Against impressions of this sort, Kate knew well enough how little reasoning availed, and she forbore to press arguments which she was aware would be unsuccessful. She tried, however, to turn the current of the old woman's thoughts, by leading her to speak of the condition of the country and the state of the people. Catty gave short, abrupt, and unwilling answers to all she asked, and Kate at length arose to take her leave.

"You're goin' away, are ye?" said Catty, half angrily.

"I have only just remembered that I have a long way to walk, and it is already growing late."

"Ay, and ye 're impatient to be back again, at home, beside your own fire, with your own people. But _she_ has no home, and her own has deserted her!"

"Mine has not many charms for me!" muttered Kate to herself.

"It's happy for you that has father and mother," went on the old woman.

"Them 's the only ones, after all!--the only ones that never loves the less, the less we desarve it! I don't wonder ye came back again!" And in a sort of envious bitterness Catty wished her a good-night.

If the distance she had to walk was not shortened by the tenor of her thoughts, as little did she feel impatient to press onward. Dreary and sad enough were her reveries. Of the wild visionary ambitions which once had stirred her heart, there remained nothing but disappointments. She had but pa.s.sed the threshold of life to find all dreary and desolate; but perhaps the most painful feeling of the moment was the fact that now pressed conviction on her, and told that in the humble career of such a one as Mary Martin there lay a n.o.bler heroism and a higher devotion than in the most soaring path of political ambition, and that all the theorizing as to popular rights made but a sorry figure beside the actual benefits conferred by one true-hearted lover of her kind. "She is right, and I am wrong!" muttered she to herself. "In declining to entertain questions of statecraft she showed herself above, and not beneath, the proud position she had taken. The very lowliness of this task is its glory. Oh, if I could but win her confidence and be a.s.sociated in such a labor! and yet my very birth denies me the prestige that hers confers." And then she thought of home, and all the coldness of that cheerless greeting smote upon her heart.

The moon was up ere Kate arrived at her father's door. She tapped at it gently, almost timidly. Her stepmother, as if expecting her, came quickly, and in a low, cautious whisper told her that she would find her supper ready in her bedroom.

"To-morrow, perhaps, he may be in better humor or better spirits.

Good-night." And so Kate silently stole along to her room, her proud heart swelling painfully, and her tearless eye burning with all the heat of a burning brain.

CHAPTER x.x.x. "A TEA-PARTY" AT MRS. CRONAN'S

Once more, but for the last time, we are at Kilkieran. To a dreary day of incessant rain succeeded an evening still drearier. Wild gusts swept along the little sh.o.r.e, and shook the frail windows and ill-fitting doors of the cottages, while foam and sea-drift were wafted over the roofs, settling like snow-flakes on the tall cliffs above them. And yet it was midsummer! By the almanac the time was vouched to be the opening of the season; a fact amply corroborated by the fashionable a.s.semblage then enjoying the hospitalities of Mrs. Cronan's tea-table. There they were, with a single exception, the same goodly company already presented to the reader in an early chapter of our story. We have already mentioned the great changes which time had worked in the appearance of the little watering-place. The fostering care of proprietorship withdrawn, the ornamental villa of the Martins converted into a miserable village inn, the works of the pier and harbor suspended, and presenting in their unfinished aspect the dreary semblance of ruin and decay,--all conspired with the falling fortunes of the people to make the scene a sad one. Little evidence of this decline, however, could be traced in the aspect of that pleasant gathering, animated with all its ancient taste for whist, scandal, and shrimps; their appet.i.te for such luxuries seeming rather to have increased than diminished by years.

Not that we presume to say they could claim any immunity against the irrevocable decrees of age. Unhappily, the confession may be deemed not exactly in accordance with gallantry; but it is strictly true, time had no more forgotten the living than the inanimate accessories of the picture. Miss Busk, of the Emporium, had grown more sour and more stately. The vinegar of her temperament was verging upon verjuice, and the ill opinion of mankind experience enforced had written itself very legibly on her features. The world had not improved upon her by acquaintance. Not so Captain Bodkin; fatter and more wheezy than ever, he seemed to relish life rather more than when younger. He had given up, too, that long struggle with himself about bathing, and making up his mind to suffer no "sea-change;" he was, therefore, more cheerful than before.

