The Martins Of Cro' Martin, Vol. II (of II)

“What a good, kind doctor!” said she, faintly; “I’m sure to find you ever beside me when I awake.”

“Oh, darlin’, dear,” broke in old Catty, “sure you ought to know who he is. Sure it ‘s your own – ”

“Hush! be silent!” muttered the old man, in a low, stern voice.

“Is it Tuesday to-day?” asked Mary, softly.

“Yes, dear, Tuesday,” said the old man.

“It was on Thursday my poor uncle died. Could I live till Thursday, doctor?”

The old man tried to speak, but could not.

“You are afraid to shock me,” said she, with a faint attempt to smile, “but if you knew how happy I am, – happy even to leave a life I loved so well. It never could have been the same again, though – the spell was breaking, hardship and hunger were maddening them – who knows to what counsels they ‘d have listened soon! Tell Harry to be kind to them, won’t you? Tell him not to trust to others, but to know them himself; to go, as I have done, amongst them. They ‘ll love him so for doing it. He is a man, young, rich, and high-hearted, – how they ‘ll dote upon him! Catty used to say it was my father they ‘d have worshipped; but that was in flattery to me, Catty, you always said we were so like – ”

“Oh dear! oh dear! why won’t you tell her?” broke in Catty. But a severe gesture from the old man again checked her words.

“How that wild night at sea dwells in my thoughts! I never sleep but to dream of it. Cousin Harry must not forget those brave fellows. I have nothing to requite them with. I make no will, doctor,” said she, smiling, “for my only legacy is that nosegay there. Will you keep it for my sake?”

The old man hid his face, but his strong frame shook and quivered in the agony of the moment.

“Hush!” said she, softly; “I hear voices without. Who are they?”

“They’re the country-people, darlin’, come from Kiltimmon and beyond Kyle-a-Noe, to ax after you. They passed the night there, most of them.”

“Catty, dear, take care that you look after them; they will be hungry and famished, poor creatures! Oh, how unspeakably grateful to one’s heart is this proof of feeling! Doctor, you will tell Harry how I loved them and how they loved me. Tell him, too, that this bond of affection is the safest and best of all ties. Tell him that their old love for a Martin still survives in their hearts, and it will be his own fault if he does not transmit it to his children. There’s some one sobbing there without. Oh, bid them be of good heart, Catty; there is none who could go with less of loss to those behind. There – there come the great waves again before me! How my courage must have failed me to make this impression so deep! And poor Joan, and that dear fond girl who has been as a sister to me, – so full of gentleness and love, – Kate, where is she? No, do not call her; say that I asked for her – that I blessed her – and sent her this kiss!” She pressed a rose to her hot, parched lips as she spoke, and then closing her eyes seemed to fall off to sleep. Her breathing, at first strong and frequent, grew fainter and fainter, and her color came and went, while her lips slightly moved, and a low, soft murmur came from them.

“She’s asleep,” muttered Catty, as she crouched down beside the bed.

The old man bent over the bed, and watched the calm features. He sat thus long, for hours, but no change was there; he put his lips to hers, and then a sickly shuddering came over him, and a low, deep groan, that seemed to rend his very heart!

Three days after, the great gateway of Cro’ Martin Castle opened to admit a stately hearse drawn by six horses, all mournfully caparisoned, shaking with plumes and black-fringed drapery. Two mourning-coaches followed, and then the massive gates were closed, and the sad pageant wound its slow course through the demesne. At the same moment another funeral was approaching the churchyard by a different road. It was a coffin borne by men bareheaded and sorrow-struck. An immense multitude followed, of every rank and age; sobs and sighs broke from them as they went. Not an eye was tearless, not a lip that did not tremble. At the head of this procession walked a small group whose dress and bearing bespoke their class. These were Barry Martin, leaning on Repton; Massingbred and the two Nelligans came behind.

The two coffins entered the churchyard at the same instant The uncle and the niece were laid side by side in the turf! The same sacred words consigned them both to their last bed; the same second of time heard the dank reverberation that pronounced “earth” had returned “to earth.” A kind of reverential awe pervaded the immense crowd during the ceremony, and if here and there a sob would burst from some overburdened heart, all the rest were silent; respecting, with a deference of true refinement, a sorrow deeper and greater than their own, they never uttered a word, but with bent-down heads stole quietly away. And now by each grave the mourners stood, silently gazing on the little mounds which typify so much of human sorrow!

