Gladys, the Reaper Part 16

Still Netta was silent.

'He may reform, you know,' suggested Mrs Jonathan, 'and then you may be allowed to marry,'

'No chance of that,' roared Mr Prothero, advancing towards Netta, taking her by the arm, and looking as if a few more of her rejoinders would bring her a good shaking. 'Do you mean to promise, miss?'

'Father, you're hurting me,' said Netta petulantly. 'You needn't pinch me so.'

Mr Prothero relaxed his hold. He doated on this obstinate, pretty, wilful child of his--the only girl, and whose temper was the very facsimile of his own.

'It's you're hurting me most, Netta, by rus.h.i.+ng into certain misery.

Will you promise?'

Again he took hold of the arm.

'One would think you were a Papist, father, and this the Inquisition,'

said Netta, growing learned under the torture of her father's grasp,

'Well said, Netta,' broke in Mr Jonathan, aroused by any allusion to any subject out of the present. 'A cruel court that perhaps more properly called Jesuitical than Papistical.'

Mr Prothero gave Netta a slight shake, which shook more pa.s.sion into both of them, and frightened Mrs Prothero.

'Once for all, Netta, will you promise to give up that scamp of a cousin of yours, Howel Jenkins?' roared the father.

'I won't promise anything at all,' replied Netta doggedly; and freeing herself from her father, she ran to her uncle as if for protection.

'You won't!' said Mr Prothero, pursuing her, 'then I tell you what it is. The moment you are known to keep company with him, you may find some other home than this; and if you determine to marry him, you shall be no longer a daughter of mine. I'll never, as long as I live--'

'Hush, hush, David, hush, please,' said Mrs Prothero, putting her hand on his arm. 'Netta will not disobey us, I am sure. But it is her obstinate temper; she never would say anything she was commanded to say.'

'Then you ought to have taught her better. She is a good-for-nothing girl, and I'll--'

'Netta, you had better leave the room,' said Rowland, opening the door, through which Netta gladly escaped. '"Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath,"' he added, turning to his father. 'You will do nothing with her at present. She is worked up to a spirit of resistance by too much argument, and the more you say the more obstinate she will become.'

'You are all as obstinate as mules,' said Mr Prothero; 'I can't think who you turn after. And then to have the impudence to say I was a Papist! Why, I'd rather be a Methody preacher any day. And you to encourage her, brother Jonathan. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.'

Brother Jonathan started up from his dream of Garn Goch and the Inquisition, to repudiate the imputation of encouragement.

'I was merely glad to find that she knew anything about the Inquisition, and had any information at all in her head; generally speaking, women know so little. I a.s.sure you, David, it was far from me to wish to encourage her in disobedience, or to offend you; so give me your hand.'

The brothers shook hands very warmly, and in so doing, the contrast between them was very great. The farmer I have already described. The clergyman was a remarkable specimen of the 'dry-as-dust' species. Very tall, very thin, with very loose joints, seemingly hung together on wires, and a very prominent nose. He had acquired the habit of poking his chin and looking on the ground, as if he were always in search for something, which he possibly was, as he never despaired of finding some antiquity or curiosity at any moment. It must not be augured from his devotion to antiquarian lore that he made a bad clergyman On the contrary, he was always ready at the call of the poorest paris.h.i.+oner, regular in his visits to the sick, charitable in no mean degree, and humble in his deportment to rich and poor. True, his sermons were somewhat dry, and occasionally too learned for the greater portion of his flock; but he made up for this by the simplicity of his conversation when he talked to them at their own houses.

He seldom was seen without a sort of school-boy satchel at his back, containing a small hammer and other useful tools, which, it was believed, had actually carried his lesson-books years ago. All the villagers knew his strong-and-weak point, and he rarely appeared amongst them without having various stones and imaginary curiosities presented to him, particularly by the young people. Many of these stones found their way into his bag, and it was not to be wondered at that he had a somewhat round back, as he frequently carried a load upon it, that a beast of burden would not have rejoiced in.

He and Mrs Jonathan were a remarkable pair; one of those ill-a.s.sorted couples that you wonder at. 'How in the world did they come together?'

was the usual question, the philosophic reply to which would have been, that theirs was actually one of the 'Matches made in heaven.' The gentleman got money to enable him to follow the bent of his genius without anxiety for his daily bread, and therewith a stirring wife to take care of him and his house; the wife got her great desideratum, a husband, and therewith the desideratum of all women, her own way.

But we must return to Netta and the other belligerents. As nothing more was to be made of her at present, they let her alone, perhaps the wisest thing they could do, and sat down to dinner. Netta declined eating, and consequently was left to her own reflections. Mr Prothero inquired anxiously of his wife, when he had cooled a little, whether he had really hurt Netta when he took hold of her arm; to which Mrs Prothero replied with unusual severity, 'No, perhaps it had been better if you had; she wanted some trial or punishment to bring down her proud spirit.'

In the course of the evening, a little before Mr and Mrs Jonathan left Glanyravon to return home, Miss Gwynne came to inquire for the poor Irish girl. She joined the party in the parlour for a short time, and gave a message from her father to Rowland, to the effect that he was very anxious for another game of chess, and begged him to come and dine at the Park on the morrow. Of course Rowland was only too happy, and the rest of the party too proud.

