CHAPTER XXIV. THREE COACHES AND THEIR COMPANY

Three large and stately travelling-carriages, heavily laden, and surrounded with all the appliances for comfort possible, rolled from under the arched gateway of Cro' Martin. One eager and anxious face turned hastily to catch a last look at the place he was leaving, and then as hastily concealing his emotion with his handkerchief, Mr. Martin sat back in the carriage in silence.

"Twenty minutes after eight!" exclaimed Lady Dorothea, looking at her watch. "It is always the case; one never can get away in time."

Rousted by the speech, Martin started, and turned again to the window.

"How handsome those larches are!" cried he; "it seems but yesterday that I planted them, and they are magnificent trees now."

Her Ladyship made no reply, and he went on, half as though speaking to himself: "The place is in great beauty just now. I don't think I ever saw it looking so well. Shall I ever see it again?" muttered he, in a still lower tone.

"I really cannot think it ought to break your heart, Mr. Martin, if I were to say 'No' to that question," said she, testily.

"No--no!" exclaimed he, repeating the word after her; "not come back here!"

"There is nothing to prevent us if we should feel disposed to do so," replied she, calmly. "I only observed that one could face the alternative with a good courage. The twenty years we have pa.s.sed in this spot are represented to _your_ mind by more leafy trees and better timber. To _me_ they are written in the dreary memory of a joyless, weary existence. I detest the place," cried she, pa.s.sionately, "and for nothing more, that even on leaving it my spirits are too jaded and broken to feel the happiness that they ought."

Martin sighed heavily, but did not utter a word.

"So it is," resumed she; "one ever takes these resolutions too late.

What we are doing now should have been done sixteen or eighteen years ago."

"Or not at all," muttered Martin, but in a voice not meant to be overheard.

"I don't think so, sir," cried she, catching up his words; "if only as our protest against the insolence and ingrat.i.tude of this neighborhood,--of these creatures who have actually been maintained by us! It was high time to show them their real condition, and to what they will be reduced when the influence of our position is withdrawn."

"If it were only for _that_ we are going away--" And he stopped himself as he got thus far.

"In itself a good and sufficient reason, sir; but I trust there are others also. I should hope that we have paid our debt to patriotism, and that a family who have endured twenty years of banishment may return, if only to take a pa.s.sing glance at the world of civilization and refinement."

"And poor Mary!" exclaimed Martin, with deep feeling.

"Your niece might have come with us if she pleased, Mr. Martin. To remain here was entirely her own choice; not that I am at all disposed to think that her resolution was not a wise one. Miss Mary Martin feels very naturally her utter deficiency in all the graces and accomplishments which should pertain to her condition. She appreciates her unfitness for society, and selects--as I think, with commendable discretion--a sphere much better adapted to her habits."

Martin again sighed heavily.

"To leave any other girl under such circ.u.mstances would have been highly improper," resumed her Ladyship; "but she is really suited to this kind of life, and perfectly unfit for any other, and I have no doubt she and Catty Broon will be excellent company for each other."

"Catty loves her with all her heart," muttered Martin.

And her Ladyship's lip curled in silent derision at the thought of such affection. "And, after all," said he, half involuntarily, "our absence will be less felt so long as Molly stays behind."

"If you mean by that, Mr. Martin, that the same system of wasteful expenditure is still to continue,--this universal employment scheme,--I can only say I distinctly and flatly declare against it. Even Rep ton--and I 'm sure he 's no ally of mine--agrees with me in p.r.o.nouncing it perfectly ruinous."

"There's no doubt of the cost of it," said Martin, gravely.

"Well, sir, and what other consideration should weigh with us?--I mean,"

added she, hastily, "what should have the same weight? The immaculate authority I have just quoted has limited our personal expenditure for next year to five thousand pounds, and threatens us with even less in future if the establishment at Cro' Martin cannot be reduced below its present standard; but I would be curious to know why there is such a thing as an establishment at Cro' Martin?"

"Properly speaking, there is none," said Martin. "Rep-ton alludes only to the workpeople,--to those employed on the grounds and the gardens. We cannot let the place go to ruin."

