"And even that I cannot give you," said the girl disconsolately; "but at least," she added suddenly, in a brighter tone, "I think I can tell you where to find that." She pointed with her whip to a narrow path branching off a little lower down the hill, and leading apparently in the direction of the sea. "Follow that path—it is neither long nor difficult—and it will lead you to the waters of the creek below. At the very foot of the hill, where the path ends, you will find a hut; if empty, it will at least give you shelter; if otherwise, its owner will, I doubt not, make you welcome. He ought at least," she added quickly, "for he also has lost something. Trust me, you are not the only ones whom we have robbed for the achievement of our own greatness. Farewell! and if ever you pray for your enemies, put us among the worst and foremost."
She turned to her horse as she finished speaking. Her companion would fain have aided her to mount; but putting him pettishly on one side, she leaped into the saddle without assistance, and galloped back by the road which she had come. The officer, thus repulsed, bowed respectfully to Nellie, and then, remounting his own horse, followed in the same direction. She cantered on, however, as if unconscious of his existence, merely urging her horse to a quicker speed, in order to escape him—a manoeuvre which he took care, by imitating, to render useless. Finding, at last, that he would not be shaken off, she pulled up suddenly, and said angrily, and without even deigning to look round:
"Why do you follow me? Why do you dog my footsteps? Ride back to my father, will you? He is of your own creed and calling, and will better appreciate your society that I can."
"Nay, Ruth," he was beginning, but she interrupted him almost fiercely—
"Call me by my own name if you wish that I should answer you. To you at least, and to the world, I will still be Henrietta, though at my father's hands I am compelled to submit to this mummery of a change of name."
"Well, then, Henrietta," he answered quietly, but very gravely, "believe me, I did not mean to anger you. I said 'Ruth,' because that name is so often on your father's lips that it has begun to come almost naturally to mine. I would not willingly anger you at any time, and least of all, just now, when, in spite of what I must call your unkind waywardness toward myself, I love and worship you, as I never did before, for that nobleness of nature which recoils, at any cost, from all that savors of injustice."
"Carry your love and worship elsewhere, then, for I will have none of it," she said, evidently in nowise mollified by his apology. "What should I care for your good opinion? Do you not feel in your heart of hearts, or must I tell you, that we are divided, as far as the north pole from the south, in our most intimate convictions, and that what you and my father call religion I consider as fanaticism—or that something which is worse than fanaticism, or almost than crime—hypocrisy."
"You cannot believe what you are saying," he answered, now indignant in his turn; "you know how well and truly I have loved you, and you cannot believe that I am a hypocrite; you cannot—you could not—you would not so dishonor me in your thoughts—you who have promised to be my wife!"
"I retract that promise, then," she answered passionately, "wholly and entirely I retract it. Never, so help me God, will I become the mother of a race of fanatics, who will find, for such deeds as we have seen done today, their pretext in religion."
"Henrietta!" he cried, the blood rushing to his temples, "you cannot be in earnest!"
"See if I am not!" she answered coldly. "Ride back to my father now, and let me go my ways alone to the tower."
"I will go to him, Henrietta; but it will only be to tell him that I am about to return to my appointment in Dublin—unless, indeed," he added, with a lingering hope of reconciliation—"unless, Henrietta, you retract."
"I never retract," she answered shortly.
"Then, farewell!" he said, with a half movement, as if he would have taken her hand."
"Farewell!" she answered, affecting not to see his offered hand, and shaking the reins loose on her horse's neck.
Ormiston turned his horse's head in the opposite direction, and went forward a few paces; then he stopped and looked after his late companion. She was moving on, but slowly, and like one lost in thought. Stirred by a sudden honest impulse of regret, he turned and followed her. Henrietta heard him, and instantly checked her horse, as if determined not to suffer him to ride any longer at her side.
"Henrietta!" he said.
"What would you?" she asked sullenly.
"Only unsay that one word, 'hypocrisy,' and let things be as they were before."
"I never unsay what I have said," she answered coldly.
"Neither do I," he retorted, now angry in earnest; "and I swear to you that I will see you no more until under your own hand and seal you retract, of your own accord, what you have said to-day, and tell me to return."
"Farewell, then, for ever," she replied, with rather a bad assumption of indifference—"for ever, if so it must be."
"Farewell," he answered, without, however, as even in that moment Henrietta noticed, adding the ominous "for ever." "Farewell, and God forgive you for so trifling with the honest heart that loves you, and has loved you from your childhood. Some day—too late, perhaps—you will do me justice."
And so they parted.
