The Young Step-Mother Part 55

'Are you subject to these headaches?'

'It is only home-sickness,' he said. 'I'll have got over it soon.'

'I must come and see after you, my good friend,' said Mr. Kendal, with suppressed impatience and anxiety. 'I shall return in a moment or two, but I am sure you are not well enough for so many visitors taking you by surprise. Come.'

He was so peremptory, that Albinia found herself on the staircase before she knew what she was about. The fever panic had seized Mr. Kendal in full force; he believed typhus was in the air, and insisted on her taking Maurice home at once, while he went himself to fetch Mr. Bowles.

She did not in the least credit fever to be in the chill touch of that lizard hand, and believed that she could have been the best doctor; but there was no arguing while he was under this alarm, and she knew that she might be thankful not to be ordered to observe a quarantine.

When Mr. Kendal returned home he looked much discomposed, though his first words were, 'Thank Heaven, it is no fever! Albinia, we must look after that poor lad; he is positively poisoned by that pestiferous river and bad living! Bowles said he was sure he was not eating meat enough.

I dare say that greasy woman gives him nothing fit to eat! Albinia, you must talk to him--find out whether old Goldsmith gives him a decent salary!'

'He ought not to be in those lodgings another day. I suppose Miss Goldsmith had no notion what they were. I fancy she never saw the Lower Wharf in her life.'

'I never did till to-day,' said Mr. Kendal. 'It was all of a piece--the whole street--the room--the furniture--why the paper was coming off the walls! What could they be dreaming of! And there he was, trying to read a little edition of Prodentius, printed at Salamanca, which he picked up at a bookstall at Galway. It must have belonged to some priest educated in Spain. He says any Latin book was invaluable to him. He is infinitely too good for his situation, and the Goldsmiths are neglecting him infamously. Look out some rooms fit for him, Albinia.'

'I will try. Let me see--if I could only recollect any; but Mr. Hope has the only really nice ones in the place.'

'Somewhere he must be, if it is in this house.'

'There is poor old Madame Belmarche's still empty, with Bridget keeping it. I wish he could have rooms there.'

'Well, why not? Pettilove told me it must be let as two tenements. If the old woman could take half, a lodger would pay her rent,' said Mr.

Kendal, promptly. 'You had better propose it.'

'And the Goldsmiths?' asked Albinia.

'I will show him the Lower Wharf.'

The next afternoon Mr. Kendal desired his wife to go to the Bank and borrow young O'More for her walking companion.

'Really I don't know whether I have the impudence.'

'I will come and do it for you. You will do best alone with the lad; I want you to get into his confidence, and find out whether old Goldsmith treats him properly. I declare, but that I know John Kendal so well, this would be enough to make me rejoice that Gilbert is not thrown on the world!'

Albinia knew herself to be so tactless, that she saw little hope other doing anything but setting him against his relations; but her husband was in no frame to hear objections, so she made none, and only trusted she should not be very foolish. At least, the walk would be a positive physical benefit to the slave of the desk.

Ulick O'More was at his post, and said his head was well, but his hair stuck up as if his fingers had been many times run through it; he was much thinner, and the wearied countenance, whitened complexion, and spiritless sunken eyes, were a sad contrast to the glowing freshness and life that had distinguished him in the summer.

Mr. Kendal told the Banker that it had been decided that his nephew needed exercise, and that Mrs. Kendal would be glad of his company in a long walk. Mr. Goldsmith seemed rather surprised, but consented, whereupon the young clerk lighted up into animation, and bounded out of his prison house, with a springy step learnt upon mountain heather. Mr.

Kendal only waited to hear whither they were bound.

'Oh! as far as we can go on the Woodside road,' said Albinia. 'I think the prescription I used to inflict on poor Sophy will not be thrown away here. I always fancy there is a whiff of sea air upon the hill there.'

Ulick smiled at such a fond delusion, bred up as he had been upon the wildest sea-coast, exposed to the full sweep of the Atlantic storm! She set him off upon his own scenery, to the destruction of his laborious English, as he dwelt on the glories of his beloved rocks rent by fierce sea winds and waves into fantastic, grotesque, or lovely shapes, with fiords of exquisite blue sea between, the variety of which had been to him as the gentle foliage of tamer countries. Not a tree stood near the 'town' of Ballymakilty, but the wild crags, the sparkling waters, the broad open hills, and the bogs, with their intensely purple horizon, held fast upon his heart; and he told of white sands, reported to be haunted by mermaids, and crevices of rock where the tide roared, and gave rise to legends of sea monsters, and giants turned to stone. He was becoming confidential and intimate when, in a lowered voice, he mentioned the Banshee's crag, where the shrouded messenger of doom never failed to bewail each dying child of the O'More, and where his own old nurse had actually beheld her keening for the uncle who was killed among the Caffres. Albinia began to know how she ought to respect the O'Mores.