"There is certainly no necessity for pineries and forcing-houses. Your niece is not likely to want grapes in January, or camellias in the early autumn. As little does she need sixteen carriage-horses and a stable full of hunters."

"They are to be sold off next week. Mary herself said that she only wanted two saddle-horses and the pony for the phaeton."

"Quite sufficient, I should say, for a young lady."

"I 'm sure she 'd have liked to have kept the harriers--"

"A pack of hounds! I really never heard the like!"

"Poor Molly! It was her greatest pleasure,--I may say her only amus.e.m.e.nt in life. But she would n't hear of keeping them; and when Repton tried to persuade her--"

"Repton's an old fool,--he's worse; he's downright dishonest,--for he actually proposed my paying my maids out of my miserable pittance of eight hundred a year, and at the same moment suggests your niece retaining a pack of foxhounds!"

"Harriers, my Lady."

"I don't care what they 're called. It is too insolent."

"You may rely upon one thing," said Martin, with more firmness than he had hitherto used, "there will be nothing of extravagance in Mary's personal expenditure. If ever there was a girl indifferent to all the claims of self, she is that one."

"If we continue this discussion, sir, at our present rate, I opine that by the time we reach Dublin your niece will have become an angel."

Martin dropped his head, and was silent; and although her Ladyship made two or three other efforts to revive the argument, he seemed resolved to decline the challenge, and so they rolled along the road sullen and uncommunicative.

In the second carriage were Repton and Kate Henderson,--an arrangement which the old lawyer flatteringly believed he owed to his cunning and address, but which in reality was ordained by Lady Dorothea, whose notions of rank and precedence were rigid. Although Repton's greatest tact lay in his detection of character, he felt that he could not satisfactorily affirm he had mastered the difficulty in the present case. She was not exactly like anything he had met before; her mode of thought, and even some of her expressions were so different that the old lawyer owned to himself, "It was like examining a witness through an interpreter."

A clever talker--your man of conversational success--is rarely patient under the failure of his powers, and, not very unreasonably perhaps, very ready to ascribe the ill-success to the defects of his hearer. They had not proceeded more than half of the first post ere Repton began to feel the incipient symptoms of this discontent.

She evidently had no appreciation for bar anecdote and judicial wit; she took little interest in political events, and knew nothing of the country or its people. He tried the subject of foreign travel, but his own solitary trip to Paris and Brussels afforded but a meagre experience of continental life, and he was shrewd enough not to swim a yard out of his depth. "She must have her weak point, if I could but discover it,"

said he to himself. "It is not personal vanity, that I see. She does not want to be thought clever, nor even eccentric, which is the governess failing _par excellence_. What then can it be?" With all his ingenuity he could not discover. She would talk, and talk well, on any theme he started, but always like one who maintained conversation through politeness and not interest; and this very feature it was which piqued the old man's vanity, and irritated his self-love.

When he spoke, she replied, and always with a sufficient semblance of interest; but if he were silent, she never opened her lips.

"And so," said he, after a longer pause than usual, "you tell me that you really care little or nothing whither Fortune may be now conducting you."

"To one in my station it really matters very little," said she, calmly.

"I don't suppose that the post-horses there have any strong preference for one road above another, if they be both equally level and smooth."

"There lies the very question," said he; "for you now admit that there may be a difference."

"I have never found in reality," said she, "that these differences were appreciable."

"How is it that one so young should be so--so philosophic?" said he, after a hesitation.

"Had you asked me that question in French, Mr. Repton, the language would have come so pleasantly to your aid, and spared you the awkwardness of employing a grand phrase for a small quality; but my 'philosophy' is simply this: that, to fill a station whose casualties range from courtesies in the drawing-room to slights from the servants'

hall, one must arm themselves with very defensive armor as much, nay more, against flattery than against sarcasm. If, in the course of time, this habit render one ungenial and uncompanionable, pray be lenient enough to ascribe the fault to the condition as much as to the individual."

"But, to be candid, I only recognize in you qualities the very opposite of all these; and if I am to confess a smart at this moment, it is in feeling that I am not the man to elicit them."