Left to herself, Nellie Netterville sat down to collect her scattered senses. The situation in which she found herself needed, in truth, a calm sense and courage, not often the heritage of petted girlhood, in order to bear up successfully against its difficulties. Happily for herself, the brave Irish girl was possessed of both in no common degree, and the trials and troubles of the last few months had ripened these faculties into almost unnatural maturity. The tale she had just told to Major Hewitson was free of the smallest attempt at exaggeration, being, in fact, rather under than over the measure of the truth. Lord Netterville, in common with many another unfortunate gentleman of the English Pale, had been kept dancing attendance on the commissioners at Loughrea until both hope and money failed him.The absence of home comforts told heavily upon a frame already weakened by age and sorrow; and just at the moment when he could least bear up against it, he was attacked by the plague, or some disease analogous to the plague, which at that very time was making most impartial havoc among the native Irish and their foes. Thanks to an iron constitution, he recovered, but he rose from his sickbed, if not absolutely a child in mind, yet as utterly incapable of aiding Nellie by advice, or of steering his own way unassisted through the troubled waters on which his ill fate had cast him, as if he had been in very deed an infant. His servant was already dead, therefore the whole responsibility of their future movements devolved upon his granddaughter. She proved herself, fortunately, not altogether unequal to the occasion, never losing sight for a moment of the purpose which had brought her to Loughrea, and tormenting the commissioners until, less moved by her youth and helplessness than by a desire to rid themselves of her troublesome importunities, they gave her the certificate which she had shown to Major Hewitson, and which, as he had instantly perceived, was rendered worse than useless to its possessor by the fact of its being merely a temporary arrangement. Ignorant alike of Latin and law language, Nellie had, naturally enough, supposed it to be a permanent appointment; and, selling their horses and every article of value in her possession, in order to pay the debts contracted at Loughrea, she had made the rest of the journey on foot, leading, soothing, and encouraging the old man as if he had been a child, and buoying up his courage and her own by fanciful descriptions of that home in the far west, where she trusted his last days might be passed in peace. She had tried to deceivehim; she never attempted to deceiveherselfas to the nature of their future prospects; yet unpleasant as her anticipations had been, they were so much more agreeable than the terrible realities upon which she had just stumbled, that she felt for a few moments, as she sat there alone among the hills, as if the very gates of an earthly Paradise had been closed against her. But it was no moment for the indulgence of such natural regrets. She looked at her grandfather, and felt that his life was in her hands. She remembered, too, her promise to her mother to be son as well as daughter to his age; and sternly and tearlessly, for tears were too weak an expression for such desolation as she was feeling then, she set herself to consider what her next move ought to be. Food and shelter for the old man—(and it needed not another glance at his pale face to tell her how much both were needed) food and shelter—these must be her first object. It would be time enough after they had been secured to decide as to the feasibility of a return journey to Loughrea. She rose, and drawing her hood, which, in her struggle with Major Hewitson, had fallen back upon her shoulders, once more over her head, she took her grandfather by the hand, and led him quietly and silently down the path pointed out to her by Henrietta. It had originally been a sheep-path, and proved far less difficult than she had expected, winding gradually round the hills until it reached a sort of creek or estuary formed by the inrushing, for a couple of miles, of the waters from the bay beyond. It was a lonely, but a lovely spot, and Nellie's heart beat more calmly as she paused to listen to the soft rocking of the waters in their inland bed, and to feel the fresh breeze which they brought from the ocean playing on her heated brow.There were no visible signs near her of that human habitation of which Major Hewitson's daughter had so confidently spoken; but at last, after having searched the landscape steadily in all directions, she thought she saw something like a blue curl of smoke rising out of a sort of mound, which, at first sight, seemed neither more nor less than a cairn of unusually large dimensions, nearly hidden by clumps of gorse and heather at least six feet high, and bushy and luxuriant in proportion. On nearer inspection, however, it proved to be a hut, such a hut as even to this day may be sometimes seen in the wildest parts of the wild west, rounded at the gables, built of rough stones, rudely yet solidly put together, and with a roof laid on of fern and shingle, carefully secured from the violence of the western winds by bands of twisted straw. A hole in this roof stood proxy both for window and for chimney, and the doorway was literally doorless. A sort of grass mat hung across it from the inside, being evidently considered by the inhabitants as ample protection against cold and wet, the only foes which extreme poverty has got to boast of.
For five seconds, at the very least, Nellie stood gazing on this frail barrier with a feeling as if it would require more than human courage to announce her presence to the human beings (she knew not whether they were friends or enemies) who might be stowed away behind it. At last, with a shaking hand, she drew back a small corner of the matting, and, without daring to look in, saluted the possible inmates, as the natives of the country salute each other to this day in Irish, "God save all here!" There was no answer, and, lifting the curtain a little higher, she looked in.
The hut was empty, though a few embers burning on the floor gave sufficient evidence of its having been recently inhabited. Of furniture, save a single wooden settle, Nellie could discover none; but a gun was standing upright against the opposite wall, and near it hung a very Spanish-seeming mantle, looking as much out of place in that miserable abode as its owner would probably have done if he had been there to claim it. The solitude, and the sight of that gun and mantle, made her feel far more nervous than she would have felt if a dozen of the natives of the soil had been congregated within. It seemed to imply some mystery, and, to the helpless, mystery always has a touch of fear about it. Moreover, it made her suddenly conscious that she was an intruder, an idea which would never have come into her head if her possible hosts had been of that frank-hearted race to whom the virtue of hospitality comes so easily that it does not even occur to them to call it "virtue." On the other hand, her grandfather's pale face and sunken features seemed to plead with her against all unseasonable timidity. Hastily, therefore, and as though she were about to commit a theft, she put aside the matting, drew the old man inside, and then replaced the screen as carefully as if she hoped in this manner to hide her audacious proceedings from the owner of the hut—or rather, if the truth must be told, from the owner of the mysterious mantle. This first step fairly taken, Nellie suddenly grew brave, and resolving to make the most of their impromptu habitation, she drew the settle nearer to the fire, and made Lord Netterville sit down upon it.
