Light O' the Morning Part 16

Nora now opened the envelope, and took a very thick sheet of paper out. The contents of the letter ran as follows:

"My Dear Nora--Your brother Terence came here a week ago, and has told us a great deal about you. We are enjoying having him extremely; but he has made us all anxious to know you also. I write now to ask if you will come and pay us a visit at once, while your brother is here. Ask your mother to spare you. You can return with Terence whenever you are tired of us and our ways. I have business at Holyhead next Tuesday, and could meet you there, if you could make it convenient to cross that day. I inclose a paper with the hours that the boats leave, and when they arrive at Holyhead. I could then take you up with me to London, and we could reach here that same evening. Ask my sister to spare you. You will be heartily welcome, my little Irish niece.--Your affectionate uncle,

George Hartrick."

Nora could scarcely read the words aloud. When she had finished she let the sheet of paper flutter to the floor, and looked at her mother with glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes.

"I may go? I must go," she said.

"My dear Nora," said Mrs. O'Shanaghgan, "why that must?"

"Oh, mammy! oh, daddy! don't disappoint me," cried the girl. "Do--do let me go, please, please."

"Nora," said Mrs. O'Shanaghgan again, "I never saw you so unreasonable in your life; you are quite carried away. Your uncle, after long years, has condescended to send you an invitation, and you speak in this impulsive, unrestrained fas.h.i.+on. Of course, it would be extremely nice for you to go; but I doubt for a single moment if it can be afforded."

"Oh, daddy, daddy! please take my part!" cried Nora. "Please let me go, daddy--oh, daddy!" She rushed up to her father, flung her arms round his neck, and burst into tears.

Mrs. O'Shanaghgan rose from the table in cold displeasure. "Give me your uncle's letter," she said.

Nora did not glance at her; she was past speaking. So much hung on this; all the future of the O'Shanaghgans; the Castle, the old Castle, the home of her ancestors, the place in which she was born, the land she loved, the father she adored--all, all their future hung upon Nora's accepting the invitation which she had asked her uncle to give her. Oh! if they ever found out, what would her father and mother say? Would they ever speak to her again? But they must not find out, and she must go; yes, she must go.

"What is it, Nora? Do leave her alone for a moment, wife," said the Squire. "There is something behind all this. I never saw Light o'

the Morning give way to pure selfishness before."

"It isn't--it isn't," sobbed Nora, her head buried on the Squire's shoulder.

"My darling, light of my eyes, colleen asth.o.r.e, acushla machree!"

said the Squire. He lavished fond epithets upon the girl, and finally took her into his arms, and clasped her tight to his breast.

Mrs. O'Shanaghgan, after staring at the two in speechless indignation for a moment, left the room. When she reached the door she turned round.

"I cannot stand Irish heroics," she said. "This is a disgraceful scene. Nora, I am thoroughly ashamed of you."

She carried her brother's letter away with her, however, and retired into the drawing room. There she read it carefully.

How nice it would be if Nora could go! And Nora was a beauty, too--an Irish beauty; the sort of girl who always goes down in England. She would want respectable dress; and then--with her taking ways and those roguish, dark-blue eyes of hers, with that bewitching smile which showed a gleam of the whitest and most pearly teeth in the world, with the light, lissome figure, and the blue-black hair--what could not Irish Nora achieve? Conquests innumerable; she might make a match worthy of her race and name; she might--oh, she might do anything. She was only a child, it is true; but all the same she was a budding woman.

Mrs. O'Shanaghgan sat and pondered.

"It seems a great pity to refuse," she said to herself. "And Nora does need discipline badly; the discipline of England and my brother's well-ordered home will work wonders with her. Poor child, her father will miss her. I really sometimes think the Squire is getting into his dotage. He makes a perfect fool of that girl; to see her there speaking in that selfish way, and he petting her, and calling her ridiculous names, with no meaning in them, and folding her in his arms as if she were a baby, and all for pure, downright selfishness, is enough to make any sensible person sick. Nora, too, who has always been spoken of as the unselfish member of the family, who would not spend a penny to save her life if she thought the Squire was going to suffer. Now she wants him to put his hand into his pocket for a considerable amount; for the child cannot go to my brother without suitable clothes--that is a foregone conclusion.

But, dear me! all women are selfish when it comes to mere pleasure, and Nora is no better than the rest. For my part, I admire dear Terence's downright method of asking for so-and-so, and getting it.

