The Martins Of Cro' Martin Volume I Part 24

As she spoke these words, she buried her face between her hands; but the quick heaving of her chest showed how deep was her emotion. The old woman respected her sorrow too deeply to interrupt her, and for several minutes not a word was spoken on either side. At last Mary raised her head, and throwing back the long, loose hair, which in heavy ma.s.ses shaded her face, said with a firm and resolute voice,--

"I 'd have courage to go to school to-morrow, Catty, and begin as a mere child to learn, if I knew that another was ready to take my place here.

But who is to look after these poor people, who are accustomed now to see me amongst them, on the mountains, in the fields, at their firesides?--who gain new spirit for labor when I ride down in the midst of them, and look up, cheered, by seeing me, even from a sick-bed. Her Ladyship would say, Mr. Henderson could do all this far better than myself."

"Mr. Henderson, indeed!" exclaimed Catty, indignantly; "the smooth-tongued old rogue!"

"And perhaps he might, in England," resumed Mary; "but not here, Catty,--not here! We care less for benefits than the source from which they spring. We Irish cherish the love of motives as well as actions; and, above all, we cherish the links that bind the lowliest in the land with the highest, and make both better by the union."

She poured out these words with rapid impetuosity, rather talking to herself than addressing her companion; then, suddenly changing her tone, she added,--

"Besides, Catty, _they_ are used to me, and _I_ to _them_. A new face and a new voice would not bring the same comfort to them."

"Never, never," muttered the old woman to herself.

"And I 'll not desert them."

"That you won't, darling," said the old woman, kissing her hand pa.s.sionately, while tears swam in her eyes, and trickled down her cheeks.

"There is but one thought, Catty, that makes me at all faint-hearted about this, and whenever it crosses me I do feel very low and depressed." She paused, and then murmured the words, "My father!"

"Your father, my darling! What about _him?_"

"It is thinking, Catty, of his return; an event that ought to be--and would be, too--the very happiest of my life; a day for whose coming I never sleep without a prayer; and yet, even this bright prospect has its dark side, when I recall all my own deficiencies, and how different he will find his daughter from what he had expected her."

"May the blessed saints grant me patience!" cried Catty, breaking in.

"Isn't it too bad to hear you talking this way? Sure, don't I know Master Barry well? Didn't I nurse him, and wasn't I all as one as his own mother to him, and don't I know that you are his own born image?

'Tis himself and no other ye are every minute of the day."

"And even that, Catty," said Mary, smiling, "might fail to satisfy him. It is something very different indeed he might have imagined his daughter. I'm sure n.o.body can be more ignorant than I am, of what a person in my station ought to know. I cannot hide this from myself in my sad moments. I do not try to do so, but I have always relied upon the consolation that, to an existence such as mine is like to be, these deficiencies do not bring the same sense of shame, the same painful consciousness of inferiority, as if I were to mingle with the world of my equals. But if he were to come back,--he, who has seen society in every shape and fashion,--and find me the poor, unlettered, unread, untaught thing I am, unable to follow his very descriptions of far-away lands without confusion and mistake; unable to benefit by his reflections from very want of previous knowledge,--oh, Catty dearest, what a miserable thing is self-love after all, when it should thus thrust itself into the foreground, where very different affections alone should have the place."

"He 'd love you like his own heart," said Catty. "n.o.body knows him like me; and if there was ever one made for him to dote on, it's your own self."

"Do you indeed think so?" cried Mary, eagerly.

"Do I know it--could I swear it?" said Catty. "He was never much given to study himself, except it was books of travel like 'Robinson Crusoe,'

and the like; and then, after reading one of them books he 'd be off for days together, and we 'd be looking for him over the whole country, and maybe find him in the middle of Kyle's Wood up a tree; or once, indeed, it was in the island of Lettermullen we got him. He built a mud-house, and was living there with a goat and two rabbits that he reared himself, and if he was n't miserable when they brought him away home! I remember his words well,--'Maybe,' says he, 'the time will come that I 'll go where you can't come after me;' and ye see that's what he's done, for n.o.body knows where he wasn't wandering these last eight or nine years."