The sight of the embers seemed to revive the latter, less perhaps from any need he felt of its warmth on that bright sunny day than from the home-like associations which it awakened in his mind. He smiled a wintry smile, with more of old age than of gladness in it, and stretched forth his withered hands to warm them in the blaze. Then, as if suddenly waking up for the first time to a perception of his being foodless, he asked Nellie if supper would soon be ready, for that in truth he was well-nigh starving. Starving he must have been, that poor Nellie knew well enough already; for they had exhausted their scanty stock of food that very day, and he had tasted nothing since the early dawn. She soothed him, however, and besought him to have yet a little patience, and then, with a desperate resolution to appropriate to his use whatever of food the hut might happen to contain, she commenced a careful examination of its hidden nooks. There were, of course, neither shelves nor cupboards, or anything, indeed, which even suggested the idea of provisions having been ever kept there; but at last, when she had almost begun to give up the search in despair, she espied something like the handle of a basket peeping out from beneath a bundle of firewood which lay heaped in one corner of the hut upon the floor. Pouncing upon this at once, she discovered that it contained a couple of sea-trout, upon which the owner of the mansion had probably intended making an early dinner, for they were already prepared for broiling. With renewed energy Nellie took a handful of dried brushwood, and threw it upon the half-extinguished fire, after which she proceeded, in her new character of cook, to lay, in a very leisurely and scientific manner, the fish upon the embers. So engrossed was she in this occupation, that she never perceived that the mat curtain over the doorway had been once more lifted up, and that some one was watching her proceedings from the outside. This some one was a man, apparently about twenty-five or thirty years of age, with a figure rather above than below the middle height, and a face which, full of energy and expression as it was, was by no means regularly handsome, though the large, Murillo-looking eyes by which it was lighted up deceived casual beholders into a conviction that it was.
He was clad in a garb which might have belonged to the native fishermen of the coast, yet no one could have mistaken him for other than a gentleman and soldier, as he stood there, holding back the screen of matting, and gazing, with a look curiously compounded of amusement and annoyance, at the scene presented by the interior of the cottage. The latter feeling, however, was evidently in the ascendant—so much so, indeed, that he had actually made a half-movement, as if to retreat and leave the hut to its uninvited occupants, when something—was it a glimpse of Nellie's delicate profile, as she stooped over the glowing embers?—induced him to change his mind, and stepping quietly over the threshold, he dropped the screen behind him with an energy and good-will which seemed to indicate that, instead of his premeditated flight, he had made up his mind to accept with a good grace, and perhaps even to enjoy, this unexpected addition to his society. The sound of the falling mat warned Nellie of the advent of a stranger, and, crimson with shame and fear, she stood up to receive him. He gazed upon her steadily, the half-feeling of annoyance, still visible on his clouded brow, yielding gradually to a look of intense but reverent admiration, and removing his fisherman's cap from his head, he bowed courteously, and said in English:
"God save all here, and a hundred thousand welcomes also, if, as I apprehend, you are fugitives like myself from tyranny and injustice."
There was an indescribable tact and courtesy in the way in which he combined this announcement of his being the master of the hut with a frank and ready welcome to his unknown visitants, which made Nellie feel at once that she had to do, not only with a man of gentle birth but of high and polished breeding also. Yet this fact seemed for the moment rather to add to her difficulty than to decrease it, and secretly wishing that the fish could be made, by some magical process, to disappear from the embers upon which it was comfortably broiling, she placed herself as much as she could between it and the stranger as she stammered out her apology for intrusion. Did he see the fish? and did he guess at the petty larceny she had just committed? Nellie fancied she saw something like an amused look in his eye, which made her feel hot and cold by turns with the consciousness of discovered guilt, but the rest of his features wore no smile, nothing but an expression of kind and courteous sympathy as he eagerly interrupted her excuses—
"Say no more, dear lady, say no more, trust me I have not now to learn for the first time to what dire straits the sad necessity of these days of woe may bring us. And, therefore, to all who come to this poor hut, but more especially to those who, for honor and for conscience sake, have laid down wealth and power elsewhere, I have but one word—one greeting, and that is the old Irish one, of a hundred thousand welcomes."
"A hundred thousand welcomes!" repeated a feeble, quivering voice close to the stranger's elbow. He turned and looked for the first time steadily at Lord Netterville, of whose presence up to that moment he had been barely conscious. The old man had risen from his seat, and stood smiling and bowing courteously, evidently thinking he was doing the honors of a home, of which—however humble—he was yet the undoubted master.
"Our house is poor, sir," he went on, "once, indeed, we boasted of a better; but let that pass. Such as it is—such as our enemies have made it—you may reckon assuredly upon meeting an Irish welcome in it."
"Sir," whispered Nellie through her tears, fearing lest the stranger might break in too rudely on the old man's delusion. "He is old—he has been ill—he fancies he has reached his home; you must excuse him."
The unknown turned his eyes upon the girl with a look so full of reverent sympathy, that it went straight to her heart, never afterward to be effaced from thence. She felt that her grandfather would be safe in such kindly hands, and was turning quietly away when Lord Netterville, still enacting his fancied character of host, threw a handful of dry wood upon the fire, and the blaze that instantly ensued fell full upon his features, which had hitherto been barely visible in the gloom. The stranger started violently.
"Good God!" he cried, in a tone of irrepressible astonishment. "Is it possible that I see Lord Netterville, and in such a plight?"
"You know my grandfather, then?" cried Nellie joyously, feeling as if the stranger must have been sent by Providence especially to help her in the hour of her utmost need. "You know my grandfather?"
