you remember,
Priscilla, how she refused to show his letter, wishing, I suppose, even
_then_ to spare him?"
"I forget nothing!" with some acerbity. "Often, when saying my prayers,
I have wished I could forget him, but I can't, so I have to go on being
uncharitable and in sin,--if indeed sin it be to harden one's heart
against a bad man."
"Do you remember, too, my dear Priscilla, how she refused to go to
church the Sunday after she received his cold-blooded missive telling
her he wished his engagement at an end? I often wonder in what language
he could have couched such a scandalous desire; but she tore the letter
up. Dear! dear! it might have happened to-day, it is all so clear to
me."
"Too clear," says Miss Priscilla.
"I recollect, too," says Miss Penelope, leaning her elbows on the table,
pushing her untasted tea from her, and warming to the dismal memory,
"how she would not come down to dinner on that eventful evening, though
we had the red-currant tart she was so fond of, and how I took some up
myself and knocked at her door and entreated her to open to me and to
eat some of it. There was whipped cream on it; and she was very fond of
cream, too."
"And she refused to open the door?" asks Miss Priscilla, with the
satisfied air of one who has often heard the thrilling recital before,
yet was never tired of it.
"Absolutely! so I laid the plate on a little table outside her door.
Some hours afterwards, going up to bed, I saw the plate was gone and her
door slightly ajar. Stealing into her room on tiptoe, I saw she was
sleeping peacefully, and that she had eaten the red-currant tart. I felt
so happy then. Poor dear child! how fond she was of that tart."
"She liked everything that had sugar in it," says Miss Priscilla,
mournfully.
"It was only natural. 'Sweets to the sweet,'" says Miss Penelope,
letting one little white jewelled hand fall slowly, sadly upon the
other.
There is a lengthened pause.
Presently, stooping slightly towards her sister, Miss Penelope says in a
mysterious whisper,--
"I wonder, my dear Priscilla, _why_ she married James Beresford a month
afterwards."
"Who can read the human heart? Perhaps it was pride drove her into that
marriage,--a desire to show George Desmond how lightly she treated his
desertion of her. And James was a handsome young fellow, whereas George
was----"
"Ugly," says Miss Penelope, with quite an amazing amount of vicious
satisfaction for her.
"Strikingly so," says Miss Priscilla, acquiescing most agreeably. "But
then the Desmond estates mean half the county; and we _used_ to think he
was the soul of honor."
"It was our father's expressed desire upon his deathbed that Katherine
should marry him."
"Yes, yes; a desire to be held sacred. And Katherine gave her promise to
our dying parent. Nothing," says Miss Priscilla, in a solemn tone,
"should induce any one to break such an oath. I have often said so to
the dear child. But she appeared not only willing, but anxious, to marry
George Desmond. _His_ was the traitorous mind."
"I daresay he has had his own punishment," says Miss Penelope, mildly.
"I hope so," says Miss Priscilla, sternly. Then, with a return to
sadness, "Twenty years ago it is, and now she has been a twelvemonth
dead and in her quiet grave."
"Oh, _don't_, my dear Priscilla," says Miss Penelope, in a broken voice,
burying her face in her pocket-handkerchief.
"Ah! well, well, we had better look to the future; the past has no
charms for us," says Miss Priscilla, with a ghastly attempt at
cheerfulness. "Let me see," referring through a pair of gold-rimmed
spectacles to the letter in her hand: "That the dear children have
landed we know, and--h'm--yes, this very--yes, plainly, _very_
respectable person, the captain, writes to say they will be with us
to-morrow."
"_To-morrow!_ and that was written yesterday," says Miss Penelope,
putting down her handkerchief and starting once more into life. "Why, at
that rate, my dear Priscilla, they will be here _to-day_!"
"Bless me! you don't mean it!" exclaims Miss Priscilla, again applying
her glasses to the letter. "Monday, and this is Tuesday: yes, sure
enough you are right. What a head you have, my dear Penelope!"
"Oh, not at all," says Miss Penelope, flushing with pleasure at this
tribute to her intellect.
"To-day,--in a few hours. Now, what is to be done about the beds?"
"But surely they are aired?"
"Aired?--yes. They have been aired every day regularly for the past two
months, ever since I first heard the children were likely to come to us.
But still I am uncertain about them. I know they will want hot jars; and
then the rooms, they will want flowers and many things--and----"
"Can't I help you?" demands Miss Penelope, eagerly.
"My dear girl, not at all," says Miss Priscilla, with a calmly superior
air, arising from the fact that she is quite eighteen months her senior.
"You can assist me with your valuable counsel, but I would not have you
disturb yourself for worlds. You must be cool and collected, and hold
yourself in readiness to receive them when they come. They will be shy,
no doubt, coming here all the way from Palestine, and it must be your
part to make them feel quite at home."
This to Miss Penelope, who is afraid of strangers in any guise, appears
such a fearful mission that she pales, and says, tremblingly,--
"But you too will be present at our first meeting? I must indeed _beg_
you to be present, my dear Priscilla."
"Of course, of course," says Miss Priscilla, encouragingly. Then,
doubtfully, "I hope the boy won't take a dislike to us."
"I wonder how we shall get on with children," says Miss Penelope. She is
evidently growing extremely nervous. "It seems so strange they should be
coming here to the old house."
"Monica cannot be a child now. She must be at least eighteen," says Miss
Priscilla, thoughtfully. "It was in 1863 that----"
"1864, I think," interrupts Miss Penelope.
"1863," persists Miss Priscilla.
"You may be right, my dear," says Miss Penelope, mildly but firmly, "you
often are,--but I know it was in '64 that----"
"What?" asks Miss Priscilla, sharply.