They were skirting the side of the hill, with a dip of green meadow-land below them, rising on the other side into coppices. The tw.a.n.g of the horn, and the babbling cry of the hounds, reminded Albinia that the hunting season had begun, and looking over a gate, she watched the parti-coloured forms of the dogs glancing among the brushwood opposite, and an occasional red coat gleaming out through the hedge above. Just then the cry ceased, the dogs became silent, and scattered hither and thither bewildered. Ulick looked eagerly, then suddenly vaulted over the gate, went forward a few steps, looked again, pointed towards some dark object which she could barely discern, put his finger in his ear, and uttered an unearthly screech, incomprehensible to her, but well understood by the huntsman, and through him by the dogs, which at once simultaneously dashed in one direction, and came pouring into the meadow over towards him, down went their heads, up went their curved tails, the clatter and rus.h.i.+ng of hoofs, and the apparition of red coats, showed the hunters all going round the copse, while at the same moment, away with winged steps bounded her companion, flying headlong like the wind, so as to meet the hunt.

'Ask me not what the lady feels, Left in that dreadful hour alone,'

laughed Albinia to herself. 'Well done, speed! Edmund might be satisfied there's not much amiss! Through the hedge--over the meadow--a flying leap over the stream--it is more like a bird than a man--up again. Does he mean to follow the hunt all the rest of the way? Rather Irish, I must say! And I do believe they will all come down this lane! I must walk on; it wont do to be overtaken here between these high hedges. Ah! I thought he was too much of a gentleman to leave me--here he comes. How much in his way I must be! I never saw such a runner; not a bit does he slacken for the hill--and what bright cheeks and eyes! What good it must have done him!'

'I beg ten thousand pardons!' cried he, as he came up, scarcely out of breath. 'I declare I forgot you, I could not help it, when I saw them at a check!'

'You feel for the hunter as I do for the fox,' said Albinia. 'Is yours one of the great hunting neighbourhoods?'

'That it is!' he cried. 'My grandfather had the grand stud! He and his seven sons were out three times in the week, and there was a mount for whoever wanted it!'

'And this generation is not behind the last?'

'Ah! and why would it be?' exclaimed the boy, the last remnant of English p.r.o.nunciation forsaking him. 'My Uncle Connel has the best mare on this side the bridge of Athlone! I mean that side.'

'And how is it with you?' asked Albinia.

'We've got no horses--that is, except my father's mare, and the colt, and Fir Darrig--the swish-tailed pony--and the blind donkey that brings in the turf. So we younger ones mostly go hunting on foot; and after all I believe that's the best sport. Bryan always comes in before any of the horses, and we all think it a shame if we don't!'

'I see where you learnt the swiftness of foot that was so useful last July,' said Albinia.

'That? oh! but Bryan would have been up long before me,' said Ulick.

'He'd have made for the lock, not the gate! You should see what sport we have when the fox takes to the Corrig Dearg up among the rocks--and little Rosie upon Fir Darrig, with her hair upon the wind, and her colour like the morning cloud, glancing in and out among the rocks like the fairy of the glen. There are those that think her the best part of the hunt; they say the English officers at Ochlochtimore would never think it worth coming out but for her. I don't believe that, you know,'

he added, laughing, 'though I like to fetch a rise out of Ulick at the great house by telling him of it.'

'How old is she?'

'Fifteen last April, and she is like an April wind, when it comes warm and frolicking over the sea! So wild and free, and yet so gentle and soft! Ellen and Mary are grave and steady, and work hard--every st.i.tch of my stockings was poor Mary's knitting, except what poor old Peggy would send up for a compliment; but Rosie--I don't think she does a thing but sing, and ride, and row the boat, and keep the house alive! My mother shakes her head, but I don't know what she'll say when she gets my aunt's letter. My Aunt Goldsmith purses up her lips, and says, "I'll write to advise my sister to send her daughters to some good school."

Ellen, maybe, might bear one, but ah! the thought of little Rosie in a good school!'

'Like her brother Ulick in a good bank, eh?'

'Why,' he cried, 'they always called me the steady Englishman!'

Albinia laughed, but at that moment the sounds of the hunt again occupied them, and all were interpreted by Ulick with the keenest interest, but he would not run away again, though she exhorted him not to regard her. Presently it swept on out of hearing, and by-and-bye they reached the summit of the hill, and looked forth on the dark pine plantations on the opposite undulation, standing out in black relief against a sky golden with a pale, pure, pearly November sunset, a 'daffodil sky' flecked with tiny fleeces of soft bright-yellow light, reminding Albinia of Fouque's beautiful dream of Aslauga's golden hair showing the gates of Heaven to her devoted knight. She looked for her companion's sympathy in her admiration, but the woods seemed to oppress him, and his panting sigh showed how real a thing was _he-men_.

'Oh! my poor sun!' he broke out, 'I pity you for having to go down before your time into these black, stifling woods that rise up to smother you like giants--and not into your own broad, cool Atlantic, laughing up your own sparkles of light.'

'We inland people can hardly appreciate your longing for s.p.a.ce.'

'It's a very prison,' said Ulick; 'the horizon is choked all round, and one can't breathe in these staid stiff hedges and enclosures!' And he threw out his arms and flapped them over his breast with a gesture of constraint.

'You seem no friend to cultivation.'

'Why, your meadows would be pretty things if they were a little greener,' said Ulick; 'but one gets tired of them, and of those straight lines of ploughed field. There's no sense of liberty; it is like the man whose prison walls closed in upon him!' And he gave another weary sigh, his step lost elasticity, and he moved on heavily.

'You are tired; I have brought you too far.'

'Tired by a bit of a step like this?' cried the boy, disdainfully, as he straightened himself, and resumed his brisk tread. But it did not last.