CHAPTER XIII. "A HOUSEKEEPER'S ROOM"

Cro' Martin was replete with every comfort and luxury. All its arrangements betokened wealth; not a single appliance of ease or enjoyment but was to be found within its well-ordered walls; and yet there was one want which seemed to mar all, and infuse a sense of almost dreary coldness over everything, and this was--the absence of a numerous family, the a.s.semblage of various ages, which gives to a home its peculiar interest, embodying the hopes and fears and pa.s.sions and motives of manhood, in every stage of existence, making up that little world within doors which emblematizes the great one without; but, with this singular advantage, of its being bound up in one holy sentiment of mutual love and affection.

This charm is it which gives the whole vitality to home,--this mingling of the temperaments of youth and manhood and deep age, blending hopes of the future with memories of the past, and making of every heart a portion of one human biography, in which many are sharers. To the stranger, who came to see the house and its gorgeous decorations, all seemed suggestive of habitable enjoyment. The vast drawing-rooms appeared as if only waiting for a splendid company; the dark wainscoted dining-room, with its n.o.ble fireplace of gigantic dimensions, looked the very scene where hospitable conviviality might be enacted; the library, calm, quiet, and secluded, seemed a spot wherein a student might have pa.s.sed a life long. Even in the views that presented themselves at the several windows, there was a certain appropriateness to the character of the room, and the same importunate question still arose to one's mind: Who is there to enjoy all this? What words of glad welcome echo through this vaulted hall, what happy daughter sings through these gilded chambers, where is the social pleasantry that circles the blazing fire of the ample hearth? Alas! all was sombre, splendid, and dreary. No, we are wrong!--not all! There was one corner of this great house where cheerfulness was the very type of comfort. It was a small and not lofty room, whose two windows projected beyond the walls, giving a wide view over the swelling landscape for miles of s.p.a.ce. Here the furniture was of the most ordinary kind, but scrupulously neat and well kept. The chairs--there were but four of them--all with arms and deep cushions; the walnut table a perfect mirror of polish; the cloth curtains, that closed the windows and concealed the door, ma.s.sive and heavy-folded,--all breathed of snugness; while the screen that surrounded the fire had other perfections than those of comfortable seclusion, containing a most strange collection of the caricatures of the time, and the period before the Union. It is but necessary to add that this was Mrs. Broon's apartment,--the snug chamber where old Catty enjoyed herself, after the fatigues and duties of the day. Here now she sat at tea, beside a cheerful fire, the hissing kettle on the hob harmonizing pleasantly with the happy purring of an enormous cat, who sat winking at the blaze; and while evidently inconvenienced by the heat, lacking energy to retreat from it. Catty had just obtained the newspaper,--as the master had gone to dinner,--and was really about to enjoy a comfortable evening. Far from devoid of social qualities, or a liking for companionship, she still lived almost entirely to herself, the other servants being chiefly English, whose habits and ways were all strange to her, and all whose a.s.sociations were widely different from her own. Catty Broon had thus obtained a reputation for unsociability which she by no means deserved, but to which, it must be owned, she was totally indifferent. In fact, if _they_ deemed _her_ morose and disagreeable, _she_, in turn, held _them_ still more cheaply, calling them a set of lazy devils that "were only in each other's way," and "half of them not worth their salt."

Catty had also survived her generation; all her friends of former years had either died or emigrated, and except two or three of the farm-servants, none of the "ould stock," as she called them, were in existence. This brief explanation will show that Catty's comparative isolation was not entirely a matter of choice. If a sense of loneliness did now and then cross her mind, she never suffered it to dwell there, but chased away the unpleasant thought by some active duty; or if the season of that were over, by the amusing columns of the "Intelligence,"--a journal which realized to Mrs. Broon's conceptions the very highest order of literary merit.

Catty did not take much interest in politics; she had a vague, dreamy kind of notion that the game of party was a kind of disreputable gambling, and Parliament itself little better than a "h.e.l.l," frequented by very indifferent company. Indeed, she often said it would be "well for us if there was no politics, and maybe then, there would be no taxes either." The news she liked was the price of farming-stock at fairs and markets,--what Mr. Hynes got for his "top lot" of hoggets, and what Tom Healey paid for the "finest heifers ever seen on the fair-green."

