The Light of Scarthey: A Romance

"We have been here about three weeks. Though persuaded by good Mr. O'Mally that the waters would benefit my old bones, I was actuated, I must confess, by another motive in seeking this Fashionable Resort. In such a place as this, thronged as it is by all the Rank and Family of England, one can at least know who is who, and I was not without hopes that my nieces, with their faces, their name, and their fortunes, would have the opportunity of contracting suitable Alliances, and thus relieve me of a charge for which I am, I fear, little fitted.

"But, alas! my dear Rupert, I was most woefully mistaken. Bath is distinctly not the place for two beautiful and unsophisticated Heiresses, and I am certainly neither possessed of the Spirits, nor of the Health to guard them from fortune-hunters and needy nameless Adventurers. While it is my desire to impress upon you, and my niece Sophia, that the conduct of these young ladies has been quite beyond reproach, I will not conceal from you that the attentions of a certain person, of the name of Smith, known here, and a favorite in the circles of frivolity and fashion as Captain Jack, have already made Madeleine conspicuous, and although the dear girl conducts herself with the utmost propriety, there is an air of Romance and mystery about the Young Man, not to speak of his unmistakable good looks, which have determined me to remove her from his vicinity before her Affections be irreparably engaged. As for Molly, who is a thorough O'Donoghue and the image of her grandmother, that celebrated Murthering Moll (herself the toast of Bath in our young days), whose elopement with the Marquis de Kermelégan, after he had killed an English rival in a duel, was once a nine-days' wonder in this very town, and of whom you must have heard, Mrs. Hambledon restored her to my care only three days ago, and she has already twenty Beaux to her String, though favouring nobody, I am bound to say, but her own amusement. Yesterday she departed under Mrs. Hambledon's chaperonage, in the Company of a dozen of the highest in rank here, on an expedition to Clifton; the while my demure Madeleine spends the day at the house of her dear friend Lady Maria Harewood, whither, I only learnt upon her return at ten o'clock under his escort, Captain Jack– in my days that sort of captain would have been strongly suspected, of having a shade too much of the Heath or the London Road about him – had likewise been convened. It was long after midnight when, with a great tow-row, a coach full of very merry company (amongst whom the widow Hambledon struck me as over-merry, perhaps) landed my other Miss sur le perron.

"This has decided me. We shall decamp sans tambou ni trompette. To-morrow, without allowing discussion from the girls (in which I should probably be worsted), we pack ourselves into my travelling coach, and find our Way to you. But, until we are fairly on the Road, I shall not even let these ladies know whither we are bound.

"With your kind permission, then, I shall remain a few days at Pulwick, to recruit from the fatigues of such a long Journey, before leaving your fair cousins in your charge, and in that of the gentle Sophia (whom I trust to entertain them with something besides her usual melancholy), till the time comes for me to bring them back with me to Bunratty.

"Unless, therefore, you should hear to the contrary, you will know that on Tuesday your three unprotected female relatives will be hoping to see your travelling carriage arrive to fetch them at the Crown in Lancaster.

"Your Affectionate Aunt,

"Rose O'Donoghue."

As Miss Landale sighed forth the concluding words, she dropped the little folio on her lap, and looked at her brother with a world of apprehension in her faded eyes.

"Oh, Rupert, what shall we do?"

"Do," said Mr. Landale, quickly turning on her, out of his absorption, "you will kindly see that suitable rooms are prepared for your aunt and cousins, and you will endeavour, if you please, to show these ladies a cheerful countenance, as your aunt requests."

"The oak and the chintz rooms, I suppose," Sophia timidly suggested. "Tanty used to say she liked the aspect, and I daresay the young ladies will find it pleasant to look out on the garden."

"Ay," returned Rupert, absently. He had risen from his seat, and fallen to pacing the room. Presently a short laugh broke from him. "Tolerably cool, I must say," he remarked, "tolerably cool. It seems to be a tradition with that Savenaye family, when in difficulties, to go to Pulwick."

Miss Landale looked up with relief. Perhaps Rupert would think better of it, and make up his mind to elude receiving the unwelcome visitors after all. But his next speech dashed her budding hopes.