As for Mrs. Cronan, "the little comforts she was used to" had sorely diminished by the pressure of the times, and, in consequence, she drew unlimited drafts upon the past to fill up the deficiencies of the present. Strange enough is it, that the faults and follies of society are just as adhesive ingredients as its higher qualities! These people had grown so used to each other in all their eccentric ways and oddities, that they had become fond of them; like a pilot long accustomed to rocks and sandbanks, they could only steer their course where there was something to avoid!

The remainder of the goodly company had grown stouter or thinner, jollier or more peevish, as temperament inclined; for it is with human nature as with wine: if the liquor does not get racier with years, it degenerates sadly.

The first act of the whist and backgammon playing was over, and the party now sat, stood, crouched, lounged, or lay, as chance and the state of the furniture permitted, at supper. At the grand table, of course, were the higher dignitaries, such as Father Maher, the Captain, Miss Busk, and Mrs. Clinch; but c.o.c.kles were eaten, and punch discussed in various very odd quarters; bursts of joyous laughter, too, came from dark pantries, and sounds of merriment mingled with the jangling crash of kitchen utensils. Reputations were roasted and pancakes fried, characters and chickens alike mangled, and all the hubbub of a festival prevailed in a scene where the efforts of the fair hostess were directed to produce an air of unblemished elegance and gentility.

Poor Clinch, the revenue officer, who invariably eat what he called "his bit" in some obscure quarter, alone and companionless, was twice "had up" before the authorities for the row and uproar that prevailed, and underwent a severe cross-examination, "as to where he was when Miss Cullenane was making the salad," and, indeed, cut a very sorry figure at the conclusion of the inquiry. All the gayeties and gravities of the scene, however, gradually toned down as the serious debate of the evening came on; which was no other than the lamentable condition of the prospects of Kilkieran, and the unanimous opinion of the ruinous consequences that must ensue from the absence of the proprietor.

"We 've little chance of getting up the news-room now," said the Captain. "The Martins won't give a sixpence for anything."

"It is something to give trade an impulse we want, sir," broke in Miss Busk,--"b.a.l.l.s and a.s.semblies; evening reunions of the _elite_ of society, where the elegance of the toilet should rival the _distingue_ air of the company."

"That's word for word out of the 'Intelligence,'" cried the Captain.

"It's unparliamentary to quote the newspapers."

"I detest the newspapers," broke in Miss Busk, angrily; "after advertising the Emporium for two seasons in the 'Galway Celt,' they gave me a leading article beginning, 'As the hot weather is now commencing, and the season for fashion approaches, we cannot better serve the interests of our readers than by directing attention to the elegant "Symposium!"' 'Symposium!'--I give you my word of honor that's what they put it."

"On my conscience! it might have been worse," chuckled out the Captain.

"It was young Nelligan explained to me what it was," resumed Miss Busk; "and Scanlan said, 'I'd have an action against them for damages.'"

"Keep out of law, my dear!--keep out of law!" sighed Mrs. Cronan. "See to what it has reduced me! I, that used to go out in my own coach, with two men in green and gold; that had my house in town, and my house in the country; that had gems and ornaments such as a queen might wear! And there's all that's left me now!" And she pointed to a brooch about the size of a cheese-plate, where a melancholy gentleman in uniform was represented, with a border of mock pearls around him. "The last pledge of affection!" sobbed she.

"Of course you wouldn't pledge it, my dear," muttered the deaf old Mrs.

Few; "and they'd give you next to nothing on it, besides."