'Papa is disgusted at your having beaten him the other night,' said Miss Gwynne to Rowland.

'I think Mr Gwynne got tired,' said Rowland modestly.

'What affectation,' thought Miss Gwynne, as she said, 'oh, no! he says you are the best player.'

'I disclaim that entirely,' said Rowland. 'I merely beat two games out of three, and we had not time for another.'

Rowland had been, according to promise, to dine and play chess with Mr Gwynne; Miss Gwynne had dined with them, but had left them after dinner to follow their own devices, whilst she had followed hers, and did not reappear during the evening. Mr Gwynne had reproached her for her absence, and she had declared that she hated to be so long without talking, and that chess and young Prothero were perfect antidotes to conversation.

'That ancient, Saracenic game, as Mr Jonathan Prothero calls it, played by a Goth,' she said, 'is beyond my store of politeness.'

Mrs Prothero and Miss Gwynne went to see the poor Irish girl; they found her rather better, and able to speak to them with some degree of composure. The fever and its accompanying delirium had abated, and the danger was past; but, as is usual in such cases, extreme weakness was the result.

'G.o.d bless you, my ladies,' she murmured, as Miss Gwynne stooped over her to inquire how she did, and Mrs Prothero took her thin hand. 'I am better, thank ye; I can see and understand, and know now all that you have done for the wretched beggar.'

Here the poor girl's tears began to flow.

'We only wish to see you get well,' said Miss Gwynne softly, 'and then we can help you to find your friends.'

'I have no friends in the world miss, asth.o.r.e; my father died years ago, and my mother, brother, and sister all died of this horrible famine and pestilence! oh me! oh me!'

The tears flowed still faster, and Mrs Prothero begged her to be silent, and not to excite herself; but with restless eagerness she went on, as if anxious to pour forth her sorrows whilst she felt the strength to do so. It was remarkable that her English was very good, and that, with the exception of an occasional Irish epithet of endearment, you would scarcely have discovered her country. Indeed, the Welsh peculiarities of expression and accent sometimes appeared, so that it would have been difficult to say where she was born or brought up.

'I am going to look for my friends, if I live, and then, may be, I may be able to repay you for your kindness to me, a poor, wretched wanderer on the face of G.o.d's earth. If you'll be pleased to listen whilst I have the strength, I will tell you my story.

'My mother was a Welshwoman, born in some part of South Wales; she was the daughter of a clergyman, and respectably brought up. Her father taught her a great many things that we ignorant people in Ireland used to think a great deal of. Oh, she was a good and tender mother to me, ladies, avourneen.

'My father was an Irishman, and a fine, handsome man. He was a soldier, a corporal in the Welsh Fusiliers, and used to be called Corporal O'Grady. He was going through this country to Ireland, to visit his friends, on leave, when he first saw mother, and fell in love with her, and she with him. She knew that her father would not be willing that they should marry, so she ran away with him to Ireland. They travelled about for some time with his regiment, but, after I was born, mother went to settle in Ireland with father's family, and there she had three other children, two boys and a girl. After this my father was wounded in India, and got his discharge and his half-pay. He became a kind of under-agent for a gentleman that lived in England, so we were very well off as long as he lived; but he died when I was about twelve years old, and then mother did not well know what to do. I remember my father's death, and all our trouble, as if it was yesterday.

'She set up a little school, and for some years did pretty well. She could teach all that the farmers' daughters wanted to learn, and I helped her; so we managed to live. It was a hard struggle sometimes, but everybody was kind to widow O'Grady and her orphans; G.o.d reward them.

'But the bad time came for poor Ireland; the famine visited us, and then the pestilence! Ye have heard enough of the horrors, without doubt, but not half of what they really were. We were all starving, dying--I saw enough people die to make me wish myself dead hundreds of times, to be hidden from the sight; but I was fated to live. You, ladies, in your charity, have saved me again; but oh! if it were not wicked, I should wish myself with my mother, brothers, and sister in heaven.'

Here the poor girl's sobs choked her speech, and Mrs Prothero entreated her not to proceed.

'Only one word more, my ladies, and I have done. When they were all gone--all--all--and I only left, I did not care what became of me. I went about amongst those stricken down with the fever; but, woe is me, I never caught it. I fasted from morning to night, day after day, but I could not die of starvation; nothing would kill me. I was alone in the wide world, yet it would not please G.o.d to take me to another, much as I prayed to Him.

'Before mother died she told me to go into Wales, and try to find if she had any relations left. It was all she said, or had strength for; and before she got ill she seldom talked of her friends. All that I know of them I heard from my father when I was quite a child. He told me that mother had written to her father when she settled in Ireland, and that her letter had been returned with a note, saying that he was dead, and his only son gone away, no one knew where. This was her brother, and my uncle, but I do not know where to find him, only I am come to seek them, that I may do her bidding.'

'And what was your mother's name?' asked Mrs Prothero.

'Margaret Jones, ma'am,'

'My poor girl, there are hundreds of that name in South Wales. But we will make inquiries for you, and when you are better--'

'I am better now, thank you, ma'am. To-morrow I think I may go on my way. I would not trouble you any more; a poor beggar like me is not fit--oh dear! oh dear!'