Norah (Oliphant)/Part 1
CHAPTER I.
There is one thing about Ireland which I don’t remember ever to have heard any one notice but myself, which seems a conceited thing to say, as I really know so little about it. It is nothing political, though it may have a connection with Irish politics, for anything I can tell. It is the immense, the extraordinary number of Irish gentry afloat upon the world. I never was in a country neighborhood in England where there were not two or three families, at least; and every one who has ever lived abroad knows what heaps there are at every (so-called) English center, where living is supposed to be cheap, and there is a little society. One stumbles against them wherever one goes; and my opinion is, that it is very pleasant, generally, to make their acquaintance. But the fact has always surprised me. No doubt, one falls upon a Scotch house here and there in the quiet parts of England; but I never knew a village yet without its Irish family. And there was one accordingly at Dinglefield Green.
Almost as much as a matter of course, it was in the funny, tumble-down house at the east end of the Green, which somebody, I suppose in mockery, had nicknamed the Mansion, that they established themselves. The house must have had another name for formal purposes; but it never was called anything but the Mansion among us. It stood in a little, overgrown, very weedy garden; and I know it was damp. But of course, poor things, they could not tell that. It was partly built of wood, and partly covered with creepers; and between the two, you cannot conceive a more moist and mouldy place for people to live in. Creepers are very pretty, but they are not good for the walls, nor for one’s comfort I do not say it was not rather picturesque, when the Virginia creeper was growing scarlet, and the trees changing color. There were two very fine chestnuts on the lawn in front of the house, and a good deal of wood behind—rather more wood, indeed, than I should have liked. The garden was walled all round, except in front, where the chestnuts made a very nice screen, and showed a pretty peep of the house between them. I have no doubt it was that peep which determined Lady Louisa; and as she knew nobody on the Green, it was impossible for us to warn her that things were not quite so satisfactory within.
However, they came and settled down in summer; after the season, Lady Louisa said. “I hate it myself, me dear,” she informed us all; “I’m an old woman, and what’s thim balls and kettle-drums to me? Though I don’t quarrel with a good dinner when it takes that form, sure it’s for them, poor things. You can’t put an old head on young shoulders; and, upon me honor, I never was the woman to try.” So the Beresfords came and settled down among us after their gayeties. We are always curious about a new neighbor on the Green. There are not many of us, and nice people are always an acquisition; whereas, on the contrary, when they are not nice, as has happened now and then, it is very uncomfortable for us all. Personally, the first that I saw of the Beresfords was Norah. Every afternoon when I went out, for the first fortnight after their arrival, I met a young lady who was a stranger to me, and who must, I knew, be one of the new people at the Mansion. She had a quick way of walking, which made it difficult for a shortsighted person like myself to see her face. But when I began to compare notes with my neighbors, I found that everybody had seen her, and had noticed exactly what I did. We all called her the Girl with the Blue Veil. That was the most conspicuous point about her; and what was still more conspicuous was, that the veil had a hole in it. We made a little merry over this, I confess. One could not but say it was very Irish. Sometimes her veil was thrown over her face, and then the tip of a pretty little nose would be seen through the crevice, or a laughing, dancing, merry eye. I have no doubt she did it on purpose, saucy girl as she was. By degrees, the whole household became known. Lady Louisa herself was a stout little woman, very droll and dowdy; and her eldest daughter was exactly like her, and about the same age, I should think. They both dressed in the same way, and a very funny way it was; and they were exactly the same height, and trudged about everywhere together. Mr. Beresford was a quiet little old man with headaches, and we saw very little of him. Sometimes one of the sons came down from town, and sometimes other Irish families—very fine, shabby, homely people like themselves, with queer old gowns, and heavy old chains, and bracelets, and titles—used to come to see them. We all wondered, at first, how it was they were not ashamed to ask Countesses and Viscountesses, and all sorts of grand-sounding people, to go to the Mansion among the weeds and the damp, and with the remarkable furniture which we knew the house to contain. But, good souls, they were not in the least ashamed of anything; and the other lords and ladies took to it quite kindly too.
We all called, of course, as soon as it could be supposed that they had settled down. If anybody else had gone to the Mansion in the same homely way, the ladies on the Green might have hesitated; but there could be no question about Lady Louisa. They were all in, as it happened, the day I made my visit. They were not the kind of people to throw any glare about the odd little place; but of course, with so many in the room, it could not help but look more cheerful. The windows were ridiculous little casement windows, but they were open; and Norah was there, without her blue veil. Now I don’t mean to say that she was beautiful, or even absolutely pretty, perhaps; but she was the kind of creature that takes you by storm. Her eyes laughed, as if life were the greatest fun in the world; and up to this time I think she had found it so. They were curious eyes. Some people called them green, which was a libel, and some called them gray, which was almost as bad. I have seen them look as near blue as green, and I have seen them darken into hazel for a moment, if any shadow flitted across Norah’s sky. But on ordinary occasions they were eyes of gold; they were like crystal, or sparkling running water, with a great yellow sunset shining through it. Her hair was of the Irish kind of hair which I have seen on many beautiful heads—dusky brown, neither light nor fair, with a certain paleness like dead leaves. And she was pale; her lips, even, were not too vivid in color,—everything about her toned down, except the eyes with the light in them, and the whitest teeth I ever saw. She was such a contrast to the others that I cannot help describing her. They were like two little steady old hens trolling about together, the mother and Priscilla; whereas Norah was like a bird and had wings. She was standing as I came in, which perhaps made me distinguish her the more; while Lady Louisa and Miss Beresford sat one on each side of my dear old Lady Denzil, who had called that afternoon too.
