This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world’s books discoverable online.
It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that’s often difficult to discover.
Marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book’s long journey from the publisher to a library and finally to you.
Usage guidelines Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the
public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we have taken steps to prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying.
We also ask that you:
+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individual personal, non-commercial purposes.
and we request that you use these files for
+ Refrain from automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google’s system: If you are conducting research on machine translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.
+ Maintain attribution The Google “watermark” you see on each file is essential for informing people about this project and helping them find additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.
+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can’t offer guidance on whether any specific use of any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book’s appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe.
About Google Book Search
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world’s books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web ai[http: //books . google. com/|
A? 4 67
oO
THE IRISH MONTHLY.
THE
IRISH MONTHLY
S Magazine of General Piterature
THIRTEENTH YEARLY VOLUME 1885
DUBLIN
M. H. GILL & SON, O’CONNELL STREET LONDON: BURNS & OATES; SIMPKIN, MARSHALL & 00.
M. H. GILL AND SON, PRINTERS, DUBLIN.
CONTENTS.
——
Srorzes.
Marcella Grace. By Rosa Mulholland, Chapter I. Hor Mother was a Lady, IL, Nothing Wrong, . IIL. At Home in Merrion-square, IV. Btrange Tidings, . V. An Irish Cinderella, . VI. St. Patrick's Ball, ‘VIL. Sackeloth and Ashes, . VEIL Out of the Depths, . IX. The Shadow of a Crime, X. Homeward, : XI. Inisheen, . : XI. Distrema, . XIII. Marcella a Landlord, XIV. The Calm before the Storm, XV. The Bolt Fall, . XVI. God is Good, . XVI (bis) The Missing Link, . XVIL The Inquisitor, © XVIII. What the World said,
XIx. Thou shalt not bear False Witneas,
XX, In the Dock, XXL. Corroborative Evidence, XXII. Death and Life, . XXII. Separation, . : XXIV. The Convict’s Wife, . XXV. Mike's End, : XXVI. A Warning, XXVIL. A Break in the Clouds, XXVIII Sunrie, . . Johnny’s Git, By Mrs. Frank Pentrill, . ‘A Troe Ghost Story. ByJ.J.K., . :
Sketcurs or Paces AND Parsons.
Notes of » Showt Tp to Spain, By John Fallon,
VII. Visit to the Mosque of Cordova, QL Te
ag. “3
vi Contents.
‘Notes of a Short Trip to Spain—(continued). VOL Maki, noon IX. Toledo, “. :
X. Homeward, . ; Home-Life in Colorado. By Brendan Mac Carth;
‘An Irishwoman in Disguise (Mre. Jemeron.) By 3. F. North,
Lord O'Eagan, .
On the Wye. By Henry Bedford, .
Lady Georgiana Fullerton. By F.T., . : The Late Bev, Joseph Farrell, . . An Irish Nun in Foreign Parts,
A Valiant Soldier of the Cross By the Author of “ Lean from the Annals
of the Sisters of Mercy,” ‘The Crater of Vesuvius in an Eruption. By John Fallon, An Trish Boy's Legacy to the Holy Childhood, .
Essays AND Reviews.
Our Contemporaries, Dr. Kavanagh on Catholic Students of Philosophy, Dr. Ricards on Faith and Unbelief, . . Taking Cold. By Frances Kershaw, ‘The Craze of Fashion-following. By the Same, An American Cyclopedia of Irish Poets, : ‘Miss Evelyn Pyne’s “ Dream of the Gironde,” Our Poets :—No. 18, Arthur Gerald Geoghegan,
” No. 14. Katharine Murphy (‘ Brigid”)
» No. 15. Mrs. Mary E. Blake, - Trish Literature and our Twelfth Anniversary, Hints to Students, .
‘Mise Tynan’s “Louise de la Valligre, &o,,” Everyday Thoughts. By Mrs. Frank Pontrill.
No. IX. Old Maids, . .
Bailway Travelling. By Frances Kershaw, . Bolics of a Certain Professor,» —. . A Bookworm's Fast. By A, F. North, . Dr. Ricards on the Catholic Rule of Faith, . The October Omissions of Mr. John Oldcastle, . ‘Phen and Now. By Denny Lane, - . “The Christmas Pantomime. By a Mother,
Normacgs or New Booxs.
‘Miss Rosa Mulholland’s Walking Trees and other Tales.—Mre. Frank Pentrill’s Lina’s Tales.—Rev. Joseph Farrell’s Lectures of a Certain Professor.
Judge O'Hagan’s “Bong of Roland.”—Ohemey’s Land of the Pyramids.— Bey. A. Young’s Catholic Hymnal.—St. George's Hymn-Tune Book.—Rev. D. Chisholm’s Catholic Child’s Treasury—Mrs. Cashel Hoey’s Tale of the ‘Torror.—The Foundations of Death. —History of the Sodality B.V.M.—M.
Sinclair Allison’s Snowflakes and other Talee.— Art M‘Morrough, &c.
.
Burnett's Reasons why we should believe in God, love God, and obey God .— Bpalding’s ‘History of the Ohureh.Tady C. Petr's Hymna sud Veroea.— Mis Helens Callanan’s Gathered Leafet.—Hmerald Goms—Kason’s ‘Almanac for Ireland.—Frost’s How to Write a Composition.—Gaston de
Ségur.—Rosa Ferrucci.—8t. George's Hymn-Tune Book.
+ 106
Contents. vii
no Mise Gallaher’s Lessons in Domestic Science.—Schmid’s Tales. —Miss Mulhol- land's Walking Trees, &e.— Earl Nogent’s Daughter.—Watch and Hope— Scholastic Avnual.—Lenten Meditations.— Don Boseo.— League of the Cross ‘Magasine.—Notes on Ingersoll, —Ravignan’s Last Retreat.—Dr. Magrath on Ostholic Philosophy.—A. M. Sullivan's Speeches.—Mgr. Capel’s Catholic Hints on Letter Writing, &0., &. . 166 “Louise la Vallitre and Other Poems” by Katharine Tynan.—Momeir of Jonny White del Bal—A Marvellous History, &c.—Oharacteristica of Cardinal ‘Manning.—Walpole’s History of Ireland.—Irish Tonio Solfaist.—Mre de Saumaise.— Victoire de Saint Luc. —Ecoles d’ Orient.—Dr. Sigerson on Vil- Inge Hospitals, &o.—Mowsenger of St. Joseph.—Ellis's Education Directory. —Croes of Monterey.—F. Morris's St. Thomas Becket.—Dr. M‘Devitt’s Father Hand, . 914 Father Coleridge's Preperation for the Incarnation.—Advertiser’s Guardian. — “Mary Foreshadowed.—Father Gavin's Decay of Faith.—The Theatre and Christian Parents.—Mr. C. Russell's Lecture at Lurgan, &. - 276 ‘Miss Katharine Tynan’s Poems.—Miss Clara Mulholland’s Linda’s Mistortunes. —Dr. Gargan’s Charity of the Church.— Father Gavin's Dangers of Faith— Rev. H. Browne's Handbook of Greek Composition.—Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception.—A Troubled Heart and How it was Comforted . 331 French Translation of Miss Mulholland.—A Noble Heart.—Women of Catho- licity—Home Duties and Home Difficulties.—Saints of Wessex.—The Martyr Prince.—Exiled from Erin.—Ave Maria Series Hampton Court Palace.—Mary in the Gospels.—Eve of the Reformation.—Boston College Btylus—Dr. More Madden on Ohild Culture.—Dr. Walsh’s Grammar of Gregorian Music.—Mr. Goodman's School and Home Song Book.—Handi- craft for Handy People.—Life of St. Emmelia.—Life of Father Labonde, &o. 383 Mr. J. Gillow’s Biographical Dictionary of English Catholic. —Monsignor Dillon’s Mother of Good Counsel.—Thoughte in Verse.—Irish Penny Read- ings.--Dr. Jungman's Dissertationes Selects in Historiam Ecclesiasticam.— ‘Wild Flowers.—The Battle of Fontenoy.—Philosophia, a Lyrical Sequence. Our Own Will, and How to Detect it in our Actions. —Facts of Faith, or First Lessons in Christianity—The Lost Glove.—God’s Way, Men's Way: a Story of Bristol, &c. . . 40 Rev. F. Thaddeus’s Mary Foreshadowed—The Lion and the Frog,—Sketch of the Life of 8t. Francis of Assisi—Contemplations and Meditations on the Public Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. —Mousighor Dillon's Mother of Good Oounsel.— What will the World Say.—Irish Penny Readings.—Irish Eecle- siastical Record.—Hibernia.—League of the Cross Magasine.—Catholic Child’s Bible History.—Cardinal Moran's Ireland from the Reformation to the Year 1800.—Very Rev. M. Comerford’s History of the United Dioceses of Kildare and Leighlin, . . 495 “The Rev. Felix Martin's Life of Father Toques.— rish Penny Readings.—The Price of Peace in Ireland.—Miriam and Other Poems,—All is not Gold that Glitters.—Practical Instructions for New Confersors.—The Little One’s Own Coloured Picture Paper—The Most Bev. Dr. Walsh, Prelate and . Patriot.—Christian Ohildhood.—Lays of St. Joseph's Chapel.—The Revolt . of the Notherlands.—The Pilgrim of Our Lady of Martyrs.—Catholic Con- troversial Letters.—Controversy between the Rev. B, B. KaneandS.J. © . 554 - Catholic Life and Letters of Cardinal Newman.—A Saint among Sainte.—Mr. . Chesney's Ramble round France.—One Angel more in Heaven.—Celtio Irish _Bongs and Song-writers,—A Schoolmaster’s Retrospect of Hightéen and = Half Years in an Irish School.—The Art of Oratorical Composition. —Some Notes on Popular Preaching, 7 . : . 588
viii con Contents.
‘Mise Mulholland’s Pooms.—Second edition of “Louise de la Vallidre.”—The Trish Beclesiaatical Becord.—-Life of St. Vincent de Puul.—Life aa we Live it—Onoe a Month.—The Gaelic Jouraal.—Wreaths of Roses. Historical ‘Notes on Adare.—The Defenders of the Faith: the Boyal Title, ita History and Value—A Book of Bules on the Gender of French Nouns —Holy
Childhood, . . . . : . PogMs AND MISCELLANEOUS Papers.
Pigeonhole Paragraphs, . . . . . 45, 409
Winged Word . . . + 889, 446, 502, 687
Soraps from Father Burke's Letters “—. . . . .. 90
'Taedet me Vite, By Frances Kershaw, : : + B
Londonderry Bells. By John Kane, - . . . 8
Gleanings from Thomas á Eempis . . 38, 416
After Aughrim. By the Author of “The Monks of Kilores,” 75 Integer Vite. Translated by Sir Stephen De Vere, Bart, - - 90 To Nora in Heaven. BYH.J.G. . . . . 10 ‘Two Wayfarers. By Katharine Tynan, . . 194 ‘The Trinity in the Taper. By Eleanor Donnelly, . . . 139 The Old Thorn. By Sir Stephen de Vere, Bart., . . . 165 The Minstrel Boy. Translated into Latin by J. G. . . . 166 “*Lovest thou Me?” By Mrs. Frank Pentrill, - . . 188 De Arte Poeticn. An Amaboean Lay. By 7.G. . . . + 200 At Daybreak. By Katharine Tynan. . . . : +211 Hore de Passione Domini. Translated by O. . . . . 212 Ina Garden. By Katharine Tynan. . . us Answers to Correspondents in the old Nation, . . . 261, 316 The Month of Mary. ByG.RK. . : . .m ‘The Island of Saints and of Scholars. By 8. M.8. . 297 Horace, Book IV., Ode 7. Translated by Sir Stephen De Vere, Bart, a
‘A Promise. By Helena Callanan, ‘The Proud Lady of Falkenschloss. By the Author. of“ The: Monks of Kileres,” bh The Sacristan of Roumania. By Marian 9. Le Puy, . .
‘A Soul Question. By Evelyn Pyne, . : .
For the Last Time. By Frances Kershaw,
‘The Clock of Kochem. ‘Translated from the German by Arthur G. Geoghegan A Comforter. By Evelyn Pyne, . : . Clarence Mangan’s Te Dewn, . . :
I Love the Old Songs. By Richard E. White, . . Awakening. By Evelyn Pyne, . . . After Death. By Katharine Tynan, . H . From out the Darkness. By R. E. . .
The Lord’s Pity. By Evelyn Pyne,
The Solitary’s Guest. By the Rey. M. Byrnes, S.J. Sanctuary. By Katbarine Tynan, . .
Old Letters, ByM.AC. . :
‘An Autumnal Lyric. By Eleanor Donnelly, . . Providence. By Kinnersley Lewis, . . H An Unpublished Lettar by Thomas Carlyle, . . Gerald Griffin. By Rose Kavanagh, - . . Left Behind. By Evelyn Pyne, : . . Immaculate. By G. R-K. . . : . Bo Brave. By Sister Mary Agnes - . . P
BBHREE
SRSSRERSRARESRRSE
MARCELLA GRACE.
BY ROSA MULHOLLAND, AUTHOR OF \( MESTER’® HISTORY,” “(THR WICKED WOODS OF TOBEREEVIL,” “ELDEROOWAN,”” ‘THE WALKING TREES AND OTHER TALES,” ETC., XTC.
CHAPTER I. HER MOTHER WAS A LADY.
r that part of Dublin known as the Liberties there lived an old
man called Grace with his daughter Marcella. The father, though an uneducated son of the people, had seen better days, had once been a master-weaver, and had married a lady. But the daughter never had seen better days, her mother, the lady, had been dead before she could walk, and all the good times were gone before she had sense to be aware of their existence. “The old man had of late years gradually sunk to his original level, and con- soled himself with a single loom and his pipe; and the daughter, while mending his clothes and striving to make him comfortable, had somehow grown into a woman.
They lived in a quaint old part of the Liberties, called Weaver's- square, a spot that reminded one of a dilapidated nook of some ancient foreign town, for the houses of dark brick were built with high-peaked fronts, and flat narrow windows, and had peculiarities of their own which marked them as of a different quality from the roder and uglier dwellings that surrounded them. It was a place inhabited by poplin weavers ever since the establishment of the trade in the neighbourhood, by Huguenot settlers in the olden time. Tabinet-weaving, once a flourishing art, is now on the wane and threatening to decay. Michael Grace had gone down with the trade, and was now dragged lower every day by the increasing infirmities of years.
The house in which they lived stood at the entrance to the square, and was larger than the rest, with some heavy stone-carving about the hall-door, and massive sills to the windows. The dwelling had probably been at one time the country-house of gentlefolks, and had got built up to, and walled around, and had found itself caught in a network of foul streets, and long left behind by its old frequenters. With the perpetual frown under ita windows, and
Vou. xnz., No 139. January, 1885. 2
2 Marcella Grace.
the streams of damp on its walls, it had a brooding, weeping look, which seemed ever to deplore its reverse of fortune. In his palmy days, Grace had bought the old house, and furnished it in a man- ner which he had considered splendid ; and here he had brought his wife, who had never, certainly, seen the neighbourhood before, who probably had not liked it, and who here had died. Marcella had been born in the house, and there was something about its aspect which seemed to harmonise with the character of the girl. In spite of its sad and lonesome air, it had also its gracious aspect, and held the same relation to the other houses in the streets that Marcella occupied among the people, being one of themselves, though standing a little apart, and, undoubtedly, a good deal the pride, and slightly the envy of its neighbours. Its glory was a thing of the past, like the good fortune of the Graces, for it had become so dilapidated that it was with difficulty the weaver and his daughter were able to make their home in a corner of it.
Yet, in spite of all difficulties, Marcella, by virtue of some gift in her eyes and fingers, contrived to make the dingy place something a little different from the ordinary of such homes. Strips of old amber tabinet, much faded with frequent cleaning, hanging by the window, and other such contrivances, gaye the room she lived in a character of itsown She would go without her breakfast to buy a penny bunch of yellow spring flowers, to place in the brown pitcher, which. was the best vase she could find, on the corner of the dark old loom that caught the’ sun- light as it fell through the window. Her floor was always scrupu- lously sanded, and her fireside bright and swept. Neighbours who came to ask her help or advice could not tell what it was that made the old weaver’s room so home-like. The walls were as crooked as other folks’ walls, the ceiling as dark with age and smoke, and the light as scant, for it was not in the handsomer rooms of his house that he harboured in his latter days, nor had the Graces preserved any smart pieces of furniture to show that they had come down in the world. Housewives of the decenter order came and went away again perplexed. There was something in old Grace's room which they could not describe, and which they did not see when they went home.
Even from the outside, Marcella’s window, when she happened to stand by it, would strike a stranger who might happen to be peering about the ancient street, and might wake in him—if he happened to-be imaginative and a traveller—a memory of Italy. He had seen a richly tinted face, a dark picturesque head; like the
Marcella Grace. 8
head of a Roman girl framed in a gueer worm-eaten window frame based by a sill with fantastic carving, and behind it a glow of yel- low drapery had shone dimly through the shadows and glinted into the light. And if it chanced to be sunset hour, when the sunshine would suddenly cover one strip of the house, like the unfurling of a long red banner against the time-darkened walls, then deep un- suspected hues would come out of the weather-stained bricks, enhanced by the intensified shadows under the sullen brown window frames, and in the cavernous chambers behind the sashes.
Certainly the Graces’ room would not have been a cheerful one if anyone else had lived in it, if Marcella had been allowed to go elsewhere to earn her bread, or if the fever had not spared her the last time it went its fiery way through the Liberties, burning up human life like chaff before flame. The better class of neighbours were aware of this, and would have been sorry to see her depart ; for though she did stand a little aloof from them, it was only a little. Were anyone sick or in trouble, Marcella forgot her reserve. She was a credit to the street when she went out to do her scanty bit of marketing, for she walked with the step of a lady in her bonnet which was no better than their own. And why should she not do so, since her mother was a lady? In the girl’s simple superiority there was little that could offend even the most envious or ill-conditioned. In spite of her unusual beauty she never in- terfered with the lovers of other girls ; never had had one herself and seemed. willing to have none. Then she was useful to the mothers’ as a model to be held up to the daughters. Sometimes young wives did not like having her thrift thrust in their teeth by cross husbands ; but on the whole she was popular. The very old men liked her the best, and the young men least of all, the latter feeling awed by her gravity, and by a certain involuntary haughti- ness in the carriage of her head which made them humble and awkward when (as on rare occasions) they happened to find them- selves in her presence.
A damp winter afternoon was just closing, the thick yellow daylight fading in the street, and dingy lights springing up in the windows. In the weaver’s room dusk was shifting gradually along the walls and through the panes, and, seeing it depart, a small fire began to find courage to burn, and darted little javelins of flame into the gloom, making the silent loom look like some ungainly ogre who was trying, vainly, to hide himself in Fá ighadows of the corner.
Marcella put down her sewing, and straightened ‘her ‘limbs,
4 Marcella Grace.
which were stiffened with the fatigue of sitting still. She had been at work since morning and had earned a shilling. She peered out before drawing the curtain across the window, looking anxiously for her father coming home. There was poplin on the loom which ought to be finished to-morrow. Why had he always forbidden her to learn to do his work? She stood before the loom gazing at it with bent brows, as at an enemy with whom she was powerless to grapple; while she thought of her terrible helplessness as a woman, and the urgent need of aid from some quarter which she felt more and more as the days went by, and her father grew less inclined to work. And then the door opened and Michael Grace came in, and sat down at the fire.
He was a tall old man, with arms that seemed loose at the joints, long rugged features, and an indolent, not ill-humoured expression of countenance, but with a warning spark smouldering in the corner of his eye which might easily be quickened into anger. He looked like one who would do a good turn if it cost him no trouble, but who would shirk a burden if he could. The world might slip away from his large limp hands if the holding it fast were to cost him much effort. And it had slipped away from him, taking with it his comfortable house, his workmen, his mastership, and many busy looms. But he was old now, and he had his pipe. Could he but live without toiling, he were content. It was slow getting money out of yonder weary old loom ; but Marcella, the girl there, knew more about money than he did. She contrived his cup of tea and his tobacco. Could her magic but reach the length of providing for herself and her old father, then indeed, he would be glad of her and proud of her. But no ; he never had got her taught a trade. Her mother had been a lady; let the world remember that. His daughter had enough to do about her own fireside. He needed his little comforts looked after. Were she to go running about after millinering and dressmaking what kind of life would her old father have at home? Well, well, she had a handsome face. No brighter eyes were to be seen about Dublin. He had turned the matter over in his mind. Never fear but she would do her work well some day.
Michael Grace lit his pipe and smoked, and Marcella stood waiting at the opposite side of the hearth. Should she dare to light the evening lamp? No; her father might be angry, thinking she wanted him to work.
The weaver extended his large feet to the blaze, and smoked with great zest. He was dreaming that he lay at ease in a snug
Marcella Grace. 5
arm-chair by the side of a fire that was not likely to go out, and that he had no other duty than to smoke all day long, with a pleasant odour of plentiful food in his atmosphere. Old Michael's castle in the air was a substantial one, and he thought he knew the road to it well.
“T'm gettin’ old, my girl, an’ I feel myself full of aches and pains. Whisht, now, ye needn’t look so scared. It’s only ould age that’s come down on me. I’m not goin’ to be makin’ many more gran’ gownds for the ladies, an’ that’s all.”
Marcelle’s face grew pale in the firelight. She had hardly thought this day so near at hand.
“You've got cold, father!” she said, briskly. “Cheer up and let me nurse you a while.”
“No such a thing !” cried the father, angrily. “TI tell you Im grown old, an’ I look to have my rest.”
