The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain Part 45

She then gave a brief account to her kind-hearted friend of her journey to Dublin by the "Fly," in the first instance, suppressing one or two incidents; and of her second to Mrs. Mainwaring's, who, after hearing that she had not slept at all during the night, would permit no further conversation on that or any other subject, but hurried her to bed, she herself acting as her attendant. Having seen her comfortably settled, and carefully tucked her up with her own hands, she kissed the fair girl, exclaiming, "Sleep, my love; and may G.o.d bless and protect you from evil and unhappiness, as I feel certain He will, because you deserve it."

She then left her to sepose, and in a few minutes Lucy was fast asleep.

Whilst this little dialogue between Lucy and Mrs. Mainwaring was proceeding in the parlor of Summerfield cottage, another was running parallel with it between the two servants in the kitchen.

"G.o.d bless me," said Nancy Gallaher, addressing Alley, "you look shockin' bad afther so early a journey! I'll get you a cup o' tay, to put a bloom in your cheek."

"Thank you, kindly, ma'am," replied Alley, with a toss of her head which implied anything but grat.i.tude for this allusion to her complexion: "a good sleep, ma'am, will bring back the bloom--and that's aisy done, ma'am, to any one who has youth on their side. The color will come and go then, but let a wrinkle alone for keepin' its ground."

This was accompanied by a significant glance at Nancy's face, on which were legible some rather unequivocal traces of that description.

Honest Nancy, however, although she saw the glance, and understood the insinuation, seemed to take no notice of either--the fact being that her whole spirit was seized with an indomitable curiosity, which, like a restless familiar, insisted on being gratified.

In the case of those who undertake journeys similar to that which Lucy had just accomplished, there may be noticed almost by every eye those evidences of haste, alarm, and anxiety, and even distress, which to a certain extent at least tell their own tale, and betray to the observer that all can scarcely be right. Now Nancy Gallaher saw this, and having drawn the established conclusion that there must in some way be a lover in the case, she sat down in form before the fortress of Alley Mahon's secret, with a firm determination to make herself mistress of it, if the feat were at all practicable. In Alley, however, she had an able general to compete with--a general who resolved, on the other hand, to make a sortie, as it were, and attack Nancy by a series of bold and unexpected manoeuvres.

Nancy, on her part, having felt her first error touching Alley's complexion, resolved instantly to repair it by the subst.i.tution of a compliment in its stead.

"Throth, an' it'll be many a day till there's a wrinkle in your face, avourneen--an' now that I look at you agin--a pretty an' a sweet face it is. 'Deed it's many a day since I seen two sich faces as yours and the other young lady's; but anyway, you had betther let me get you a comfortable cup o' tay--afther your long journey. Oh, then, but that beautiful creature has a sorrowful look, poor thing."

These words were accompanied by a most insinuating glance of curiosity, mingled up with an air of strong benevolence, to show Alley that it proceeded only from the purest of good feeling. "Thank you," replied Alley, "I will take a cup sure enough. What family have you here? if it's a fair question."

"Sorra one but ourselves," replied Nancy, without making her much the wiser.

"But, I mane," proceeded Alley, "have you children? bekase if you have I hate them."

"Neither chick nor child there will be under the roof wid you here,"

responded Nancy, whilst putting the dry tea into a tin tea-pot that had seen service; "there's only the three of us--that is, myself, the misthress, and the masther--for I am not countin' a slip of a girl that comes in every day to do odd jobs, and some o' the rough work about the house."

"Oh, I suppose," said Alley, indifferently, "the childre's all married off?"

"There's only one," replied Nancy; "and indeed you're right enough--she is married, and not long either--and, in truth, I don't envy her the husband, she got. Lord save and guard us! I know I wouldn't long keep my senses if I had him."

"Why so?" asked Alley. "Has he two heads upon him?"