“Here’s Mrs. Mulgrave at last,” said Lady Louisa, as if she had known me all my life. “Me dear ma’am, don’t look so surprised. Haven’t I heard of you from me Lady here, and heaps of friends; and ye may imagine me feelings when I thought you were not going to call. Mr. Beresford has one of his bad headaches; so he’ll not have the pleasure of seeing you to-day. But here’s me girls, and very glad to make your acquaintance at last.”
“I am sure you are very good,” I said; and faltered out excuses (though I might have had the sense to see they were not necessary) for having let a whole fortnight pass. Lady Louisa did not pretend to pay the least attention. She was off at a tangent before I had said half a dozen words.
“He married an O’Farrell, me dear lady,” she said, “and Mr. Beresford’s grandmother, as ye may have heard, was step-daughter to old O’Farrell, of Castle Farrell; so he’s a near relation, though we haven’t seen much of him. They make fun of him because he’s a widower, poor man; but ye may take me word, a widower with ten thousand a year is as pretty a thing as ye’ll see in a day’s journey—and neither chick nor child. They’re silly girls, more’s the pity, as I tell them every day.”
“When a man is a widower so young as that,” said Lady Denzil, “I am always sorry for him. It is bad for people beginning over again, even if there was nothing more.”
“But he needn’t begin over again. Why can’t he stay as he is?” said Miss Beresford, with a little prim consciousness, and Norah clapped her hands and went off into wild laughter most exhilarating to hear.
“I would if I were him,” she said, “if it was only for the fun of cheating mamma and you. But the man is old,—he’s five-and-thirty. He might be one’s grandfather—and a widower. If I were Prissy, I know what I should say.”
“You would stop till you were asked, me dear,” said Lady Louisa; “and so will your sister—and sure it’s the height of bad breeding to be speaking of a thing Mrs. Mulgrave hasn’t heard of till now. It’s Col. Fitzgerald, me dear ma’am, that’s come to the Castle—a cousin of their own, and ye hear how they’re making fun of him. His wife, poor little soul, died within the year, and ye may take me word, being a young man, he’s looking out again. So I don’t see why they should not have the chance, as well as another. Now don’t ye agree with me?”
“It depends on what the young ladies think,” said I, so much amazed that I really could not for the moment see the fun, notwithstanding the dancing laughter in Norah’s eyes.
“Ah, then, and what do they know?” said Lady Louisa, “a pack of girls! Norah, me child, sit down and be quiet, do, or the ladies will think ye a tomboy, and it’s not far wrong they would be. It’s a young woman’s duty to marry, as I always tell them, and I don’t see that there’s much prospect here, where you’ve no gentlemen to speak of—unless it’s the officers. We’d have laughed in my time to think of the men failing. They used to be as plenty as blackberries in the old days.”
“We have got our brothers,” said Miss Priscilla, “and I don’t know what more we want. You would not find it so easy to get on without us as you think, mamma.”
“1 don’t think of meself, me dear,” said Lady Louisa; and abandoned the subject abruptly, with that fine sense of the genius of conversation which belongs to her race. “Mr. Beresford would have called on Sir Thomas, me dear Lady, but for his headaches. Sure we all know what a man is when he is ill. I You can’t tell how I’m hoping the place will suit him. We’ve done nothing but wander about since me children were babies. As for our own country, it’s out of the question. The damp, and the heat, and the cold, and altogether. But I hear you’ve a fine bracing air on the Green?”
“Yes,” said Lady Denzil and myself, both together, but there was, of course, a certain hesitation in our voices, which Lady Louisa was much too sharp not to observe. We were thinking of the Mansion itself and the damp, but that we could not explain.
“Ah, well,” she said, looking at us. “It is not easy to know who to trust. Time will show. It is a droll little bit of a house, but we make it do. We had some friends over to lunch yesterday, our cousin Lady Langdale, and young Everton, her eldest son. That’s a fine young fellow now—very handsome, me dear lady, and I fear, if one must believe all the tales one hears, very fast too—but the best of sons. As pleased to come down here with his dear mother as if he had been going to—well, I was going to say the Castle, but that’s not very exciting now-a-days, me dear ma’am.”
“Why, he came to have some fun, mamma,” said Norah. “Don’t you know it’s great fun coming to this tumble-down old place? I like it of all things. One can skip about as one pleases, and nobody minds—instead of having to mend one’s glove, and put up one’s hair, and look as proper as four pins.”
“But we rather pique ourselves upon being proper all the same,” said Lady Denzil, “and you must not teach the girls to be wild, my dear, though it is very nice to see you skipping about—even with holes in your gloves.”
We looked at each other, my old friend and I, and had a little difficulty in keeping our countenances. It was all of a piece, somehow, and though one might be didactic as one’s duty, one had no particular desire to set it right.
After the little glimpse we had been having of the Mansion and its inmates, there was something quite harmonious in that hole in Norah’s veil.