Barry Martin’s bronzed and weather-beaten features were a thought paler, perhaps. There was a dark shade of color round the eyes, but on the whole the expression conveyed far more of sternness than sorrow. Such, indeed, is no uncommon form for grief to take in certain natures. There are men who regard calamity like a foe, and go out to meet it in a spirit of haughty defiance. A poor philosophy! He who accepts it as chastisement is both a braver and a better man!

Repton stood for a while beside him, not daring to interrupt his thoughts. At length he whispered a few words in his ear. Barry started suddenly, and his dark brow grew sterner and more resolute.

“Yes, Martin, you must,” said Repton, eagerly, “I insist upon it. Good heavens! is it at such a time, in such a place as this, you can harbor a thought that is not forgiveness? Remember he is poor Godfrey’s son, the last of the race now.” As he spoke, passing his arm within the other’s, he drew him gently along, and led him to where a solitary mourner was standing beside the other grave.

Barry Martin stood erect and motionless, while Repton spoke to the young man. At first the words seemed to confuse and puzzle him, for he looked vaguely around, and passed his hand across his brow in evident difficulty.

“Did you say here, in this country? Do I understand you aright?”

“Here, in this very spot; there, standing now before you!” said Repton, as he pushed young Martin towards his uncle.

Barry held out his hand, which the young man grasped eagerly; and then, as if unable to resist his emotions longer, fell, sobbing violently, into the other’s arms.

“Let us leave them for a while,” said Repton, hurrying over to where Massingbred and the Nelligans were yet standing in silent sorrow.

They left the spot together without a word. Grief had its own part for each. It is not for us to say where sorrow eat deepest, or in which heart the desolation was most complete.

“I’d not have known young Martin,” whispered Nelligan in Repton’s ear; “he looks full twelve years older than when last I saw him.”

“The fast men of this age, sir, live their youth rapidly,” replied the other. “It is rarely their fortune to survive to be like me, or heaven knows what hearts they would be left with!”

While they thus talked, Massingbred and Joe Nelligan had strolled away into the wood. Neither spoke. Massingbred felt the violent trembling of the other’s arm as it rested on his own, and saw a gulping effort by which more than once he suppressed his rising emotion. For hours they thus loitered along, and at length, as they issued from the demesne, they found Repton and Mr. Nelligan awaiting them.

“Barry Martin has taken his nephew back with him to the cottage,” said Repton, “and we ‘ll not intrude upon them for the rest of the evening.”

CHAPTER XXXVIII. REPTON’S LAST CAUSE

We have no right, as little have we the inclination, to inflict our reader with the details by which Barry Martin asserted and obtained his own. A suit in which young Martin assumed to be the defendant developed the whole history to the world, and proclaimed his title to the estate. It was a memorable case in many ways; it was the last brief Val Repton ever held. Never was his clear and searching intellect more conspicuous; never did he display more logical acuteness, nor trace out a difficult narrative with more easy perspicuity.

“My Lords,” said he, as he drew nigh the conclusion of his speech, “it would have been no ordinary satisfaction to me to close a long life of labor in these courts by an effort which restores to an ancient name the noble heritage it had held for centuries. I should have deemed such an occasion no unfitting close to a career not altogether void of its successes; but the event has still stronger claims upon my gratitude. It enables me in all the unembellished sternness of legal proof to display to an age little credulous of much affection the force of a brother’s love, – the high-hearted devotion by which a man encountered a long life of poverty and privation, rather than disturb the peaceful possession of a brother.

“Romance has its own way of treating such themes; but I do not believe romance can add one feature to the simple fact of this man’s self-denial.

“We should probably be lost in our speculations as to the noble motives of this sacrifice, if our attention was not called away to something infinitely finer and more exalted than even this. I mean the glorious life and martyr’s death of her who has made a part of this case less like a legal investigation than the page of an affecting story. Story, do I say! Shame on the word! It is in truth and reality alone are such virtues inscribed. Fiction cannot deal with the humble materials that make up such an existence, – the long hours of watching by sickness; the weary care of teaching the young; the trying disappointments to hope bravely met by fresh efforts; the cheery encouragement drawn from a heart exhausting itself to supply others. Think of a young girl – a very child in the world’s wisdom, more than a man in heroism and daring, with a heart made for every high ambition, and a station that might command the highest – calmly consenting to be the friend of destitution, the companion of misery, the daily associate of every wretchedness; devoting grace that might have adorned a court to shed happiness in a cabin, and making of beauty that would have shed lustre around a palace the sunshine that pierced the gloom of a peasant’s misery! Picture to yourself the hand a prince might have knelt to kiss, holding the cup to the lips of fever; fancy the form whose elegance would have fascinated, crouched down beside the embers as she spoke words of consolation or hope to some bereaved mother or some desolate orphan!