[Ill.u.s.tration: 324]

"We 'll have law enough here soon, it seems," said Mrs. Cronan, angrily; for the laugh this blunder excited was by no means flattering and pleasant. "There 's Magennis's action first for trial at the a.s.sizes."

"That will be worth hearing," said Mrs. Clinch. "They 'll have the first lawyers from Dublin on each side."

"Did you hear the trick they played off on Joe Nelligan about it?" asked the Captain. "It was cleverly done. Magennis found out, some way or other, that Joe wanted to be engaged against him; and so what does he do but gets a servant dressed up in the Martin livery, and sends him to Joe's house on the box of a coach, inside of which was a gentleman that begged a word with the Counsellor. 'You 're not engaged, I hope, Counsellor Nelligan,' says he, 'in Magennis against Martin?' 'No,' says Joe, for he caught a glimpse of the livery. 'You're quite free?' says the other. 'Quite free,' says he. 'That's all I want, then,' says he; 'here's your brief, and here's your retainer;' and he put both down on the table, and when Joe looked down he saw he was booked for Magennis.

You may imagine how he felt; but he never uttered a word, for there was no help for it."

"And do you mean to tell me," cried Mrs. Clinch, "that the lawyers can't help themselves, but must just talk and rant and swear for any one that asks them first?"

"It's exactly what I mean, ma'am," responded the Captain. "They 've no more choice in the matter than the hangman has as to who be 'll hang."

"Then I'd as soon be a gauger!" exclaimed the lady, with a contemptuous glance at poor Clinch, who winced under the observation.

"But I don't see what they wanted young Nelligan for," said Miss Busk; "what experience or knowledge has _he?_"

"He's just the first man of the day," said Bodkin. "They tell me that whether it be to crook out a flaw in the enemy's case, to pick a hole in a statement, to crush a witness, or cajole the jury, old Repton himself is n't his equal."

"I suppose, from the airs he gives himself, he must be something wonderful," said Mrs. Cronan.

"Well, now, I differ from you there, ma'am," replied Bodkin. "I think Joe is just what he always was. He was cold, silent, and distant as a boy, and he 's the same as a man. Look at him when he comes down here at the a.s.sizes, down to the town where his father is selling glue and hides and tenpenny-nails, and he 's just as easy and unconstrained as if the old man was Lord of Cro' Martin Castle."

"That's the height of impertinence," broke in Miss Busk; "it's only real blood has any right to rise above the depreciating accidents of condition. I know it by myself."

"Well, I wonder what he 'll make of this case, anyhow," said feodkin, to escape a controversy he had no fancy for. "They tell me that no action can lie on it. It's not abduction--"

"For shame, Captain; you forget there are ladies here," said Mrs.

Clinch.

"Indeed I don't," sighed he, with a half-comic melancholy in his look.

"I'll tell you how they do it, sir," chimed in Father Maher. "Whenever there 's anything in law that never was foreseen or provided for, against which there is neither act nor statute, they 've one grand and unfailing resource,--they charge it as a conspiracy. I 've a brother an attorney, and he tells me that there is n't a man, woman, or child in the kingdom but could be indicted for doing something by a conspiracy."

"It's a great comfort to know that," said Bodkin, gravely.

"And what can they do to her if she's found guilty?" asked Mrs. Cronan.

"Make her smart for the damages, ma'am; leave her something less to expend on perversion and interference with the people," said the priest.

"The parish isn't the same since she began visiting this one and reading to that. Instead of respect and confidence in their spiritual guides, the people are running after a young girl with a head full of wild schemes and contrivances. We all know by this time how these things end, and the best receipt to make a Protestant begins, 'First starve your Papist.'"

"I rise to order," called out Bodkin. "We agreed we'd have no polemics nor party discussions."

"Why am I appealed to, then, for explanations that involve them?"

cried the priest, angrily. "I'm supported, too, in my observations by a witness none will dispute,--that Scotchman, Henderson--"

"By the way, isn't his daughter come home to him?" asked Bodkin, eager for a diversion.