“But Norah is quite particular about her gloves, I assure you,” said Miss Beresford. “She is not such a wild Irish girl as people think, though she will run about. Mamma has no proper maid just now—”
“Ah,” sighed Lady Louisa, “don’t remind me of it, me dear. I’ve never had a proper maid, me dear ladies, I give you my word, since that fool of a girl went and married under me very nose, as it were. They will marry, the fools! as soon as they’ve got to be a bit useful to ye. And to prove it, I’ve got no cook in the house at this minute, if ye’ll believe it, me dear ma’am, which is worse, when there’s a man to be fed, than the want of a good maid.”
“Oh dear, I am very sorry,” said I. “Can—one—be of any use, Lady Louisa? Of course it is strange on so short an acquaintance—but if my servants can do anything—”
“It’s like your kindness,” said Lady Louisa, pressing my hand. “But we do the best we can. There’s the lad that came with us; sure he’s the son of an old butler of ours, and he’s seen a good deal for his condition in life, and a very pretty notion of a dinner he has, I assure you; and me maid, such as she is—I don’t call her a clever maid—but she can take a turn at anything. It’s handy, me dear ladies, when you’re moving about, and can’t carry a full establishment at your tails. And we get along. Mr. Beresford’s an invalid, thank God, and not so unreasonable as most men about the cooking. And oh, I assure ye, we get along.”
Lady Denzil had turned to Norah, and was speaking to the child over her shoulder as this revelation was made to me, and I could do nothing but falter a hope that she would soon feel herself settled down, and be supplied with cooks and everything necessary, as I rose to go away.
“Ah, then, it does not take so long to settle down,” said Lady Louisa, rising, “when ye are used to it like me. I come in, me dear ma’am, and I give meself a shake, and I’m at home, whatever the place may be. It isn’t a palace,” she continued, looking round, “and the furniture is old-fashioned, but we’ve put in some of our own knick-knacks, ye see, which I always carry about with me, and that does more than anything to give the home-look. Norah, ring for old Ferns to show me Lady Denzil the door.”
“Is this the man of all work, who has a pretty notion of a dinner?” I could not refrain from whispering as we went out. We had shaken hands and got quite clear of the drawing-room—indeed, we were outside the door; out of all possibility, as I thought, of being overheard. But before Lady Denzil could answer, a fresh, sweet, ringing peal of laughter came upon my astonished ear.
“Oh no, not that old fellow; but I’ll show him to you if you please,” said Norah Beresford, suddenly making her appearance round the corner. “He’s the stable boy, and the cleverest boy I know.”
You may suppose how I started! That Mansion is one of the most awkward places for back doors and side doors, so that you never know when you are safe. Of course I made some stupid excuses, but Norah only went off into another fit of laughing. The girl was wild with fun and spirits; she could not be more than eighteen—a kind of dancing fawn—and I took a fancy to the creature on the spot; though, no doubt, if she had been one of our own girls on the Green, who have always been brought up to behave themselves, one might have thought differently. But a young face of that age running over with fun and nonsense is pleasant, when it is sweet nonsense and not wicked. Norah laughed as most people breathe, and it was not from the lips outward, but with all her heart.
“What a light-hearted creature!” I said, with a little sigh, such as middle-aged people are apt to indulge in at such a sight. It meant poor thing, she knows no better! I suppose one cannot help that half-envying, half-melancholy thought.
Lady Denzil was old, not middle aged, and had ceased to feel this little prick of compassion and superiority. She smiled only, she did not sigh, as she waved her hand to Norah. “It is a nice, innocent, cordial sort of laugh,—it does one’s heart good to hear it,” she said.
“And what a household!” I went on, for we were now quite free of the Mansion and its inmates. “So frank and so queer about everything! Are they half out of their minds, do you think—or is it all a joke?”
“My dear, they are Irish,” said Lady Denzil quietly. “And then, why should they be ashamed? It is not their own house. I dare say their own place is very nice, if you could see it. And then they have a certain rank, you know. That makes people very easy about what they say. She is Lady Louisa if she lived in a garret. She can't be mistaken; and they take the good of their own mishaps, and see the fun of them just as we do, whereas our mishaps only amuse our neighbors, not ourselves,” Lady Denzil added. It was very true, perhaps; but one did not like to hear such a sentiment from my Lady's lips.
And before a week was over, as might have been expected, the Green rang with stories of the Irish family. “Fancy, she says Colonel Fitzgerald is a widower with £10,000 a year, and her daughters may as well have the chance as another,” Mrs. Stoke said to me, pale with consternation, though such calculations could not be absolutely foreign to her own experience. She was so shocked that it took away her speech for a whole evening: which was very different from its effect on Lady Louisa. “And the stable boy cooks the dinner,” said the Admiral, with a laugh that they must have heard on the other side of the Green, and shrugged his shoulders, and added, “Poor devil,”—meaning, no doubt, Mr. Beresford, whom Lady Louisa, on the contrary, thanked God was an invalid, and not so particular. Whenever we met, we had a new story to tell of the Mansion. But it did them no harm, as far as I could see. No cook ever came that we could find out, and no maid; and the hole in Norah’s blue veil survived triumphantly till Christmas, when she tied up the leg of a little table in the drawing-room with it, to the admiration of all beholders. “I never saw such furniture,” Norah said; “it breaks if you look hard at it. I suppose it must be made expressly for furnished houses;” and then she tied up the little table, which had a sprain, with the blue veil.