These, and the accidents--a deeply interesting column--were her peculiar tastes; and her memory was stored with every casualty, by sea, fire, and violence, that had graced the "Intelligence" for forty years back; in truth they formed the stations of her chronology, and she would refer to events as having occurred the same year that Joe Ryan was hanged, or "the very Christmas that Hogan fired at Captain Crossley." An inundation of great extent also figured in these memorabilia, and was constantly referred to, by her saying, "This or that happened the year after the Flood," suggesting a rather startling impression as to her longevity.

On the evening we now refer to, the newspaper was more than commonly adorned with these incidents. Public news having failed, private calamities were invoked to supply the place. Catty was, therefore, fortunate. There was something, too, not altogether unpleasant in the whistling storm that raged without, and the heavy plashing of the rain as it beat upon the window-panes. Without imputing to her, as would be most unjust, the slightest touch of ill-nature, she felt a heightened sense of her own snugness as she drew closer to the bright hearth, while she read of "a dreadful gale in the Bay of Biscay."

It was just in the most exciting portion of the description that her door was rudely opened, and the heavy curtain dashed aside with a daring hand; and Catty, startled by the sudden interruption, called angrily out,--

"Who's there?--who are ye at all?"

"Can't you guess, Catty?" cried out a pleasant voice. "Don't you know that there's only one in this house here who 'd dare to enter in such a fashion?"

"Oh, Miss Mary, is it you? And, blessed Virgin, what a state ye 're in!" cried she, as she gazed at the young girl, who, throwing away her riding-hat, wrung out the rain from her long and silky hair, while she laughed merrily at old Catty's dismayed countenance.

"Why, where in the world were you--what happened you, darling?" said Catty, as she a.s.sisted her to remove the dripping costume.

"I was at the Wood, Catty, and up to the quarries, and round by Cronebawn, and then, seeing a storm gathering, I thought I 'd turn homeward, but one of Kit Sullivan's children--my little G.o.dchild, you know--detained me to hear him recite some verses he had learned for my birthday; and, what with one thing and another, it was pitch dark when I reached the 'New Cut,' and then, to my annoyance, I found the bridge had just been carried away--there, Catty, now for a pair of your own comfortable slippers--and, as I was saying to you, there was no bridge!"

"The bridge gone!" exclaimed Catty, in horror.

"All Tom Healey's fault. I told him that the arch had not span enough, and that the b.u.t.tresses would never stand the first heavy fall of rain from the mountains, and there 's not a vestige of them now!"

"And what did you do?"

"I rode for the Low Meadows, Catty, with all speed. I knew that the river, not being confined there between narrow banks, and spreading over a wide surface, couldn't be very deep. Nor was it. It never touched the girths but once, when we got into a hole. But she is such a rare good beast, that little Sorrel; she dashed through everything, and I don't think I took forty minutes from Kane's Mill to this door, though I never saw a spot of the road all the while, except when the lightning showed it. There now, like a good old dear, don't wring your hands and say, 'Blessed hour!' but just put some more tea in the teapot, and fetch me your brown loaf!"

"But surely you 'll die of cold!--you 'll be in a fever!"

"Nonsense, Catty; I have been out in rain before this. I'm more provoked about that bridge than all else. My excellent aunt will have such a laugh at my engineering skill, when she hears of it. Can't be helped, however. And so there's a dinner-party upstairs, I hear. f.a.n.n.y told me there were three strangers."

"So I hear. There's a lawyer from Dublin; and a lady from I don't know where; and young Nelligan, old Dan's son. I 'm sure I never thought I 'd see the day he 'd be eating his dinner at Cro' Martin."

"And why not, Catty? What is there in his manners and conduct that should not make him good company for any one here?"

"Is n't he the son of a little huckster in Oughterard? Old Dan, that I remember without a shoe to his foot?"

"And is it a reproach to him that he has made a fortune by years of patient industry and toil?"