Nora is deceitful. I am much disappointed in her."

CHAPTER XI.

THE DIAMOND CROSS.

But although Mrs. O'Shanaghgan spoke of her daughter to herself as deceitful, she did not at all give up the idea of her accepting her uncle's invitation. George Hartrick had always had an immense influence over his sister Ellen. He and she had been great friends long ago, when the handsome, bright girl had been glad to take the advice of her elder brother. They had almost quarreled at that brief period of madness in Ellen Hartrick's life, when she had fallen in love with handsome Squire O'Shanaghgan; but that quarrel had long been made up. Mrs. O'Shanaghgan had married the owner of O'Shanaghgan Castle, and had rued her brief madness ever since. But her pride had prevented her complaining to her brother George. George still imagined that she kept her pa.s.sionate love intact for the wild Irishman. Only one thing she had managed ever since their parting, many years ago, and that was, that her English brother should not come to see her in her Irish home. One excuse after the other she had offered, and at last she had told him frankly that the ways of the Irish were not his ways; and that, when he really wanted to see his sister, he must invite her to come to England to visit him.

Hartrick was hurt at Ellen's behavior, and as he himself had married about the same time, and his own young family were growing up around him, and the making of money and the toil of riches were claiming him more and more, he did not often think of the sister who was away in the wilds of Ireland. She had married one of the proud old Irish chiefs. She had a very good position in her way; and when her son and daughter required a little peep into the world, Hartrick resolved that they should have it. He had invited Terence over; and now Nora's letter, with its perplexity, its anguish, its bold request, and its final tenderness, had come upon him with a shock of surprise.

George Hartrick was a much stronger character than his sister. He was a very fine man, indeed, with splendid principles and downright ways; and there was something about this outspoken and queer letter which touched him in spite of himself. He was not easily touched; but he respected the writer of that letter. He felt that if he knew her he could get on with her. He resolved to treat her confidence with the respect it seemed to him it deserved; and, without hesitation, he wrote her the sort of letter she had asked him to write. She should pay him a visit, and he would find out for himself the true state of things at Castle O'Shanaghgan. Whether he would help the Squire or not, whether there was any need to help him, he could not say, for Nora had not really revealed much of the truth in her pa.s.sionate letter. She had hinted at it, but she had not spoken; she would wait for that moment of outpouring of her heart until she arrived at The Laurels.

Now, Mrs. O'Shanaghgan, standing alone in her big, empty drawing room, and looking out at the summer landscape, thought of how Nora might enter her brother's house. Fond as Mrs. O'Shanaghgan was of Terence--he was in truth a son after her own heart--she had a queer kind of pride about her with regard to Nora. Wild and untutored as Nora looked, her mother knew that few girls in England could hold a candle to her, if justice were done her. There was something about the expression in Nora's eyes which even Mrs. O'Shanaghgan could scarcely resist at times, and there were tones and inflections of entreaty in Nora's voice which had a strange power of melting the hearts of those who listened to her.

After about an hour Mrs. O'Shanaghgan went very slowly upstairs. Her bedroom was over the drawing room. It was just as large as the drawing room--a great bare apartment. The carpet which covered the floor was so threadbare that the boards showed through in places; the old, faded chintz curtains which hung at the windows were also in tatters; but they were perfectly clean, for Mrs. O'Shanaghgan did her best to retain that English cleanliness and order which she felt were so needed in the land of desolation, as she was pleased to call Ireland.

A huge four-post bedstead occupied a prominent place against one of the walls; there was an enormous mahogany wardrobe against another; but the whole center of the room was bare. The dressing-table, however, which stood right in the center of the huge bay, was full of pretty things--silver appointments of different kinds, brushes and combs heavily mounted in silver, gla.s.s bottles with silver stoppers, perfume bottles, pretty knick-knacks of all sorts. When Nora was a little child she used to stand fascinated, gazing at her mother's dressing-table. It was the one spot where any of the richness of the Englishwoman's early life could still be found. Mrs.

O'Shanaghgan went up now and looked at her dressing-table, sweeping her eyes rapidly over its contents. The brushes and combs, the bottles of scent, the b.u.t.ton-hooks, the shoe-horns, the thousand- and-one little nothings, polished and bright, stood upon the dressing-table; and besides these there was a large, silver-mounted jewel-case.