But notwithstanding, they were the greatest acquisition we had met with for a long while on the Green. Norah was a favorite everywhere; our pet, and the darling of the village, though she was not always perfectly tidy. And as for Miss Priscilla, though she was by way of being the precise and old-maidenly sister, even she had a suppressed sense of fun with all her primness. I do not believe they read three books from one year's end to another. The girls knew nothing to speak of, except a smattering of languages, which they had picked up abroad in their wanderings. Really, I cannot help thinking sometimes it is great nonsense, the fuss we make about education. Norah was a great deal nicer than if she had been well educated. I am old-fashioned, I suppose, but on the other hand I am very fond of books, which have been my closest companions for years; but yet—Those lively, keen, open eyes, seeing everything—that vivacious original mind, finding out the fun first of all, and then heaps of other meanings, if they were but ever so slightly indicated to her, in everything she heard or saw—are worth a great deal more than mere knowledge. I hate dull people, uneducated or not, which I fear is a very unchristian sentiment when one thinks how many of our fellow-creatures are very dull—and I love intelligence about all things, without caring much about its amount of education. “Ah, that is because you only see the pleasant side of it,” Mr. Damerel says to me. He is very highly educated, good man, and so are his children going to be. The girls (it is his pride) learn everything with their brothers. But, oh me, how heavy they all are! how it wears one out to spend an evening at the Rectory! whereas with those dear ignorant souls at the Mansion the moments flew.
It was July when the Beresfords came, so that they had still a good deal of the summer before them, and our young people did their duty in making them acquainted with all there was to be seen. They had brought a pony with them and a little carriage, not any bigger, and, I must say, very much more crazy and out of order than mine. The wheels had a jingle of their own, which distinguished Lady Louisa’s pony-chaise to the whole neighborhood. It was this that was the nominal occupation of the boy who cooked the dinner, and a very clever boy he was. I have seen him myself in the yard, polishing the chaise as if his life depended on it. “Sure and it’s joking my lady was,” he answered, when somebody congratulated him one day on his various accomplishments. He blushed, though Lady Louisa did not. And so the quaint, funny, candid household got settled down in the midst of us. Beside Lady Denzil, who was our queen in a way, Lady Louisa looked like an old washerwoman: but notwithstanding all her good-nature, there was one point she was stiffer upon even than Lady Denzil. We were all gentry, fortunately, and people whom one could visit, but nothing could be finer than the unconsciousness that came upon the lady of quality when an interloper of a lower order came in. She became blind, deaf, and stupid in a moment, though she was the very soul of good-humor and kindness. This is a mystery I don’t understand, though I am as fond of well-born people as anybody need be.
And alas! the autumn that the Beresfords came to the Green was the year that, after all his misdoings, Everard Stoke came home.
CHAPTER II.
Everard was Mrs. Stoke’s eldest son: they were people of the very best connections, but poor—so poor that they had to live in a little cottage and practice the most rigid economy, though they “counted cousins” with half the people in the peerage. Everard had had every advantage in education, people thinking naturally that the eldest son was his mother’s best prop, and that he would be glad to be able to help his own. And no doubt some boys are a help and comfort to every one belonging to them; just as there are others who pull everybody down who has ever attempted to help them. He was meant to go into the Indian Civil Service, that being the best way, as many people think, for a young man to get on. But he would not be a Civil servant. He insisted on going into the army, where, of course, he knew he could never keep himself, much less help his family. I don’t know what poor Mrs. Stoke, who was not a strong woman either in mind or body, was subjected to in the way of threats, and disobedience, and ill-temper, before she would consent. But she had to consent at last; and they got him a commission in a very nice regiment in the line. He wanted to be a Guardsman, the young fool! but of course her friends were not such idiots as that. I suspect Everard had thought of soldiering—for he was not much more than a boy, and could not be expected to have much sense—as nothing but a life of indolence and freedom, heaps of amusements and gay society. But when he found he had to obey as well as to command, it changed his ideas altogether. The way in which he tried to cover his insubordination at first was by calling his Colonel a snob, which he did whenever he came to see any of us. “His grandfather was a tailor,” he would say; “fancy gentlemen having to be under a fellow like that!” He tried after a while to get his friends to arrange an exchange for him into a different regiment: but it happened to be just at the moment when Willie, the second boy, was going out to India, and no one could pay attention to Everard’s grumbles. Then there came a dreadful explosion. Whether he refused to obey orders, or whether he was insolent to his commanding officer, one could never quite make out; but the result was that he was recommended to resign to avoid a court-martial. It was the 119th, and I knew one of the officers. His account was, that he never saw such an ill-conditioned cub. “Snob himself,” said my friend with indignation; “our old Colonel is a man to be proud of. The little brute never obeyed an order in his life, and wouldn’t—’twasn’t in him. What business had his mother to be a widow? Oh yes, I suppose she couldn’t help it: but she ought to have flogged the very life out of that little beggar all the same.” Poor, gentle Mrs. Stoke, to think of her whipping a boy! though I don’t doubt it would have done him good.