"Troth, no," replied the other; "but he's what they call a mad docther, an' keeps a rheumatic asylum--that manes a place where they put mad people, to prevent them from doin' harm. They say it would make the hair stand on your head like nettles even to go into it. However, that's not what I'm thinkin' of, but that darlin' lookin' creature that's wid the misthress. The Lord keep sorrow and cross-fortune from her, poor thing--for she looks unhappy. Avillis.h.!.+ are you and she related? for, as I'm a sinner, there's a resemblance in your faces--and even in your figures--only you're something rounder and fuller than she is."

"Isn't she lovely?" returned Alley, making the most of the compliment.

"Sure, wasn't it in Dublin her health was drunk as the greatest toast in Ireland." She then added after a pause, "The Lord knows I wouldn't--"

"Wouldn't what--avourneen?"

"I was just thinkin', that I wouldn't marry a mad docther, if there was ne'er another man in Ireland. A mad docther! Oh, beetha. Then will you let us know the name that's upon him?" she added in a most wheedling tone.

"His name is Scareman, my misthress tells me--he's related by the mother's side to the Moontides of Ballycrazy, in the barony of Quarther Clift--arrah, what's this your name is, avourneen?"

"Alley Mahon I was christened," replied her new friend; "but," she added, with an air of modest dignity that was inimitable in its way--"in regard of my place as maid of honor to Lady Lucy, I'm usually called Miss Mahon, or Miss Alley. My mistress, for her own sake, in ordher to keep up her consequence, you persave, doesn't like to hear me called anything else than either one or t'other of them."

"And it's all right," replied the other. "Well, as I was going to say, that Mrs. Mainwaring is breakin' her heart about this unforthunate marriage of her daughter to Scareman. It seems--but this is between ourselves--it seems, my dear, that he's a dark, hard-hearted scrub, that 'id go to h.e.l.l or farther for a s.h.i.+llin', for a penny, ay, or for a farden. An' the servant that was here afore me--a clean, good-natured girl she was, in throth--an' got married to a blacksmith, at the cross-roads beyant--tould me that the scrames, an' yells, an' howlins, and roarins--the cursin' and blasphaymin'--an' the laughin', that she said was worse than all--an' the rattlin' of chains--the Lord save us--would make one think themselves more in h.e.l.l than in any place upon this world. And it appears the villain takes delight in it, an' makes las.h.i.+ns of money by the trade."

"The sorra give him good of it!" exclaimed Alley; "an' I can tell you, it's Lady Lucy--(divil may care, thought she--I'll make a lady of her at any rate--this ignorant creature doesn't know the differ) it's Lady Lucy, I say, that will be sorry to hear of this same marriage--for you must know--what's this your name is?"

"Nancy Gallaher, dear."

"And were you ever married, Nancy?"

"If I wasn't the fau't was my own, ahagur! but I'll tell you more about that some day. No, then, I was not, thank G.o.d!"

"Thank G.o.d! Well, throth, it's a quare thing to thank G.o.d for that, at any rate." This, of course, was parenthetical. "Well, my dear,"

proceeded Alley, "you must know that Mrs. Scareman before her marriage--of course, she was then Miss Norton--acted in the kippacity of tutherer general to Lady Lucy, except durin' three months that she was ill, and had to go to England to thry the wathers."

"What wathers?" asked Nancy. "Haven't we plenty o' wather, an' as good as they have, at home?"

"Not at all," replied Alley, who sometimes, as the reader may have perceived, drew upon an imagination of no ordinary fertility; "in England they have spakin' birds, singin' trees, and goolden wather. So, as I was sayin', while she went to thry the goolden wather------"

"Troth, if ever I get poor health, I'll go there myself," observed Nancy, with a gleam of natural humor in her clear blue eye."

"Well, while she went to thry this goolden watlier, her mother, Mrs.

Norton, came in her place as tutherer general, an' that's the way they became acquainted--Lady Lucy and her. But, my dear, I want to tell you a saicret."

We are of opinion, that if Nancy's cap had been off at the moment, her two ears might have been observed to erect themselves on each side of her head with pure and unadulterated curiosity.

"Well, Miss Alley, what is it, ahagur?"