"I ought, at any rate," he answered, with a sad smile, as he took Lord Netterville's proffered hand. "For we fought together and were beaten at Kilrush; my first battle, and, as I suppose, his last."
"Ha!" cried the old man, "Kilrush! Kilrush! who speaks to me of Kilrush? Were you there, sir? Time must have played sad tricks upon my memory then, for, truth to say, I do not recognize you."
"Nay, my good lord," said the stranger soothingly, "it would be stranger still if you had done so, for I was but a beardless boy in those days. Nevertheless, I rememberyou, Lord Netterville, and surely you cannot have altogether forgotten the cheer we gave when you, a tried and veteran soldier, rode up to serve with us as a volunteer in the regiment of your gallant son."
"I remember! I remember!" cried the old man eagerly. "It was a bright and glorious morning, and we charged them gallantly—a bright and glorious morning, but with a sad and bloody ending. Alas! alas!" he added, his voice falling suddenly from its trumpet-like tone of exultation to an old man's wail of sorrow. "Alas! alas! how many of the best and bravest that we had among us lay dead and trampled in the dust, as we withdrew from that fatal field."
He bowed his head upon his breast, and remained for a little while absorbed in thought, and Nellie took advantage of the pause to say:
"You knew my father, sir? You must have known him if you were near Lord Netterville at Kilrush; for father and son charged side by side, and were seldom, as I have since been told, ten minutes out of each other's sight during the whole of that bloody battle."
"Knew your father? Yes, dear lady—if your father was, as I suppose, Colonel Netterville—I knew him well. He was the bosom friend of my uncle and namesake, Roger Moore of Leix, who placed me in his regiment when I joined the Irish army."
"Roger Moore of Leix," cried Nellie, a flash of enthusiasm lighting up her face; "Roger Moore—the brave—the gifted—the first leader in a noble cause, whose very name was a battle-cry, and whose followers rushed into fight, shouting for 'God—our Lady—and Roger Moore!' Yes, yes; he was my father's friend. I remember even when I was a child how he used to talk about him. Andyou," she added, with a sudden change of voice and manner, and placing both her hands in his, "you, then, are that Roger Moore, the younger, in whose arms my poor father died."
"At the battle of Benburb," said Moore, in a low voice; "a glorious battle—well fought, and well won, and yet for ever to be regretted, for the loss of one of Ireland's bravest and most faithful soldiers."
"Grandfather," cried Nellie, suddenly withdrawing her hands from Roger, and blushing scarlet at the inadvertence of her own action which had placed them in his, "this is Captain Moore, who bore my wounded father out of the press of battle, and to whom we are indebted for that last and loving farewell which he sent to us in dying."
But instead of replying with an eagerness corresponding to her own, Lord Netterville gazed vacantly upon the stranger, evidently without the slightest recollection of his name or person, and repeated, in a low mechanical voice, his previously-muttered welcome.
"He does not remember!" said Roger. "Alas! alas! for that bright intellect, once cloudless as a summer's noon!"
"Hush, hush!" whispered Nellie. "Recollection is beginning to return." And Lord Netterville did, in fact, seem to be making a languid effort at gathering up his scattered thoughts, for he looked at Roger, and said feebly:
"You knew my son, sir?—you knew my son?—then, indeed, you are very welcome. He was a brave boy, and fought for his king and country—fought and fell—on the field of—the field of—the name—which I thought never to forget—has almost escaped me."
"Benburb," Roger ventured to interpose.
"Benburb! Ay, that was the very name—Benburb!—my memory does not fail me, sir; but I have been much tried of late—or we rode too far this morning—for I feel very faint."
He tried to draw back from the fire as he spoke, but he tottered, and would have fallen if Roger had not caught him by the arm, and made him sit down upon the settle.
"He is faint for want of food," said Nellie hastily; "we have been wandering all day among the hills, and he has not broken his fast since morning."
Roger did not answer, but signing to her to support Lord Netterville, he went straight to some invisible cranny in the walls of the hut, and drew thence a bottle of strong cordial. Pouring a little of this into a broken mug, he made the old man swallow it, and then stood beside him, anxiously watching the result. Happily it was favorable—in a few minutes Lord Netterville revived, the color returned to his wan cheek, and turning to Nellie, he asked her, in a half-whisper, "if supper would soon be ready?" Shyly, and blushing scarlet, Nellie nodded an affirmative, and forgetting all her previous shame in anxiety for her grandfather, she was about to resume her office as cook, when, with a half-smile on his face, Roger Moore put her quietly aside.
"Nay, Mistress Netterville, remember that I am master here, and that I forbid you to lay hands upon that fish? I have always been cook in my own proper person to the establishment, and I cannot allow you to supersede me in the office."
"Forgive me!" said Nellie, tears starting to her eyes, and half fancying in her confusion that he was angry in earnest. "I could not help it, for he was starving."
"Do not misunderstand me, I entreat you," said Roger, in a voice of deep and real feeling; "I should be a brute if I objected to anything you have or could have done; I only meant that I objected to your continuing in that office; for so long as the daughter of my old colonel is under my roof, (even though it be but a poor mud sheeling,) she shall do no work, with my good-will, unfit for the hands of a princess." He busied himself while speaking in drawing forth, from that same recess in which he had found the cordial, some thin oaten cakes, a few wooden platters, and one or two knives and spoons of such massive silver, that Nellie could not help thinking they were as much out of keeping with the rest of the furniture as Roger himself appeared to be with the hut, of which he was doing the honors in such simple and yet such courtly fashion. He would not even let her hold the platter upon which he placed the fish as he took it from the embers, and he himself then brought it to Lord Netterville, and pressed him, as tenderly as if he had been a child, to partake of this impromptu supper.