Marcella sat silent. Many items of trouble were cast up in her mind on the moment into a long account—owing to the baker, dinner to-morrow—rent at the end of the week. Next week— next month—next year!”
“Father,” said she presently, “why did you not give me a trade P” .
“A trade! Puff!” The old man drew away his pipe, and made a contemptuous flourish with his hand. “ Your mother was a lady, girl. Remember that.”
Marcella had heard such an answer before. She had spoken on the subject many times: maybe once too often, for she was silent now.
“Ay,” echoed the weaver, “she was arale lady. No better blood ever danced a Pathrick’s dance in the four ould walls of the Castle yonder—black as it is wid the age, and big asit is wid the size. It was a Pathrick’s Night that I seen her the first.’
“My masther had an order on hands of blue tabinet for Her Excellencyess the Lady Liftenant. Holiday as it was I had to stay at the finishing of it. I worked very hard to get the evenin’ to myself; but it was far in the night when the parcel was ready. ‘Well, well,’ I said, ‘I'll just take the bundle in my hands, and go up to the Castle at the wanst wid it. An’ maybe Molly Sullivan ‘ll contrive to get me a sight of the quality at their dancin.” Molly was a tidy little maid at the Castle, an’ there’s little she wouldn’t ha done for me at the time.’
“Its myself was in the right, for Molly found me apeep-hole. At first I could see an’ hear nothing, for the whole place was in
6 Marcella Grace.
wan uproar of splendiour. 'The music was fit to make your heart burst in two halves wid the delight. Molly said they were dancin’, but I only saw the ladies sailin’ up an’ down the room like swans in a river, an’ the gentlemen follyin’ them, an’ meetin’ them, an’ bowin’ to them.
“I was hardly drawing my breath wid admiration when my eyes lit on wan little face : an’ never could they leave it the rest of the time. She was shy and frightened lookin’ someways—Molly said because it was her first Castle ball. She was as beautiful as a fairy, an’ as happy as a queen. I thought she had the purtiest pair of eyes that ever were planted in any mortal head. An’ she was dressed out all in white, wid a long poplin train ; an’ what but Michael should set about thinkin’ maybe ’twas his hands that wove the very piece! Molly knew all about her: in the regard of her sister being the little jewel’s maid.
“I went home that night grumblin’ to myself because I wasn’t a gentleman ; that I couldn’t wear a uniform, nor ruffles, nor silk stockings; for then I might ha’ been leadin’ her about as proud as e’er a wan o’ them, an’ bowin’ to her, an’ meetin’ her, an’ follyin’ her through the crowd. But in a few days I forgot about it all. Times took a good turn wid me, an’ my head was full o’ the lucre 0’ the world.
“Five or six years went by, an’ I had got to be a master- weaver. I had taken this ould house the best in the street, an’ made it look tidy, an’ furnished it up handsome. An’ it’s little I thought who I was doing it for. An’ when it was finished there was somethin’ the matter wid me. An’ wan day the truth hit me hard; an’ I says to myself, ‘Michael Grace,’ says I, “you're a lonesome man !’ An’ then an order came in, an’ I forgot about it again. An’ that same day I was walkin’ down the street, an’ who should I light upon but little Molly Sullivan.
“Well, well, Misther Grace!’ said she; ‘ but it’s you has got up in the world since the Pathrick’s night when ye came up to the castle wid the poplin.’
“Tt thrue for you, Molly,’ said I, ‘an’ I hope things goes aiqually as well wid yourself.”
“I'm not goin’ to complain,’ said Molly; ‘ but it’s badly the times has gone wid some since then. Do you remember the little lady you fell in love wid at the Pathrick’s ball P Well, she’s down now, lower nor you nor me.”
“é What do you mane ?’ said I, for well I minded her.
“The father went to ruin that year,’ said Molly,‘ wid his
Marcella Grace. 7
‘horses, an’ his hounds, an’ his dinners. Hunted himeelf to death, an’ his poor wife wid him. An’ what was the daughter but a child P—an’ her friends has dropped off, an’ the world has turned against her. An’ she’s trying to airn her bread, the poor crature, doin’ little bits of sewin’ that wouldn't feed a cat. But it’s in the graveyard she'll be afore long,’ said Molly.
“‘That’s what Molly said, an’ it was thrue. Molly was mar- ried only middlin’ herself. She had a corner to let, an’ the poor little lady was livin’ wid her. I seen her at the place, by the way I should give an order for work, an’ the purty young face was thin an’ worn, an’ she had no more pride than a babby. For three Jong years I stood her friend, fast an’ firm, till Molly died, rest her sowl! an’ there wasn't a crature left to take care of the little lady. I don’t know where I got the courage to ask her to marryme. I tould her I wasn’t fit to spake to her, I knew; but I could give her a safe home, an’ I could worship the ground she walked. An’ she took it quite quiet, an’ was thankful to me till the last day she lived. An’ the ould house was beautiful to go into from ever the first day she set her foot upon the floor, an’ ill luck ne’er came near me till she left it in her coffin. I made her the purtiest gowns that ever seen the loom; but she didn’t like the gay ones, I could see: seemed as if they minded her o’ somethin’! An’ she never wanst gave me thecrooked word. It was ‘ Yes, Michael, if ye plase,’an’‘ No, Michael, if ye plase.’ She got rosy an’ happy- lookin’ for wan little while, after the child was born—that was you, Marcella. Then she faded like the snow off the ditch.”
Old Michael paused and drew his hand across his eyes. Mar- cella had listened to every word. The tale was not new to her, yet it never had grown wearisome. Many a time had her fancy seen that pretty girl-lady, her mother, dancing in glee, among her peers, at the great Castle ball. Of Patrick-nights, when the carriages were rolling to the Castle, she had sat late over her fire and studied the brilliant picture. Very dazzling were the lights, very gloomy the shades: and Marcella’s thoughtful eyes had marked them all.
Many a time, too, had she lingered, passing the old house before entering it. She had peered in at the windows, and had seen the gentle creature with her baby in her arms. Up and down she had seen her pacing softly, pondering in mild amazement the sadness of the changes in her life. So this mother was like a dream or a story, but with a difference. In passing away she had left something behind her. Her strange little fate had made a
& Marcella Grace.
mark upon her narrow bit of world: an unusual niark which would ‘be seen and recognised. She had left a nature with her daughter which was foreign to the class to which that daughter must belong. And this Marcella had observed in her own untutored way
“Bo that bein’ the story of your mother,” said the weaver, “ never spake again about learnin’ a thrade. I'll settle you like a lady in a house of your own, an’ Michael will have a seat in the chimney corner.”
“Father! ” cried Marcella, startled out of her dream.
“Buy yourself a ribbon, and begin to look handsome,” he went on, “for I’ve made a fine match for you. And I'll weave you a weddin’ gown that'll stand alone.”
Marcella sprang forward and stood trembling before him.
“Oh, no, father! I will not have that !” she cried, hastily.
The weaver took his pipe out of his mouth and stared at her. How handsome she looked, even when she was a bit troublesome, like this. It was well she was, or the well-to-do grocer on the quay would never have taken a fancy to her, as she stepped out of the chapel-door on Sundays.
“Not have what ?” he asked, peevishly. “‘ Maybe ye'd like a thrade to work at, betther nor a husband to airn for ye P”
“I would,” said Marcella, eagerly.
“ Ye're a fool,” shouted the weaver, “and ye'll go to the poor- house! It’s the cursed proud blood of strangers that’s workin’ in ye, settin’ ye against the biddin’ of yer father !”
Michael was angered and disappointed in his daughter. Would any other girl in the world not have been thoroughly charmed with his plan? But there was always a queer turn in her, wherever she came from. Her eyes might be like her mother’s, now when they had tears in them, but it was not her mother’s humble spirit that had looked out of them a minute ago.
He got up impatiently, knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and went off to bed in a sulk, leaving a frightened, aching heart, and the unfinished tabinet behind him.
Marcella lit the poor but neatly trimmed lamp, and unfolded a new piece of sewing. It wasstill early in the night, and she could, perhaps, earn sixpence before the great bell of St. Patrick's Cathe- dral should boom forth, calling the hour of midnight over the city. And meantime she could give herself up to her own sad and spe- culating thoughts, undisturbed except by the occasional too-familiar sounds of quarrelling in the streets, as men and women, turned: out
Marcella Grace.
of the late-closing taverns in the neighbourhood, passed under the window, on their way to wretched homes.
Shuddering over the announcement her father had just made, of his desire to marry her to some well-to-do man of his own, or not much better than his own, class, she assured herself again and again that this was a matter in which she hada right to refuse obedience to him. Though she was certainly his child, and would always devote herself lovingly to his service, yet she had, as he had angrily complained, blood in her veins which was different from his. The instincts of her mother, of whose ladyhood he so proudly boasted, were with her, and she felt that they would cling to her as long as she lived. She acknowledged to herself now, what through loyalty to him she had often tried to deny and ignore, that there wasa gulf between herself and his friends and associates, which time would never help her to bridge. It was not that she disliked or despised. the poor people around her, but they were not of her class, and she was not of theirs. She could help them, sympathise with them, pity them, respect them as occasion required, but she could not take a husband of their kind.
Dropping her work and covering her face with her hands, she gave way to her grief and wept. Having faced the loneliness, the isolation of her position in the world, she perceived the mis- fortune that her birthright of refinement must be to her, the burden of solitude that it laid upon her. Must she spend her whole life sewing alone in a garret, as now, after her father had left her, when she should indeed be alone in the world? He must really be ill, must feel himeelf breaking down, or he never would have talked as he had talked this evening. Oh, why had he not given her a trade, not taught her something by which she could earn for him now, by which she should be able to maintain herself after he was gone P
She thought of the very small amount of education she had received; not sufficient to enable her to be a National School teacher without further study. She could read and write well, better than most ladies (though of that she knew nothing), and had read and re-read the few treasured books which her mother had left behind her, and which the weaver had always preserved with a sort of superstitious reverence. The “Imitation of Christ,” Wordsworth’s Poems, and a New Testament were the staple of Marcella’s library.
Though her fingers were naturally clever at putting feminine odds and ends together, she had received no teaching to enable
10 Marcella Grace.
her to be a dressmaker or milliner. And who was to support her while she learned such handicrafts, even if she were free to begin now? She knew nothing of artistic work, such as ladies do, and which she had often looked at admiringly in the windows of shops where such things are to be sold.
Her thoughts strayed longingly towards the convent where she had received her scanty education at a daily school, to the hospital where the bright-faced Sisters of Charity pass their days in tending the sick and the dying. Oh, could she be even a lay-sister under such a blessed roof! But how could she hope to be good enough, clever enough, strong enough? Now, at all events, she could not desert her father. She must endure his anger, she must stitch night and day—
A subdued but persistent sound of urgent knocking here inter- rupted the course of her thoughts. She dropped her work and listened. It was at the streetdoor. Someone was wanting admit- tance to the house. As she sat listening in absolute wonder, the summons was repeated, softly, rapidly, imploringly.
CHAPTER II. NOTHING WRONG.
Mancgtta got up from her seat, and went down into the mildewed old hall, and spoke through the keyhole. -
“Who wants to get in so late at night? I cannot open.”
“Open for God's sake!” said a voice. “’Tis a matter of life and death.”
More information as to character is sometimes conveyed in the tones of a voice than in the expression of an eye, and Marcella, believing instinctively in the owner of the voice, opened the door without further hesitation. Inan instant it was shut again by a pair of strong hands, and a man was standing in the darkness in the hall beside her.
By the very faint ray of lamplight that came through the dusty and broken fanlight, she could just see that he was tall and dark, pale and weary looking.
“You have done a good act,” he said; “I am more thankful than I can say. Will you go further, and find mea hiding-place fora few hours? I trust myself entirely into your hands.,)But
Marcella Grace. it
first: of all, let me assure you before God that I have done nothing wrong.’
“It is a serious thing,” said Marcella, hurriedly, for the urgency of his manner pressed her. “I am a young girl, and my father is an old man, and there are only two of us in the house. We are very poor, and I think if you were not good we should hardly be worth your notice. And if you are good and in trouble —”
“TI do not boast of much goodness, but I am not a wicked man, and I am in astrait. Is there any place in the house where you could conceal me? I have reason to fear I have been watched, and may be searched for here.”
“ There isa place,” said Marcella, “though not a comfortable: one. Come upstairs and I will show it to you.”
She led the way up the worm-eaten stair. Old Michael Grace slept heavily, and the light sound of their feet did not wake him. Marcella knew that the times were troubled, and that it was a moment when a man might be in a strait through his political opinions. She therefore asked no more questions and hoped for’ the best. At all events, once fastened up in the old secret closet behind the panel in the unused room, at some distance from that in which she and her father lived, the stranger would be safe, and also incapable of delivering himself till she should choose to release: him with her own hands. Even if he were a robber-
She fetched her small lamp, and holding it over her head rejoined the stranger on the threshold of the mouldy and deserted room, into which she had introduced him.
A robber! What a fool she must be to have allowed such an idea to cross her mind for an instant, was her thought as she glanced at the face on which the meagre lamplight fell. It was the: thoughtful face of a cultivated gentleman, a countenance of no ordinary cast, pale, thin, and worn, with a look of noble resolve and manly determination on the brow and mouth.
‘Such a man could do, could think no wrong,” thought Mar- cella, with enthusiasm, while the piercing gray eyes of the stranger scanned her own face and form, wondering much, even in the midst of his own anxiety, that so beautiful and intelligent a creature should be found harbouring in this rotten old shelter in the midst of the poverty and squalor of the city slums.
“The closet is here, sir,” she said, putting her hand on the: wood that still lined the strong-built walls. “It was evidently made for a hiding-place in the old times, and I think nobody: remembers its existence but me.”
12 Marcella Grace.
For a moment her words, and unconsciously graceful action as she looked over her shoulder at him, suggested the conceit that this was no woman who had come to his aid, but the ghost of some long-dead lady of quality, who had once dwelt in state in the now dilapidated mansion, and who had come back opportunely to reveal to him the secret of her house, pleased that there had occurred yet another opportunity for the service of the once needful hiding-
lace.
P Marcella threw open a door, formed by the panel, which creaked on its rusty hinges, and disclosed a small chamber long enough for a man to lie his full length in, and high enough to allow of his standing upright. It smelt of decay and damp, and was as dark as a dungeon.
“Jt is ventilated through the outer wall,” she said; “so you cannot be smothered. At what time shall I come back to let you out Pe”
« About an hour before daylight, if you will be eo good.” He was going to say something more when a loud knocking began to resound upon the street door which had so lately ad- mitted him.
Marcella instantly closed the closet and extinguished her light, which, as the room was a back one, could not have been yet seen by the new applicants for admittance to the house. Then she crept away to the little room where she slept, got into bed, and lay still. This time she was determined she would not open the door to strangers.
The knocking went on for five or ten minutes, and at last became so loud and imperious that Michael Grace was awakened by it.
7 The old man sat up in his bed and listened in astonishment. It did not seem to him that the house was on fire, and what other reason could there be for such an assault upon his house after midnight? Grumbling, and muttering a few characteristic oaths, he groped out of his room and went stumbling down the staircase, and confronted the assailant of his knocker (a knocker that was one of the few relics of grandeur the old fellow had got to be proud of) with a face of thunder.
At the sight of the police his countenance altered, not for the better, however, and a storm of abuse greeted the stalwart servants of the law.
“You great overgrown fools,” he said, “ what brought you to
Harcella Grace. 13
an honest man’s dure at such an hour of the night—or mornin’ P— bad scran to me if I know which of them it is!”
“ Aisy, Miether Grace, aisy ! ” said the head policeman. “It’s not you we have to do with. But you see there’s been a bad job done to-night —”
“ Of course there has!” sneered Grace. “ Many’s the bad job
done ivery night that you've got no eyes to see, Mister Omad- haun. Why didn’t you take whoever was afther doin’ the job that ye’re talkin’ of, an’ not come routin’ adacent man out of his bed to tell him the news that he could wait for till mornin’.”
“Come, come,” said the policeman. “I tell you I am going to search your house. We have reason to suspect that a person concerned in the affair is in hiding here.”
“Dropped down the chimney, I suppose, or into the letter- box,” said Grace, talking in a sarcastic tone, and glancing towards the slit in the massive door (another source of his pride), where a letter-box once had been. “ Nothing more likely to happen in the world, Misther Peeler, when a dacent man is asleep ——”
Here the policemen put the master of the house aside, and walked noisily up the crazy stair, followed by a volley of impre- cations of a ludicrous and harmless character from the exasperated Grace.
“ You unmannerly giant; may you grow so broad that no door will be able to recave you! May ye live to have to boil yer potatoes in that ugly pot of a helmet ye wear on your stupid head!”
By this time the policemen were searching the house, followed by Grace threatening and abusing them.
“Tl have ye up before the Lord Liftenant himself, so I will. Where’s yer warrant P The law’s agin you ——”
“Whisht, man,” said the second policeman, good-humouredly. “Do you think ye are in England? Cock ye up with a warrant! Don’t ye know you're livin’ under the Coercion Act ?”
“ Bedad, so I am,” said Grace, ‘an’ I forgot it entirely. Well, now, Mr. Policeman, are you satisfied that nobody is here? Nicely you've let misther, what's his name—Captain Mconlight—I beg his pardon—slip through your fingers!”
“ There's a room here that we have not opened.”
“My daughter’s room. Then do you want me to brain you P”
But at the same moment Marcella appeared at her door.
“Let them come in, father. You know it is the law.”
“ Beg pardon, Miss, but we have to do our duty.”
Vou, xim., No. 139. 3
14 Marcella Grace.
In a few seconds the big men of the massive belts and helmets were out on the landing again, admitting to each other that they had got on a wrong scent. The house had been easy enough to search. Except in the corner of it occupied by the weaver and his daughter, there was no furniture behind which a man could hide. A look into the empty rooms, with their decaying ceilings and floors, was sufficient, and even the inhabited chambers could not have long concealed a cat. With another apology to Marcella, the policemen soon turned on their heels and retreated from the place, followed by the gibes and jeers of the master of the dilapi- dated dwelling.
Marcella stood fora moment irresolute on the threshold of her room, as her father came grumbling up the stair again after fastening the door. Should she tell him what she had done, relieve her mind of the responsibility she had incurred, and place the fate of the concealed stranger in his hands? She felt that she could not do it. There was no knowing what view a man so uncertain of humour, though with so good a heart as her father, might take of the affair. If he chose to make up his mind instantly that the refugee was a criminal, skulking from justice, he might deliver him up and undo the good she had done, for she felt assured that it was good. On the other hand, a knowledge of what had occurred this night might at some future time involve the old man in difficulty and danger. He had acted in all sincerity in dismissing the police. She alone was accountable for misleading them ; and so she elected to remain. Let her take the sole respon- sibility of her impulsive action.
Grace returned to his bed, and the girl crept back to hers, to lie awake, counting the hours by the strokes of St. Patrick's bell, waiting for the moment for her prisoner’s release, and thinking anxiously over this strange event that had broken upon the poverty- stricken monotony of her existence.
Her imagination was possessed by a troubled wonder as to the “bad job” that had been done. How had that man with the noble face got himself mixed up in such an affair? Though she did not read the papers, Marcella heard enough of what they con- tained from her father, who was a lively politician (as what Irishman is not P) to be well aware that she was living in troubled times, that a struggle was going on between class and class which she could not understand, and that wicked deeds had been done.
In her secret heart Marcella was on the side of the powers that be. The spirit of her lady-mother’s forefathers was at this
Marcella Grace. 15
moment more strong within her than sympathy with the “ people,” who were to her represented chiefly by the drinking, idle, and disorderly crowd, who made the alums around her hideous on a Saturday night.
Her heart yearned towards the beings of nice living, retined habits, and finer perceptions, whom she vaguely knew as the upper classes, and of whose kind she felt herself to be. More wise, more intelligent, better educated than the others, why should they not be more fitted to regulate the affairs of the world? She trusted them, blindly following the instinct that was in her blood. She reflected now that if an outrage had been committed in the streets, the gentleman in her keeping was little likely to have been concerned init.
Had the man been of a coarser mould, had he failed, when seen, to match with the vibrations of his voice, which had gained admittance by appealing to her charity, she should, she told her- self, have wakened her father directly and placed the affair in his hands. But the secret of a person like this she could venture to keep to herself. Something which she could not have described in the stranger’s face, an expression not easily analysed even by persons accustomed to ticket and label their thought, had impressed the untutored girl so vividly that the countenance must henceforth remain on her memory as the incarnation of all that was strong, chivalrous, and stainless in manhood.
Quick and keen in her perceptions, she recognised this fact as she lay thinking, and was glad that she had seen the face. During the rest of that life of hers which was to be spent sewing in a garret among coarse surroundings, she could hold it in her memory, much as she cherished the picture of her patron saint upon the wall.
At last hearing the hour beginning to toll at which she was to give back his liberty to the intruder, she arose, dressed quickly, and not daring to strike a light, made her way by the glimmer of — the faint moonlight into the mouldy recesses of the panelled chamber. The closet was quickly opened, and the stranger stepped out of it.
“TI heard the police making search,” he said, “and I know how prudent you have been for my sake. How is it possible for me to thank you ?”
“I want no thanks,” said the girl. “The poor are accustomed to do any little good turn they can. It was fortunate for you that you happened to knock at this door, though ; for in no other house would there have been a closet like that.”
16 Harcella Grace.
“Yes, it was providential ; I do not overlook that part of it. But any other girl would have raised an alarm. I am deeply grateful for your caution, and your trust in me, both of which have been of the utmost service to me.”