Mrs. O'Shanaghgan was not at all afraid to leave this jewel-case out, exposed to view day after day, for no one all round the place would have touched so much as a pin which belonged to the Squire's lady. The people were poor, and would think nothing of stealing half a bag of potatoes, or helping themselves to a good sack of fruit out of the orchard; but to take the things from the lady's bedroom or anything at all out of the house they would have scorned. They had their own honesty, and they loved the Squire too much to attempt anything of the sort.

Mrs. O'Shanaghgan now put a key into the lock of the jewel-case and opened it. When first she was married it was full of pretty things--long strings of pearls, a necklet of very valuable diamonds, a tiara of the same, rings innumerable, bracelets, head ornaments of different kinds, buckles for shoes, clasps for belts, pins, brooches. Mrs. O'Shanaghan, when Nora was a tiny child, used on every one of the little girl's birthdays to allow her to overhaul the jewel case; but of late years Nora had never looked inside it, and Mrs. O'Shanaghgan had religiously kept it locked. She opened it now with a sigh. The upper tray was quite empty; the diamonds had long ago been disposed of. They had gone to pay for Terence's schooling, for Terence's clothes, for one thing and another that required money. They had gone, oh! so quickly; had melted away so certainly. That first visit of her son's to England had cost Mrs.

O'Shanaghgan her long string of pearls, which had come to her as an heirloom from her mother before her. They were very valuable pearls, and she had sold them for a tenth, a twentieth part of their value.

The jeweler in Dublin, who was quite accustomed to receiving the poor lady's trinkets, had sent her a check for fifty pounds for the pearls, knowing well that he could sell them himself for at least three hundred pounds.

Mrs. O'Shanaghgan now once more rifled the jewel case. There were some things still left--two or three rings and a diamond cross. She had never wanted to part with that cross. She had pictured over and over how it would s.h.i.+ne on Nora's white neck; how lovely Nora would look when dressed for her first ball, having that white Irish cross, with its diamonds and its single emerald in the center, s.h.i.+ning on her breast. But would it not be better to give Nora the chance of spending three or four months in England, the chance of educating herself, and let the cross go by? It was so valuable that the good lady quite thought that she ought to get seventy pounds for it. With seventy pounds she could fit Nora up for her English visit, and have a little over to keep in her own pocket. Only Nora must not go next Tuesday; that was quite impossible.

Mrs. O'Shanaghgan quickly determined to make the sacrifice. She could still supply Nora with a little, very simple pearl necklet, to wear with her white dress during her visit; and the cross would have to go. There would be a few rings still left; after that the jewel case would be empty.

Mrs. O'Shanaghgan packed the precious cross into a little box, and took it out herself to register it, and to send it off to the jeweler who always bought the trinkets she sent him. She told him that she expected him to give her, without the smallest demur, seventy pounds for the cross, and hoped to have the money by the next day's post.

Having done this and dispatched her letter, she walked briskly back to the Castle. She saw Nora wandering about in the avenue. Nora, hatless and gloveless, was playing with the dogs. She seemed to have forgotten all about her keen disappointment of the morning. When she saw her mother coming up the avenue she ran to meet her.

"Why, mammy," she said, "how early you are out! Where have you been?"

"I dislike extremely that habit you have, Nora, of calling me mammy; mother is the word you should address your parent with. Please remember in future that I wish to be called mother."

"Oh, yes, mother!" answered Nora. The girl had the sweetest temper in the world, and no amount of reproof ever caused her to answer angrily. "But where have you been?" she said, her curiosity getting the better of her prudence.

"Again, Nora, I am sorry to say I must reprove you. I have been to the village on business of my own. It is scarcely your affair where I choose to walk in the morning."

"Oh, of course not, mam--I mean mother."

"But come with me down this walk. I have something to say to you."

Nora eagerly complied. There was something in the look of her mother's eyes which made her guess that the usual subject of conversation--her own want of deportment, her ignorance of etiquette--was not to be the theme. She felt her heart, which had sunk like lead within her, rise again to the surface. Her eyes sparkled and smiles played round her rosy lips.

"Yes, mother," she said; "yes."

"All impulse," said Mrs. O'Shanaghgan--she laid her hand on Nora's arm--"all impulse, all Irish enthusiasm."

"I cannot help it, you know," said Nora. "I was born that way. I am Irish, you know, mammy."

"You are also English, my dear," replied her mother. "Pray remember that fact when you see your cousins."