The old man yielded, nothing loath, and so, indeed, did his grandchild; for, though very fair to look at, no goddess was poor Nellie, but a young and growing girl with the healthy appetite of sixteen. She accepted, therefore, Roger's invitation without the smallest affectation of reluctance, and sitting down on the floor beside her grandfather, shared the contents of his platter with innocent and undisguised enjoyment. With all her sense and courage, she was as yet in many things a perfect child, yielding as easily as a child might do to the first ray of sunshine that brightened on her path, and accepting the happiness of the present moment as unrestrainedly as if never even suspecting the shadows that were lurking in her future. Now, therefore, that she felt her grandfather was in safe and helpful keeping, she threw off the sense of responsibility which had weighed her down for months, and became almost gay. Color rose to her wasted cheek, light sparkled in her eyes, and she responded to Roger's efforts to make her feel comfortable and at home, with such innocent and unbounded faith in his wish and power to befriend them, that he vowed an inward vow never to forsake her, but to guard her, as if she had been in very deed his sister, through the trials and dangers of her unprotected exile. When their meal was over, and while her grandfather slumbered in the quiet warmth of the peat-fire, she told Roger Moore her story, simply and briefly as she might have told it to a brother, beginning at her departure from her ancestral home, and ending with her encounter with the English strangers among the mountains.
"It is Major Hewitson," said Roger, "in whose favor I have been despoiled of my old home. Major Hewitson and his pretty daughter 'Ruth,' as he chooses to call her, in order to blot out the fact that her name is Henrietta, and that she had a popish queen for her godmother. She forgets it not herself, however," he added, with a smile; "for her mother was of noble race, and they say that she is a true cavalier at heart, and pines like a caged bird in the network of demure fanaticism which her father has twined around her."
"She has a lovely face and a kind and honest heart, for certain," said Nellie. "She knows you also, now I think of it; for she it was who directed me to this hut, with a hint that I should here find a friend."
"Did she?" said Roger, with genuine fervour. "Nay, then, for that one good deed I needs must pardon her, that she, or her father for her, have robbed me of my inheritance. And now I think of it," he added, with a touch of sly malice in his smile, "you also, if you came hither to seek land, must have been bound on the same errand; for both these baronies, 'Umhall uaghtragh' and 'Umhall ioghtragh,' is the country of the O'Mailly's, and, in right of my grandmother, my own."
Nellie blushed scarlet. "Alas!" she said, "I knew not whither or to whom they sent us; but sure am I, at all events, that we never would have accepted of any home at the expense of its rightful owners."
"Nay," said Roger, "I did but jest. Would indeed that it was to you I had been compelled to yield it! In spite of that fact you should have had, I promise you, a right royal welcome. And now I must needs explain. This sheeling, you must know, is not really my home. It is but a temporary refuge, of which I have two or three along the coast; for I have fought battles enough against England's new-fangled government to have deserved the honors of outlawry at her hands.My life consequently has been none too safe at any time these six months past, and now that yonder gray-haired fanatic, who would ask nothing better than to seal his title in my blood, has got possession of these lands, it is of course less secure than ever. My most permanent home, however, is on an island, facing the bay on this side, and washed by the waters of the Atlantic on the other. It is poor enough, God knows, yet capable of giving better accommodation than such a hut as this is. Will you and your grandfather be content to share it with me?"
Tears rushed into the dark eyes of Nellie.
"Providence is good," she answered simply—"Providence is very good, and gives us friends when we least expect them."
"Well, then, it is a bargain," cried Roger gayly; "and now. Mistress Netterville, come and see the craft in which you will have to make the voyage."
He pulled down the "mysterious mantle" as he spoke, and Nellie saw that, instead of covering the bare wall as she had imagined, it merely concealed an opening into an inner and smaller portion of the hut, built right over the creek, and made to answer the purpose of a boat-house. Into this the water rushed, so as to form a basin deep enough for the floating of a boat, and one accordingly lay safe within it, concealed by the overhanging roof from observation on the outside.
It was not flat-bottomed like the native craft, but had been evidently built both for strength and speed by one who understood his business, and its chief cargo at this particular moment seemed to be a quantity of luxuriant heather.
To this Roger pointed with a smile. "If I were a Highlander," he said, "you might suspect me of second-sight; for I have gathered, without thinking of it, double the usual quantity of heather, that which we outlaws perforce use for bedding. I hope you will not mind roughing it a little."
"I have roughed it a good deal within the last few months," said Nellie, "and I do not think you will find me difficult to please. Is the boat quite safe? I have never been out on the real sea before."
"Safe!" said the young man, with a little pardonable pride in his dark eyes. "I built her myself, and she has weathered more than one bad storm since the first day that I sailed her. I call her the 'Grana Uaille,' after the stout old chieftainess whose island kingdom I inhabit, and which, with the other lands of which Major Hewitson has robbed me, I inherit from my grandmother. But the sun is getting low. Do you not think we had better start at once, and get the voyage over before night-fall?"