When Catty got upon this theme she could not be brought to quit it,--nor, indeed, did Mary try,--for though she had heard these stories of her father's boyish days over and over again, she never wearied of them; they had all the fascination of romance for her, with the stronger interest that grew out of her love for one who, she was told, had so loved herself. Besides this, she felt in her own heart the same promptings to a life of action and adventure. All the incidents and accidents of an eventful existence were the very things to delight her, and one of her happiest daydreams was to fancy herself her father's companion in his wanderings by flood and field.

And thus they sat till a late hour of the night talking and listening, old Catty answering each inquiry of the young girl by some anecdote or trait of him she still persisted in calling "Master Barry," till, in the ardor of listening, Mary herself caught up the phrase, and so designated her own father.

"How unlike my uncle in everything!" exclaimed Mary, as she reflected over some traits the old woman had just recorded. "And were they not very fond of each other?"

"That they were: at least I can answer for Master Barry's love; and to be sure, if having a reason was worth anything, your uncle ought to love him more than one man ever did another." Old Catty uttered these words with a slow and almost muttering accent; they seemed as if the expression of a thought delivered involuntarily--almost unconsciously.

Mary was attracted by the unwonted solemnity of her accent, but still more by an expression of intense meaning which gathered over the old woman's brows and forehead. "Ay, ay," muttered she, still to herself, "there's few brothers would do it. Maybe there's not another living but himself would have done it."

"And what was it, Catty?" asked Mary, boldly.

"Eh!--what was I saying, darling?" said Catty, rousing herself to full consciousness.

"You were telling of my father, and some great proof of affection he gave my uncle."

"To be sure he did," said the old woman, hastily. "They were always fond of each other, as brothers ought to be."

"But this one particular instance of love,--what was it, Catty?"

The old woman started, and looked eagerly around the room, as though to a.s.sure herself that they were alone; then, drawing her chair close to Mary's, she said, in a low voice: "Don't ask me any more about them things, darling. 'T is past and gone many a year now, and I 'd rather never think of it more, for I 've a heavy heart after it."

"So, then, it is a secret, Catty?" said Mary, half proudly.

"A secret, indeed," said Catty, shaking her head mournfully.

"Then you need only to have said so, and I'd not have importuned you to tell it; for, to say truth, Catty, I never knew you had any secrets from me."

"Nor have I another, except this, darling," said Catty; and she buried her face within her hands. And now both sat in silence for some minutes,--a most painful silence to each. At last Mary arose, and, although evidently trying to overcome it, a feeling of constraint was marked in her features.

"You'd never guess how late it is, Catty," said she, trying to change the current of her thoughts. "You 'd not believe it is past three o'clock; how pleasantly we must have talked, to forget time in this way!"

But the old woman made no reply, and it was clear that she had never heard the words, so deeply was she sunk in her own reflections.

"This poor hat of mine will scarcely do another day's service," said Mary, as she looked at it half laughingly. "Nor is my habit the fresher of its bath in the 'Red River;' and the worst of it is, Catty, I have overdrawn my quarter's allowance, and must live on, in rags, till Easter. I see, old lady, you have no sympathies to waste on me and my calamities this evening," added she, gayly, "and so I'll just go to bed and, if I can, dream pleasantly."

"Rags, indeed," said Catty. "It's well it becomes you to wear rags!"

and her eyes sparkled with indignant pa.s.sion. "Faith, if it comes to that,"--here she suddenly paused, and a pale hue spread over her features like a qualm of faintish sickness,--"may the Holy Mother give me help and advice; for sometimes I'm nigh forgetting myself!"

"My dear old Catty," said Mary, fondly, "don't fret about me and my foolish speech. I only said it in jest. I have everything,--far more than I want; a thousand times more than I desire. And my excellent aunt never said a truer thing in her life than when she declared that 'everybody spoiled me.' Now, good-night." And kissing the old woman affectionately, Mary gathered up the stray fragments of her riding-gear, and hurried away, her merry voice heard cheerfully as she wended her way up many a stair and gallery to her own chamber.