"Ay, as in the days of their mother before them, when she came here to lay her eggs, like a cuckoo in another bird's nest – I wish they had been addled, I do indeed – we may expect to have the whole place turned topsy-turvy, I suppose. It is a pretty assortment, faith (as Tanty says herself); an old papist, and two young ones, fresh from a convent school – and of these, one a hoyden, and the other lovesick! Faugh! Sophia you will have to keep your eyes open when the old lady is gone. I'll have no unseemly pranks in this house."

"Oh, Rupert," with a moan of maidenly horror, and conscious incompetence.

"Stop that," cried the brother, with a contained intensity of exasperation, at which the poor lady jumped and trembled as if she had been struck. "All your whining won't improve matters. Now listen to me," sitting down beside her, and speaking slowly and impressively, "you are to make our relatives feel welcome, do you understand? Everything is to be of the best. Get out the embroidered sheets, and see that there are flowers in the rooms. Tell the cook to keep back that haunch of venison, the girls won't like it, but the old lady knows a good thing when she gets it – let there be lots of sweet things for the young ones too. I shall be giving some silver out this afternoon. I leave it to you to see that it is properly cleaned. What are you mumbling about to yourself? Write it down if you can't remember, and now go, go – I am busy."

PART II

"MURTHERING MOLL THE SECOND"

Then did the blood awaken in the veins
Of the young maiden wandering in the fields.

    Luteplayer's Song.

CHAPTER X

THE THRESHOLD OF WOMANHOOD

Onward floweth the water, onward through meadows broad,
"How happy," the meadows say, "art thou to be rippling onward."
"And my heart is beating, beating beneath my girdle here;"
"O Heart," the girdle saith, "how happy art thou that thou beatest."

    Luteplayer's Song.
Dublin, October 15th, 1814. – This day do I, Molly de Savenaye, begin my diary.

Madeleine writes to me from Bath that she has purchased a very fine book, in which she intends to set forth each evening all that has happened her since the morning; she advises me to do so too. She says that since real life has begun for us; life, of which every succeeding day is not, as in the convent, the repetition of the previous day, but brings some new discovery, pleasure, or pain, we ought to write down and preserve their remembrance.

It will be so interesting for us to read when a new life once more begins for us, and we are married. Besides it is the fashion, and all the young ladies she knows do it. And she has, she says, already plenty to write down. Now I should like to know what about.

When ought one to start such a record? Surely not on a day like this.

"Why demme" (as Mrs. Hambledon's nephew says), "what the deyvil have I got to say?"

Item: I went out shopping this morning with Mrs. Hambledon, and, bearing Madeleine's advice in mind, purchased at Kelly's, in Sackville Street, an album book, bound in green morocco, with clasp and lock, which Mr. Kelly protests is quite secure.

Item: We met Captain Segrave of the Royal Dragoons (who was so attentive to me at Lady Rigtoun's rout, two days ago). He looked very well on his charger, but how conceited! When he saw me, he rolled his eyes and grew quite red; and then he stuck his spurs into his horse, that we might admire how he could sit it; which he did, indeed, to perfection.

Mrs. Hambledon looked vastly knowing, and I laughed. If ever I try to fancy myself married to such a man I cannot help laughing.

This, however, is not diary. —Item: We returned home because it began to rain, and to pass the time, here am I at my book.

But is this the sort of thing that will be of interest to read hereafter? I have begun too late; I should have written in those days when I saw the dull walls of our convent prison for the last time. It seems so far back now (though, by the calendar it is hardly six months), that I cannot quite recall how it felt to live in prison. And yet it was not unhappy, and there was no horror in the thought we both had sometimes then, that we should pass and end our lives in the cage. It did not strike us as hard. It seemed, indeed, in the nature of things. But the bare thought of returning to that existence now, to resume the placid daily task, to fold up again like a plant that has once expanded to sun and breeze, to have never a change of scene, of impression, to look forward to nothing but submission, sleep, and death; oh, it makes me turn cold all over!

And yet there are women who, of their own will, give up the freedom of the world to enter a convent after they have tasted life! Oh, I would rather be the poorest, the ugliest peasant hag, toiling for daily bread, than one of these cold cloistered souls, so that the free air of heaven, be it with the winds or the rain, might beat upon me, so that I might live and love as I like, do right as I like; ay, and do wrong if I liked, with the free will which is my own.