“You may wonder, perhaps, that I did not tell my father,” said Marcella; and even in the moonlight he could see the vivid colour that dyed her face as the idea occurred to her that possibly he thought her less maidenly, even if more self-reliant, than others, would have been under the circumstances; “and if you had been any other man, I would have done so.”
Any other man! Was it possible this girl of the Liberties, whom he had never seen before, could recognise him P
“Ido not mean that I know who you are,” she said, appre- hending his thought, and quick to correct the impression her words had made, “but only that I know that you are good, by your face. It was not that I wanted to be bold, but I thought I could venture to take care of you myself; and that it would be sure to be the safest course for you.”
“I understand you perfectly,” said the stranger, trying to conceal the admiration aroused in him by the straight, proud glance of her beautiful eyes, the graceful gesture with which she threw out her hand, giving her words a kind of impassioned emphasis, He would try not to distress her maidenly pride by words or looks of masculine compliment. ‘You are a woman of fine instincts as well as perfect courage,” he went on, wondering at himself for speaking to this humble girl in the same language he would have used to an equal. But in manner as well as appear- ance, he reflected, she was far beyond her class.
Even in his own hour of difficulty, which was not over yet, he could not help feeling curious to know something more of this strange girl with her peculiar beauty, her mournful, steadfast eyes and thrilling voice. How was her presence to be accounted for in this abode of poverty, in this neighbourhood of wretched- neas and viceP “Truly the Irish are a wonderful race,” he thought, “when such creatures can spring up in the very cellars of our cities.” He glanced around to impress the scene upon his memory with a strong conviction that he would in the future look back upon it with exceeding interest, the decaying old room with its mouldy ceiling, rotting panels, and mysterious and friendly closet, and the dark head and pale brows of the girl dimly seen in the scanty moonlight, as she waited patiently till it was his pleasure to follow her from the chamber, to allow her to finish the task she
Marcella Grace. 17
had undertaken for him by letting him noiselessly out of the house and closing the door as silently behind him.
“ At all events, I shall never forget this kindness,” he said; “and now if you will allow me to offer you something ——”
Emboldened by the certainty that one so wretchedly dressed and living in such a house must be miserably poor, he attempted to put money in her hand. But the girl shrank from the touch of it, and quickly drew several steps further away from him. Poor as she was and miserable as were her prospects, she would not take money for this charity she had done. The man whom she had sheltered and succoured, unknown as he was, had already become her hero, her protegé, in some sort her child, by virtue of her efforts for him. She would not have .her part in him blotted out like a settled score.
“T cannot!” she said, eagerly, “I cannot! The poor are accus- tomed to serve others without payment. I am glad to have been of any little use to you. Do not spoil it all by paying for what cannot be bought.”
“ You are a strange, unusual girl,” he said. “ Well, I cannot distress my benefactress. You will not refuse, however—I trust you will not refuse—to take some little token of my gratitude. This ring is not very valuable,” he added, drawing one from his finger. “I have nothing else to offer you at this moment. Yow will spoil all if you deny me the pleasure of remembering afterwards that you accepted it.”
She leaned forward, and looked with interest at the ring. Yes, she would take this shining circlet as a memorial of this night, which had given a living form and voice to the ideal of her dreams.
She held forth her hand for it with sudden eagerness, and he dropped it in her palm.
“ May I put it on your finger ?”
She hesitated, and then held up her long, slim hand, while he placed the ring on a finger too slender to hold it in safety long.
The next moment they had passed the threshold of the rotting old chamber, and were descending the staircase in the dark, slowly and carefully for fear of awaking the weaver.
As her hand was on the lock of the door, he said to her earnestly: “It is possible that I may never see you again in this world; but if so, remember, whatever may come to pass, that I repeat I have not been in hiding here because of any criminal thing that I have done.”
“Té£ I had not been sure of it, I should not have acted as J did,”
18 Marcella Grace.
said Marcella, firmly; and then the door opened and closed and the stranger was gone.
Marcella listened anxiously in the hall for a few moments. It ‘was a safe hour, she hoped, for his return to his home wherever that home might be, an hour when the late people have all gone to rest at last, and the early people have not got up. With a vehement prayer for his safety she went softly back to her own room and lit her lamp and examined her ring, the only proof remaining to her that this wonderful adventure was not entirely a dream. It was a very old, slender hoop set with a few pearls; not extremely valuable, as the donor had said, but priceless in the eyes of its new owner. She threaded it on a string and hung it round her neck; there let it remain for ever as an earnest of the happy service she had done.
Then she took out her sewing and worked for an hour, and thought again and again over every look and every accent of the stranger. No fear that she had done wrong in admitting him troubled her. As she had said to him, the poor are accustomed to do service to each other, and, she might have added, they do not always stop to think of the cost. To her mind it was the most simple and rational thing in the world to harbour a fellow-creature , who was in trouble. The secrecy from her father had been justi- fied by the exigencies of the case. The stranger had thought so, and had thanked her for it.
“I am deeply grateful for your caution and your trust in me,” he hed said, “and both have been of the utmost service to me.”
Again and again she wondered what was the danger from which she had saved him. What was it that he could not openly face with that brave and piercing glance?
Six o’clock rang, and the people began to stir in the streets, and Marcella put out her light, and put on her shabby old cloak, and went out to Mass, picking her way through the dirty gutters and seeing the day break over the squalor of the streets. This early hour of the morning, when she could walk alone through a sort of rarified atmosphere not of this earth, with her eyes on the red dawnlight that just touched the chimneys at a certain street corner as she passed, or on the silvery clouds that floated behind the ugly roofs above her, was the only happy one she knew in the twenty-four. It led her to the church where she was accustomed to carry all her sorrows and temptations, leaving them at the foot of the altar, and taking away in their place something that enabled
Marcella Grace. 19
her to get through her day, if not with the meekneas of a saint, at least with the resignation of a Christian soul.
Here, in the dim shades of one of the poorest churches of the people, she found the lamp of Faith ever burning, and the promises of the Lord written all over the walls around her. Why should she despair whom He had saved? Blessed are the meek for they shall possess the land. Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted. She mourned, and she should be comforted. She would try to be meek that she might arrive at her heavenly inheri- tance. If life must be long and bleak, she would endeavour to " travel it bravely, following all the way the Stations of the Cross on her knees—as now.
As she moved from one dark corner of the church to another, faring along that Dolorous Way, just able to see in the faint dawn the figure in the great tragic drama, her eyes discerning eagerly one form holding ever on its painful road and beckoning her to come on, her heart grew wonderfully lighter, and she felt a strong conviction that her future would not be made harder for her than she could bear.
The church was crowded at that early hour with a multitude of patient toilers and sufferers, delicate and ill-fed girls on their way to a too-long day’s work, the hopeless repetition of which was gradually killing them ; careworn mothers of families, with piteous faces, praying passionately for help for the souls and bodies they had in charge, withered and half-starved old men and women who had crept from the wretched dens where they hid from the poor- house to the feet of Christ in the dim dawn, unwilling to show their faces in the fuller daylight. To these Marcella’s heart turned from the happier and healthier faces which helped to fill the church. The strong men and women who had come to get a bless- ing on the tolerably prosperous work of their day had not the same interest for her as had the wretched. And across her prayer for all who were in trouble or danger came suddenly the sound of the voice of the stranger she had succoured, and the anxious though fearless expression of his eyes. Finishing her prayer with a hearty supplication for his welfare she reluctantly left the House of Peace and went home,
As she retraced her steps through mud and dirt now painfully visible, the rainbows of the dawn had vanished from above the roofs, and the leaden sky of wintry day looked sullenly down on the city’s slums.
‘Well, what matter did it make, so long as the lights) on the
20 Scraps from Father Burke a Letters.
everlasting hills could be discerned beyond the roofs of this world by the eyes of Faith. As she entered the gloomy door of her home Marcella felt buoyed up with hope that she should in some future day which she could not now see live a fuller, nobler, and more useful life than she had known as yet, and that her patience in the present moment might go far to prepare her for that day.
‘With a brighter face than usual she prepared her father’s breakfast. Presently he came in with a newspaper in his hand.
“Look here!” he cried. “The police were not wrong about that bad job they were talkin’ about. There was a murder done in the city last night—not half a dozen streets away from us.”
“Murder!” echoed Marcella, turning whiter than the milk she was pouring into his tea.
“There now, girl, ye needn’t look so frightened. Nobody can say we harboured or hid the assassins, as they wanted to even to us. Make haste and give me my breakfast, while I read the per- ticulars. And mind, I'll want you to take some tabinet to Merrion-
square this mornin’.”
SCRAPS FROM FATHER BURKE'S LETTERS.
DEVOTED client of the illustrious Father Thomas Burke, 0.P., has allowed us to look over the letters which she received from him
from time to time, and which she preserved with jealous care. Gene- rally, they were little more than the briefest notes, fixing the time when he could be seen in the confessional at St. Saviour’s or elsewhere; for, in spite of his residence at Tallaght, his frequent absences as the one charity sermon preacher of all Ireland, and the worse interrup- tions of illness, many made strenuous efforts to have the great preacher as their spiritual director. For they knew how thoroughly he gave heed to St. Bernard’s warning to preachers; Concha esto, non canalis— not a mere channel conveying the waters on to others, but a reser- voir feeding the thirsty fields from its own overflow. He joined both the Jucere and the ardere of that mellifluous Doctor—the brilliancy of genius, and the ardour of the simplest piety. He realised, as I think I have already remarked in former papers about Father: Burke—-he
Scraps from Father Burke's Letters. 21
realised the conseption of an apostolic preacher’s function put forward by his own St. Thomas—contemplata traders. We shall not even attempt to give these hurried and unstudied notes in order. The first is dated from Corpo Santo, Lisbon, 17th Nov., '81 (or is it 80?) We need not give the other dates :—
“ Although I have not written to you (nor indeed to anyone), I have let no day pass without praying for my child. I hope you are keeping up well. Remember you will be coming with your accounts to me ina few days, for we are on the point of leaving Lisbon after a pleasant sojourn of three weeks. We go back through Spain and France, and I hope to be at home in a fortnight. With the exception of a sharp attack of four days last week, my health has been wonder- fully well, thank God. Try and keep to the meditation, and keep up courage and confidence in God, whatever you do. I shall be so glad to see you all again. (ood-bye, and may God bless you, my dear child.”
sa
“Your letter has arrived, after taking its own time on the way. It found me in bed, where I have to spend most of my time now ; and I could not write sooner. I made a tremendous effort on Sunday to get through forty minutes of a sermon for the orphans, and in conse- quence I spent the afternoon and all yesterday in bed, and in very great suffering, Your account of yourself did not surprise, as I made allowance for the dissipation of travelling ; but, doing it leisurely as you do, you ought to be far more faithful to your resolutions and practices of devotion. Remember, my child, that habits of piety are easily lost, and most difficult to regain; and I beg of you to havea Letter account to give me when next you write. My health is getting worse every day. I don’t fail to pray for you. Iam not able to do anything else.”
sa
“T am glad you settled the question of choosing a confessor with- out my interference, as I really could not advise you on that point only, I am always of opinion that you ought to go to Holy Commu- nion every second day as long as you are attending to your meditation and prayers, and trying to be good. I was more than pleased, my child, to find by your last letter that you are doing this, and I have prayed, and shall continue to pray, that you may be faithful to the resolutions formed with me. Try and make the meditation always in the morning, and make a great point of getting through it so well as to satisfy your conscience. Enjoy yourself by all means, but first do this duty carefully. I hope you are enjoying yourself as well asa Catholic can enjoy Rome just now. How is ‘the other Mary?’ My health continues to improve, thank God, and we are having lovely
32 Scraps from Father Burke's Letters.
weather, like summer. Don’t forget to pray for me. I preached in Dominick-street on New Year's Day. It didnothurt mea bit. Good- bye to both of you. Take care of one another, and may God bless you both.”
sí
“The pains are at me full swing, thanks be to God, and the'day looks so threatening that I cannot gointo-day. Let us say to-morrow, same hour.”
si: “Tallaght, March 3015, 89.
“I have been silent too long, but I am up to my eyes in business connected with the new church, and in constant, pain, so that I have to spend more than half my time in bed. Your last letter gave me great consolation, and I hope now that the last days of Holy Week in the Eternal City will do you great good, as they assuredly will, if you try to realise the mysteries of the Passion, remembering that you are in the holiest spot of earth next to Jerusalem. What I want you and ‘the other Mary ’ to do, is to throw yourselves thoroughly and in a medi- tative spirit into the devotions of the week. Don’t read any worldly matter ; rise promptly (lazy rising is the cause of half the;tepidity of the world) ; and don’t yield to the mere curiosity of listening to grand music; but try to keep silence, and spend the days as if you were present in Jerusalem when our Lord suffered. Think how the,Marys of the Gospel spent the Holy Week.
“I hope you have tried to keep up to your daily meditation, and the frequent Holy Communion. The Passion of our Lord used to be a favourite subject with you. 1 beg you to try and get into it this week, and lay up for yourself a store of thoughts and aspirations that will be of use to you when you are far from Rome.
“There is nothing new here. I am going about, and trying to get money: a difficult task, especially when you are in constant and great pain. Pray for me, and tell the other Mary to do likewise. God bless you both.”
s sos “ Tallaght, Jan. 4tA, '83.
“I wasin bed from Chriatmas Eve to the following Friday, awfully sick, On Friday I had to go north beyond Belfast, to preach on Sunday ; and I did not return here till Tuesday night. The sickness and the travelling put all correspondence out of my head, but I hope I am not too late to wish you a whole lot of blessings for the New Year. I came home much better than when I left, thank God.
“Now, my dear child, you will enjoy everything twice as much if you are faithful to the meditation. It is a small thing, but it will brace you up for the day if you do it in the morning—the proper
Taedet Me Vite. 28
time. Keep faithful. Don’t yield to the repugnance or lazy feel. A thing is only worth what it costs, and God thinks twice as much of the meditation which has cost us some sacrifice or self-denial. “Ever thine, “T, Bung, 0.P.”
TAEDET ME VIT&. BY FRANCES KERSHAW.
HAT is the use of blooming, O flowers, to pass away ?
What is the use of springing,
Ye trees, to slow decay ?
What is the use of shining,
O sun, from yonder sky ;
To see, in sad succession,
Men live, and love, and die?
What is the use of flowing, O river, to the sea?
Its greedy depths have never One word of thanks for thee! What is the use of dreaming Of peace and gentle rest,’ When all the world is weary, And every heart oppressed P
What is the use of loving, Through this life’s little day ? Bo soon the chord is broken ; Its music dies away!
Yet, grieve not, fretful spirit ; From this rough sketch of his, God paints a perfect picture, To thy eternal bliss !
(24)
NOTES OF A SHORT TRIP TO SPAIN BY JOHN FALLON. Parr ITI.—Szviniez. Tax Sevilians have a little couplet which everyone quotes :
“Quien no ha visto a Sevilla No ha visto maravilla.”
It simply means that whosoever has not seen Seville has not seen areal marvel. With this couplet firmly embedded in my mind, I started out before seven o’clock this morning, determined in advance to find it true.
My first pleasure was to receive letters from home at the “ corréo” (post-office), where I found my name, with the prefix of “Don,” written up amongst the list of personages for whom letters were waiting. This list is kept renewed from day to day, and a passport serves as a ready credential for delivery.
The “calle de las sierpes” (serpent-street), so gay last night, was still asleep, with half its shutters closed. But, early as it was, many a veiled lady all in black, just as at the papal receptions, and escorted by her duenna, was wending her way with rapid steps towards the cathedral : I followed, as a matter of course.
Passing through a narrow and tortuous lane, most scrupulously clean, like everything at Seville, I observed men at open windows working lathes of patriarchal simplicity : fancy a bow in one hand, driven forwards and backwards, with the string coiled round the ivory or wood: a chisel in the other hand, doing the work, and doing it admirably. Such is the simple contrivance, probably a legacy of the Moors.
This lane opens into the cathedral-square,and you soon find your- self in face of the giant pile, with the stately Giralda doing duty as a spire. Both are dove-coloured, and, so far, they har- monise.
The Giralda (pronounced Hiralda), is a square tower built on a narrow base of fifty feet each way. It was erected in the twelfth century by the Moors, and its height then was two hundred and fifty feet: on the top of it were four brass balls of which they were very proud, though I cannot understand why. . O£ course
Notes of a Short Trip to Spain. 25
they used it as a minaret, and where the cathedral now stands was their great Mosque.* In the following century St. Ferdinand captured Seville, and mosque and “ minár” became Christian. Then, in course of time, the minaret was raised another hundred feet, with marvellous masonry, like lace-work of stone, and sur- mounted by a statue of gilt bronze, which weighs twenty-five hundred-weight, and revolves with the slightest breeze. Hence the name : Giralda (weather-vane.)
While I looked and wondered, the chimes of this old tower began to ring, reminding me strangely of “the harp in the air” in Wallace’s charming opera:
“It hangs on the walls
Of the old Moorish halls,
Though none know its mirfetrel,
Or how it came there,” The Giralda has great bells also, only rung on great solemnities, and the fun is to ascend to the very top, on some such occasion, when all the bells are ringing their very loudest, and to see the acrobatic feats of the bell-ringers, perhaps unique in the world. This I was fortunate to witness on the festival of Corpus Christi, which the Sevilians claim as specially their own,t and celebrate accordingly. But I must reserve an account of it to that day,
thugh I long sadly to tell you about it.
Coming as I came, you enter the precincts of the great cathe- dral, on the side of the north transept, by the “ gate of pardon,” an undestroyed relic of the great mosque, in the shape of a gigantic Moorish arch, horse-shoed above, and inimitably rich. Youfind your- self in the “court of oranges.” The lofty walls that hem in this space, and shut out the sound of ordinary life as if by magic, make of this enclosure an absolutely perfect cloister, truest sanctuary for thought and recollection and forgiveness, and give a very special significance to the name of the entrance: “the gate of pardon.” You have passed at a step from the glare and bustle of a most lively city, intoa place of stillness and grateful. shade, where your very foot-fall comes back with an echo. In the centre is a fountain, and the small silvery sound of its trickling water fills the air with music.
This fountain is classic, for it existed in the days of imperial and even republican Rome, and the water that feeds it was brought
© And, before the days of the Moors, the Visigothe had their Oathedral here, built on the site of a heathen temple of Roman, and even Phoenician, antiquity.
4 Because they sag that it was at their special ontreaty that the Holy See established the festival apart from the Thursday in Holy Week,
26 Notes of a Short Trip to Spain.
by the legionaries of Cesar from the distant hill-sides of Guadaira. At this fountain, some centuries after, one can picture the Visigoth mothers holding out their young Rodericks and Alarics to be christened, too many of them, alas! to grow up into rankest Arianism. Then,{for long and stirring ages, the vision is of grim or graceful warriors of the Crescent, performing their ablu- tions here, while the muezzin chanted -his plaintive call to prayer from the nearest “ minér.” And now, in this present year of grace and joyous month of June, what do I behold? . . . Why, simply, alot of broad-chested Andalusians, with classic features, and sunny smiles on their honest faces, filling the daintiest little kegs with the sparkling water, to deliver it for sale through the town, loaded in panniers on their gigantic donkeys.
And this explains a mystery that puzzled me as I entered: why a number of those magnificent silver-gray animals were patiently standing outside the lofty wall, one behind another in Indian file, each at least fourteen hands high, and caparisoned in brown velvet and fringe of twine, as if to mount a duke.
Within the court of oranges, on each side of the fountain, you might count about thirty orange-trees, growing in formal rows, with still a few oranges: lingering on their branches, looking sadly shrivelled at this advanced season. The inner entrance to the cathe- dral is another perfectly preserved remnant of the great mosque, horse-shoed, diapered, with alternately recessed and projecting courses, and altogether Saracenic. And now imagine yourself cross- ing this inner threshold: you pass from pleasing shade todim twilight, or rather from twilight to darkness. But gradually the eyes get accustomed to the deep gloom: it seems to recede bodily, like an evil spirit, or a London fog : and then the glorious whole stands revealed.
At first, be it confessed, the momentary impression is delusive, as in St. Peter's of Rome. The long aisles seem short, the lofty vaults do not appear high, the very columns seem few in number : but right soon do length and height come on you, right soon does the vivid sense of them grow, as you wander about here. Few as the columns seem, there are sixty of them, each like Nelson’s pillar in height and thickness. Low as the vaults may look, they are so lofty that even in the side aisles many another cathedral of the first class might walk about beneath them, roof and all.
To put the matter in plain figures, the clear height of the nave, above the pavement, is a hundred and forty-five feet; and, as you approach the “ cimborio” (lantern), where nave and tran- septs intersect, it is thirty feet more!
Notes of a Short Trip to Spain. 27
In fact, this is the church of which the designers said: “ Let us build a cathedral so grand that no other shall ever compare with it,” and a junior member of the chapter moved an amend- ment: “Let us build a cathedral so grand that posterity will say we were mad!” and that inspired amendment, like a recent important resolution of Mr. Gladstone in the House of Commons, was carried ‘“nem-con,” by acclamation.
It was better than carried: it was executed to the letter, without cowardice, or faltering. Hence the Titanic dimensions, which astonish the world to-day.