"In-dus-try! toil! indeed," said Catty, sneeringly. "How much in-dus-try or toil there is, weighing out snuff and sugar in a snug shop. Ayeh!

he's an old nig-gar, the same Dan. I know him well."

"But that is no reason why you should disparage his son, Catty, who is a young gentleman of the highest ability and great promise. I never heard you speak so ungenerously before."

"Well, well, darling, don't look angry with your ould Catty, anyway. It isn't for the like of Dan Nelligan, or his son either, you'd be cross with _me!_"

"Never, Catty, never,--for anybody or anything," said the young girl, taking her hand with both her own. "But you have n't told me who the lady is. How did she arrive, and when?"

"I know nothing of her. Peter came to say that the blue bedroom was wanting to-night, and he wished to torment me into asking who for?--but I wouldn't, just for that same; and so I gave him the keys without a word."

"I wonder if this note, that I found on my dressing-table, will explain anything," said Mary, as she proceeded to break the seal. "Of all the absurd ways of my Lady aunt, she has not a more ridiculous one than this trick of writing little notes, instead of speaking. She sees me every day, and might surely say whatever she wanted to say, without embalming it in a despatch. This, I perceive, is number four hundred and seventy-six, and I presume she 's correct in the score. Only think, Catty,--four hundred little epistles like this!"

And with these words she carelessly unfolded the letter and began to read it. All her indifference of manner, however, soon gave way to an expression of considerable eagerness, and she had no sooner finished the epistle than she recommenced and reread it.

"You 'd never guess what tidings this brings me, Catty," said she, laying down the paper, and looking with an expression half sad, half comical.

"Maybe I might, then," said Catty, shaking her head knowingly.

"Come, out with your guess, then, old lady, and I promise to venerate your wisdom ever after if you be right,--that is, if n.o.body has already given you a hint on the subject."

"Not one in the world," said Catty, solemnly; "I pledge you my word and faith I never heard a syllable about it."

"About it! about what?"

"About what's in the letter there," said Catty, stoutly.

"You are therefore quite certain that you know it," said Mary, smiling, "so now let's have your interpretation."

"It 's a proposial," said Catty, with a slight wink.

"A what!"

"A proposial--of marriage, I mean."

But before the words were out, Mary burst into a fit of laughter, so hearty and with such good-will that poor Catty felt perfectly ashamed of herself.

"My dear Catty," said she, at length, "you must have been reading fairy tales this morning; nothing short of such bright literature could have filled your mind with these imaginings. The object of the note is, I a.s.sure you, of a quite different kind;" and here she ran her eye once more over the epistle. "Yes," continued she, "it is written in my dear aunt's own peculiar style, and begins with a 'declaratory clause,' as I think Mr. Scanlan would call it, expressive of my lamentably neglected education, and then proceeds to the appropriate remedy, by telling me that I am to have a governess!"

"A what!" cried Catty, in angry amazement.

"A governess, Catty,--not a governor, as you suspected."

"Ayeh, ayeh!" cried the old woman, wringing her hands; "what's this for?

Don't you know how to govern yourself by this time? And what can they teach you that you don't understand already?"

"Ah, my dear Catty," said the young girl, sadly, "it is a sad subject you would open there,--one that I have wept over many a dreary hour!

No one knows--no one even could guess--how deeply I have deplored my illiterate condition. Nor was it," added she, ardently, "till I had fashioned out a kind of existence of my own--active, useful, and energetic--that I could bury the thought of my utter want of education.

Not even you, Catty, could fathom all the tears this theme has cost me, nor with what a sinking of the heart I have thought over my actual unfitness for my station."

"Arrah, don't provoke me! don't drive me mad!" cried the old woman, in real anger. "There never was one yet as fit for the highest place as yourself; and it is n't me alone that says it, but hundreds of--"

"Hundreds of dear, kind, loving hearts," broke in Mary, "that would measure my poor capacity by my will to serve them. But no matter, Catty; I 'll not try to undeceive them. They shall think of me with every help their own affection may lend them, and I will not love them less for the overestimate."