To this Nellie gladly assented, and between them they conducted Lord Netterville to the boat. Roger arranged the heather so as to form a sort of couch, and, with the mantle thrown over him to protect him from the damp, the old man found himself so comfortable that he settled himself quietly for slumber. Then Roger put up his sail, and with a fresh and favorable wind they glided down the creek.
Nellie would not lie down, but she sat back in the boat with a lazy kind of gladness in her heart, which, rightly interpreted, would probably have been found to mean perfect rest of body and mind. Such rest as she had not felt for months! The waters widened as they approached the bay, and Nellie marked each new feature in the scene with an interest all the keener and more enjoyable, that everything she saw was so unlike anything she had ever seen before.Accustomed as she had been to the tamer cultivation of her native country, the savage grandeur of that wild west, with its poverty in human life, its wealth in that which was merely animal, took her completely by surprise, and she gazed with unwearied interest, now on the undulating ranges of blue mountains which crossed and recrossed each other like network against the sky, then on the broad, black tracts of peat and bog land which covered the country at their feet like a pall; listened now to the bittern and plover as they answered each other from the marshes, then to the shrill screams of the curlews as they rose before the boat, darkening the air with their uncounted numbers; or she watched a heron sweeping slowly homeward from its distant fishing-ground—or a grand old eagle soaring solemnly upward, as if bent on a visit to the departing sun; and her delight and astonishment at last reached their climax in the apparition of a seal, which, just as they cleared the creek, popped its head up above the waves, leaving her, in spite of Roger's laughing assurances to the contrary, well-nigh persuaded that she had seen a mermaid. The wind continuing steady, Roger shook out his last remaining reef, and, responding gayly to the fresh impulse, the boat sprang forward at a racing pace. They were in Clew Bay at last, and Nellie uttered a cry of joy—never had she seen anything so beautiful before. Masses of clouds, with tints just caught from the presence of the sun, soft greens and lilacs, and pale primrose and delicate pearly white, so clear and filmy that the evening star could be seen glancing through them, hung right overhead, shedding a thousand hues, each more beautiful than the other, upon the bay beneath, until it flowed like a liquid opal round its multitude of tribute isles. Opposite, right in the very mouth of the harbor, stood Clare Island, all alight and glowing, as if it were in very deed the pavilion of the setting sun, which, as it sank into the waves beyond it, wrapped tower, and church, and slanting cliff, and winding shoreline, in such a glory of gold and purple as made the old kingdom of Grana Uaille look for the moment like a palace of the fairies. Nellie was still straining her eyes for a glimpse of the Atlantic on the other side, when the deep baying of a hound came like sad, sweet music over the waters, and Roger slightly touched her shoulder. They were close to the island; in another moment he had run his boat cleverly into the little harbor and laid her alongside the pier. A huge wolf-dog, of the old Irish breed, instantly bounded in, nearly oversetting Nellie in his eagerness to greet his master.
Roger laid one restraining hand on the dog's massive head, and removing his cap with the other, said, smiling courteously:
"You must not be afraid of Maida, Mistress Netterville, she is as gentle as she is strong, and has only come to add her voice to her master's, and to bid you welcome to the outlaw's home."
Nellie slept that night the peaceful slumbers of a child; but the habits of long weeks of care were not to be so easily shaken off, and the first ray of sunshine that found its way through the narrow window of her chamber roused her from her well-earned repose.Her first impulse was, as it had ever been of late, to spring from her couch with a painful sense of hard duty to be accomplished that very day; her next was to thank God with all the fervor of a young and innocent heart for the haven of safety into which he had guided her at last. Then she lay back upon her pillow, and, yielding to the delightful consciousness that there was now no immediate call upon her for exertion either of body or mind, glanced languidly round the dimly-lighted room, and endeavored to make a mental inventory of its contents. It was a square chamber, forming the second story of the old tower in which Roger had taken up his abode, and which was all that was yet remaining of the old stronghold of Grana Uaille. The apartment had evidently no furniture of its own to boast of, but, having been used as a sort of lumber-room, was abundantly supplied with articles brought hither from more favored mansions. Nellie soon perceived that much of this so-called lumber was of the costliest description, and represented probably the sum total of all that had been saved from the wreck of Roger's fortune. There were cabinets of curious workmanship, a table carved in oak as black as ebony, a few high-backed chairs of the same material, ornaments in gold and silver, some of ancient Celtic manufacture, others in their more delicate workmanship bearing marks of artistic handling, which, even to Nellie's unaccustomed eye, betrayed their foreign origin. There were pictures, too, most of them with the dark shadow of a Spanish hand upon them, and swords, bucklers, weapons, and armor of all kinds, old and new, defensive and offensive, piled up here and there in picturesque confusion in the corners of the turret. Nellie had been amusing herself for some minutes scanning all these treasures over and over, and guessing at their various uses, when her attention became suddenly riveted upon a huge coffer with bands and mouldings of curiously-wrought brass, which stood against the wall exactly opposite to the foot of her bed. She was still quite girl enough to be willing to amuse herself by imagining all sorts of impossibilities respecting the contents of this mysterious looking piece of furniture, and she was watching it as anxiously as if she half expected it to open of itself, when the door of the chamber was cautiously unclosed, and the old woman, who represented the office of cook, valet, and everything else in Roger's establishment, crept up to her bedside as quietly as if she fancied her to be sleeping still.