“These are not the scenes we are wont to look on here. Our cares are, unhappily, more with the wiles and snares of crafty men than with the sorrows and sufferings of the good! It is not often human nature wears its best colors in this place; the spirit of litigious contest little favors the virtues that are the best adornments of our kind. Thrice happy am I, then, that I end my day where a glorious sunset gilds its last hours; that I close my labors not in reprobating crime or stigmatizing baseness, but with a full heart, thanking God that my last words are an elegy over the grave of the best of The Martins of Cro’ Martin.’”

The inaccurate record from which we take these passages – for the only report of the trial is in a newspaper of the time – adds that the emotion of the speaker had so far pervaded the court that the conclusion was drowned in mingled expressions of applause and sorrow; and when Repton retired, he was followed by the whole bar, eagerly pressing to take their last farewell of its honored father.

The same column of the paper mentions that Mr. Joseph Nelligan was to have made his first motion that day as Solicitor-General, but had left the court from a sudden indisposition, and the cause was consequently deferred.

If Val Repton never again took his place in court, he did not entirely abdicate his functions. Barry Martin had determined on making a conveyance of the estate to his nephew, and the old lawyer was for several weeks busily employed in that duty. Although Merl’s claim became extinguished when young Martin’s right to the property was annulled, Barry Martin insisted on arrangements being made to repay him all that he had advanced, – a course which Repton, with some little hesitation, at last concurred in. He urged Barry to reserve a life-interest to himself in the property, representing the various duties which more properly would fall to his lot than to that of a young and inexperienced proprietor. But he would not hear of it.

“He cannot abide the place,” said Repton, when talking the matter over with Massingbred. “He is one of those men who never can forgive the locality where they have been miserable, nor the individual who has had a share in their sorrow. When he settles his account with Henderson, then he ‘ll leave the West forever.”

“And will he still leave Henderson in his charge?” asked Jack.

“That is as it may be,” said Repton, cautiously. “There is, as I understand, some very serious reckoning between them. It is the only subject on which Martin has kept mystery with me, and I do not like even to advert to it.”

Massingbred pondered long over these words, without being able to make anything of them.

It might be that Henderson’s conduct had involved him in some grave charge; and if so, Jack’s own intentions with regard to the daughter would be burdened with fresh complications. “The steward” was bad enough; but if he turned out to be the “unjust steward” – “I ‘ll start for Galway to-night,” thought he. “I ‘ll anticipate the discovery, whatever it be. She can no longer refuse to see me on the pretext of recent sorrow. It is now two months and more since this bereavement befell her. I can no longer combat this life of anxiety and doubt. – What can I do for you in the West, sir?” asked he of Repton, suddenly.

“Many things, my young friend,” said Repton, “if you will delay your departure two days, since they are matters on which I must instruct you personally.”

Massingbred gave a kind of half-consent, and the other went on to speak of the necessity for some nice diplomacy between the uncle and his nephew. “They know each other but little; they are on the verge of misunderstandings a dozen times a day. Benefits are, after all, but sorry ties between man and man. They may ratify the treaty of affection; they rarely inscribe the contract!”

“Still Martin cannot but feel that to the noblest act of his uncle’s generosity he is indebted for all he possesses.”

“Of course he knows, and he feels it; but who is to say whether that same consciousness is not a load too oppressive to bear. I know already Barry Martin’s suggestions as to certain changes have not been well taken, and he is eager and pressing to leave Ireland, lest anything should disturb the concord, frail as it is, between them.”

“By Jove!” exclaimed Massingbred, passionately, “there is wonderfully little real good in this world; wonderfully little that can stand the test of the very basest of all motives, – mere gain.”