Seville Cathedral almost reminds one of that of Vienna: because, although there is a clerestory of traceried lights near the vaulting of the nave, itis so pinched up that it almost escapes observation. In like manner the triforium merely looks like a cornice from below. This is another way of saying that the long double side-aisles are almost as lofty as the nave, and this leaves the side-chapel windows of leviathan dimensions, immense in every way. They are not traceried, but filled with stained-glass of the sixteenth century, by Flemish artists of the best period, from Italian cartoons of the best school, when Spain and Flanders, and all Germany were practically one, and could command the genius of Europe, and the wealth of the New World. Almost four centuries have rolled away since those gorgeous windows were set up: time has toned, but scarcely tarnished, their varied lustre—thanks to the marvellous climate. It is in the tinted radiance which they shed, full of richest prismatic colours, that the side altars stand, spaced from pillar to pillar, encircling the great cathedral, and filling it with soul, and warmth, and life.
I am not going to attempt a detailed description of those side- chapels or altars, though each is a treasury of sculpture, and precious metals, and of paintings by the deftest hands of the Andalusian school, too little known to us. Each time I passed, veiled ladies in black were still prostrate on the marble flags, absorbed in deepest devotion. Let not French writers say that the ladies of Seville are frivolous, fickle, light! they have not seen them here, at earliest hours, pioneering the steep way to heaven, for others to follow who dare.
One thing I could admire without disturbing them; the mar- yellous lace-work of wrought iron, which separates, without in the least concealing, those side-chapels from the aisles: even the smith- work here is as artistic as it is colossal.
For the same reason I cannot venture on a detailed account
28 Notes of a Short Trip to Spain.
of the grand altar and choir, still of imperial magnificence, not- withstanding French pillage. Each time I approached, lights were burning and prayers were being offered up unoeasingly.
If I were to find one single fault with this glorious cathedral, it would be in the non-removal of the choir-screen, rising like a barricade of rare and richly sculptured marble from the pavement to the very vaults, but obstructing a perspective which would, if left clear, be like a vista of Heaven !
The clear span of the nave is a matter of international rivalry amongst countries possessing great cathedrals, and each country exaggerates its own. For this reason I took care to measure the accurate width here more than once, from column to column,
“behind the plinths, not with a rule or tape, but simply with my feet, of which I knew the linear value to a hair’s breadth : and I can conscientiously fix the span at forty-three feet three-inches. This does not place Seville Cathedral amongst the widest-naved of Europe, but awards it the palm in this respect amongst the highest-vaulted, and makes it nearly two feet wider than Cologne, its mighty rival of the north.
Perhaps you will ask why did I not use a tape or rule? Because, had I done so, I should perhaps have become an object of more than suspicion. But, putting one foot before another, the proba- bility is that I was scarcely observed; or, if observed, that I was looked upon merely as an eccentric, and thus I accomplished my object without giving offence.
And now it was my happy fate to hear one of the choir organs* pealing out a quaint melody, in wailing tones, like an appeal to heaven for mercy; and it ewelled till the long aisles and lofty vaults became resonant and, as it were, shaken into fury, with the mighty sound, and then it softened, and died away, in sweetest “vox humana”... I can truly assure you the vibrations lingered in the air, and came back, and back again, from the vast heights and deep recesses of the building, in varied'cadence, with charming echo, revealing all the huge dimensions of the vast fabric far more effectually than tape, or rule, or foot of man could ever do... Such is the cathedral of Seville : I visited it often, and often again, but I can tell you no more: my poor words fail to describe it.
If you leave by the south transept, you pass out by another Moorish arch, horse-shoed and diapered like its twin-sister on the north side, and manifestly, like it, another surviving portion
“I believe there are four of them.
Notes of a Short Trip to Spain. 29
of the old Moorish mosque. Here is no “court of oranges,” no fountain fed by Roman aqueduct, no “ gate of pardon.” But the air is curiously alive with hawks and pigeons intermized, all dove~ coloured like the masonry, living in peace and concord, a happy family! They seem to never tire of flying round the giddy pinnacles of the cathedral, and its flame-shaped battlements. Probably, like the pigeons of St. Mark’s, they are here from timo immemorial. To me they seemed all hawks; to others they seem all pigeons. But the fact is established beyond question, they are hawks and pigeons intermixed. ‘Truly, Seville is a town of marvels !
I suppose I had spent hours in the cathedral; for, when I sallied out, the red-sashed natives were already huving their siesta on the marble flags that surround it, amidst the truncated pillars that still proclaim the former boundaries of the mosque.
After a perfectly Spanish breakfast of salmoneta, tortilla, and venison, I drove to the “ muséo” (picture-gallery), which is simply a desecrated, or rather, de-consecrated church, retaining of course all its ecclesiastical form, but with its altars and religious emblems all gone, and its walls all hung with Zurbardéns, Murillos, and other masters of the Sevilian school. But not a single Velasqués is here: to find him you must go to Madrid.
I note that Murillo had three styles, as he advanced in years, the “ frio,”.the “calido,” and the “ vaporoso” (cold, warm, and steaming, just like the successive stages of a kettle that is boiling for tea). And I have an impression, formed elsewhere, confirmed here, that his middle period fixes the stage of his highest perfec- tion, though many of his most world-renowned pictures are of the ““yaporoso ” type, including the grand “Conception” at the Louvre.
Murillo is the true artistic glory of Seville, and in front of the “ muséo” his statue justly stands. He looks for all the world like Oliver Cromwell, in face and costume: and, be it remembered, they were contemporaries, and lived at a time when England borrowed much of its fashions, and even colloquial expressions from Spain.
Strolling ,homewards, I could not fail being struck by the
very peculiar narrowness of the streets in this part of the town:
in many of them you could reach from side to side with your open
arms. The houses also have a built-up windowless appearance
along the basement storey, more like citadels or prisons than
Christian dwellings, T muspect many of them are of great ego, Vou. xin, No. 139.
80 Notes of a Short Trip to Spain.
all clean as they look. It was siesta hour, and the streets were almost absolutely deserted ; but, from many a grated opening above, came down sounds of piano music, well played, and mostly classical.
Reaching the broader streets, I found them canopied with awning from side to side, the canvas being suspended from the upper storeys. Most of the shop fronts were closed again, to Keep out the heat: of those that were open I noticed that many are not glazed, but simply rest on metal or marble pillars : all this, I think, is Oriental. As for the heat in the full sunshine, it was simply like an oven ; to face it further would have been madness.
In the evening we drove to the “ paséo,” to see the upper class enjoying the cool air. The “paséo” runs by San Telmo, the palace of the Montpensiers, where the late young Queen of Spain spent her happy childhood. It also runs by the banks of the famous Guadalquivir, favourite theme of Moorish legends. I was quite struck by the smartness of the equipages: horses, vehicles, servants all perfectly turned out. The ladies, without hats or bonnets, looked to perfect advantage, with just a flower or two in the hair, and a lappet of white or black lace. A small minority wore tiny Parisian hats of straw: the contrast just served to enhance the paramount grace of the national mantilla. The young men were on horseback, and many a young gallant seemed ambi- tious to make his steed prance and curvet with all the airs of the haute école, an easy task with such mettlesome, well-trained animals. The Andalusian horse is small and plump: he has a perfect head, capital quarters, but appears rather short in front, and rather drooping towards the tail. The colour is as varied as with us: bay, brown, steel-gray, &c. The canter is particularly airy, and high in front ; the trotting pace is very fast and showy ; the walk is like a trot, and very peculiar to our Northern eyes. Altogether the Andalusian horse is just the right thing for a “paséo.” And think not that the ladies sit back in their carriages, looking sulky or sad, or drive with the saddening regularity of-a procession or funeral. Some are dashing past like fire-flies, emiling and bowing as they go; others have pulled up and are chatting: the delicious air enlivens all, and they show it even to the tips of their fans.
As we pass San Telmo, let me tell you a story concerning the late queen. When death was coming on her, and grandees were inseribing their names at the palace of Madrid, a poor woman came through the titled throng and said: “ I have no name worth
Notes of a Short Trip to Spain. 81
inscribing, but I want to know how Mercedes is, and I will call again and again until I hear that Mercedes is better.” When the end came, that poor woman was seen no more: vainly the young king ordered all possible inquiries to find her out; her name remains unknown. Still I venture a solution: the young queen used to visit the poor and the sick; perhaps she met her death illness in this way, perhaps not ; but probably the poor woman who made those mysterious inquiries had a sick child, or husband, whose pillow had been smoothed by the young fingers of royalty. Hence the sympathy, which ignored formalities and etiquette, and felt responsive only to the promptings of gratitude, for kindness unrecorded except in heaven.
All the world has read of the Guadalquivir, as tí was, with its banks lined, and in fact canopied, with evergreens and scent-laden trees; such the enraptured Moors found it, and described it to their friends, even in far-off Damascus: such their descendants picture it still} and with imperishable faith pray to Allah for their return to it once more. But plain truth compels me to tell you that I found it brown and rushy, except where it is embanked with masonry, with sea-going ships from London and the Levant moored alongside. I believe the ebb and flow of the Atlantic tide is felt here: so that practically Seville is a seaport town, although, to look at the map, you would scarcely think so.
There is a charming tower by the river-side, dove-coloured, octagonal, with flame-shaped battlements, surmounted by turrets, one over another, of lessening diameter. This tower, evidently a Moorish structure, is now called “the tower of gold,” not by reason of its colour, but because the followers of Columbus often landed here, laden with the golden spoil of America. You can easily picture the light-hearted Moors in earlier days starting from this same place on their boating excursions at sundown, “ venting their exuberance of spirits in poetry and song.” The habit sur- vives still; alongside are steps from which boating parties start as of old, and, if you listen, you may hear couplet and guitar blend- ing on the evening air. But the evergreens are gone for ever.
* * * .
Again an early start this morning for an excursion round the town ; but, this time, in one of the small two-horse phaetons which stand waiting in the square. It is surprising what a round one has to take, when driving, to get from one objective point to another: much as if, to get from Sackville-street to Nassau- street, you had to drive round by the Four Courts and St: Patrick's
32 Notes of 4 Short Trip to Spain.
Cathedral : this gives you a practical idea how narrow the majority of the streets are.
I went first to see “ the house of Pilate,” built, in the days of Charles V., by an ancestor of the Sidonias, who had accomplished a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. There is a popular delusion (amongst tourists) that it is an exact facsimile of the Roman governor's house, as the sixteenth century pilgrim found it! but the simple fact is, that the open air stations of the cross start from here in Holy Week : hence the name. It is to all intents a small Moorish
with wainscotting of azuleio tiles and walls covered with elaborate stucco. Scattered through its courts and cloisters are busts of white marble, of Roman emperors and consuls, brought from Italica. By-the-way, what is, or rather was, Italica P Simply a Roman colony, planted within half-a-dozen miles of here, more than two thousand years ago, by Scipio Africanus, to make a home for his worn-out legionaries. It gave birth to Trajan, and some say it gave birth to Hadrian and Theodosius; and then, after a certain number of centuries, it simply ceased to exist as a city, not through any volcanic eruption or convulsion of nature, but for the simplest reason imaginable. The Guadalquivir, which had been flowing by its walls just as it flows here, changed its course one fine morning, and left it dry ; and so its inhabitants had to migrate en masse. Seville was their nearest refuge: they fled here; and their temples and theatres became the legitimate quarry of this fair town, because esthetic archseology was not then in vogue. In fact it is more than probable that the nice little marble shafts, which we admire in the shop-fronts here, came from Italica, and re-echoed to the Latin lisping of the boy emperors who were reared there. . :
I passed quite a number of churches, and visited a few, so antique-looking that I verily believe they were mosques in the Moorish days. On leaving (never on entering) an odd mendicant woman may ask you for alms in a placid, dignified sort of way, holding out her hand, and saying: “Por V’amor de Dios;” to refuse her, you have only to say: “perdon’ uste, hermana” (forgive me, sister), and your sister in Adam will not say another word. I mention this, because an impression prevails that Spanish beggars are importunate: the truth is quite the reverse.
Next I found myself at the tobacco factory—a government establishment, which employs five thousand people, and where cigars and cigarettes are made in millions and billions each year. Five hundred women and girls work upstairs, the women at cigars,
Notes of a Short Trip to Spain. 33
the girls at cigarettes ;—and what a din! You are shown through by a matron; the corridors, where the work proceeds, are each long enongh for a rifle range, and arched with solid masonry, all scrupulously whitewashed. The tables are arranged crose-ways with mathematical regularity, and the perspective from end to end is quite a study. Seated at those tables the cigarreras work, four at each side, the fragrant weed piled in heaps before them. They are paid ‘according to the number of cigars they produce, and therefore are at liberty to chat and laugh, and to idle if they please. Some are having their frugal repast of stewed tomatoes ; some are eleeping soundly, notwithstanding the tremendous discord of voices all chattering simultaneously. Some of the cigarreras are mothers of families, and their infants are slung in extemporised hammocks made of their shawls, or stowed away in baskets or boxes on or under the tables, Strange to say, those infants do not look un- healthy or restless, notwithstanding the pungent atmosphere and the clatter of so many babbling tongues ; but even here they sleep the sleep of angels. It is the general opinion that the cigarreras of Seville represent a class in themselves, though they vary much in type. Like students at a German university, they have certain fashions, which to them are law. One particular fashion is to arrive early in the morning, scrupulously well dressed, with hair glistening like a raven’s wing, and a fresh crimson or white carnation flower tastefully adorning it; then to hang the walking costume on the wall (which is all fitted with crooks for the purpose), and to sit in demi-toilette, working or idling, but always chattering, till the sun gets low and the hour arrives for an evening walk. Similar corridors, similarly arched and whitewashed, and simi- larly endless, contain the cigarreras of the junior grade, where cigarettes are made instead of cigars. Here the hair-dressing has evidently been equally attended to, and the din is, if possible, more deafening. You may perhaps think I am exaggerating in saying so much of the hair-dressing: so let me add that, this morning, in a little square by the roadside, I saw two poor, elderly women, water-sellers (whose emoluments perhaps reached two- pence halfpenny a day), with their earthen pitchers laid down: one was acting as hairdresser to the other, the latter sitting on the ground, obviously on the principle of fair trade and reciprocity, and yet the coiffure of the standing figure was already fit for a queen! But to end with the cigarreras : although I fail to recognise any fixity of type, it seems to me that there is much of the Moor (and probably more of the tigress, if roused) in those richly’ sun-
84 Notes of a Short Trip to Spain.
burnt Andalusian faces, and that the softened glance of the Murillo madonnas must be sought elsewhere. Here it was that Prosper Mérimée found the real “Carmen,” and the charming music of Bizet really incorporates many of the roulades that one hear at every moment in the streets of this most musical city.
And now, as the forenoon advances, the fierce glare of the sun becomes all too hot for further defiance. You seek the welcome shades of the hotel, and there, as you sit, musing perhaps, or dozing, more probably, you hear from moment to moment the tinkling of bells. You look out from beneath the sun-shades, and you see files of those superb gray donkeys, which we found yesterday outside the court of oranges. They are delivering water, or bringing charcoal from the mountain-sides, or bread from the baking village, and they are caparisoned and fringed just as I described them. But, in addition, they are carefully muzzled with basket or network! Is it that they are disposed to biteP No; but, like you or me, they are fond of the purple figs and blood-red. oranges which Seville produces to such perfection, and which Sevilian fruitsellers display at every other corner. Silent but wise, their minds are ever bent on the luscious fruit, and to prevent them from making a raid on it, the muzzles are deemed indispens- able. Thus they trudge along, in Indian file, justas they are accustomed to stand, and the only way the streets permit, and all the while their owners are shouting their wares, in baritone voices that would make the fortune of a theatre. Those men are peasants, and their appearance is picturesque: a wide sombrero hat; face closely shaved, without whiskers or moustache ; hair closely cut ; short jacket; red sash round the waist, and buff gaiters. Such are the men who drive the donkeys of Seville, delivering charcoal, or bread, or water, from door to door.
From door to door? Let us say rather from one open-work gate of wrought iron to another, each of them a study of art, and most of them gilt: such is the graceful fashion here. For, let me tell you, Sevilian houses are built in the form of a hollow square ; the small quadrangle thus enclosed is planted with shrubs flowering and aromatic, and generally has a fountain in the middle. The living rooms face it, and during the warm months each family migrates to the ground floor, and transfers to it their principal furniture, musical instruments, pictures, &c. Thus each little square becomes a centre and focus of family life: this is the famous “patio ” (pronounced patti-o), which forms the chief characteristic of Sevilian domestic existence—a characteristic not jealously ‘bar-
Notes of a Short Trip to Spain. 35.
ricaded from the public gaze, but simply fenced against the unconscious intrusion of dogs, donkeys, &c., by the lacework of iron to which I have referred. Externally, Sevilian houses are all neatness, being kept constantly limewashed in tints of palest lavender, or cream-colour, or pink: this gives them all a modern look, though many of them, I suspect, date from the middle ages. A proof of their age, to a trained eye, is that you have to descend three or four steps into each of them, and this proof is all the more cogent from the fact that the Sevilians have a praise- worthy habit, universal and apparently inherited, of removing all their dust rubbish every morning to allocated places outside the city walls. To finish about Sevilian houses, I should tell you that the roofs are covered with tiles of palest brown or fawn colour, set in downward lines, like corduroy, and that at the corners are gargoyles, representing heads of animals, just such as we are accustomed to associate with Gothic architecture, but which were quite familiar and usual in Roman villas of the classic days, like much of the “patio” arrangement which I have attempted to describe.
This evening, with my young Cambridge friend, I went to hear a gipsy concert in the ‘calle de l’amor de Dios.” Here Gitanos and Gitanas sang, one after another, dreary airs in long wailing minor keys, and, while eack was singing, the others kept clapping hands to the time, and one, a miserable little hunchbacked man, kept jingling accompaniments on a guitar. Infer from this that the performance did not strike me as either artistic or delight- ful. How different from the magnificent flow of almost impromptu stringed Tzigane music, which has astonished and delighted the most cultivated ears, from Jassy to Paris! The songs which the gipsies of Seville sing must be in Andalusian patois, because the audience seemed to follow them with keen delight. Sometimes a Gitano would stop in the middle of his song, and begin a long and animated recitative, getting more and more excited, and at last draw a sword-cane, and flourish it, and then run his imaginary foe through, and after the plaudits would subside finish his song in a wild roulade. Neither Gitanos nor Gitanas made the slightest attempt at costume, but were just arrayed as ordinary Andalusians of the middle class; but there was something in their serpent-like stare that did not enlist confidence. The audience, excepting ourselves, were all of the middle class, or lower, seated in threes and fours at little tables, smoking cigarettes and drinking Manza- nella sherry! I soon came to see that we were rather gazed at,
36 Notes of a Short Trip to Spain.
and was glad to get myself back into the open streets, with pockets and watch untouched,
To walk the streets in the cool evening air isan endless delight and study: I note that Sevilians, men and women, the latter especially, are wisely addicted to milk drinking: this is the result of the climate. ' But it is not all cow’s milk that is taken, as you might perhaps think: goat’s milk and ass’s milk are equally patronised. Everywhere you go, you see the sign-boards: “leche de vaca”... “leche de cabra” .. . “leche de burra” (cow’s milk, goat’s milk, ass’s milk), and you see the small black cows and the gigantic brown goats led about from street to street.
Another favourite refreshment is iced cream, the ice made of compressed snow from the Sierra Morena; this is taken in the “‘neverias,” handsomely fitted rooms, open as much as possible to the cooling air, and crowded with respectable people, sipping the frigid mixture and chatting all the while. The fun is to go from “neveria” to “ neveria,” and have an ice at each.
* . * *
This, my third morning at Seville, I had laid out for a drive to Italica, and round the walls of Seville, which are of every age, from modern times to the days of the Moors, Goths, and Romans, and perhaps long before them. But the fierce heat interposed a positive veto. You do not care to explore ruins, when the day begins at ninety degrees in the coolest shade, and very much higher in the sunshine. So we just sent to engage select seats for the great bull-fight next Thursday, and started for Grandda, to spend the interim in that paradise. And now let me wish you a Spanish good-bye: “ Vaya uste con Dios” . . . Go with God.
(8)
LONDONDERRY BELLS. BY JOHN KANE.
{OW sreetiy rang the belle when we chased the honey bee, And loudly sang the lark to you, love, and to me, ‘When winds of sunny April whispered wooingly :
Sing, merry ! ‘When childhood heard the bells of Londonderry.
How softly rang the bells when we clomb the misty hill,
‘When we reached the pebbled cradle of the foamy mountain-rill, And pledged our love at noontide when every bird was still;
. Bing, merry t
So clearly rang the bells of Londonderry.
And sprightly was the dancing beneath the flowered thorn,
When the little eastarn moonlight, like Plenty’s golden horn,
Lit our way from stile to stile through the fields of whispering corn, Sing, merry!
So gaily rang the bells of Londonderry.
But now the mountain flowers have lost their rich perfume, And the lark bas now no rapture, the nodding rose no bloom, Since they took you from the ocean to lay you in the tomb.
‘Never merry Shall sound for me sweet bells of Londonderry.
But merrily they'll sound when my heart has passed uway, To the fisher near his nets, and the hillmen mowing hay, To mothers at their doorsteps, and lovers in the May,
Making merry, Shall chime the silver bells of Londonderry.
GLEANINGS FROM THOMAS Á EEMPIS.
8 yet too few of the works of Thomas a Kempis, the holy monk of Windesheim and gifted exponent of its spiritual school, have appeared in English; therefore I propose to offer, from time to time, to the readers of the “Inisq MontHty,” selected translations from his voluminous writings.
I shall make no comment on these rare geme—they speak for themselves. I only wish my translation could equal the original.
The first piece which I have chosen is the little essay “ de vita bona et pacifica.”