So Everard came home, more or less disgraced, his chosen profession thrown away, or throwing him away. By that time he was one-and-twenty, and a dreadful life he led his poor mother and sisters, grumbling at every thing. They had nothing on the table fit to eat,—they had nothing decent to put on,—they made a fellow wretched with their long faces, &c., &c. Once he did me the favor to take me into his confidence, but was sufficiently startled by my answer not to try it again. Then by immense exertions—it was before the time of examinations for everything, and interest did a great deal—a place was got for him in one of the Government offices. When Mrs. Stoke asked my advice, I was against this step from the beginning, for what was a young man of his habits to do in London, where everything would tempt him to go astray? “Ah, you don’t know my Everard,” said the misguided woman, with tears in her eyes. “He is very proud, I must confess. Yes, indeed, Mrs. Mulgrave, it is a grave fault, but all the Stokes are proud. How could he be expected to be superior to the character of the family? But he has no other faults, poor boy. I could trust him as I would trust one of the girls,” she said, drying her eyes. And I suppose, so strangely are people constituted, that she believed what she said.
Everard got the situation, and everything seemed to go well for a year or two. By degrees, he got quite out of the habit of coming to the Green. When he did come, they never could please him. When his poor mother remonstrated with him for neglecting her, he made her the cruelest answer. “You don’t think I could stand the Green all by myself?” he said; “and what fellow would care to come down with me to a hole like this?” It was Lottie who told me, in her indignation; but Mrs. Stoke bore it all, and never made any sign. And then It was a dreadful business; and nobody ever explained, in so many words, exactly how it was. It was not in the papers, which kept it from the knowledge of people out of society, at least As for people in society, of course the papers are nothing; and everybody knew. There was some public money that had to pass through his hands; and besides that, he was more than a thousand pounds in debt. It came upon the poor Stokes like a thunder-clap. That sort of thing is more dreadful to us, who have but a very little money, and that little our very own, than, I suppose, to mercantile people, who are used to have other people’s money in their hands. He had to go away, with just a telegram to his poor mother that he was ruined, and that she would never see him more. Of course it was some days before we heard; but we all noticed and wondered at the strange commotion in the cottage, and poor Mrs. Stoke, more dead than alive, going and coming constantly to town. As soon as the first whisper got abroad I went to them at once, which was rather a bold thing to do, and might have been badly taken. But they knew me, and that I meant only to serve them; and that is what Lottie means when she speaks of the time when I stood by them in their trouble. They had to make great sacrifices to pay up what they could. I know Mrs. Stoke sold her pearls, which she had always clung to through all their poverty, for the sake of her girls. And they sent away one of their servants, and lived more plainly, and dined more poorly than ever. And Everard disappeared for a long time, like a man who has gone down at sea. It was long before they knew even if he were alive, or where he was. I cannot tell how he lived, or what he did with himself; but at the time I am writing of, everything had quieted down and been forgotten; and he came back. His poor mother, somehow, had still a remnant of belief in her boy, and wept over him as did the father of the prodigal—though Everard was far too much a young man of the period to have any confession on his lips. I don’t believe he even said “I am sorry,” for all the dreadful trials he had dragged those poor women through. Oh, how many things such women have to bear that they cannot confide to their dearest friends! He took it all as a matter of course. He looked us all in the face, just so conscious of what we thought as to be defiant of our opinion. There had been no public stigma put upon him, no prosecution, nor anything of that kind. And now that it had “blown over,” as he thought, he had the audacity to come home.
There are some men who are more attractive in their first youth than at any other age; and some whom life so moulds and stimulates, that they who were stupid and disagreeable at twenty, are at thirty interesting men of the world. Everard had never been a nice boy. Fond as I am of young people, he was one to whom I could not open my heart. But when he came home at the time I mention, strongly prejudiced as I was against him, I could not but acknowledge that he was improved. His manners were better. One could not tell if it were false or if it were true. But it is more agreeable, all the same, to be listened to, and heard out, and have a deferential answer, than to be interrupted and contradicted. Then he had learned to talk, which was a new gift; and it was a rare gift on the Green. He had been to all sorts of places, and seen every kind of people; and whatever his motive might be (I do not pretend to guess it), he took the trouble at least to make himself agreeable. Though I have an antipathy beyond all expression for this kind of man—the being who has two or three fair starts, and always turns out a failure, and comes back upon the poor women “that own him,” as Lady Louisa would have said—yet somehow I could not quite execute justice upon Everard. “He is sorry, though he does not say it,” said his poor mother. “He is not one to say it; and his very coming back like this is like turning over a new leaf. Don’t you think so, dear Mrs. Mulgrave?”
I could not commit myself to such a favorable judgment. But still one might hope he did mean better this time.
He was at home all the summer; and the impression he produced on our little community in general was much the same as on myself. We knew his story so well that it was needless repeating or opening it up again. We said to each other, “I wonder Everard Stoke has the assurance to come back; and what will his poor mother do with him?” And then we changed to “Everard Stoke has certainly improved—don’t you think so?” And at length somebody was so kind as to suggest that he was but nine and twenty, and that perhaps he might even yet do well. It will be easily understood that no distinct reference was made to his story so as to render it intelligible to a stranger. And the Beresfords had lived abroad a good deal, and had no connection with our district, and had heard nothing about it. This was how it happened that in a place where every detail of the business was known, Lady Louisa never heard of it. She knew, of course, that there was something. He had been in the army, and left it; he had been a wanderer on the face of the earth for a long while. But then so had she and all her family; so that did not seem so strange to her. He had been a little wild, or gone too fast, as people say,—in short, there was something. But that was all Lady Louisa knew. And we, foolish creatures as we were, not seeing an inch before us, thought it kinder not to rake up an old story. “If he gets the chance now, he may do well,” we said to each other, and began to ask him to our houses. And then he amused us, which is so irresistible a spell in a dull country place. And we all agreed tacitly to take him on trial again, and ignore the sins of his youth.