"The Desmond jilted our Katherine."
"You are wrong, Penelope, utterly wrong. It was in '63."
"I am nearly always wrong," says Miss Penelope, meekly, yet with a
latent sense of suppressed power. "But I cannot forget that in the year
George Desmond behaved so shamefully to our sweet Katherine, Madam
O'Connor's cow had two calves, and _that_," triumphantly, "was in '64."
"You are right--quite right," says Miss Priscilla, vanquished, but not
cast down. "So it was. What a memory you have, my dear Penelope!"
"Nothing when compared with _yours_," says Miss Penelope, smiling.
At this moment the door opens and an old man enters the room. He is clad
in the garb of a servant, though such wonderful habiliments as those in
which he has arrayed himself would be difficult to purchase nowadays:
whether there are more wrinkles in his forehead or in his trousers is a
nice question that could not readily be decided at a moment's notice.
He is quite ten years older than either of his mistresses; and, indeed,
both he and his garments belong to a by-gone generation. His knees are
bent, so is his back; his face is like a Ribston pippin, his coat is a
marvel both in cut and in texture, but his linen is irreproachable, and
what hair nature has still left him is most carefully brushed. There is,
too, in his small gray Irish eyes a mischievous twinkle, and a fund of
honest good humor that goes far to defy the ravages of time. In spite
of his seventy years and his quaint attire, he still at times can hold
his own with many a younger man.
"Well, Timothy," says Miss Priscilla, looking up as he approaches the
table, "we have had news of Miss Katherine's--I mean Mrs.
Beresford's--children."
"Rest her sowl!" says Timothy, in a reverential tone, alluding to that
part of the late Mrs. Beresford.
"It seems they have landed and will be with us to-day."
"The day, miss?" growing brisk at this unexpected announcement.
"Yes, they have reached England in safety, and are now in Dublin. What a
long, long journey it has been for them," with another dreamy glance at
the letter, "all the way from Palestine!"
"An' so it has, miss, poor little crathurs!" says Timothy, who knows as
much about the whereabouts of Palestine as he does about the man in the
moon.
"You mustn't think they are very young, Timothy," says Miss Penelope,
hastily. "Miss Priscilla and I have been talking it over, and we believe
Miss Beresford must be now seventeen, Master Terence sixteen, and Miss
Kate fourteen."
"And so of course they must be, miss. Thrue for ye, ma'am. Dear, dear,
though only to think now; it seems only the other day the dear young
lady was married to Mister Beresford. But you aren't eating a bit,
miss," anxiously; "you haven't tasted a morsel, ma'am. What can I get ye
now?"
"Nothing, Timothy. The fact is----"
"There's an iligant ham downstairs, ma'am," says the old man, now really
concerned for the mistresses, who still always appear to him as "the
young ladies:" "let me bring it up to you."
"No, thank you, Timothy: we are just a little upset by this sudden news.
We cannot help wondering how the old house will be with children in it,
after all these years of calm and quiet."
"Sure an' a grand change it will be for us all, miss; 'twill indeed,
ma'am," says Timothy, cheerfully, though his mind misgives him. "There's
nothing like children, when all's told: sure's there's music in every
sound of their footsteps."
"I hope they will be good," says Miss Penelope, with a doubtful sigh.
"Faix, what else would they be, miss?" says the old man, with assumed
reproach. "'Tis well I mind of poor Miss Katherine herself,--the soft
tongue she had in her head, an' never a cross word out of her, save to
Nelly Doolin--an' she was the divil herself, savin' your presence, miss,
and enough to provoke all the saints--glory be----"
"I trust they will be happy here," goes on Miss Penelope, still wistful.
"An' why not, miss? Sure the counthry is the finest place at all for the
young; and where's a finer counthry than ould Ireland?"
"Much can't be said for it of late, Timothy," says Miss Priscilla,
sadly: "all it can boast of now is rebellion, sedition, and bloodshed."
"Sure every one must have a kick up sometimes, miss," says Timothy, with
youthful lightness; "an', afther all, isn't the ould place only doin'
what she can for herself, more power to her?"
"Ryan," says Miss Priscilla, sternly, addressing her butler by his
surname,--a thing that is never done except in dire cases,--and fixing
upon him an icy glance beneath which he quails, "I regret you should so
far forget yourself as to utter such treasonable sentiments in our
presence. You ought to be ashamed of yourself."
"So I am miss. I humbly ask yer pardon, ma'am," says Mr. Ryan, promptly.
"But all the different opinions one hears addles the brain. 'Twas only
last night the Murphys had a meeting, and they do say, miss," lowering
his voice confidentially, "that the Squire down there," pointing
apparently through the breakfast-room wall, "is in a bad way with the
League boys."
"The Desmond?"
"Yes, miss. He's been evictin' again, ma'am, an' there's queer talk
about him. But," with a relapse into former thought, "if he's a bad
landlord, what can he expect?"
"No, no, Timothy. He is not a bad landlord," says Miss Priscilla,
hastily, though this allowance of grace to her enemy causes her a bitter
pang. "He has been most patient for years. That I _know_."
"Well, maybe so, miss," says Ryan, deferentially, but with a reservation
in his manner that speaks volumes. "It isn't for the likes of me ma'am,
to contradict the likes of you. But did ye hear, miss, that Misther
Desmond's nephew has come to stay with him?"
"At Coole?"
"At the Castle. Yes, miss. Faix 'twas meself was surprised to hear it.
But there he is, safe enough, an' another gentleman with him; an' they
do say that the old masther is as proud as Punch of him. But his blood's
bad, I'll no doubt."
"No doubt," says Priscilla, severely.
Miss Penelope sighs.