This meditation, so brief and yet so full, well suited for the daily use of those whose leisure is scanty, appears in the author’s manuscript, dated A.p. 1441, now preserved in the Burgoyne Library at Brussels (Nos. 5855-5861). It will also be found in print, near the end of the 2nd Vol. of a Kempis’s complete works, edited by Henricus Sommalius, 8.J., a.p. 1615.
F.R.C.
Of a good peaceful life.
I. If thou dost wish to live worthily in the sight of God, thou shouldst give thyself up entirely to Him.
Set thy heart upon doing what is thy duty, and thou shalt enjoy peace in all things.
Put it before thee to bear the heavier trials, and then thou wilt more easily endure the lighter.
Learn to overcome thyself in all things, and thou shalt have interior rest.
Say to thyself—What I ought to do is what I will do; and thus I shall gain heaven.
With patience and silence comes an increase of peace. The wise man is truly patient.
If I am to conquer myself in all things, then I must begin by mortifying myself. Above all, mortification is good and necessary for me.
Although I should possess this thing, or the other thing, still I would not be satisfied.
Dismiss from thy heart all likings and dislikes, and then nothing will disturb thee
Gleanings from Thomas a Kempis. 39
If thou dost not give thyself overmuch to exterior matters, thou shalt enjoy inward rest.
Be not solicitous for the goods of this world, lest thou forfeit the eternal blessings i in heaven promised by Jesus Christ to those who are in his friendship.
All knowledge, all possessions avail nothing, unless by our prayers we win God’s favour.
He who contemns all that gives delight on earth, can lift up his heart to heaven, and feel some portion of its celestial joys.
II. Alas! how comes it that we so strongly desire to be well thought of P Yet, for all that, we are nothing, howsoever differ- ently we ourselves may think.
‘Why complain greatly about this, and wander hither and thither P
Wheresoever thou goest or comest thou shalt not find all smooth, because everywhere there is something to be borne with.
And if thou knowest not how to rejoice thereat, at all events it behoves thee to endure it now, and to dispose thyself for peace in the end, vanquishing all by patience.
Nought avails unless thou ceasest to seek thyself in anything.
As long as thou livest here thou must struggle against thyself, and combat the enemy.
In this will thy merit be enhanced, if, for the sake of God, thou bearest up against all that troubles thee.
III. He who flies from suffering only courts it. This life is full of wants and worries.
Although thou wouldst willingly crave freedom from all trials, still such would not be profitable for thee: therefore endure patiently if thou desirest to please God, and to do that which is very meritorious in his sight.
Everything will turn to profit if thou dost accept all trials from God, as a gain to thy soul.
The straight road to heaven is to suffer for our Lord.
Humble endurance is the mark of a virtuous life, and of heavenly wisdom, and leads to the eternal joys of paradise ; which may the loving Jesus grant us, by the merits of his most holy death, and the intercession of his most precious Mother, the Blessed Mary ever Virgin; Jesus, who with the Father and the Holy Ghost, liveth and reigneth God for ever and ever. Amen.
(40)
HOME-LIFE IN COLORADO. BY BRENDAN MAC CARTHY.
F the realities of Colorado life be unknown at New York, for which meridian the following article was written, how much more so here at home! Our own special interest, however, was drawn to this paper by the circumstances that it is the first that we have seen from the pen of the youngest son of our Irish poet, the late Denis Florence Mac Oarthy, who since Good Friday, 1882, has only been represented in these pages by the initials 8. M.8. Many of our readers will have no difficulty in supplying the remaining five letters that make up the name of the Irish barrister Mr. D—— who is spoken of towards the end. This is another of the reasons why, in no dearth of matter of our own—certainly not !—we for once borrow from The Catholic World. * * * .
'To those whose ideas of life west of the Missouri River are chiefly derived from the performances of Mr. Buffalo Bill, or the thrilling Western drama, in which the six-shooter and the coroner take the leading parte, a short sketch of Western home-life may be useful by way of antidote.
The ranch of my friend Mr. Sutcliffe is situated some ten miles from the county-town of Castleton, in Colorado, and is a good example of all that a Western home might be. Castleton is a town of some fifty wooden houses, amongst which are a court- house, school, newspaper-office, and four or five saloons. The popu- lation is chiefly engaged in farming land in the vicinity of the town. The predominant standing of the gentlemen is that of judge, owing to the fact that they are supposed to have occupied that responsible position “back East” before they came to Castle- ton. There is, indeed, one admiral there, strangely placed so far inland—but this is accounted for by the fact that he came there a retired first lieutenant, and has received his promotion since at the hand of the settlers.
Leaving Castleton, the track to the ranch of Mr. Sutcliffe winds amongst the hills, gradually ascending until it suddenly emerges on the brow of the “Divide.” Here a magnificent pano- rama is spread before the eyes of the traveller. In front is a verdant, undulating valley of great extent, intersected at intervals
Home-Life in Colorado, 41
by little streamlets or creeks, which take their rise in the foot-hills beyond, their course marked by the thick growth of pines and cotton-woods, and an occasional gleam of silver where the sun lights up the rapid water. At one end of the unbroken chain of foot-hills Pike’s Peak rears his venerable head, silvered with frost, and far to the right of the landscape Long’s Peak, shaped like a gigantic pyramid, towers in mowy magnificence.
Nestling in the valley is the house of my friend. It is a good- sized frame-house, of which the architect and builder, a local genius, known in these parte as “ old man Grant,” has every reason to be proud. In front of the house stands that most useful invention, the windmill, by which the breezes are constrained to pay toll in kind and keep up the supply of fresh, pure well-water ; and a little to the right of the house is the wood-pile, where the hungry tramp must labour for a time before his wants are attended to.
Mr. Sutcliffe is an Englishman, and twenty-five years’ residence in Colorado appears only to have brought out more strikingly the national characteristics. He is a stout, hearty man of about forty, on whose face a life of incessant work has left the stamp of honesty and keenness. He comes of a good old farming stock in Derby- shire, where his family have farmed the land time out of mind. * Mra. Sutcliffe is also English, and a glance round the house will make it clear that here comfort and cleanliness reign supreme. The parlour, on the right of the entrance, is a large room, well lighted with three windows. There is a large, open fireplace, and on winter's nights, when the red curtains are drawn close, and the pitch-pine fire roars up the chimney, you may sit in warm slippers before the cheerful blaze, and have only an increased feeling of comfort from the thought that Jack Frost is equeezing the meroury into the bulb of the thermometer outside or screaming enviously round the corners of the house. At the back is a cosy little room, devoted to the ladies of the family. Here, amongst other things, are a piano and a sewing-machine, and in the long evenings work and music go merrily together. The hall is adorned with a magnificent pair of antlers, a trophy from one of Mr. Sutcliffe’s hunting expeditions. Upstairs are the bedrooms, where the spot- lees linen and shining furniture invite repose. Such a house as this is not a very common thing to meet with amonget the settlers in the West; and it is easy to see that it is appreciated, when in the summer-time the stream of tourists begins to pour along the Pueblo-road, from the number that seek for a night’s lodging here, and the earnestness with which they pray to be admitted:
42 Home-Life in Colorado.
The family consists of a boy and three girls, all of whom take their share of the house duties. The girls, amongst other cares, milk some twenty head of cows twice a day, churn the milk, make the butter, assist in the cooking, and attend to the welfare of the poultry and calves. The boy helps his father with the farm work, collects the milch cows, and is always in readiness to ride anywhere at his father’s commands on his fleet-footed pony. Work is never slack on such a farm. In the winter’s mornings, when there are sun-dogs at dawn, and the air glitters with minute particles of frost, and the mercury stands far down below zero, Mr. Sutcliffe will draw on his warmest coat, and mounted on his favourite mare, her shoes well sharpened, will sally out on a tour of inspection. Every beast, down to the latest arrival, he knows, and his practised eye can discern at a glance exactly how each is bearing the cold weather.
Expeditions in search of beef-steers to be fed and kept fat until the price of beef in the Denver market rises are made in the winter time. A snow-storm may come on, on the evening of the expected return. Then the resources of the larder are taxed to the uttermost, and the table, covered with a snowy cloth, groans under a surprising display of good fare. The heaped-up logs roar and crackle in the wide fireplace, and a welcome change of garments hangs toasting in readiness. Suddenly the watchful eye of Mrs. Sutcliffe discovers a dark patch moving towards the house through the curtain of snow, and a distant bellow announces the approach of the wanderers. Then there is a hurrying to and fro, and the girls run out to open the corral-gate and take charge of the tired horses, so that father and brother may get the sooner to the welcome warmth of the house. Never does house look more cosy or food more enticing than to the tired ones on such occasions.
But when the snows have melted, and the silence of winter gives place to the hum of returning spring, then comes the farmer's busy season. The crops have to be put in, and stock branded up and turned out on Uncle Sam’s big property, still requiring con- tinual attention.
The change from winter to spring in Colorado is very strange in its completeness. In winter the grass is dried up and yellow after the summer's heat, the ground is hard with frost, and not a sound breaks the icy stillness except the occasional howling of a wolf or the chattering of a magpie. But when the winter breaks the soft, green grass springs up as if by magic, the air is filled
Home-Life in Colorado. 43
with the voices of countless birds of gay plumage, and the ground is covered with a wealth of wild flowers unequalled in any country.
Summer and harvest-time follow quickly on one another in Colorado, and not many weeks elapse from the appearance of the tiny spears of rye above the ground before the “ waves of shadow ” chase.each other across the golden fields, and the crop is ready for harvesting.
All times are busy with the settler’s wife. But during the haymaking, and when the threshing and the harvesting begin, then she must be well endowed with those qualities which Dr. Robert Collier sums up under the title of “clear grit,” to bear the strain which is laid upon her. Breakfast takes place by lamplight, dinner in the fields at noon, and at sundown the men return with the neighbours who have been lending a helping hand—some ten or twelve, perhaps—hungry, tired, and dusty, to have their wants supplied. To each must be given a cheerful word of welcome, and for each a plentiful meal must be prepared.
Farmers in Colorado are to be congratulated that the seasons there are not so fickle as elsewhere ; and if they be blessed with as happy a temperament as my friend Mr. Sutcliffe, and with such an untiring helpmate as he has got, I can safely predict their home- life in Colorado will be healthful and happy.
An example of a Colorado house of a different kind is the next ranch up the creek. It is a genuine old-style log cabin. The owner, Mr. D—, was an Irish barrister, but ill health would not allow him to continue his work in the old country. The ground- floor is divided into parlour and kitchen. The parlour is a square room, supplied with a couple of windows and a door, so constructed as to let the breezes wander at their own sweet will through the house. The chief ornaments on the whitewashed walls are a collection of guns and rifles. There is, in fact, nothing to suggest the barrister in this room. At the top of a steep staircase, however, is an ingeniously-contrived den, which presents a somewhat different aspect. Here a table strewed with writing materials, a well-filled bookcase, an easy-chair, and a reading-lamp hold possession. Ranch affairs do not penetrate into this sanctum. Calculations as to the price of beef and arrangements for the slaughter of the fattened hogs are rigidly excluded from this Colorado Parnassus, where such topics might be uncongenial to the distinguished company always present. For ranged against the walls are Homer, Horace, Shakespeare, and a number of sages
. 44 Home-Life in Colorado.
and philosophers whom it is rare to encounter on a ranch in the West. In their company Mr. D—— may sit and soon forget that he is not in some cosy nook of the temple, within easy reach of Simpson’s.
“ Baching” in Colorado has its disadvantages as well as its charms, and as dinner-hour approaches visions of Simpson’s may rise for a moment when the old steer which has been slaughtered for home-consumption proves a trifle tough; but a day’s work irrigating, putting up fence, or driving cattle sharpens a man’s appetite wonderfully, and the food, if not dainty, is plentiful and the cooking good. “James,” a Sligo lad who takes the place of the “ neat-handed Phillis” in this bachelor’s establishment, is an excellent cook and always in the best of spirits, but the busy woman's hand is missed, and shirt-buttons are at a premium. The situation of the little house is one of the most beautiful in the neighbourhood. It is close to the foot-hills, which rise behind it, clad to the summit with pine-trees. Two of the hills directly behind the house bear an odd resemblance to old Sugarloaf and Corragoona, in the county Wicklow. The main product of the ranch is hay, and when the meadow is standing, and the sunflowers and wild flowers of every hue peep out through the long, waving grass, a prettier spot could not well be imagined.
For occupation, the buying and feeding of cattle in winter and the getting-in of the hay crop in summer furnish plenty. Then Mr. D—— has opened a “ law office” in Castleton—more, I suspect, as an excuse for a day or two of quiet study in the week than from any hope of a lucrative practice. The county judge is by profession a house-painter. His knowledge of law he eequires in court. Legal training is considered rather an impedi- ment to a man obtaining the office of county judge, on the ground, presumably, that such training might bias him when deciding on law points.
Farm-life does not present very many striking novelties, but the time passes with wonderful rapidity and a store of health is quickly laid in.
(4)
PIGEONHOLE PARAGRAPHS.
Tue best passages of a poem, says Southey, are those which have been felicitously produced in the first glow of composition; but I have found in my own experience that those which have been inserted in place of something faulty have been next to them in merit.
* . *
It has been calculated, it seems—we know not hy whom or on what data—that every pound of honey represents two millions and a half of clover tubes sucked by bees. Every page of good poetry, or even of good prose represents the essence of many an hour of thought and feeling.
* . .
The description in the next pigeonhole is so picturesque that it deserves to be rescued from the ephemeral columns of the Weekly Register and enshrined in our own immortal pages. The incident ooourred about the end of last September.
“Two curious consequences of the long-continued dry and sunny weather have been noticed by sojourners among Erin’s greenest nooks, viz., the abundance of mushrooms, tons of which have left the country every week (even after all the country housekeepers have made their ketchup), and the many fires that have broken out over the furze- covered mountains and hills, adding another picturesque effect to twilight or moonlight scenes. On Monday afternoon the dwellers on exquisite Killiney Hill, above the curving shores of Dublin Bay, were atartled to see the great granite crags crowning the wooded hill wrapped in a sheet of scarlet fame. The fire began on the side of a private road, as if the spark from a pipe had caught the dry grass scorched white by the sun, and in a few minutes the flames had leaped to the top branches of a young tree, and darted up the face of the crags, devouring furze, brambles, dry leaves and grass, and hiding the green foliage of the trees under a fountain of fire. Soon various streams of flame ran round the hill, destroying all before it, and blackening the stripped rocks, and later in the evening the fire had curled its way through the beautiful young pine-wood sloping towards Dalkey, making a weird effect as it hissed and crackled among the resinous trees, sending up a lurid glare and clouds of silver smoke into the sky. For some time two or three gentlemen’s houses, separated only by the narrow road and their own plantations from the burning wood, seemed to be in imminent danger; and it wasa curious sight to see the assemblage of people on the road—policemen in their helmets, maid-servants in their white caps, labourers with spades and axes,
You. xm., No. 189. 5
46 Pigeonhole Paragraphs.
carts with water-barrels, for the only water-engine attainable had to be hastily constructed out of a barrel and a garden hose. All were doing their best to accomplish the impossible, to check the course of the beautiful mischief-maker, that flew sparkling and circling away into the distance as if laughing at their puny efforts. As night came on, and the red glare in the sky deepened, the moon came out low down on the silvering sea, and looked over at the fiery crown of the hill, completing the picture. On Tuesday the fire was still burning fiercely, but when the wind fell towards evening it gradually became extinct.” * * *
One of the funniest words that ever came to us from that land of funny words, Yankeedom, is “salutatorian.” Its meaning will be guessed from this American account of some school exhibition. “ Little ‘Miss Mitchell was salutatorian and in a neat and appropriate address bade all a very hearty welcome.”
* * .
We have only once enshrined verse in these pigeonholes. Let us make a second exception in favour of this—* The Two Streams '—by Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Behold the rocky wall That down its eloping sides
Pours the swift rain-drops, blending as they fall In rushing river-tides!
Yon stream, whose sources run Turned by a pebble’s edge,
Is Athabasca, rolling towards the sun Through the cleft mountain-ledge.
‘The slender rill had strayed. But for the slanting stone,
To evening's ocean, with the tangled braid Of foam-flecked Oregon.
So from the heights of Will
Life’s parting stream descends, And, as a moment turns its slender rill,
Each widening torrent bende—
From the same cradle’s side, From the same mother’s knee— One to long darkness and the frozen tide,
One to the Peaceful Sea ! * * *
Pigeonhole Paragraphs. * 47
Swinburne, in his latest volume, levels against such biographical scavengers as Froude this notable couplet :— “ Strip the stark-naked soul, that all may peer— Spy, smirk, sniff, snort, snap, snivel, snarl, and sneer.” . . . The following hexameter fixes the dates of the Quatuor Tempora which we oddly translate by “ Quarter Tense ” : —
“ Post Luciam, cineres, post sanctum pneuma, crucemque.
As the ecclesiastical year begins with Advent, precedence is given to the Quarter Tense which follows the feast of St. Lucy, December 13th; the next is after Ash Wednesday; the next after Pentecost, represented here by the Greek word for “Spirit” which gives Pneu- matics to the English language; and finally the Quarter Yense which succeeds the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, September 14th. May this mnemonic be diluted into this couplet ?— “ Et. Lucy’s day, Ash Wednesday, then Whitsuntide, and last The Exaltation of the Cross, precede the three-day fast.” . * .
Ina letter to the Author of the “ Monks of Kilcrea”—one of the most delightful poems in the English language, which we must soon find an opportunity of bringing under the notice of our readers— Mr. Brinley Richards, the eminent composer and pianist, gives the following estimate of the Irish music in “The Poets and Poetry of Munster,” of which Messrs. Duffy of Wellington-quay are issuing a new edition. Praise from such a Masstro of the “divine art” is. indeed most valuable : .
“25 Br, Many Axsorr’s TRRRAOE, Kexsixotox, W., October 14th, 1884.
* Dean Ma. Geocuraan,
“With this I return you the little volume you kindly lent me, and it has very greatly interested me. I have copied some of the melodies as specimens of ‘ National Music,’ remarkable for individuality and tenderness. According to modern ideas they seem ‘wild,’ and refuse all attempts at accompaniment: indeed the music does not appear to require any, and though at first they appear strange to English ears, they seem to grow into a beauty peculiarly ‘ winning,’ and possess an eloquence that requires nothing more than the simple notes of the melodies. We have no Welsh airs so characteristic, with the exception of one or two old songs that seem to have been ‘ built’ on a scale entirely different from the modern diatonic. I am very much obliged to you for adding ‘ something more’ to my collection of National music,
“With kind regards, very truly yours,
“ Brintey Ricuaros.”
NOTES ON NEW BOOKS.
In honour of Christmastide and the Divine Child we put aside for a moment larger and graver tomes and give precedence to some books that the young folk will like to get for Christmas presents. Of this class the most attractive put forward by Messrs. M. H. Gill & Son were named hurriedly to our readers last month.
There is no fear that the other book mentioned at the end of our last number will be lost in the ordinary crowd of juvenile literature. A clever person remarked to us lately, that the best writing of the day is done for children; witness Mrs. Molesworth and Lewis Carroll, and, just this Christmas, Mrs. Augusta Webster, the greatest, probably of women-poets, at least living, has given “Daffodil” to the fanciful literature of childhood. Fully worthy of being named with these efforts of real genius is “The Walking Trees,” which is a wonderful exploit of artistic imagination, and will rank higher than “The Little Flower Seekers” or any other of Miss Mulholland’s contributions to this department of litera- ture. We must return to the study of this exquisite tale, over- flowing with poetic thought; but, as we have to mention many other booke, we shall now add only that Mr. W. C. Mills, a Dublin artist, has illustrated the story very gracefully. Though the opening story has absorbed all our attention, younger readers will relish even more the other tales which make up this very pretty and very cheap volume. “Little Queen Pet and her Kingdom” is a very bright and useful little story, and so is “ Floreen’s Golden Hair.” The remaining tale, “ The Girl from under the Lake,” is- longer than these two, indeed exactly as long as “The Walking Trees ;” but somehow it has won our heart less than the others, perhaps because we have studied it less carefully. The human parts seem to have been made too human and too natural to mingle successfully with the superhuman or the subterhuman parts. Will the circumstance of this book’s being published in Dublin interfere with its receiving such full and favourable notices from the Westminster Review, the Spectator, the Times, the Atheneum, the Pall Mall Gasette, &c., as we see appended to the advertise-~ ment of its sister-volumes, “ The Little Flower Seekers,” “ Puck and Blossom,” &c. “The Walking Trees” is a finer. work of art than any of its predecessors.
‘We wish to be very truthful in these brief notices of new books.
Notes on New Books. 49
‘We have often wondered at the eulogies bestowed in excellent pe- riodicals on books for which these pages had only a scanty word of praise or none at all. This remark is meant to emphasise the very earnest welcome that we consider due to “ Lina’s Tales” by Mrs. Frank Pentrill (M. H. Gill & Son). It is as prettily got up & book as ever made a good little girl’s eyes dance in her head with delight ; and the two stories, one of ten chapters and the other of eight—well, all we can say is that we have read them through without skipping a line, and we consider them exceedingly good, wholesome, and pleasant. The writer, though her English style is pure and graceful, is evidently quite at home among French ways and places; and this delicate foreign flavour adds zest to her lively story-telling. May we relieve the misgivings of anxious mammas on one very prosaic point ? The price is only a shilling and a-half. “Lina’s Tales” is the first book, on the title page of which we have seen the name of Mrs. Frank Pentrill as authoress; and we are quite sure it will not be the last. The possessor of sucha lively style, and such a lively fancy, will not be able to resist the requisitions certain to be laid upon her again and again for work like this. The stories are interesting and very prettily told; and altogether “Lina’s Tales” must not be confounded with the com- mon herd of children’s books which are only pretty and harmless.