All this preamble is necessary to explain how he got to meet Norah Beresford, in the familiar way which our small society made inevitable. I remember being startled, not long after they came, by the advanced state of their acquaintance, till Lottie explained to me that they were always meeting Norah in her walks, and had taken to making little expeditions together. “Everard is so kind, he always walks with us now,” his sister said, with, as it seemed to me, just a touch of doubtfulness in her voice.
“That is very unlike Everard,” said I, perhaps a little severely; which was a very foolish thing to say, for however much we may ourselves condemn our own, none of us like to hear another do it. Lottie flushed a little and turned upon me, as I might have known. “Everard has changed very much, Mrs. Mulgrave,” she said; “he is not like the same. Indeed, I don’t think he is the same; but of course old friends always remember the past and don't believe in the future, as we do.”
“I think that is not quite fair to me, Lottie,” I said; “but at all events I hope in the future with all my heart, and that your faith may be fully verified. No doubt he is much improved.”
And thus my little representation was put a stop to. To be sure it was possible that Everard’s kindness to his sisters might be one of the fruits of repentance. It was not like him, but still it was possible, and he was very much improved. But I can’t say I quite liked, the moment after, to see him come along the road with his little sister Lucy, by way of chaperone, I suppose, and Norah by his side. It was her laugh, that sweet, fresh, mellifluous Irish laugh, that called my attention to them. And the two were talking very closely. Lucy, whose head was busy about other matters, tripped on before, and Everard was talking and Norah listening as—well, as people do. One knows when one sees, without requiring to explain. I saw the scene from my window, and immediately, on the spur of the moment, rushed out to the garden gate, and called to them to come in and have some tea. “I am sure you have been having a long walk, and you shall not pass my door,” I said, with a playfulness that I did not feel. Norah was very willing, poor child; she meant no harm and knew no better. She came in to me as brightly as if my quiet house had been the gayest in the world. But her face did cloud over a little when Everard paused, and took off his hat, and excused himself. He had only meant to see Miss Beresford home, he said, and could not stay. He had letters to write. Norah’s face clouded, and showed the cloud. She looked wistfully at him, as if, but for shame, she would have changed her mind, and gone home; and she looked reproachfully at me. But the thing was done, and could not be altered. “I dare say we shall meet to-morrow, somehow,” she said to Lucy, as she kissed her—and so went in with me, in that cloudy condition, half smile, half tear, which was, of all others, the most natural aspect of the mobile Irish face.
“I should not have come in if I had known he would go away,” said Norah frankly. “Ah, then, you won’t be angry that I say it. He was telling me something—I’d rather have heard it out, and had his company a little longer, than a dozen cups of tea.”
“But the tea is better for you, my dear,” said I, “though perhaps not a dozen cups.”
“No, fun is best,” said Norah, beginning to brighten out of the cloud. “I like to be amused above all things. You steady English, with your steady ways, you prefer being dull. But I am not an English girl, and I have been brought up abroad; I like to be amused.”
“All the better,” said I. “I like it too, and Everard Stoke is amusing. He is even interesting, sometimes, which is more surprising still.”
“Why should it be surprising?” said Norah. “You all seem to speak as if you patronized Ever—Mr. Stoke, and made allowance for him, and all that; whereas,” said the girl, flashing up into full animation, “there is not a man all about can hold a candle to him! Sure you know it as well as me! They are all old fogies, or young fogies, which are worse. I laugh at them till it makes me ill—and then I could cry to think one is never to see anything better than that, when up starts somebody suddenly out of the earth,—that is Fun! Yes; he is fun, though you shake your head—and—interesting, and all that;—and then you English put on your solemn faces. Oh, I don't like you at all! I shall never like you! That is, you are an old dear, and a jewel, and I love you.” It was a minute at least before I could free myself from Norah’s embrace, which was as impulsive and vehement as herself.
“You may not like us, my dear,” said I, “and yet you must acknowledge we are not very ill-natured, after ail. We might have made it impossible for Mr. Stoke to have so much as seen you, if we had thought proper to make ourselves disagreeable; and I am not sure we ought not to have done so, after all.”
“It can’t matter to me one way or another,” said Norah with a sudden blush; and then she put her arms round me again, and looked up in my face with her shining sunset eyes, and coaxed me in her mellow Irish tones. “Ah, then, Mrs. Mulgrave, darling! do tell me all to myself—mamma shall never hear, nor any one. Tell me what he has done?”
“Norah, if I thought it was anything to you what he had done—” I began.
“Ah, then, and what could it be to me?” said Norah. “Did I ever see him till six weeks ago? Did I ever hear his name? But I like to know everything. I am fond of stories. I suppose he has been very naughty, poor fellow!” she said, with an inimitable fall of her voice. Love itself could not have been more pathetic. Perhaps, with all her naïveté, there was a touch of that delicious instinctive histrionic sense which made her face unconsciously suit the emotion of the moment; or else things were worse than I thought.