We were told that the outer world, with all its sorrows and trials, and dangers – how I remember the Reverend Mother's words and face, and how they impressed me then, and how I should laugh at them, now!– that the world was but a valley of tears. We were warned that all that awaited us, if we left the fold, was misery; that the joys of this world were bitter to the taste, its pleasures hollow, and its griefs lasting.

We believed it. And yet, when the choice was actually ours to make, we chose all we had been taught to dread and despise. Why? I wonder. For the same reason as Eve ate the apple, I suppose. I would, if I had been Eve. I almost wish I could go back now, for a day, to the cool white rooms, to see the nuns flitting about like black and white ghosts, with only a jingle of beads to warn one of their coming, see the blue sky through the great bare windows, and the shadows of the trees lengthening on the cold flagged floors, hear the bells going ding-dong, ding-dong, and the murmur of the sea in the distance, and the drone of the school, and the drone of the chapel, to go back, and feel once more the dull sort of content, the calmness, the rest!

But no, no! I should be trembling all the while lest the blessed doors leading back to that horrible world should never open to me again.

The sorrows and trials of the world! I suppose the Reverend Mother really meant it; and if I had gone on living there till my face was wrinkled like hers, poor woman, I might have thought so too, in the end, and talked the same nonsense.

Was it really I that endured such a life for seventeen years? O God! I wonder that the sight of the swallows coming and going, the sound of the free waves, did not drive me mad. Twist as I will my memory, I cannot recall that Molly of six months ago, whose hours and days passed and dropped all alike, all lifeless, just like the slow tac, tac, tac of our great horloge in the Refectory, and were to go on as slow and as alike, for ever and ever, till she was old, dried, wrinkled, and then died. The real Molly de Savenaye's life began on the April morning when that dear old turbaned fairy godmother of ours carried us, poor little Cinderellas, away in her coach. Well do I remember my birthday.

I have read since in one of those musty books of Bunratty, that moths and butterflies come to life by shaking themselves out, one fine day, from a dull-looking, shapeless, ugly thing they call a grub, in which they have been buried for a long time. They unfold their wings and fly out in the sunshine, and flit from flower to flower, and they look beautiful and happy – the world, the wicked world, is open to them.

There were pictures in the book; the ugly grub below, dreary and brown, and the lovely butterfly in all its colours above. I showed them to Madeleine, and said: "Look, Madeleine, as we were, and as we are."

And she said: "Yes, those brown gowns they made us wear were ugly; but I should not like to put on anything so bright as red and yellow. Would you?"

That is the worst of Madeleine; she never realises in the least what I mean. And she does love her clothes; that is the difference between her and me, she loves fine things because they are fine and dainty and all that – I like them because they make me fine.

And yet, how she did weep when she left the convent. Madeleine would have made a good nun after all; she does so hate anything ugly or coarse. She grows quite white if she hears people fighting; if there is a "row" or a "shindy," as they say here. Whereas Tanty and I think it all the fun in the world, and would enjoy joining in the fray ourselves, I believe, if we dared. I know I should; it sets my blood tingling. But Madeleine is a real princess, a sort of Ermine; and yet she enjoys her new life, too, the beauty of it, the refinement, being waited upon and delicately fed and clothed. But although she has ceased to weep for the convent, if it had not been for me she would be there still. The only thing, I believe, that could make me weep now would be to find one fine morning that this had only been a dream, and that I was once more the grub! To find that I could not open my window and look into the wide, wide world over to the long, green hills in the distance, and know that I could wander or gallop up to them, as I did at Bunratty, and see for myself what lies beyond– surely that was a taste of heaven that day when Tanty Rose first allowed me to mount her old pony, and I flew over the turf with the wind whistling in my ears – to find that I could not go out when I pleased and hear new voices and see new faces, and men and women who live each their own life, and not the same life as mine.

When I think of what I am now, and what I might have remained, I breathe deep and feel like singing; I stretch my arms out and feel like flying.

Our aunt told us she thought Bunratty would be dull for us, and so it was in comparison with this place. Perhaps this is dull in comparison with what may come. For good Tanty, as she likes us to call her, is intent on doing great things for us.

"Je vous marierai," she tells us in her funny old French, "Je vous marierai bien, mes filles, si vous êtes sages," and she winks both eyes.

Marriage!That, it is quite evident, is the goal of every properly constituted young female; and every respectable person who has the care of said young female is consequently bent upon her reaching that goal.