The confraternity so widely diffused over the Catholic world, the members of which are called in France Congréganistes, in Jesuit Colleges, sodalists, and in convents “Children of Mary,” celebrated on the 5th of December, the third hundredth anniver- sary, not of its establishment, but of its regular canonical erection and papal confirmation and approbation by a brief of Pope Gregory XIII. The beautiful name Enfant de Marie is now associated more with the devotus fwmineus sexus; but the female branches of the organisation had hardly a recognised existence till the time of Pope Benedict XIV., when the Sodality had been at work for some two hundred years. It can reckon on ita rolls Popes, emperors, statesmen, generals; and indeed, we think that Father Delplace, 8.J., might have given more interesting statistics of this kind, the names of the most distinguished members, &c., than we can find in the 230 pages in which he has told the Histoire des Congrégations de la Sainte Vierge, just published at Lille and Bruges. May Our Blessed Lady reward the pious diligence which has produced so admirable a souvenir of the Tercentenary of her Sodality !
An excellent present for Christmas, appealing, however, to
50 Notes on New Books.
different constituency from Mrs. Pentrill’s, is the new edition of The Lectures of a Certain Professor,” by the Rev. Joseph Farrell, To descend again to the prosaic detail of price, it costs exactly the same as the “ Walking Trees and Other Tales”—namely, three shillings and sixpence. Every time that we turn to these not unfamiliar pages, our admiration increases for the thoughtful and genial wisdom and rare beauty of style that make Father Farrell’s book of Essays one of the most brilliant literary achievements of any Irishman of our time.
In the same category with the preceding, as another great Irish success, which, in its second edition, is much cheaper and yet quite beautiful enough for Christmas purposes, we may name Mr. Justice O'Hagan’s “Song of Roland.” The more we ponder on its the more we marvel and rejoice that so eminent a literary feat was reserved to be accomplished so successfully by the busy lawyers who is now chief of the Irish Land Commission.
The accomplished daughter of the late Colonel Chesney conveys, ina very agreeable manner, a vast amount of information about Egypt, under the title of “The Land of the Pyramids.” The publishers, Cassell & Company, have been wonderfully liberal in illustrating the lively narrative with pictures and portraits, very well engraved and nearly as numerous as the pages.
We reserve for next month extended notices of an important work by the Most Rev. Dr. Ricards of South Africa, and two learned treatises which have been sent by New York publishers. We must mention “The Catholic Hymnal,” by the Paulist, Father Alfred Young, large volume containing the finest collection of hymns and canticles, words and music, that we have ever seen. Many of the hymns are original.
A very much smaller collection, but excellent in its kind, is “St. George’s Hymn Tune Book,” compiled by the Rev. Joseph Reeks (Burns & Oates), which has reached a second edition.
The Rev. D. Chisholm of Aberdeen has brought out already nine monthly penny parts of “ The Catholic Child’s Treasury,” for which Messrs. James Duffy & Sons are the Irish agents. Admir- bly selected stories and anecdotes from the Lives of the Sainte and other sources.
Mrs. Cashel Hoey, who has written so many successful novels of her own, has given M. Charles D’Hericault the benefit of her great literary skill in turning into English his excellent tale, “ Les- Aventures de Deux Parisiennes pendant la Terror,” which Messrs. M. H. Gill & Son have brought out most readably under the title
Notes on New Books. 51
of, “1794: A Tale of the Terror.” This firm rivals on its own premises the best London book-binders, representing ingeniously on the cover the bonnet rouge and the guillotine. This is very superficial criticism; but we have said already that it is an excellent tale translated excellently.
“The Foundation of Death: a Study of the Drink Question,’ by Axel Gustafson (Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co.), is a fine volume of six hundred pages, full of the most solid and interesting matter concerning the use of intoxicating drinks. Its learning and literary skill are unquestionable. Cardinal Manning has com- mended it earnestly. Fifteen hundred copies were sold in five weeks. It is sure to run through many editions, and to be always a standard work on the subject. Though some of its conclusions would not pass the censorship of the Catholic moralist, its immense array of well-authenticated facts cannot fail to produce wholesome impressions on all who study them for their own profit, or for the good of others whom they more practically concern.
From Mr. Washbourne of London, we have received at the last moment two new story-books, one of which pleased us greatly —‘ Snowflakes, and other Tales,” by M. Sinclair Allison. Shall we say Mr. or Mrs. or Miss? Miss Allison has a bright fancy and a graceful style. We recommend this pretty book cordially to the notice of our juvenile readers and their aunts; and when we next see Miss Allison’s name on a title page, we shall open the book with interest. The other tale from Paternoster-row is not
for children, and has a good deal of cleverness and variety—“ The-
Brides of Kensington ”—but Miss Bridges ought to have submitted her book to some judicious censor who would have cut out sundry phrases about the doctrine of a Trinity and about a religious vocation, &c. Have not those conversion stories been a little overdone? The conversation is a good deal in the old Amanda Fitzalan style, from whom indeed one of the characters takes his name.
“Art M‘Morrough O’Cavanagh, Prince of Leinster, an Historical Romance of the Fourteenth Century” (M. H. Gill & Son), is the fourth of a series of novels founded on Irish history, each of them filling an ample tome of some seven hundred solid pages. The literary and patriotic ardour which makes Miss M. L. O’Byrne persevere in such labours is worthy of earnest praise. But the author of “The Collegians” failed, we fear, to secure readers of his Irish historical novels; and Miss O’Byrne’s style is not so attractive as Gerald Griffin's. Her previous efforts
52 Our Contemporaries.
have been commended by such journals as The Month, The Tablet, and The Nation ; and the present tale is equally meritorious in its aims, its spirit, and its execution. But its perusal requires a good deal of the author’s knowledge and enthusiasm.
“The Catholic Family Annual for 1885” is one of the best things ever published by the New York Catholic Publication Society, which has done excellent service to Catholic literature. At home, Messrs. James Duffy & Sons have just brought out a large and handsome prayer-book, compiled by Father Jarlath Prendergast, O.8.F. It is called The Franciscan Manual, and is specially adapted to the use of Members of the Third Order of St. Francis, so earnestly recommended in a recent encyclical of Leo XIII.
Some other books must wait till next year. May it be a happy year for our Magazine and its readers !
OUR CONTEMPORARIES.
GREAT deal of good, honest literary work is done, week by week A and month by month, all the world over, along with plenty that is neither good nor honest. Useful and interesting subjects are served up in convenient doses in the periodical press. Some think that this makes the writing and reading of complete and solid treatises im- possible; but many eubjects and many readers do not admit of com- plete and solid treatises. Most people can crush into a short paper all that they know on a subject and more than most people care to learn about it. Meanwhile, books also go on getting written and printed in sufficient numbers.
‘We must confine ourselves to the Catholic periodical press, and in the Catholic periodical press we naturally single out those that single us out, and we limit our notice to those that take the trouble of in- viting our notice.
Which is farthest away, Boston or Philadelphia? Notre Dame in Indiana, is farther away than either; but the Ave Maria is already familiar to all our readers, and we believe it has secured a wider cir- culation than any similar publication. The Amerscan Catholic Quarterly, whose home is the aforesaid City of Brotherly Love is a worthy suo- cessor of Brownson’s Review, and a worthy rival of the Dublin; and it has fully maintained its high standard of excellence. From Boston
Our Contemporaries. 58
comes to us regularly month by month Donahos’s Magazine, which aims at a large popular circulation and hits the mark. It furnishes & very full bill of fare suited toa great variety of palates. We have noticed no more original papers in any of its numbers than the one to which the place of honour is assigned in November. It is contributed by Mies Hannah Lynch, and is full of minute condition which is evi- dently the fruit of a careful, loving study of the subject. Fortunately the condition is set forth to the best advantage with the aid of a lively imagination and a picturesque style which will not surprise anyone who recognises in the contribution to the transatlantic magazine, the author of that exceedingly vivid piece of word-painting about the middle of our last year’s volume under the title of “ Nature’s constancy in Variety.”
The Catholic World is another visitor from the States, its head- quarters being New York. It isa dignified organ of Catholic thought, and is certainly one of our most creditable representatives in literature, strong rival of anything on this side of the Atlantic. It does not seem to be stronger but weaker in fiction.
The Messenger of St. Joseph is published nearer home—at Thurles The paper does no: do the printing justice, and neither of them is quite worthy of the excellent matter set forth. Excellent matter, and we can discern a steady improvement month by month. We take such an interest in anything bearing St. Joseph’s name that we may stoop to such minute matters as the colour of the cover: it is patrictic but unworkable. A lighter colour letting the table of contents be seen to advantage on the outside cover (like—like—erubesco referens—like our own!) would be a decided improvement. And must the advertisements be ao monotonous? The poems are very often spoiled for want of a white-line between the stanzas. If Thurles cannot attend to these technical points, it is not worthy of the honour of printing St. Joseph’s Measenger ; but we think it can, and that is why we chide it for almost spoiling a very beautiful and pathetic story by the way page 158 is printed. Very prettily told that “Novice-Master's Story” is, and there are other papers as good in the last two numbers of Zhe Messenger of St. Joseph, which has improved steadily in the two years of its young and vigorous life.
Another Messenger has lived through a greater number of years. The Hessenger of the Sacred Heart began its work in English in the year 1869, and has appeared punctually every month since then. As the shilling magazines have very generally become sixpenny, so the Hessenger also ‘stoops to conquer” and hopes to attain a wider cirou- lation among the pious Catholic public by a large diminution of price.
Separate numbers will cost twopence; but if you send a postal order for one shilling and sixpence to Rev. A. Dignam, 8.J., St. Helen’s Lancashire, the Messenger of the Sacred Heart will bring its messages to
54 Our Contemporaries.
you every month for the year 1885; and I think you will not dissolve partnership next Christmas twelvemonth.
The League of the Oross Magasine pursues its modest and useful career with much spirit and good taste. Miss Kershaw has prose and verse in the November part, both short and both good.
A paragraph from The Weekly Register of London is going the rounds of the American newspapers to the effect that, short as has been the existence of The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, it has already made bishops of four of its Editors—Dr. Moran the new Archbishop of Sydney, Dr. Carr the Bishop of Galway, the late Dr. Conroy of Ardagh, and the recently appointed Coadjutor of Clonfert, Dr. Healy, who has frequently enriched our own pages also with learned contributions con- nected chiefly with the ecclesiastical antiquities of Ireland. The present editor of the Record, the Very Rev. Robert Browne, Vice-President of Maynooth College, is fully maintaining its high standard of excellence.
Gill's Tlustrated Magazine for Young People is improving each week.
We had almost overlooked in this notice of “ Our Contemporaries” one that comes to us by mistake—TZhe Season, Lady's Illustrated Magasine. It is an English issue of the well-known journal of dress and fashion, La Saison. In its fashion-plates, and its practical discus- sion of all of those mysterious subjects which employ the thoughts of one class of the daughters of Eve, and the hands of another class, The Season seems to have good value for a shilling ; but further the present critic is not competent to pronounce.
( 55 )
MARCELLA GRACE.
BY ROSA MULHOLLAND,
Avraon or “ masrzx’s uteToRY,” “THR WIOKRD WOODS OF TOBRREEVTL,” “ ELDEROOWAN,” “THE WALEINO TREES AXD OTHER TALES,” ETC., HTC.
CHAPTER III. AT HOME IN MERRION-SQUARE.
Mars. Timothy O'Flaherty O'Kelly was sitting in her own particular snuggery in her handsome house in Merrion-square, and opposite to her on the hearth sat Father Daly, of Ballydownvalley, Distresna, Back-o’-the-mountaing, in Connaught. All of the above three names had to be put on an envelope expected to find its way into the good priest’s hand when he was at home. Backothemountains was the post town, the name of which had been Englified for convenience sake. Ballydownvalley was the parish administered by Father Daly, and Distresna was the townland on which his thatched cabin and cabbage-garden stood.
“No, Father Daly,” the lady was saying, “with all due respect to you and your views I must assure you I have made up my mind that I will never be induced to return to Crane’s Castle. Since the people have become so ungrateful as to refuse to be satisfied to live under the rule of an O’Kelly without grumbling, I will no longer sacrifice my own little pleasures in life to spend my time among them, and to show them my countenance. They object to their rents—the rents that their forefathers paid without complaint—— ”
“ Or promised to pay and could not,” put in the priest.
“True, the rents were often remitted, for which grace they did not scorn to be deeply and everlastingly grateful. The present race will never be thankful for anything.”
“Try them,” said Father Daly, drily.
“Try them? Really, Father Daly, I am astonished at you. Have I not built them a schoolhouse, put them up new houses, in which they refused to live——”
“ Not being able to meet the demand for increased rent which the mere possession of better dwellings did not enable them to pay,” said Father Daly, quietly.
“Did I not give the women flannel-petticoats. and) shawls
Vou. xm, No 140. February, 1885. 6
56 Marcella Grace.
when they were so miserably clad that I was ashamed of them as my tenantry P”’ persisted the old lady, with an angry flash of the
res.
“ And paid for them out of the surplus rent which was in your pocket and ought to have been in theirs,” returned the priest, with mild bluntness.
Mrs. O'Kelly breathed hard, and sat still for a few moments, trying bravely to restrain her wrath, for'she was a good Catholic and a kind-hearted woman according to her lights, and to quarrel with old Father Daly who had been parish priest of Ballydown- valley for thirty years, whom she knew to be honest, unselfish, and devoted to his duty, besides being her sincere friend, with all his plain speaking, would have been to her a catastrophe much to be deplored. She looked upon him as one 80 blinded by the heavenly lights of his vocation as to be an impossible guide to a sensible woman. of the world like herself; and though, from a religious point of view, she held that there could be no more worthy soul alive than this priest, yet from her vantage ground as practical woman and landlord, her own common sense (as she called it) appeared to her a far more respectable thing than the weaker enthusiasm of any one whose only concern in the universe was avowedly with charity and prayer.
“No, I will not be angry with you, Father Daly,” she said, “though I find it very hard to keep my temper. The O'’Kellys were always friends with their priests, no matter- iú
““How misguided the priests might be in venturing to give them a warning,” said Father Daly, slyly, with a twinkle in his eye.
“Exactly. Priests are rortals, after all, you know, old friend and they are liable to make mistakes like the rest of us sinners.”
“Too true.”
“ And so, you must allow me to remain where I am, and do my duty in my own way. I have been driven out of the country where my ancestors, who spent their money freely there——”
“Hunting, drinking, roistering, keeping open house for their equals in station and in folly,” said Father Daly, “ not in any way that was of use tothe poor. If you were one of these, my dear lady, I would not be asking you to return to Distresna. Better for the people to be deserted by their natural protectors than to be subject to the-bad example of such as the O’Kellys of bye-gone days.”
“T agree with you there, though the people need not have been deserted if they would have learned to be content. But their
Marcella Grace. 57
grumbles and their menaces I will not endure. And I wonder greatly, Father Daly, that you would choose such a time to come here and make such a proposal to me. The murder that occurred last night, of a landlord whose property lies not fifty miles from mine, ought to be a sufficient answer, and a very terrible one to all your suggestions as to my conduct. There was a man who, I doubt not, did his duty.”
Father Daly shuddered and sighed heavily.
“I cannot enter into that question,” he said. “ All I can say is, if you were to follow my advice you would run no risk. I pray God,” he went on with deep emotion in his face and voice, “ that whatever may happen, none of my flock may ever be stained by ever so small a participation in the crime of Cain. If I sympathise - with their cares and miseries, and strive with them to obtain redress, it is only on the express condition that they obey my teachings on higher matters and keep themselves sinless before God.”
“I am sure you do your best,” said Mra. O'Kelly, in an uncon- sciously patronising tone. “ But I am not going to take the odds as to whether the secret Fenians of your parish may receive orders to finish me or not. I have other duties in life besides trying to humour an unreasonable tenantry. I go to daily Mass, even when the weather is cold and my rheumatism troublesome. I have many charities on my hands here. I do my share in upholding the respectability of the Irish gentry in Dublin. I pay my respects periodically to the viceroy of my queen. Neither do I forget to patronise the home manufactures of my country; only this day I expect a parcel of rich tabinet, woven in Dublin, to make me a castle train. My modiste wished me to have it of Lyons velvet, but I said “no, not unless it can be made for me in Ireland.’ But, oh, Father Daly, there is something else I want to say to you. What am I to do about these dreadful O’Flahertys ?”
“Who are they, ma’am?” said the priest, his mind still running on his miserable parishioners.
“Why, don’t you know? The people who expect to be my heirs; hardly kindred, so very distantly related, and have always been as disagreeable to me as they could be. I simply can’t bear them, Father Daly, and yet I have no nearer of kin. Am I obliged to leave them my property, or can I bequeath it all to the church, or the poor?”
Father Daly reflected a few moments while an. expression something like bitterness flitted over his benevolent countenance.
58 Marcella Grace.
He knew the O’Flahertys to be rack-renting, overbearing people, whose tenants were in even a more wretched plight than the people of Distresna. It seemed, then, that his flock were doomed to fall from bad to worse. As for the alternative so wildly pro- posed by the lady as a last means of defeating the impertinent hopes of the objects of her dislike—that is, the idea of her leaving her property to the poor—well it suggested to the priest one of those fine ironical touches which life is always putting to our plans and projects. On the one hand, a half-starved population drained of a rent a fair deduction from which would help to feed them, and on the other a fortune setting out to look for the poor!
“I cannot undertake to advise you about that,” he said. “ Are you sure you have no nearer kindred in the world than the O'Flahertys P”
“I am afraid—I am quite sure. For a long time I had some hope that a younger branch of our family might turn up. There was one who sank in the world and was forgotten. He might have left heirs, but I hardly hope now to discover them, if they exist. At one time I even thought of adopting somebody. There is Bryan Kilmartin, a fine fellow and always a pet of mine till lately. Since he has shown such very erratic tendencies, quite mixed himself up with Nationalists in politics, I, of course, have changed my views, And seeing that he has disappointed me I shall look for no ope else. Now, stay, you are not going away, Father Daly. Would it really be right to leave all I have to the
cP”
Poerather Daly had taken his hat, and only for this question would have gone out of the room with his present thoughts unspoken. But Mrs. O’Kelly’s eagerly repeated query about the poor was the last straw that broke the back of his patience.
“When you are about making that will” he said, “consult some one who knows less of your hardness to those poor whom God placed in your power in this life, thanI do. Better, I tell you, to do good while you live than try to snatch back at it with your dead hand. Better be just with your worldly goods from a pure intention than assume generosity in your last hour for the purpose of gratifying your dislike to your neighbour.”
He raised his hand in warning, and the old lady got up from her chair and confronted him, with angry eyes and a convulsive movement of the head.
“That will do, Father Daly,” she said with an, hysterical quaver in her voice. “I will trouble you no further at present. Do
Harcella Grace. 59
not let me detain you any longer, and please don’t return here till I send for you.”
“I will not, ma'am. Trust me, I will not,” said the priest, faintly, and turned away to the door, feeling with a pang that he had lost an old friend and injured the cause of his people as well. He fumbled for his stick in the hall, and took an umbrella instead, then had to turn back and rectify his mistake.
“Now, what does be ailin’ Father Daly to-day anyway?” said the butler to himself, as he stood on the threshold of the big hall-door and watched the old man trudging down the square, absently holding his stick upright like an umbrella, for it was raining. “I suppose the mistress is after rakin’ him about thim rents down at Disthresna. Throth an’ she might lave Father Daly alone. But sure, though she’s the good misthress to live with, still she does be the divil when she takes a thing in her head.”
It was Mrs. O’Flaherty O’Kelly’s day at home, and visitors were already waiting for her in the drawingroom, whither she repaired as soon as she could remove the traces of excitement from her countenance. As she sailed in with her rich black silk dress trailing behind her, her black lace shawl floating from her shoulders, and her white lace cap crowning her whiter locks, she looked as stately an old lady as could be found in the three kingdoms.
“ Dear Mrs. O'Kelly, how very well you're looking!” cried a tongue. with a Galwegian brogue, and a tall florid young woman came with a bouncing movement across the floor to meet her.
“Thank you, Miss O'Flaherty, I don’t know that a flush arising from vexation makes one look particularly well, especially when it gets into the nose. Now, my flush always gets into my nose, and so I would rather you didn’t notice it.”
“Dear Mrs. O'Kelly, you are always so original. And no wonder you are vexed. Everybody is so wretched about this dreadful murder. Nobody knows whose turn will come next. And to think of them following him to Dublin! It is very com- forting at any rate to those who take the risk of staying on the spot all the year round as poor papa does at Mount Ramshackle. People who run away don’t fare any better, it seems.”
“Humph!” said Mrs. O'Kelly, twitching the end of her lace shawl with nervous fingers. She was well aware of several of Mr. O’Flaherty’s reasons for living permanently at Mount Ram- shackle. In the first place he was what is called a Sunday-man,
60 Marcella Grace.
who, on week-days, was safe from his creditors only within his own walls, and could not stroll abroad with security except on the Sabbath ; in the second place, he was enamoured of the “ mountain dew ” of his native wilds, and, being so, preferred to blush unseen in his privacy, rather than show his rubicund countenance on the highways of the world. So, when Miss O'Flaherty boasted that her papa had never deserted his post at home, while other people lived as absentees wherever they pleased, Mrs. O'Kelly always said “ Humph !”
