Louise Imogen Guiney

“ With a sweet instinct like motherliness, his maid, bending over, kissed it in benediction.
It was two o'clock when they crossed the ford, and the late afternoon found them still pacing on their roadless way, like the lost enchanted knight and lady of the Black Forest. They were less than a mile from Braleton, on the rocks, in sight of the tents, when they unsaddled and tethered the horses, and made the last halt. "Dearest," the Sergeant had said, lying at her feet, his elbow in the grass, "dedicate my sword." ”

“ Lady Eleanor was a sweet lass of honorable blood, a good squire's daughter, and the youngest of a family of eight. She belonged over there in Frambleworth, where you see the twin spires. From boyhood and girlhood these two clung to each other. I wonder if one ever sees such fast love now-a-days: so simple, so deep, so long-suffering, all made of rapture and grief! They were betrothed early, with a kiss given under the shadow of the king yew in the old church-yard; they both cherished the place to the end, and there lies their dust. You see, the original Saint Ruth's was a monastic chapel ”

“ It was Nora's tenth birthday, and, to please her, they had been on the march all afternoon, their arms full of rock-born speedwell and primrose. "'Tis so pretty!" echoed little Winny, with enthusiasm. But the boy looked abroad without a smile. "'T'd be prettier when things is right," he answered severely. Hughey was a man of culture; but his speech was the soft slipshod of the south. The three trudged on in silence, for Hughey was a personage to his small sisters; and Hughey in a mood was to be respected. He, alas, had been in a mood too long. ”

“ Rodolfo crept up quietly to his strange benefactor, who was absently gazing far away, so quietly that the wherry moved not a muscle under him.
"It is you," he said. "The 'friend' is a made-up. I know. Padre, si!" He threw his arms about Mr. Openshaw, his old hatred melted away, and lay there on his knees like a little boy, sobbing, sobbing. "It is for nothing at all," he explained with his endearing semblance of good-breeding; "but the gentle goodaness of God. The beautiful Anne,—O you musta see her, and letta yourself be thank in so harmonious the voice of seventeen! she will taka me. ”

“ The young man vaulted lightly to the ground, close to Molly's satin stirrupless flank, his hands clasped, his head thrown back, fired with adoring hope. When Cecily inclined towards him again, he saw in her (or was it his bewitched fancy?) the remote, incredible radiance of his old day-dream. The great flush rolled responsive to his own clear brow. He shook himself free, and found his voice. "Cecily," he said simply, "I love you; you must know that I love you. Such a love has no beginning and no end. ”

“ The former was a horsewoman of experience, erect, neat, orthodox, approved of connoisseurs everywhere. But the regiment was in this, as in other things, all for the favorite; and when she came in sight, (with the dare-devil mare going it, six leaps [Pg 38] to a mile,) lying flat forward, like her own cavalrymen, with breathless, laughing face, and hair shaken loose along Molly's mane like the sun on a torrent,—such a cheer as would go up from the distracted Eleventh! Cecily and Molly, in the tingling pine-odorous Braleton air, made a familiar and joyful spectacle. ”

“ His own solitude, the washing tide, the one towering linden yonder, the gambrel roofs and ancient gardens, the felt neighborhood of the dear wild little graveyard where his forbears slept, steeped his heart in overwhelming melancholy. He had already passed a week at the Rockingham. It was a strange date to choose, out of all his free and prosperous life, for a first visit since childhood to the fair old New England borough where he was born. ”

“ The Honorable Langdon Openshaw, standing among ruinous warehouses and wharves, built by the Sheafes in the hour of their commercial glory under the second George, looked down upon the clear Piscataqua at full flood, breathing between its day-long, Samson-like tugs at the yet enduring piers. It was a lonely spot; the wind had a way there, sometimes, of waking momentary, half-imagined odors, the ghosts of the cargoes of wines and spices in the prodigal past. ”

“ Hither Cecily loved to climb, tying Molly in the copse below, to lie upon the shaded escutcheoned tomb of one Reginald Brale, "borne in Salop in olde Ingland," and to muse long and happily, forgetful of battles, on
"The great good limpid world, so still, so still!" ”

“ He foresaw vaguely that he would not be allowed, out of his royal wages of three shillings, to spend full half every Saturday night, at McClutch and Gullim's; yet to do it was the imperative thing now, and that he felt impelled to do it was his own super-private business, and his warrant. Therefore would he keep his secret close, and make what excuse he might. He could not even think of asking advice; how should any one else be able to realize how he must act towards his mother? ”

“ I went silently in at Nasmith's heels. The flooring was the perfect plush of English grass; the roof of the nave was living boughs. For a single huge ash-tree had rooted itself there generations ago, and grown much larger round than our four arms could span, and lifted its spread of leaves nearer heaven than the level of the walls. Ivy hung on [Pg 19] the chancel arch, and many bright-colored wildflowers, whose seeds had lodged in the crevices and in the blank windows, filled the whole enclosure, bay after bay, with a riot of color and fragrance. ”

“ This must be the man. Impeach him; clear yourself!" Openshaw, in his calmer mood, a few moments back, had measured the character before him. Whatever else it was, it was not astute. He foresaw no trouble in worming the secret out of him.
"Very well," he replied, as if æons on æons of thought had not passed since he spoke last. "I will take the gold-piece back, on your own condition: I will see that you earn it. Have you business on hand?"
"Oh, no. The venerable butcher, the fever kills him; we bury him, and locka the door for all day." Rodolfo was sullen yet. ”

“ The O'Kinsellas were a powerful aboriginal sept in the old days, and lived in fortress castles, and playfully carried off cattle and ladies from their neighbors of the Pale. Malachi O'Kinsella's mother, a heroine of romance who ran away with a jockey lover, and never throve after, was of pure Norman blood, and most beautiful, with gray eyes, water-clear, like Hughey's own, and the same bronze-colored hair ”