If Mary Martin's character had any one quality preeminently remarkable, it was the absence of everything like distrust and suspicion. Frankness and candor itself in all her dealings, she never condescended to impute secret motives to another; and the very thought of anything like mystery was absolutely repugant to her nature. For the very first time in her life, then, she left old Catty Broon with a kind of uneasy, dissatisfied impression. There was a secret, and she was somehow or other concerned in it; so much was clear. How could she convince the old woman that no revelation, however disagreeable in itself, could be as torturing as a doubt? "Can there be anything in my position or circ.u.mstances here that I am not aware of? Is there a mystery about me in any way?" The very imagination of such a thing was agony. In vain she tried to chase away the unwelcome thought by singing, as she went, by thinking over plans for the morrow, by noting down, as she did each night, some stray records of the past day; still Catty's agitated face and strange emotion rose before her, and would not suffer her to be at rest.

To a day of great excitement and fatigue now succeeded a sleepless, feverish night, and morning broke on her unrefreshed, and even ill.

CHAPTER XIV. A FINE OLD IRISH BARRISTER

Can any one tell us what has become of that high conversational power for which Ireland, but more especially Dublin, was once celebrated? Have the brilliant talkers of other days left no successors? Has that race of delightful con-vivialists gone and disappeared forever? Or are we only enduring an interregnum of dulness, the fit repose, perhaps, after a period of such excitement? The altered circ.u.mstances of the country will doubtless account for much of this change. The presence of a Parliament in Ireland imparted a dignity and importance to society, while it secured to social intercourse the men who made that Senate ill.u.s.trious.

The Bar, too, of former days, was essentially the career of the highest cla.s.s, of those who had the ambition of political success without the necessity of toiling for it through the laborious paths of the law; and thus the wit, the brilliancy, and the readiness which gives conversation its charm, obtained the high culture which comes of a learned profession, and the social intercourse with men of refined understanding.

With the Union this spirit died out. Some of the brightest and gayest retired from the world, sad, dispirited, and depressed; some felt that a new and very different career was to open before them, and addressed themselves to the task of conforming to new habits and acquiring new influences; and others, again, sought in the richer and greater country the rewards which they once were satisfied to reap in their own. With the Union, society in Dublin--using the word in its really comprehensive sense--ceased to exist. The great interests of a nation departed, men sank to the level of the small topics that engaged them, and gradually the smallest and narrowest views of mere local matters usurped the place of great events and liberal speculations. Towards the end of the first quarter of the present century, a few of those who had once made companionship with Curran and Grattan and Lysaght and Parsons were still in good health and vigor. A fine, high-hearted, manly cla.s.s they were, full of that peculiar generosity of character which has ever marked the true Irish gentleman, and with a readiness in humor and a genial flow of pleasantry which rendered their society delightful.

Of this school--and probably the last, for he was then the Father of the Bar--was Valentine Repton, a man whose abilities might have won for him the very highest distinctions, but who, partly through indolence, and partly through a st.u.r.dy desire to be independent of all party, had all his life rejected every offer of advancement, and had seen his juniors pa.s.s on to the highest ranks of the profession, while he still wore his stuff-gown, and rose to address the Court from the outer benches.

He was reported in early life to have professed very democratic opinions, for which he more than once had incurred the _deep_ displeasure of the authorities of the University. The principles of the French Revolution had, however, been gradually toned down in him by time, and probably by a very aristocratic contempt for the party who advocated them; so that soon after he entered on his career at the Bar he seemed to have abandoned politics; nor, except by a sly jest or an epigram upon a party leader, no matter of which side, did he ever advert to the contests of statecraft.

Though closely approaching seventy, he was hale and vigorous, his gray eyes quick and full of fire, his voice clear, and his whole air and bearing that of one many years younger. He had been a "beau" in his youth, and there was in the accurately powdered hair, the lace ruffles in which he still appeared at dinner, and the well-fitting silk stocking, an evidence that he had not forgotten the attractions of dress. At the Bar he still maintained the very highest place. His powers of cross-examination were very great; his management of a jury unrivalled. A lifelong acquaintance with Dublin had familiarized him with the tone and temper of every cla.s.s of its citizens, and had taught him the precise kind of argument, and the exact nature of the appeal to address to each. As he grew older, perhaps he did not observe all his wonted discretion in the use of this subtle power, and somewhat presumed upon his own skill. Nor was he so scrupulous in his deference to the Court,--a feature which had once pre-eminently distinguished him; but, upon the whole, he had kept wonderfully clear of the proverbial irritability of age, and was, without an exception, the favorite amongst his brethren.