““ But I am sure I do not wonder,” Miss O'Flaherty went on, sipping her tea, “at anyone running away from such ungrateful savages. If I did not escape sometimes myself, I should die of disgust.”
Now, Mrs. O'Kelly knew well that whatever right she had to the gratitude of her tenantry the O’Flahertys had none. They had built no houses and bestowed no petticoats. The tradition of their family, still admirably cherished, had, always been to spend twopence for every penny they could wring out of the wretched tillers of the rocky and boggy wilderness which was crowned by the glory of Mount Ramshackle,—owing the balance to anyone who would credit them. Miss O'Flaherty looked on the poor of her father’s estate much as she regarded the lean horses that dragged her up and down the hilly roads, and the sheep that were killed to furnish the frequent leg of mutton for the family table. They were there for her support and convenience, and any sign of unwillingness on their part was to be infinitely derided. Mrs. O'Kelly knew that in very truth there was much more sympathy between her own views of the people and those of Father Daly, than between her own views and those of Miss O'Flaherty. And therefore though to many and various ears the lady of Distresna would formally abuse her tenants and complain of their treatment of her, yet never would she be betrayed into such weakness in presence of an O'Flaherty. Between them and herself she drew such a broad line that by no chance or artifice could she be brought to mingle her grievances with theirs. And it must be said, in justice to her, that her objection to think of the O’Flehertys as her heirs, was not entirely caused by personal dislike of them. In spite of her present anger at the peasantry of Distresna, she felt a genuine distaste to the idea of their falling into O’Flaherty hands. And this distaste was strengthened when it happened, as it sometimes would, that after listening to Miss O’Flaherty’s views as now, she heard her in conversation with some one else, alluding
Marcella Grace. 61
to the estate of Distresna, as if it was already in the possession of her family.
Miss O’Flaherty was not in the dark as to this peculiarity of the old lady, but thought herself quite safe in teasing her. She had no nearer of kin to whom to leave her lands. But when Mrs. O'Kelly refused to reply to her remarks, as now, and began to twitch the corner of her shawl, Miss O’Flaherty thought it prudent to change the conversation.
“I'm just after meeting Bryan Kilmartin in Nassau-street,” said Miss O’Flaherty, who was not above sprinkling her conversa- tion with Hibernicieme, “and I asked him what he thought of this murder, and how he intended to go on defending the people and talking about their virtues.”
“ And pray, what did he answer you?” asked Mrs. O’Kelly, erecting her head as if to declare that here was another of her pet hobbies going to be taken from under her and ridden to death before her eyes, and that she would not have it, would seize it by the reins and bring it to a dead stop rather than trust it to another. “I should think Mr. Bryan Kilmartin would have a keener appreciation of the iniquity of murder than you could have, in proportion to the superior size of his heart and brains.”
Miss O'Flaherty tittered. ‘Dear Mrs. O'Kelly, you do use such eloquent language. Can you think men’s hearts and brains are really larger than ours, now? I am nearly as tall as he is, you know. Iconfesshe remarked that he had no sympathy with mur- derers ; but rather spoiled the statement, however, by saying that his opinion of the virtues of the people remained the same.”
“A rash fool is sometimes more admirable than a pradent rogue,” said Mrs. O'Kelly, oracularly.
“Well, I wouldn't quite call him a fool,” said Miss O'Flaherty.
“TI should think not,” retorted the old lady ; and she was just sharpening her tongue to say something which would make it clear to her visitor that she did not forget the court that had at one time been paid, and in vain, to her favourite-in-disgrace by the ladies of Mount Ramshackle, when more visitors poured in, and the conversation became general—fluctuating as to subject between the terrible murder in the city-streets last night, and the approaching drawingroom at the castle.
“ So lucky it was not an official !” said a sprightly girl who was looking forward to the season of amusement which is so short in Dublin. “How dreadful if anything had stopped, the Castle balls !”
62 Harcella Grace.
“Now, Katty,” said her sister, “ don’t pretend to be so heart- less!”
“Well, I did not even know him, and I hear he was an ogre,” said Miss Katty, pouting. ““I wouldn't kill even an ogre myself. But I never did him any harm, and I don’t see why he should interfere with my dancing.”
“He won't,” said another lady. “ What are you going to wear at the drawingroom P ”
“Now, ladies,” said Mrs. O'Kelly. “I am going to petition you in favour of tabinet. I have been directed to a first-rate weaver, who will give you a splendid quality cheaper than the shops. I have ordered a train myself, and I am expecting the material home this afternoon. If it comes in time, I will show it to you.”
me The colours are so ugly,” said a graceful woman, the wife of a leading queen’s counsel who was on the eve of being made solicitor-general, a lady who had accepted all the recent improve- ments in colour as to dress and furnishing. ‘Poplin will never revive until the new delicate shades are introduced.”
“I forgot your esthetic tendencies,” said Mrs. O'Kelly, with a compassionate smile. “ Indeed, I must say, for my part, I hope the weavers will keep to their genuine greens, blues, and ambers, and leave us something with a bit of colour in it. I confess I am not of the die-away school, Mrs. O’Shaughnessy.”
Mrs, O'Shaughnessy slightly shrugged her graceful shoulders, and glanced round the fiercely ugly room which boldly claimed for its mistress a place in the first rank of the Philistines. The builder had long ago made the room handsome, with ceiling exquisitely carved in wreaths and figures, and with noble old chimney-pieces of inlaid and sculptured marble. But the gilded consol-tables, the carpet of brilliant varieties, the crude colours swearing at one another from ottoman to couch, and from easy- chair to lounge, so distracted the eye that the only beautiful things of the interior passed unnoticed.
“But, Mrs. O'Kelly,” said another young woman, the daughter of a prominent Castle official, who had of late bravely improved her apartments at home, “I assure you the new colours are admitted to be the best. Why even in the wilds of Donegal the peasants are knitting them into stockings and jerseys for sale. New dyes have been sent over from England.”
“It may be, it may be,” said Mrs. O'Kelly. “I do not worship everything English as you do, my dear Miss Nugent. I
Marcella Grace. 68
hold that just as many mistakes are made in England as in Ireland, which God know is saying enough.”
And then, feeling that her temper, which had never recovered Father Daly’s home-thrust, was getting the better of her again, the old lady got up and rang the bell.
“See if that parcel of tabinet has come home yet, Murphy,” she said, “and, if so, bring it to me.”
“There's a young woman down below wid it, ma’am,” said Murphy, briskly.
«Bring me the parcel then, and tell the young woman to wait,” said Mrs. O'Kelly.
The poplin but a few hours ago taken from Grace’s loom was carried to the drawingroom, opened out, looped about the chairs, hung over the back of a couch, displayed in every light for the admiration of the assembled ladies.
“You see this is only a sober purple,” said Mrs. O'Kelly, “Cas I would not of course go out in anything gay. And for even duller people than me there is a lovely grey, and they have a very good brown also and a handsome myrtle green. But I confess, if I were young, it would be the emerald green, and the torquoise blue, and the carnation pink, that I would be thinking of.”
After the tabinet had been admired, criticised, and pulled about for half an hour, and two fresh tea-pots had been emptied, fortunately not over it, but only over the debate upon it, the visitors disappeared at last, and left Mrs. O'Flaherty O'Kelly rather tired after her ‘ day.”
“Roll it up again, Murphy,” she said, wearily, looking at the poplin, “ang put it in the paper, and then poke the fire. And stay, I will go down myself and speak to that young woman. Where is she, Murphy P”
“I put her in the library, ma’am,” said Murphy.
Mrs. O'Kelly drew her shaw] around her and moved slowly down the stairs, sighing as she went. What with her feud with her people, Father Daly’s denunciation of her rightminded con- duct, Miss O'Flaherty’s general unpleasantness and particular fling at Bryan Kilmartin, and finally, the new-fangled ways of fashionable women who would not wear sensibly-dyed poplin for the good of their country, her heart felt very sore. What a world of contradictions and misunderstanding this was! It were good to flee away from it and be at rest!
The library-door was not quite shut and she did not make sufficient noise in opening it further to disturb the young woman
64 Marcella Grace.
from the weaver’s, who was standing at the table looking up at a portrait that hung over the chimney-piece. In the long strip of looking-glass that divided the mantle-shelf from the picture frame, the face of the gazing girl, whose back was to the door, was reflected, and Mrs. O'Kelly had not taken two steps into the room before she stopped and stood quite still in astonishment. The upraised face framed in its shabby little black bonnet which she saw in the glass of course belonged to the young woman who
had brought her tabinet from the weaver'’s, and yet to Mrs. ” O’Kelly’s eyes at that moment it appeared to be exactly the same face as that of the lady in the picture on which its eyes were so earnestly fixed.
Recovering from her surprise Mrs. O’Kelly spoke, and Mar- cella Grace, startled to find that she had so far forgotten herself, in her study of the picture as to fail to hear the lady enter the room, turned quickly round, colouring deeply.
“It was you who brought the poplin? Yes; well, please to tell Mr. Grace that I like it very much, and will do my best to get him some orders,” said Mrs. O'Kelly, having got qnite to the other side of the table where she could see the weaver’s messenger in a better light. Then she dropped into a chair, and looked long at the girl, turned away and poked the fire, and then faced the girl again and stared at her.
“Thank you,” said Marcella; ‘shall you require the piece of grey poplin you spoke about P My father would like to know.”
“No—that is, yes. Wait a moment, young woman. I ama little tired, and I forget this moment what I wanted to say to you.”
She put her hand up to her head, and holding it there, looked covertly at the face of the portrait.
“ Yes, it is a remarkable likeness” she was thinking, “a very unaccountable likeness. How in the world can there be such a resemblance between my poor dead sister and this weaver's girl P”
“ Are you Mr. Grace’s daughter P” she asked, as Marcella stood patiently waiting her pleasure. Now, that her passing blush had disappeared, the girl was very pale, and the clear dark beauty of her eyes, with their proud yet tender gravity of expression, struck the old lady forcibly.
“Yes,” said Marcella, “you may safely trust me with any message to him.”
“I don’t doubt it,” said Mrs. O'Kelly, absently, not knowing what she was saying. She felt so strangely attracted, to. this
Marcella Grace. 65
weaver's girl that she could not bear to let her go out of her presence without further parley ; and yet she could think of no pretence upon which to detain her. Feeling that some effort was necessary, she struggled to make one.
“Well, my dear, your father is a very clever weaver and I want to talk about him and his work. You see it is raining, and I hope you are not in a hurry.”
“Not at all,” said Marcella, “though I do not mind the rain.”
“Now, I wonder if Murphy would think it very extraordinary if I asked him to bring the girl a cup of tea? ‘Well, I don’t care if he does. I am mistress in my own house. And I wild know something more about this handsome creature,” thought Mrs. O'Kelly; and she rang the bell.
“Murphy, make some freah tea, and bring it here.”
“Is it here, ma'am P”
“Yes, Murphy.”
“I will, ma'am ; ” and Murphy stared and withdrew.
“Now, my dear, take off your wet cloak and sit down. You must know I have taken it into my head to patronise poplin, and I am doing my very best to stir up a feeling for it among my acquaintances.”
“You are very good, madam,” said Marcella, as the old lady helped her to take off her cloak and made her sit near the fire. The tea was brought, and while the girl drank it Mrs. O'Kelly proceeded to explain to her all about the objections which the fashionable ladies were making to the old-fashioned dyes, and to impress upon her that there was a necessity for introducing new ones in the manufacture of poplin. An hour ago she could not have believed that she should ever be induced to advocate so absurd a movement, but in her eagerness to see more of this interesting young woman, she had grasped at the subject as affording the only excuse she could think of for a conversation.
Marcella listened with interest, but when the lady had ceased speaking said, sighing :
“I fear, madam, my father is not young enough to make efforts to improve his trade. I understand your meaning perfectly, and T hope the younger weavers may profit by your advice. But my poor father’s day for such things is over, I am greatly afraid.”
Mrs. O’Kelly listened, wondering to hear how well she expressed herself.
“Well, we shall see,” she said ; “I donot mean to lose sight of your father, however.” And then she prolonged, the conversation,
66 Marcella Grace.
by various little artifices inducing the girl to speak her mind, till at last she could make no further excuse for detaining her, and allowed her to depart.
As it was now quite dusk, Mrs. O'Kelly rang for her reading lamp, and when again left alone stood before the fire-place holding the light above her head and gazing at her sister's portrait.’ Truly the face was wonderfully like the young face under the little black bonnet that had confronted her for the last half hour. There was the same broad brow expressive of mingled sentiment and strength, the same tender mouth, the same grave and steadfast eyes. The girl in the picture had more colour in her face and was richly dressed, and her dark hair was arranged in a bye-gone fashion ; but yet the likeness remained. What a curious accidental resem- blance !
That night Mrs. O'Kelly wakened with a start out of her first sleep, thinking her young sister long years dead, laid in her grave at the age of twenty-one, was standing by her bed and had spoken to her. “These likenesses do spring up among branches of the same family, skipping a generation or two,” was the thought standing clearly in her mind, as if some one had said the words to her; and she lay awake all night after that, revolving the curious suggestion in her brain. How could the daughter of a weaver have any connexion with her family P And then an echo of her own words, spoken to Father Daly, came floating across her memory— there was one who sank in the world and was forgotten. He might have left heirs, but one could hardly hope now to discover them, if they exist.” Long before the tardy daylight came, Mrs. O'Kelly had worked herself into a feverish state over these fancies, and was down stairs half an hour earlier than usual, studying again the features of the long-dead sister, who had been the darling of her early youth.
“TI must see the girl again,” she decided, “or I shall have a fever. I will send for patterns of all the colours of poplins at present made. That will be a good excuse. Probably by another light the young woman will look quite different. I was disturbed yesterday, and in a condition to become the prey of distressing fancies.”
In the meantime, Marcella had taken her way home, well pleased at hearing her father’s work commended, yet fearing that he would resent the lady’s suggestions for improvement. She knew he believed his work to be, as it stood, the most perfect fabric in the world. Now, if he would only teach her his art, she would
Marcella Grace. 67
strive to profit by the hints offered, and if a good market were to open up she might employ others to help in the work. A bright idea occurred to her, that if she could learn, unknown to him, from some other weaver in the neighbourhood, she might ensure a certain development for her plans before telling him of their existence. Then she could happily provide for his old age, and at the same time find full play for her own industrial activity. Having arrived so far in her bright speculations she suddenly remembered that money might be necessary in order to start her fairly. How hard that she seemed to be driven back from every opening which hope and energy pointed out to her! Where in all the wide world could she find even one pound to start her upon a profitable career P
Wrapped in these thoughts, she had threaded the gayest thoroughfares of Dublin, without even seeing the people or the shops, but now, having arrived at the foot of Dame-street, and before proceeding up Cork Hill towards the Castle, she shook herself out of her dreams and noticed the crowd standing right in her way, staring at the placards hung out before the office of an evening newspaper. With a painful start she suddenly remem- bered some things that had for the moment passed from her mind— the curious events of the night before, and the terrible fact of the murder committed in the streets not far from her home. For the placards on the newspaper-office were declaring the news of the murder in huge letters to the world, and announcing a great reward for the apprehension of the murderer, or for information which might lead to the same.
She stood for a few moments, gazing at the placard, with a sharp line drawn between her smooth brows, while her imagination realised the thing that had occurred and her heart grew chill with the horror of it. Then with a shudder she drew her thin mantle more closely round her and turned her face away from the staring letters on the wall, and began to make her way as skilfully as she was able through the crowd.
Doing so, she started and drew back a little, then slightly turned so as to get another glimpse of a face and figure standing on the pavement, with eyes fixed on the newspaper placards. “ One thousand pounds reward!” proclaimed the great letters on which this gazer’s eyes were fixed. It was the hero of last night's adven- ture who stood there in the daylight before her, the man whom she had hidden in the closet and whom the police had searched for in vain. Had it all been a dream, or had this tall elegant looking
Vou, xx. No. 140.
68 Marcella Grace.
man, this gentleman every inch, really lain concealed at her mercy, actually placed his liberty and safety in her hands? Mechanically she put her hand to her breast to feel the ring that hung round her neck, and the small hard circlet, found by her touch, even through the folds of her dress, assured her of the reality of much besides its own existence.
Another glance at the gentleman standing in the crowd reading the newspaper placards convinced her as thoroughly that this was the man. There were the tall figure and brave carriage, also the pale, clean-cut features, piercing grey eyes, and forehead, indicative of high resolve. His level brows were knit in thought as he stood gazing at the sinister proclamations. Having observed him eagerly for a few moments, Marcella became suddenly fearful that he might wheel round and see her so watching him, and she turned and hurried forward on her way.
And all through the streets as she went, with the darkness descending upon her she heard the little newspaper-boys shrieking their direful tidings along the pavements: “ Terrible murder in Dublin streets last night. One thousand pounds reward for any infor- mation of the murderers!” And she began to run, to escape out of reach of the piercing and ill-omened cries.
CHAPTER IV. STRANGE TIDINGS.
Dunrtne the next few days Marcella traversed many times that part of the city, lying between the Liberties and Merrion-square; for Mre. O’Kelly’s interest in the girl had no way decreased, and she made many excuses for bringing the weaver’s daughter to her side. Her father’s objection to the idea of now dyes “ which the rale ould quality in the days when Dublin had quality” never thought of wanting, his increasing inability to work, and her own desires , to take up his art herself, and improve upon it, and devote her energies to its development, made fruitful subjects of conversation between her patroness and herself, after the old lady had once for all won the younger woman's confidence. And meanwhile Mrs. O'Kelly had contrived to draw the girl’s personal history from her lips. Before a week had elapsed, she had learned all about the lady- mother whose bitter reverses of fortune had driven her to sit meekly at the weaver’s fireside.
Marcella Grace. 69
There was a month of intense excitement for Mrs. O'Kelly, during which she had almost daily consultations with her solicitor, and frequently wept as she sat alone in the evenings under the portrait in her library. So lonely had she grown to feel in her great drawing-room upstairs, that she had caused her workbasket, novel, and favourite foot-stool to be carried down to the room where her sister's portrait hung, and where she was accustomed to receive Marcella in the mornings. And here she ransacked old desks and sorted old family letters and papers, and eagerly read the com- munications forwarded to her every evening by her solicitor.
At the end of a month her excitement rose to a climax when the result of investigations into the fate of a cousin of hers, who had ruined himself after the fashion of certain Connaught gentry of those times, and disappeared from society, was announced to her, and when the supposition started in her mind by Marcella’s likeness to a family portrait, finally gave place to certainty. On the formal page, and in the stiff terms of a lawyer’s letter, such positive assurance was conveyed to her one night asled her to drop upon her rheumatic knees, and lift up her trembling hands to heaven, and thank God that a daughter had been given to her old age, and, we fear we must add, that the intolerable O’Flahertys were defeated ! :
The next morning found her driving througk Dublin mud into the objectionable region of the Liberties, with the intention of seeing old Grace, and breaking her extraordinary news to him. ‘When the neat brougham stopped before the weaver’s door, the neighbours said to each other that Michael Grace was beginning to go up in the world again.
Marcella was out upon some message for her father, and the weaver was smoking his mid-day pipe alone when the lady, having climbed his stair with difficulty, ushered herself into his presence :
“I have come to see you, Mr. Grace. I am Mrs. O'Kelly.”
After a little preliminary skirmishing about poplins, she would proceed to open her battle with this coarse and common old man, who, unfortunately, stood between her and her desires.
“ Bedad, ma’am, and it’s welcome ye are to see the whole of my management, An’ I hope it’s another grand gown ye're goin’ to order—something beautiful and bright, none o’ them pale spirit- less things they do be havin’ in the silks and satins in the shop- windows now-a-days.”
“I hope to give you an excellent order, Mr. Grace. Ilikethe old colours myself and will always wear them, but some of my
70 Marcella Grace.
friends cry out for more sickly tints. Fashion is a ridiculous thing; is it not, Mr. Grace?”
“Deed, an’ it is, ma'am. Niver a word of lie in that. But niver will Michael Grace sit before a loom to weave such rubbitch as thim pinks and greens,” he said, pitching a little bundle of patterns of silk contemptuously on the table. “ Why, ma'am, I've wove poplin that ’ud stand alone for ‘her Excellencyess the Lady Liftenant—not this one, but her that was in the Castle whin I was a younger man, ma’am, an’ was a master-weaver ;—an’ ye
-wouldn’t have found holes, in my stairs then, ma’am. Niver to
spake,” he added, with a change of tone, “of all that I wove for my own wife, ma’am—her that was a lady born and bred, ma'am, body an’ soul, an’ betther blood niver came out o' the province of ould Connaught!”
It was only his way of dragging his wife’s name, half through Doastfulness, half through genuine sentiment, into every conver- sation he held, no matter with whom. The neighbours knew this, and would say, “ Aye, Misther Grace, thrue for you, indeed,” and
-pass on, but Mrs. O'Kelly thought the confidence special to herself, and very remarkable. Had anyone prepared him for her coming? At all events this out-spokenness of his smoothed the way for her own difficult communication. .
“I know, Mr. Grace, I know all about that,” she"said, trying hard to keep a patronising air and not to betray her nervousness. “ And it is about your wife I have come here to talk to you.”
Grace stared, and then quietly laid aside the piece of grass- green tabinet he had been flourishing about in the light while he
8
“I don’t see what you can know about her,” he said, “ seein’ that none o’ her own sort ever looked the way she went, not for years before she fell so low as to become an honest weaver's wife. No ladies came visitin’ to see Mrs. Michael Grace, ma’am. Them that had been her own left her to break her bit o’ a heart here at a fireside that was no fit shelter for her. And now, ma’am, what have ye got to say about her?”