“Don’t say so!” cried Repton. “Men have far better natures than you think; the fault lies in their tempers. Ay, sir, we are always entering into heavy recognizances with our passions, to do fifty things we never cared for. We have said this, we have heard the other; somebody sneered at that, and some one else agreed with him; and away we go, pitching all reason behind us, like an old shoe, and only seeking to gratify a whim, or a mere caprice, suggested by temper. Why do people maintain friendly intercourse at a distance for years, who could not pass twenty-four hours amicably under the same roof? Simply because it is their natures, and not their tempers, are in exercise.”

“I scarcely can separate the two in my mind,” said Jack, doubtingly.

“Can’t you, sir? Why, nature is your skin, temper only your great-coat.” And the old lawyer laughed heartily at his own conceit. “But here comes the postman.”

The double knock had scarcely reverberated through the spacious hall when the servant entered with a letter.

“Ah! Barry Martin’s hand. What have we here?” said Repton, as he ran his eyes over it. “So-so; just as I was saying this minute, only that Barry has the good sense to see it himself. ‘My nephew,’ he writes, ‘has his own ideas on all these subjects, which are not mine; and as it is no part of my plan to hamper my gift with conditions that might impair its value, I mean to leave this at once.

“‘I have had my full share of calamity since I set foot in this land; and if this rugged old nature could be crushed by mere misfortune, the last two months might have done it. But no, Repton, the years by which we survive friends serve equally to make us survive affections, and we live on, untouched by time!

“‘I mean to be with you this evening. Let us dine alone together, for I have much to say to you.

“’ Yours ever,

“‘Barry Martin.

“‘I hope I may see Massingbred before I sail. I ‘d like to shake hands with him once again. Say so to him, at all events.’”

“Come in to-morrow to breakfast,” said Repton; “by that time we’ll have finished all mere business affairs.” And Massingbred having assented, they parted.

CHAPTER XXXIX. TOWARDS THE END

Repton was standing at his parlor window, anxiously awaiting his friend’s arrival, when the chaise with four posters came to the door. “What have we here?” said the old lawyer to himself, as Barry assisted a lady dressed in deep mourning to alight, and hurried out to receive them.

“I have not come alone, Repton,” said the other. “I have brought my daughter with me.” Before Repton could master his amazement at these words, she had thrown back her veil, revealing the well-known features of Kate Henderson.

“Is this possible? – is this really the case?” cried Repton, as he grasped her hand between both his own. “Do I, indeed, see one I have so long regarded and admired, as the child of my old friend?”

“Fate, that dealt me so many heavy blows of late, had a kindness in reserve for me, after all,” said Barry. “I am not to be quite alone in this world!”

“If you be grateful, what ought not to be my thankfulness?” said Kate, tremulously.

“Leave us for a moment together, Kate,” said Barry; and taking Repton’s arm, he led him into an inner room.

“I have met with many a sore cut from fortune, Repton,” said he, in the fierce tone that was most natural to him; “the nearest and dearest to me not the last to treat me harshly. I need not tell you how I have been requited in life; not, indeed, that I seek to acquit myself of my own share of ill. My whole career has been a fault; it could not bring other fruit than misery.” He paused, and for a while seemed laboring in strong emotion. At last he went on: —

“When that girl was born – it was two years before I married – I intrusted the charge of her to Henderson, who placed her with a sister of his in Bruges. I made arrangements for her maintenance and education, – liberally for one as poor as I was. I made but one condition about her. It was that under no circumstances save actual want should she ever be reduced to earn her own bread; but if the sad hour did come, never – as had been her poor mothers fate – never as a governess! It was in that fearful struggle of condition I first knew her. I continued, year after year, to hear of her; remitting regularly the sums I promised, – doubling, tripling them, when fortune favored me with a chance prosperity. The letters spoke of her as well and happy, in humble but sufficient circumstances, equally remote from privation as from the seductions of a more exalted state. I insisted eagerly on my original condition, and hoped some day to hear of her being married to some honest but humble man. It was not often that I had time for self-reproach; but when such seasons would beset me, I thought of this girl, and her poor mother long dead and gone – But let me finish. While I struggled – and it was often a hard struggle – to maintain my side of the compact, selling at ruinous loss acquisitions it had cost me years of labor to obtain, this fellow, this Henderson, was basely betraying the trust I placed in him! The girl, for whose protection, whose safety I was toiling, was thrown by him into the very world for which I had distinctly excepted her; her talents, her accomplishments, her very graces, farmed out and hired for his own profit! Launched into the very sea where her own mother met shipwreck, she was a mere child, sent to thread her way through the perils of the most dissipated society. Hear her own account of it, Repton. Let her tell you what is the tone of that high life to which foreign nobility imparts its fascinations. Not that I want to make invidious comparisons; our own country sends its high tributaries to every vice of Europe! I know not what accident saved her amidst this pollution. Some fancied theory of popular wrongs, she thinks, gave her a kind of factitious heroism; elevating her, at least to her own mind, above the frivolous corruptions around her. She was a democrat, to rescue her from being worse.