"God's blessing and the light of heaven be on your sweet smiling face," she ejaculated, as Nellie turned her bright, wide-open eyes with a grateful smile upon the old hag. "Lie still a bit, a-lannah, lie still, and take a sup of this fresh goat's whey that I have been making for you. It will bring the color, may be, into your pretty cheeks again; for troth, a-lannah, they are as pale this morning as mountain roses, and not at all what they should be in regard to a young and well-grown slip of a lassie like yourself."
Nellie took the tempting beverage, which Nora presented to her in an old-fashioned silver goblet, readily enough; but checking herself just as she was about to put it to her lips, she said, gayly:
"Thanks, a thousand times, my dear old woman, but I do not feel that I need it much, and this whey would be the very thing for my poor old grandfather. He was always accustomed to something of the sort in the days when we were able to indulge ourselves in such luxuries."
"Lord bless the child!" said the delighted Nora. "If she isn't as gay as a bird in its mother's nest this morning, for all the weary worry of her last night's travels. But there's no need to be sparing of the whey, my honey, for sure I've a good sup of it left on purpose for the old lord as soon as ever he awakens. So drink up every drop of this, if you wouldn't have the master scold me; for he sent it up himself, he did, and it's downright mad he'd be if it came back to him and it not empty."
Something in this speech, or in old Nora's way of making it, caused the blood, the absence of which she had been just deploring, to rush once more into Nellie's cheek; and perhaps it was partly to hide this weakness that she took the goblet without another word, and drained it to the dregs, playfully turning its wrong side up as she gave it back to Nora, in order to show her how thoroughly her directions had been complied with. Made happy on this important point, the old woman trotted gayly out of the room, and then Nellie rose, half-reluctantly, it must be confessed, and commenced the duties of the toilet. They were simple enough in her case, yet difficult, also, from their very simplicity. Her hair, long and smooth and shining, was easily enough disposed in braids, which, folded tightly round her head, gave a grace and elegance to her appearance none of the fantastic head-gear then in vogue could possibly have imparted; but when she came to inspect the habiliments she had worn the day before, and which perforce she must wear again that day, she became painfully, and, perhaps for the first time, fully conscious of the dilapidations which time and travel had wrought upon them. In vain she rubbed out mud and grass stains, in vain she plied her needle. The garments absolutely defied her skill, and, painfully conscious of the fact, she was about perforce to don them as they were, when Nora burst into the room with a look of gladness on her face, which vanished, however, to do her justice, as completely as if it had never been, at the sight of poor Nellie, shame-faced and sad, vainly trying to smooth her rags into something like decent poverty around her.
"God help you, a-cushla!" she cried in a tone of unfeigned compassion, laying at the same time her withered hand upon the tattered kerchief which Nellie was trying to fold round her stately shoulders. "God help ye! and is this all that them black scum of Saxon robbers left ye when they turned ye out upon the wide world to seek your fortune?"
"It cannot be helped," said Nellie with a little choking in her voice, though she tried hard to veil it beneath an assumption of indifference. "And after all, these rags do but make me seem what in fact I am—a beggar. Only I hope," she added, with a little nervous laugh, "I hope that Colonel O'More" (she had learned his military rank and his real name, Moore being only its Saxon rendering, the night before from Nora) "will not be utterly disgusted this morning when he finds out to what a pauper he extended his hospitality last night."
"The colonel? Is it the master that you mean? The master be disgusted! Ah! now, listen to me, asthore, and don't be filling your head with them ugly fancies; for you may just take my word for it, and don't I know every turn of his mind as well as if I was inside of it? You may just take old Nora's word for it, that he worships the very ground you tread on, and would, too, all the same, if you had never a brogue to the foot or a kirtle to the back.Beggar, indeed! Why, could not he see for himself last night that you had been just robbed and murdered like out of your own by them thieving Saxons, and wasn't it for that very reason that, before he went off to his fishing this blessed morning, he gave me the key of that big black box, and says—says he, 'Nora, my old woman, I have been thinking that the young lady up-stairs has been so long on the road that may be she'll be in want of a new dress like; so, as there is nothing like decent woman-tailoring to be found in the island, maybe she'll condescend to see if there's anything in my poor mother's box that would suit her for the present.' And troth, my darling," old Nora went on, "it's you that are going to have the pick and choice of fine things; for she was a grand Spanish lady, she was, and always went about among us dressed like a princess."
Nora had opened the box at the beginning of this speech, and with every fresh word she uttered, she flung out such treasures of finery on the floor as fully justified her panegyric on the deceased lady's wardrobe.
Nellie soon found herself the centre of a heap of thick silks and shiny satins, and three-piled velvets and brocaded stuffs, standing upright by virtue of their own rich material, and of laces so delicate and fine, that they looked as if she had only to breathe upon them in order to make them float away upon the air like cobwebs.
She was quite too much of a girl as yet to be able to resist a close and curious examination of such treasures; nevertheless, her instinct of the fitness of things was stronger than her vanity, and there was an incongruity between these courtly habiliments and her broken fortunes, which made her feel that it would be an absolute impossibility to wear them. Selecting, therefore, a few articles of linen clothing, she told old Nora that everything else was far too fine for daily wear, and began, of her own accord, to restore them to their coffer. Not so, however, the good old Nora. Thatanything could be too fine for the adornment of any one whom "the master" delighted to honor, was a simple absurdity in her mind; and she became so clamorous in her remonstrances, that Nellie was fain to shift her ground, and to explain that she was bent at that moment upon "taking a long ramble by the sea-shore, for which anything like a dress of silk or satin (Nora's own good sense must tell her) would be, to say the least of it, exceedingly inappropriate."