"Now, you won't breathe this to any human creature?"

"Is it me? Arrah! little you know the woman you're spakin' to. Divil a mortal could beat me at keepin' a saicret, at any rate; an' when you tell me this, maybe I'll let you know one or two that'll be worth hearin'."

"Well," continued Alley, "it's this--Never call my mistress Lady Lucy, because she doesn't like it."

This was an apple from the sh.o.r.es of the Dead Sea. Nancy's face bore all the sudden traces of disappointment and mortification; and, from a principle of retaliation, she resolved to give her companion a morsel from the same fruit.

"Now, Nancy," continued the former, "what's this you have to tell us?"

"But you swear not to breathe it to man, woman, or child, boy or girl, rich or poor, livin' or dead?"

"Sartainly I do."

"Well, then, it's this. I understand that Docthor Scareman isn't likely to have a family. Now, ahagur, if you spake, I'm done, that's all."

Having been then called away to make arrangements necessary to Lucy's.

comfort, their dialogue was terminated before she could worm out of Alley the cause of her mistress's visit.

"She's a cunnin' ould hag," said the latter, when the other had gone. "I see what she wants to get out o' me; but it's not for nothing Miss Lucy has trusted me, an' I'm not the girl to betray her secrets to them that has no right to know them."

This, indeed, was true. Poor Alley Mahon, though a very neat and handsome girl, and of an appearance decidedly respectable, was nevertheless a good deal vulgar in her conversation. In lieu of this, however, notwithstanding a large stock of vanity, she was gifted with a strong attachment to her mistress, and had exhibited many trying proofs of truthfulness and secrecy under circ.u.mstances where most females in her condition of life would have given way. As a matter of course, she was obliged to receive her master's bribes, otherwise she would have been instantly dismissed, as one who presumed to favor Lucy's interest and oppose his own. Her fertility of fancy, however, joined to deep-rooted affection for his daughter, enabled her to return as a recompense for Sir Thomas's bribes, that description of one-sided truth which transfuses fiction into its own character and spirit, just as a drop or two of any coloring fluid will tinge a large portion of water with its own hue. Her replies, therefore, when sifted and examined, always bore in them a sufficient portion of truth to enable her, on the strong point of veracity on which she boldly stood, to bear herself out with triumph; owing, indeed, to a slight dash in her defence of the coloring we have described. Lucy felt that the agitation of mind, or rather, we should say, the agony of spirit which she had been of late forced to struggle with, had affected her health more than she could have antic.i.p.ated. That and the unusual fatigue of a long journey in a night coach, eked out by a jolting drive to Wicklow at a time when she required refreshment and rest, told upon her const.i.tution, although a naturally healthy one. For the next three or four days after her arrival at Summerfield Cottage, she experienced symptoms of slight fever, apparently nervous. Every attention that could be paid to her she received at the hands of Mrs. Mainwaring, and her own maid, who seldom was a moment from her bedside. Two or three times a day she was seized with fits of moping, during which she deplored her melancholy lot in life, feared she had offended her kind hostess by intruding, without either notice or announcement, upon the quiet harmony of her family, and begged her again and again to forgive her; adding, "That as soon as her recovery should be established, she would return to her father's house to die, she hoped, and join mamma; and this," she said, "was her last and only consolation."

Mrs. Mainwaring saw at once that her complaint was princ.i.p.ally on the nerves, and lost no time in asking permission to call in medical advice.

To this, Lucy, whose chief object was to remain unknown and in secrecy for the present, strongly objected; but by the mild and affectionate remonstrances of Mrs. Mainwaring, as well as at the earnest entreaties of Alley, she consented to allow a physician to be called in.

This step was not more judicious than necessary. The physician, on seeing her, at once p.r.o.nounced the complaint a nervous fever, but hoped that it would soon yield to proper treatment. He prescribed, and saw her every second day for a week, after which she gave evident symptoms of improvement. Her const.i.tution, as we have said, was good; and nature, in spite of an anxious mind and disagreeable reflections, bore her completely out of danger.