And even now I had not the courage to speak out—a thing I shall never forgive myself. I had not the heart to throw the first stone at him, and he trying, or appearing to try, to amend. I thought what I did say would be enough to frighten her. I made a little fancy sketch of his insubordination, and how he had to leave his regiment, and then of his getting into debt and—being obliged to go away. The way she kept smiling at me, undismayed—the dear golden gleams, unsubdued by any cloud, out of her eyes—the proud way she held her head, never a droop of shame or even doubt in it—ought to have warned me to cut nothing out of the picture. I don’t know now how it was I could have been so foolish. I had not the heart to shame him in the girl’s eyes. When I had ended I watched her very closely, more anxious how she should take it than I could tell. But she took it in a way I never would have dreamed of. She jumped up from her chair and clapped her hands.
“Now that is the kind of man I love,” she said. “His Colonel was a frightful old wretch. He bore it as long as he could, but that was not forever. The idea of shaking your head at a man for that! And then his independence—going away to hide his poverty from his friends, and making a living for himself with nobody to help him! I think it was grand! I knew I was right to like Everard Stoke. Ah now, how can I call him Mister. Don’t you all say Everard? That’s for telling me,” she said, suddenly giving me a vehement kiss. “Hush, whisper—I’m so glad. I thought it was something about some girl—”
“Oh, my dear Norah!” I cried; but she spoke so fast, and was in such a flood of talk, that it was impossible for me to go on.
“You never talk of such things before us,” said Norah in her excitement, “but we always hear a word now and again that sets us wondering. Priscilla and I made sure it was about some girl. They say men are like that. I could have forgiven him, for you know he must have been so young. But I am glad—I can’t tell you how glad—that it was only getting into debt and that sort of thing. Why, that’s nothing. We are all in debt every one,” said Norah, with a laugh of half hysterical emotion. “Papa owes—I can’t tell how much—and that’s one reason why we are never at home.”
“Oh, my dear, don’t tell me any more,” cried I, in a fright; “and Norah, stop and think before you say you are glad. He is nothing to you, and can never be anything to you; but all the same, you ought to estimate him justly. Everard Stoke has been a bad son and a bad brother—he has been—”
“And what did they ever do for him?” said Norah, with a toss of her head in defiance. “Why should he take them up on his shoulders when they don’t want it? You are seeing with their eyes, and not your own nice kind ones, Mrs. Mulgrave, dear.”
“And whose eyes are you seeing with, poor child?” I said. “He has been a burden upon them, and he has neglected them, Norah. You can’t think how he has neglected them, and they always so careful of all his tastes—always so tender to him.”
“They never understood him,” said Norah hotly, with quick tears of vexation springing into her eyes. She had come to that last defense in which the faithless and cruel intrench themselves. And when she reacheb that point, her excitement, which was not under control, as it would have been with a girl more used to self-restraint, burst into tears. I stood looking on, very serious, even rueful, not attempting to comfort her. And next moment she sprang up with a wild outburst of laughter, and dried her eyes.
“Not that I care one bit,” she said, “not one bit;—what should it matter to me? But only he has been telling me things, and I’m so glad they are quite true. There, Mrs. Mulgrave, dear, that’s all. You shall never hear me speak of Ever—Mr. Stoke again."
“I hope not, my dear," I said very gravely, giving her my hand.
“You may be quite sure. What can it matter to me?" said Norah. “We’re strangers, you know, and wild Irish. After a while we’ll go away and disappear into Italy or somewhere. I know papa’s ways. If one of us girls doesn’t marry Colonel Fitzgerald," Norah continued, looking up at me with one of her doubtful looks, half fun, half pathos. She knew that she might have to do this, strange as it sounded, should Colonel Fitzgerald throw his handkerchief at her, and yet she could not help seeing the humor of the situation, such as it was.
I confess I was so mean that I went up stairs to my bed-room window, and watched her walk all the way home. Probably the same idea that was in my mind had been in Norah’s, for she certainly paused and looked round, as with some ghost of an expectation. But Everard was too wise for that. He was not going to follow her at such a moment under my watchful eyes. Of course, if one had chosen to inquire, there was pretty sure to be “something about some girl” in his dark existence. But it had never been my business to accuse him, or investigate his sins; was it my business now?
I asked myself this question till it became a pain to me. Was I my brother’s keeper? Ah,—but the question sounds different when it is my little sister’s keeper—the child that one sees on the edge of a precipice. It gave me a bad headache and a great deal of trouble before I could make out what I ought to do. And what I decided upon was no better than a compromise, a worldly proceeding. I made up my mind to go to his mother and speak about it to her. Norah had no money that I knew o£ and though she had good connections, they were but a poor people to lean upon. He could have no motive for the part he was playing, and would surely give it up when he understood the circumstances.
With this lingering hope in my mind I got up next morning full of my purpose, and went to the cottage to have an interview with Mrs. Stoke.
CHAPTER III.
“This is carrying things a great deal too far,” said Mrs. Stoke, in her offended and stately tone. “I know you mean well, dear; but why should my boy take any trouble about such a girl as Norah Beresford? With his connections, he might look a great deal higher. She has not a penny; and her family is good, of course, but a poor Irish family. It would be nothing to us to marry into the Clantorry connection. It certainly is not worth Everard’s while. I know you speak from good motives”
“Oh, mamma! how can you talk to her so? " cried Lottie. “Have you forgotten? Dear Mrs. Mulgrave, mamma will never hear anybody say a word about Everard, you know.”
“I don’t want to say a word," I answered. “I never thought he wished to marry her; and it is for his own sake as well as hers that I speak. If he should go too far, and it should get known, people will speak of the past; and I am sure, for one, I do not want that to be raked up again.”