“ There on the old Danish ground, at the crisis, Winny's fiery Gaelic temper came again to the fore. Struck with the solitude and the dark, the dread faces of unusual things, and jostled by the wind which pounced at her from its corner lair on the north bank of the river, she hung back and rebelled. "Let me go, let me—go! Hughey! Oh!..." The little [Pg 121] silver lisp arose in very real, in irresistible alarm. ”

“ He looked down with a grateful sigh on her who so mysteriously held him to his sacrifice, and shared it, and through her and in her, on the old, old fate which he knew now was driving him to the cliff.
[Pg 55] "If there is to be a fight, I want your flag, the flag you made!" he whispered, grasping at anything to hide this rending in him of the spirit from the flesh. "However, whenever I fall, I want to be buried in it. Is it done? May I take it for mine, before it is presented to the regiment?" ”

“ Only my beloved, she know how it was I transgress, so thatta perhaps my guilt is not for eternity."
Openshaw laid the tip of his stick upon the rowlock, with authority. "Do not start yet; let the boat drift. You must be hungry with this long exercise. Pray pass me those things near you, and the wine; and while you lunch, I hope you will be as frank with me, Rodolfo, as I have been with you.... I look upon it as a miracle of mercy that at the eleventh hour we have found each other." He knew that the young man's blazing black eyes were full upon him. "I can help you. Only keep nothing back." ”

“ The old woman had recently had other queries of that nature, which proved that the victims were getting restless; that it would soon be advisable, in short, to strike camp, and betake herself and her nefarious concerns to Leeds or Manchester. Her sourness vented itself promptly on Hughey. Decidedly, the Ninth anti-Sassenach Bank would do nothing of the sort; it was against the rules; it never advanced cash except in case of death, when coupons from McClutch and Gullim's would hold good for a life-insurance policy to the corpse's relatives. ”

“ Things went wrong also with the lovers. Agata kept only for a while her soft, joyous, docile ways, and then grew restless and wretched, with the canker of a good heart spoiled, which nothing on earth can cure. She would spend hours in the chapel near by, her face covered, thinking and weeping ”

“ Because of my heedlessness, Poverty and Ignorance and Inferiority and Exile took him by the hand, and led him to the pit. He is rescued from the worst; he will cling to the highest which he sees, with an elected soul to help him ”

“ Poor Nora had yielded to temptation and filled her mouth, and pretended, holding her head down, to be much concerned about a bruise on her knee. She could not look in her mother's honest eyes, ignorant as these were of any blame in Nora. Mrs. O'Kinsella went wearily to her charing, and seven-year-old Winny set up housekeeping with Dan, the primroses and a teapot-shaped fish-bone for their only toys. Hughey had already gone, nor was he at his desk in the afternoon, when his teacher and Nora looked vainly for him ”

“ They came safely to the street; the moon indeed was there, flooding the world with splendor. When Nora had buttoned Winny's coat, and the boy had posted his letters, they took her by either hand, and started.
Hughey had planned out his difficult campaign to the end, and his brain was quiet and clear. Passing through Church Street, he raised his hat with reverence, as he had always done since he came to Dublin, to a blank stone on the south side in the ancient yard of Saint Michan's; for under that stone, according to a tradition, Robert Emmett's sentinel dust reposes. ”

“ He often found her sewing on a silken tri-color, and working its correct number of stars in a pattern. She had begun it in her father's house, for her brother-in-law's regiment, and none too soon, for the flag in use was aging fast. Robert Blanchard never saw her head bent over that bright glory, filling her lap and falling around her feet, without a tightening of the throat. ”

“ The long inactions under McClellan, hateful to her mettlesome brother-in-law and to his men, proved pleasant enough to Cecily; she never lacked entertainment. While Adela was at her accurate toilets, and the Colonel, a severe disciplinarian, busy with his troops, she, active and curiously adventurous, walked or rode about alone.
The nine-hundred-acred Brale house topped the hill not far away; the owner, a fine old planter, lived there with the survivors of his family. Six months before, an infantry regiment had bivouacked on the place. ”

“ Up to yesterday, he had somehow found his mother's plight bearable, thanks to the natural buoyancy of childhood, and the hope, springing up every week, that next week she would have a little less labor, a few more pence. Besides, it was spring; and in spring hearts have an irrational way of dancing, as if a fairy fiddler had struck up Garryowen. But now Hughey was sobered and desperate.
[Pg 98] There was no breakfast but a crust apiece. The McCarthy grandmother, on the stairs, gave Nora, starting for school, some fresh water-cresses. Just then Mrs. O'Kinsella happened to open the door. ”

“ You must cheer up and not cough. You can go to France or somewhere. You will find a heap of lengths of linen stuff in a box under the steps of old Tom's shop. He doesn't know about it. It is mine and the nicest they is, and if you don't be wanting it, you can sell it. Then you look in the lining of Danny's cap, and find some bank papers, and you send them to the Ninth anti-Sassenach Bank in Belfast and it will send you nigh twelve pound gold. You will find Winny and me by Richmond Bridge, and it will not be so expencive without us. ”

“ Malachi O'Kinsella, the cheerful thriftless man, with his handsome bearing and his superfluous oratory, was gone; and his Hughey was too young to be of service to those he left behind. A fine monument, with Glory be to God on it, had to be put up over him in the old churchyard, two years ago; and there had been since the problem of schooling, feeding, and clothing Hughey, Nora, and Winny. Then Rose, three years old, fell into a lime-kiln, and was associated with the enforced luxury of a second funeral ”