“Only this, that I have just discovered that your wife was the daughter of a first cousin of mine. And you must not scold me, Mr. Grace, for I never saw her, and her father was the person to blame.”
Grace stood looking at his visitor and patroness with a dazed expression, linked his loose hands together, and drew himself up with an air of incredible dignity.
. Marcella Grace. “1
“Tt makes no odds about blame now, ma'am,” he said. “I did my best for her, and she’s gone where all the fine cousins in the world can do nothin’ for her. The angels are her cousins now, ma'am, many thanks to you.”
“But, Mr. Grace, though it cannot touch her, this may make a difference to her daughter!”
At these words the weaver’s entire aspect underwent a sudden change. All the dignity and sentiment vanished from his face, mingled cunning and triumph twinkled in his eyes, and his very attitude was expressive of the acuteness of his perception that, something had turned up for his advantage.
“That’s as may be, ma'am. But ye must remember she’s my daughter, too. What was it you were thinkin’ of doin’ for her, ma'am P” 7
“ Your extreme frankness makes my task easier than I expected it to be,” said Mrs. O’Kelly. “Mr. Grace, I will be as candid as yourself. I am a childless old woman, and I have thought of adopting your daughter as my own. I will place hor in the position of life for which nature has fitted her, and to which her mother belonged; and I will provide for her handsomely at my death.”
“See that, now,” said Grace, fumbling among his patterns, and pretending to give only half his attention to what the lady was saying. “Sure, an’ it would be an illigant settlin’ for her. An what would you be thinkin’ of doin’ for myself, ma’am ?”
“ But, Mr. Grace, you are not my blood-relation.”
“No, ma’am; and nothin’ at all of coorse to the girl that you're takin’ from me—the child that I looked to for the comfort of my last days—not many of them indeed will I see.”
After this a long conversation followed, and the end of it all was that Mrs. O'Kelly offered the weaver fifty pounds a year to give up his daughter, on condition that he was to see her no more, except on rare occasions, when she might find it convenient to pay him a visit. But this offer Grace indignantly refused.
“She'll be here again to-morrow,” he reflected, “ doublin’ her pension to me, and in the manetime I will talk to the girl about it. Sure it is we'll make a handsome thing out of it. Only we mustn’t be in too great a hurry settlin’ our bargain. Och, an’ faix it’s a fine sight betther than marryin’ the girl agin her will,and dependin’ for the rest o’ my time on a son-in-law! An’, bedad, when the girl gets her own way wid the lady she'll be takin’ her ould father out to drive wid her in her carriage every day. An’ it’s dinin’ wid the
72 Marcella Grace.
Lord Liftenant you'll be, Michael Grace, before you die. Divil a doubt of it!”
Finding the old fellow grew more impracticable the longer she stayed, Mrs. O'Kelly desisted from further bargaining on this occasion and departed, looking forward with keen pleasure to the unfolding of her intentions to Marcella, who as yet had heard no hint of the changes in store for her.
When Marcella returned home with her scanty marketing she found her father wrapped in clouds of tobacco-smoke, and beaming with mysterious delight. He broke his news to her cautiously, with a half fear that she would fly out of the house before he had finished, and bestow herself unconditionally on her prosperous kinswoman.
“It's a little story I was makin’ up to amuse myself,” he said; “ an’, if it comes thrue, we'll have no more need for work ; so you needn't be takin’ looks at the loom. An’ ye needn't be gettin’ ina fright nayther, about marryin’ ; for, if it comes to pass, it’sa duke you'll be condescendin’ to for your husband. An’ maybe it’s the Queen herself ‘Il de recavin’ us at her table—the pair of us!”
“Father! ” said Marcella, reproachfully, thinking he was jeer- ing at her.
“Now, what title will I be after takin’, if they offer me one P My Lord Grace would sound well, I’m thinkin’. An’ isn’t that what they call the dukes, machree P””
“Dear father, I’m sure you would not care for a title, if you had one.”
“Wouldn’t I, Miss?” said Grace, chuckling with pleasure at her utter unconsciousness of the great fortune that was awaiting her. “ But let me tell you my story, alanna.”
“ Yes, father dear, you can tell it while I’m making your tea,” said Marcella, glad to find him in so pleasant a humour, and begin- ning to arrange the delft tea-cups.
“ My good little girl,” said the old man, patting her cheek, “you and J will never part, mavourneen, while thé sod is growin’ undher my feet and not over them. Afther that you can do as you plase, Marcella.”
Marcella put an arm round his neck and returned his caress.
“Mind you have promised that,” she said, playfully ; “ and you are going to teach me to work, and to dye the silks to please the fine ladies ”
“Oh, you foolish child, sure it’s you that'll be wearin’ the silke, Aisy, now, an’ I'll tell you the whole story.”
Marcella Graco. “8
It was a long time before Marcella could take it in. She thought her father was amusing himself with idle dreams of what might happen, as he had always been rather fond of doing. It was clear the lady had been to see him in her absence, and had been particularly kind, and her friendliness had suggested the extrava- gant fancies in which the old man had since been indulging over his pipe.
“« And supposin’,” he said, “ that Mrs. O'Kelly was to declare that she was your mother's cousin. ‘An’ bein’ very rich, an’ without a child,’ says she, ‘what can I do but take your daughter for my own? An’ I'll put her in her mother’s shoes,’ says she, ‘an’ well becomes her to stand in them. For she’s a handsome girl,’ says Mrs. O'Kelly, ‘an’ a credit to the genthry of Connaught.’ ”
Marcella had got her sewing, and was listening half-amused and half-impatient to her father’s romancing. Such thingsas this did often happen in stories or indreams, When she was younger, she had sometimes indulged in wild imaginings about her mother’s people, wondering would they ever think of her, find her out, and encourage her. But she was too old in experience to expect any such miracle now. And it pained her to have such bright impos- sibilities flung into her thoughts.
Seeing that none of his hints conveyed anything of the truth to her mind, Grace at last got provoked at her.
“Marcella,” he said, “ will you put down that sewin’ and listen to me? All that I have been sayin’ to you is gospel truth. An’ you're to put on your bonnet and go over an’ have a talk about it all with your cousin, Mrs. O'Flaherty O'Kelly of Merrion-square, this evenin’, Only, mind, you and me are to keep together, Mar- cella, no matter what she says. I’m not goin’ to give up my child, an’ be lonely in my latter days, not to plase no fine madam of a Connaught genthrywoman, you can tell her.”
But Marcella could not be induced to set out for Merrion-square that evening on such an errand. She begged to be allowed to put off the visit till morning, and Grace, confident in the safety of his cause, consented to humour her: “ Let it be, then,” he said; “ maybe it’s as well. You'll want a few hours to think over what you'd better say to her. These fine people.have the whip-hand of such as you an’ me, for their edication’s in their favour, an’ they know what words to put into their speeches, and what words to leave out o’ them, There’s a dale o’ differ’ between dixonary words, though plain talkin’ people would hardly believe it. Am’ everything will depend on the bargain we can make wid her.”
74 Marcella Grace.
Btill Marcella could not bring herself guite to believe in his . His persistence forced her to conclude that there was some foundation for his romance, that Mrs. O'Kelly had spoken of some relationship she had discovered between herself and the weaver’s wife and meant to be helpful to them on account of it, but further than this her common sense would not allow her to go in crediting the promise of a change of fortune, although her imagination struggled wildly to seize on all that was suggested and fly away with it. She lay awake all night pondering the likelihoods of the case, and the utmost she could admit was that Mrs. O’Kelly, who had already been so wonderfully friendly, was going to assist her towards honourably earning her bread in such a way that she could support her father in his fast declining years and no longer need to dwell among the lowest population of the city. In all this lay so much cause for joy, that, accustomed to disappointment and privation as she had all her life been, she did not know how to give herself up to the expectation of it. The warning contained in her father’s words, “mind we are to keep together— I’m not goin’ to give up my child,” seemed to hint at some difficulty in the way of the fulfilment of the rich lady's intentions, a difficulty, perhaps, not to be overcome. Certainly she would never abandon her father— that was beyond question. Was it not chiefly for his sake that a change of fortune would be so acceptable to his daughter? It was hardly conceivable to her that anyone could contemplate the idea of separating her from him, now when he needed her so much, and she would have dismissed the doubt as foolish only that a long experience of living by the patronage of the better classes had taught her the rarity of their sympathy with the natural affections of the poor. The problem of what was meant and intended by the lady's strange communication and promises (exaggerated as they might be by her father’s eanguine imagination) became at last too much for her patience and her incredulity and she counted the hours till the moment might arrive when she could hear from Mrs, O’Kelly’s own lips what wonders she proposed to work within the future of two humble lives. Her father was up early and fussing about, pressing her to eat a good breakfast, and showing her many extraordinary little atten- tions; and the thought struck upon her heart with a pang, that she was perhaps more precious to him now when good fortune seemed about to drop upon her, than she had been when she had suffered hunger and hardship that he might be as comfortable as it was within her power to make him. Starting from the thought how-
After Aughrim. 75
ever, as if it had been a crime, she found a thousand excuses for him, even if such were the case.
As much to relieve her own suspense as his impatience, she hurried early across the city upon her errand of fate.
Mrs, O'Kelly was waiting for her with a feverish anxiety that was more than equal in intensity to the eagerness of old Grace himself. As soon as the girl appeared, and they were alone in the library together she took her by both hands and looked, with feeling that was almost passion, in her eyes.
“Is this my child, my adopted daughter?” she said, with a quaver of emotion and age in her voice. ‘Marcella, I have a great deal to say to you. I have been watching for you all the morning, my dear.”
AFTER AUGHRIM. BY THE AUTHOR OF “ THE MONKS OF KILCREA.”
O you remember long ago, Kathaleen, ‘When your lover whispered low, é Bhall I stay or shall I go, Kathaleen ?” And you answered proudly, “ Go And join King James and strike a blow For the Green.”
Mavrone! your hair is white as snow Kathaleen !
‘Your heart is sed and full of woe—
Do you repent you bade him go, Kathaleen?
And through your tears you answer “No!
Better die with Sarsfield so
Than live a slave, without a blow For the Green.”
NOTES OF A BHORT TRIP TO 8PAIN BY JOHN FALLON.
Parr IV.— Visrr To GRaANADA. From Seville eastwards the railway runs through a; paradise of cultivation, justly called the “ huerta ” (garden). Everywhere the golden harvest is reaped and gathered ; and here, for the first time, I witness the delightfully primitive sight of horses treading out the corn! They are driven, four abreast, and sometimes five, round and round, by one solitary man, who stands in the centre of the rustic circus, holding them all by a single rope.*
In a few exceptional cases the driver is seated on a small vehicle, probably his own manufacture, attached to one of the horses: it looks like a sleigh, but it is easy to see that it rolls on amall discs of iron. Scenes like this, as old as the Bible, fixed the educated eyes of Layard in the wilds of Armenia; but fancy viewing them from the windows of a railway carriage, here in Andalusia!
‘Already ploughing for a second crop (perhaps a third) is fast progressing: this, remember, in the middle of June! Four adjoin- ing furrows are turned almost abreast, not by a steam-plough, but by four wooden ones, drawn by four teams of oxen. The fur- rows are not cut straight home to the head-ridge, but they curve and actually turn round as they approach it, in a manner that probably was fashionable when Virgil wrote his eclogues. Still, let us not scoff at those simple methods of the olden time, since, with the magic aid of sunshine and moisture, the yield, twice or even thrice a year, would put even Midlothian to the blush !
Nor let this talk of harvest-work and tillage lead you to imagine that the landscape is all one monochrome of buff and yellow stub- bles, at this season of the year. Olive groves, at frequent intervals, spread their leaden, yet grateful freshness for miles, inwards to the foot of the hills, and up their slopes. And tall trees strange to me, blacker in foliage than ever I had seen before, cluster in clumps, each tree like a captive balloon on a straight stem. I can assure you the wealth of cooling contrast which they form isa thing which, once seen, will scarcely be forgotten.
At a mid-way station, called Bobadilla, we stop to dine; this
* This charming scene, I have no doubt, is familiar to you in pictures; and I can truly assure you thet not one of them, eo far as I know, lisa exceeded or approached the Arcadian beauty of the reality.
Notes of a Short Trip to Spain. 7
place is twenty leagues from Seville, and about the same from Granfda. The name sounds Moorish, and the dinner, to me, was almost Oriental in the novelty of its ways. | Anyone, for instance, who has ever dined at a French railway station, will retain a rather lively remembrance of the clatter of knives, and plates, and the ceaseless cry of “garcon ... gargon.” Here people devour like true hidalgos, in stately silence; and a mere clap of the hands (two fingers of the right on the palm of the left) brings a stately attendant immediately to your side.
Back to the carriages, we change trains, entering one just arrived from Malaga, furnished in saloon fashion, with movable sofas and arm-chairs. You can scarcely conceive the luxury of movable equipments, where sunshine and air currents are equally to be avoided. At home an air-current means gentle coolness; here it may mean exactly the reverse as it often did to-day, rushing in like a furnace-blast from the roasting fields. As for the sun, I do not like to speak disrespectfully of his majesty : but I can record that a thermometer, which I carry with me, steadily marked 94° in the shade, in a cool corner, on a disengaged seat! Still the heat is really not oppressive, so dry is the air; and, incredible as it may seem, there is no dust as yet !
At each station, as we pass along, a chorus of watersellers, young and old, men and women, fills the air with the cry of “ agua- @a...agua-a-a...” For a “cuarto,” or less, if you have the coin, you can purchase a full tumbler of the heaven-sent liquid : for a “real,” you become the absolute proprietor of a small jar of it, and at leisure, as you proceed, you can exercise your ingenuity in trying to drink out of one of its strange double vents. The jar is but a frail tiny thing of unglazed’ pottery, specially made as porous as possible ; still its mould is antique, like an Etruscan vase.
I am delighted with my friends, the Andalusians, as fellow- travellers. Courtesy, combined with perfect ease, seems to be their prevailing characteristic. An Andalusian will take off his hat to you, as he enters your railway carriage—in fact he will make a stately bow to all the company, as if they were peers. Thenext thing he will do, probably, is to take off his coat, and make himself comfortable and happy with his cigarette case. But here, again, his “ politesse de cceur ” intervenes, for he will never light till he has first offered his joy-inspiring package to every mortal within reach of his arms, and nobody must refuse : to do so is an affront. Five minutes after you may produce your own cigarette-case) and offer it to him in return ; rest assured he will accept as a matter of
78 Notes of a Short Trip to Spain.
course, without hesitation, and with a genial smile. 'To refuse a cigarette in Andalusia is a downright rudeness, which a Spaniard never is guilty of. If you are really a non-smoker (which pre- supposes also that you are a foreigner) a polite speech will extricate you from the dilemma, thus: “ Muchas gratias, seior, no fumo, lo siento mucho.” (Many thanks, signor, I do not smoke, I regret it exceedingly). Say this with an air of smiling regret, mispronounce the words as well as you can, and you will soon feel that you are forgiven.
I cannot help noticing here, as in the puszta of Hungary, the melancholy absence of detached cottages.* When people come to reap the wide-spreading harvest, they apparently travel prepared to camp out in their waggons, till the work is done. Several times to-day, I observed them in happy groups, having their afternoon meals, or siestas, under the tent-like shade of their four-wheeled vehicles, with shaggy dogs mounting guard ; for here, as in every clime, the dog is the true and ever faithful friend of man.
As evening falls, we get into a country of hills and ravines, where the husbandmen have their homes. Here the pomegranates flower round the clustered cottages, in a blaze of scarlet; and oleanders are growing wild along the dried up water-courses and the sides of the deep glens, in gorgeous burst of violet blossoms, like our rhododendrons at home.
Soon a further change comes in the landscape: the hills close in, volcanic-looking and steep. We run along their rugged slopes, we get into their very heurt, and the whistle of the steam-engine echoes from their heights. And now tall, handsome “ guardias civiles,” two-and-two, perfectly uniformed and equipped, pry into our carriages at each station, and scan us to see if we are brigands —proof that such personages are not an unknown quantity in these parts. What an army ten thousand of such “ guardias” would make! :
Shortly after seven the sun goes down, disappearing behind the encircling hills in a glow of crimson. Scaroely has this glory faded away when, as if by magic, the whole scene of firmament and mountain turns to blue and silver. The steep hill-sides literally sparkle in the marvellously clear moonlight, and the shadows are dark as jet. Soon we pass through the famous “ Vega,” but of it I can tell you nothing as yet, for it looked like a sea in the delusive glare. : And now, at length, Gran&da is reached, a place associated in * Detached cottages, to me, are almost an essential item of a true Arcadia,
Notes of a Short Trip to Spain. “9
every mind with poetic recollections of earliest reading. Right eagerly I jump into the diligence of the “siete suelos,” securing a front seat delightfully open to the night air on every side. Four mules form the team, gorgeous with tassels, and tinkling with Dells. These the coachman sends along through the narrow and uneven streets, without mercy for the dumb animals, or for our tired limbs. An English charioteer would moderate his pace over the sharp channels, and do his work in silence; our friend here never slackens, and keeps up a constant converse with his beasts as he goes jolting along, addressing each of them inturn. He praises one, whom he calls “ Alonzo ; ” he reasons with another, whom he calls “Carlos ;” he argues with a third, reminding him of his ances- tors; and he degenerates into downright abuse of the fourth, whom he begins by calling “Napoleon,” and ends by calling a dog ! (perro). Thus he drives, lauding, expostulating, and scolding, till he has Drought us up the steep heights of the Alhambra, and deposited us safe, but fearfully shaken, at the hospitable door of the “siete suelos.”
Here, once fairly liberated from his romance-dispelling vehicle, what a change! We stand beneath the tall elms, their foliage interlaced above, the silver moonbeams gleaming through a mur- muring stream at our feet, and the nightingales singing themselves hoarse in the shrubberies all round.
A friend suggests the words of Victor Hugo :—
“ L’Albambra, ? Alhambra, palais que les genies “Ont doré de leurs raves, et rempli d’harmonies ! ”
‘And here, at the very first moment of arrival, I have already
got the harmonies: right soon I trust to realise the rest. . . .
First day at Granéda. Of course most of this day must be devoted to the old fortress-palace of the Alhambra : and of course, also, you will not expect from me a description of the place, such as you can read, and no doubt, have read in books ; I will merely note details and thoughts which, notwithstanding such reading, come on myself by surprise, or, in some manner, as a novelty.
As you “sally out in the morning air,” the soul-refreshing sight and sound of running water meets you at every turn, for the main walks leading down the hill are bordered with streamlets derived from the Rio Darro ; and those streamlets look like spark- ling crystal as they rush murmuring along their straight and narrow
80 Notes of a Short Trip to Spain.
High in the air the tall elms meet, their soft-leaved branches forming a level canopy above, at a height of eighty or ninety feet from the ground. It is only seventy years ago, or so, since they were planted, a gift from the soldier-duke of Wellington ; and, already, their slender stems have shot up to this height, straight and branchless, till they interlace above in this strange way. And the curious thing is, that, intermixed amongst them are cherry- trees, not quite as straight-stemmed, but fully as tall.
Knowing that the Alhambra was, in Moorish days, the citadel of Gran&da, you will easily believe that the hill is dotted with fragments of the old fortifications; and thus you meet them, detached and lonely, a gate here, a tower there, a piece of wall further on. The masonry, to me, is strange and new: huge rect- angular blocks of brown concrete, resting on horizontal layers of ordinary field stones, and jointed vertically by careful brick-work : euch is the system which, so far as I can see, pervades all the remains. The concrete blocks themselves are obviously suggested by, and probably derived from, the underlying rock, which is a natural conglomerate of quite the same appearance.*
Formerly, this masonry was coated with stucco; much of it still remains on the gates, &c. Probably also this stucco was painted in horizontal stripes of dove-colour and pale vermilion, for pictures show that such is still the fashion in North Africa, where the tastes of the banished Moors survive ; but not a trace of the colouring remains here, so far as I could see.
Some of the towers are now turned to profane use, as stables for mules and goats. One, more romantically placed than the rest, in fact overlooking a precipice, is occupied by an English family, (perhaps the identical one referred to in Lady Herbert's charming book) which comes here every season, to enjoy the pure air, and listen to the nightingsles !
Of all the towers, outside the palace, by far the most interesting is the “torre de la vela,” emphatically and pre-eminently “the watch-tower” of Granfda. Washington Irving tells us how, on its summit, the great silver cross, standard of the crusade, was held up by Cardinal Mendoza and Bishop Talavéra, on the memor- able morning of the 2nd of January, 1492, and how the Christian army, which had halted, resumed its processional advance, when the sunbeams were seen glistening on this token of final triumph.
This tower is furthermore interesting in another way: every night, for ages past, a bell from its heights has been sounding the
“Of course they are hand-made, nevertheless.
Notes of a Short Trip to Spain. 81
small divisions of time, to regulate the distribution of the irrigation waters in the Vega, even thirty miles away! Irrigation, with us, poor northerns, may mean an improvement of ten, or twenty, or perhaps fifty per cent.; but here twelve hundred per cent. is the minimum! Such is the divine influence of sunshine and water combined! And be it remembered that the irrigation works of the present day were planned and carried out a thousand years ago by the ingenious Moors, and still remain as they left them, giving to the husbandman a golden value to each minute of the night and day.
Strangely intruding, in the midst of such antique surroundings, is the unfinished palace of the Emperor Charles V., built of richly- veined red marble, in the classic renaissance style of his day, with deeply champhered blocks, and battle scenes sculptured in bold relief. Within the quadrangle which it covers is a large circular “patio,” surrounded by