At these words a new light seemed to dawn upon the old woman's mind, and, plunging almost bodily down into the deep coffer in her eagerness to gratify herprotégé, she exclaimed, "So it's for a walk you'd be going this morning, is it? and after all your bother last night! Well, well, you are young still, and would rather, I daresay, be skipping about like a young kid among the rocks than sitting up in silks and satins as grave and stately as if you were a princess in earnest. Something plain and strong? That's what you'll be wanting, isn't it, a-lannah? Wait a bit, will you? for I mind me now of a dress the old mistress had made when she was young, for a frolic, like, that she might go with me unnoticed to a 'pattern.' And may I never sin if I haven't got it," she cried, diving down once more into the coffer, and bringing up from its shining chaos a dress which, consisting as it did simply of a madder-colored petticoat and short over-skirt of russet brown, was not by any means very dissimilar to the habitual costume of a peasant girl of the west at the present hour.Nora was right. It was, as ladies have it, "the very thing!" Stout enough and plain enough to meet all Nellie's ideas of propriety, and yet presenting a sharp contrast of coloring which (forgive her, my reader, she was only sixteen) she was by no means sorry to reflect would be exceedingly becoming to her clear, pale complexion, and the blue-black tresses of her hair. It was with a little blush of pleasure, therefore, that she took it from the old woman's hand, exclaiming, "Oh! thank you, dear Nora. It is exactly what I was wishing for—so strong and pretty. It will make me feel just as I want to feel, like a good strong peasant girl, able and willing to work for her living; and, to say the truth, moreover," she added, somewhat confidentially, "I should not at all have liked making my appearance in those fine Spanish garments. I should have been so much afraid of the O'More taking me for his mother."
The annunciation of this grave anxiety set off old Nora in a fit of laughing, under cover of which Nellie contrived to complete her toilette. Madder-dyed petticoat, and, russet skirt, and long dark mantle, she donned them all; but the effect, though exceedingly pretty, was by no means exactly what she had expected; for Nora, turning her round and round for closer inspection, declared, with many an Irish expletive, which we willingly spare our readers, "That dress herself how she might, no one could ever mistake her for anything but what she really was, namely, a born lady, and perhaps even, moreover, a princess in disguise." With a smile and a courtesy Nellie accepted of the compliment, and then tripped down the winding staircase of her turret, took one peep at Lord Netterville as he lay in the room below, in the "calliogh" or nook by the hearth, which, screened off by a bent matting, had been allotted to him as the warmest and most comfortable accommodation the tower afforded, and having satisfied herself that he was still fast asleep, stepped out gayly into the open air. She was met at the door by "Maida," who nearly knocked her down in her boisterous delight at beholding her again, and she was playfully defending herself from the too rapturous advances of her four-footed friend when Roger ran his fishing-boat alongside the pier, and, evidently mistaking Nellie for some bare-footed visitor of Nora's, called out in Irish:
"Hilloa, ma colleen dhas! run back to the tower, will you, and tell Nora to fetch me down a basket, and you shall have a good handful of fish for your pains, for I have caught enough to garrison the island for a week."
Guessing his mistake and enchanted at the success of her masquerade, Nellie instantly darted into the kitchen, seized a fishing-creel which was lying near the hearth, and rushed down to the pier. Roger was still so busy disentangling the fish from the net in which he had caught them, that he never even looked at Nellie until he turned round to place them in her basket. Then for the first time he saw who it was whom he had been so unceremoniously ordering about upon his commission. Had Nellie been rich and prosperous, he would probably have laughed and made exceedingly light of the matter; but poor, and almost dependent on his bounty as she was, he flushed scarlet to the forehead, and apologized with an eager deference, which was not only very touching in itself, but very characteristic of the sensitive and generous-hearted race from which he sprung."But, after all," he added, in conclusion, smiling and laying his finger lightly on the folds of Nellie's mantle, "after all, how could I dream that, her weeks of weary wandering only just concluded, Mistress Netterville would have been up again with the sun, looking as fresh and bright as the morning dew, and masquerading like a peasant girl?"
"But I am not masquerading at all," said Nellie, laughing, and yet evidently quite in earnest. "I am as poor as a peasant girl, and mean to dress like one, ay, and to work like one too, so long as I needs must be dependent upon others."
"Not if I am still to be master here," said Roger, very decidedly, taking the fishing-creel out of her hands. "Like a wandering princess you have come to me; and like a wandering princess I intend that you shall be treated, so long as you condescend to honor me by your presence in this kingdom of barren rocks."
"But the fish," said the laughing and blushing Nellie; "in the meantime, what is to be done with the fish? Nora will be in pain about it; for she told me last night that there wasn't a blessed fish in the bay that would be worth a 'thraneen' if only half-an-hour were suffered to elapse between their exit from the ocean and their introduction to her kitchen."
"Nora is quite right," said Roger, responding freely to the young girl's merry laugh; "and it has cost me both time and pains, I do assure you, to impress that fact upon her mind. But Maida has already told her all about it; and here she comes," he added, as he caught a glimpse of the old woman descending leisurely toward the pier. "So now we may leave the fish with a safe conscience to her tender mercies, and, if you are inclined for a stroll, I will take you up to yonder rocky platform, from whence you will see the Atlantic, as unfortunately we but seldom see it on this wild coast, in all the calm glories of a summer day."
To Be Continued.