“But you do it," said Mrs. Stoke, sitting down to cry. “I was thinking nothing about the past, for the moment; and you have gone and brought it all back.”
I stood quite still while my victim cried. I own that I felt intensely uncomfortable. What business had I to interfere? Was it not the best thing to leave it alone, and let each one take care of his own affairs? I to make Everard’s mother cry, with so many real things in his life to vex her! I was angry with myself.
“But, mamma,” said Lottie, after a pause, “Everard never did consider anything but his own pleasure, all his life. You and I ought to know that.”
“You are always the one to turn against him,” said her mother. But it was not so easy to silence Lottie as me.
“Ever since the time when he would break our dolls,” said Lottie, with a little bitterness. “If he liked it, he would break Norah’s heart in the same way, and throw the fragments from him. Do you mean to say you do not know your own son, after all these years?”
“Oh, Lottie, how cruel you are to me!” cried Mrs. Stoke. That was all the satisfaction I could get. I begged them not to tell Everard, so as to rouse his vanity; but only to dissuade him, lest people should talk. And then I went home with the discouraging sense, for one thing, that Lottie agreed with me, and the feeling that I had sown dispeace among them—not a pleasant thought
Next time I saw the Beresfords after this, I found Lady Louisa, with her two daughters, in a considerable state of excitement.
“Me dear, it's the Colonel we’re expecting,” she said; “and I don’t deny I am fluttered a little when I think of the importance it may be to them, poor things. For let me tell you, me dear ma’am, ten thousand a year does not go begging every day to a couple of poor girls without a penny; and I’d have them mind what they’re about.”
“Then is he coming?” said I, and stopped short, confounded; for had he been coming, like a French gentleman on his promotion, to see the fiancée his friends had looked out for him, Lady Louisa could not have been more straightforward in her speech.
“He is coming,” said Norah, “like the man in the story, to see which of the two sisters he will like best; and one will be very fine, in full dress, to make the best of herself. And the other will be in her high frock, ready to run about after dinner is over. And he’ll turn round from the one that was got up all ready for him, and he’ll say to the papa, ‘I’ll have the one with her clothes on, please.’ That’s how it will be.”
“If it’s me you mean, Norah,” Miss Beresford began, with a little flash of spirit, “nobody ever saw me with my dress falling off my shoulders; though I don’t sit down to dinner like a tomboy that must always be running about.”
“Ah, then, don’t be vexed, Prissy dear,” said Norah. “It was only for fun. If one couldn’t make fun of it, one would be furious,” cried the little vixen, suddenly clenching her hands. “The man—the brute! coming to look at us to see which he will buy, and mamma talking and settling what we’re to wear, as if it were all right”
“Don’t get to quarreling over him already, me dears,” said Lady Louisa, with perfect calm. “Is it the man I’m thinking of? Sure the man might go to Russia, for anything I care; but he’s got ten thousand a year, me children, and why should it go past our door more than another’s, if I can help it?—and as nice a place as ever I set eyes on,” she added, with a sigh, “in county Wicklow, me own county. And the comfort it would be to see one of ye there.”
“But unless people—like each other,” said I, seeing it was my turn to say something, “even a nice place would not make them happy—” and broke off here like a fool, having made my little conventional speech.
“A nice place goes a long way, me dear ma’am,” said Lady Louisa, with that mellow, warm Irish worldliness, which somehow does not feel so abhorrent as the ordinary type; “and it does you a vast deal of good, take me word for it, to have plenty of money. They never knew what that was, poor things. We’re poor, and we’ve always been poor, and I’m not ashamed of it. But I’ll never let me children go and throw themselves away. If ye marry beauty, it’s but skin-deep,” continued this philosopher; “and as for wit and brains, and all that, it’s pleasant, but where’s the good of it? But sure, when ye marry money, ye know what you are doing; and that’s a consolation, at the least. I'm thinking, me dear ma’am, as you’ve all been so kind and hospitable to us, to make a little effort to repay ye, now me friends are in town. We can’t give but very small dinners in this bit of a place, which is a pity. But I’m thinking of a saries of tays.”
“Mamma,” said Priscilla in an undertone, with a blush and look of horror. Their mother was too ready-witted, however, to correct herself.
“‘Of tays.’ Is it too Irish I am?” she said, with her round, pleasant laugh. “The first of them is this day week, me dear lady—and I hope to see the Colonel and some of the officers; and if the young ones like to amuse themselves on the lawn—sure, it wants to be well cut first,” she added, breaking off; “and I hope you won’t forget to tell Patrick’s children. In a general way I like to see the grass grow, me dear ma’am—I’m fond of nature, though I’ll allow it’s a strange taste—and I hope we shall have the honor of Mrs. Mulgrave’s company,” said Lady Louisa, with a gracious bow. “But if I were you I’d tell Patrick at once, me dears, before you forget,” she added, turning to Norah. Patrick was the famous stable-boy who was of so much use in the cooking; and certainly such a lawn for the young people to amuse themselves upon, I never saw. The grass must have been ankle-deep at least.
Norah, however, did not move. She had some object of her own in following out this conversation. “If you mean dancing, mamma,” she said, “there are plenty of ladies—but I don’t know where the men are to come from, unless you mean the Colonel to order down his whole regiment.”
Poor Norah! I saw in a moment that this little speech was made to call forth the mention of one name.