“At last came a year of unusual pressure; my remittance was delayed, but when sent was never acknowledged. From that hour out I never heard of her. How she came into my brother’s family, you yourself know. What was her life there, she has told me! Not in any spirit of complaint, – nay, she acknowledges to many kindnesses and much trust. Even my cold sister-in-law showed traits for which I had not given her credit. I have already forgotten her wrongs towards myself, in requital of her conduct to this poor girl.”

“I’ll spare you the scene with Henderson, Repton,” said he, after a long pause. “When the fellow told me that the girl was the same I had seen watching by another’s sickbed, that she it was whose never-ceasing cares had soothed the last hours of one dearer than herself, I never gave another thought to him. I rushed out in search of her, to tell her myself the tidings.”

“How did she hear it?” asked Repton, eagerly.

“More calmly than I could tell it. Her first words were, ‘Thank God for this, for I never could love that man I had called my father!’”

“She knows, then, every circumstance of her birth?”

“I told her everything. We know each other as well as though we had lived under the same roof for years. She is my own child in every sentiment and feeling. She is frank and fearless, Repton, – two qualities that will do well enough in the wild savannahs of the New World, but would be unmanageable gifts in the Old, and thither we are bound. I have written to Liverpool about a ship, and we shall sail on Saturday.”

“How warmly do I sympathize in this your good fortune, Martin!” said Repton. “She is a noble creature, and worthy of belonging to you.”

“I ask for nothing more, Repton,” said he, solemnly. “Fortune and station, such as they exist here, I have no mind for! I’m too old now to go to school about party tactics and politics; I’m too stubborn, besides, to yield up a single conviction for the sake of unity with a party, – so much for my unfitness for public life. As to private, I am rough and untrained; the forms of society so pleasant to others would be penalties to me. And then,” said he, rising, and drawing up his figure to its full height, “I love the forest and the prairie; I glory in the vastness of a landscape where the earth seems boundless as the sky, and where, if I hunt down a buffalo-ox, after twenty miles of a chase, I have neither a game-law nor a gamekeeper nor a charge of trespass hanging over me.”

“There’s some one knocking at the door,” said Repton, as he arose and opened it.

“A thousand pardons for this interruption,” said Mas-singbred, in a low and eager voice, “but I cannot keep my promise to you; I cannot defer my journey to the West. I start to-night. Don’t ask me the reasons. I ‘ll be free enough to give them if they justify me.”

“But here is one who wishes to shake hands with you, Massingbred,” said Repton, as he led him forward into the room.

“I hope you are going to keep your pledge with me, though,” said Barry. “Have you forgotten you have promised to be my guest over the sea?”

“Ah,” said Jack, sighing, “I ‘ve had many a day-dream of late!”

“The man’s in love,” said Repton. “Nay, prisoner, you are not called on to say what may criminate you. I ‘ll tell you what, Barry, you ‘ll do the boy good service by taking him along with you. There ‘s a healthful sincerity in the active life of the New World well fitted to dispel illusions that take their rise in the indolent voluptuousness of the Old. Carry him off then, I say; accept no excuses nor apologies. Send him away to buy powder and shot, leather gaiters, and the rest of it. When I saw him first myself, it was in the character of a poacher, and he filled the part well. Ah! he is gone,” added he, perceiving that Martin had just quitted the room. “Poor fellow, he is so full of his present happiness, – the first gleam of real sunshine on a long day of lowering gloom! He has just found a daughter, – an illegitimate one, but worthy to be the rightful-born child to the first man in the land. The discovery has carried him back twenty years of life, and freshened a heart whose wells of feeling were all but dried up forever. If I mistake not, you must have met her long ago at Cro’ Martin.”