Mrs. J. H. Riddell

“ These weaknesses, which add so much to happiness, but which usually develope themselves later in life, were with Grace an integral part of her nature. She was of the soil; she was Irish and she loved everything Irish. There might be things in the country she could wish improved, but still the place was home to her. And Grace’s heart swelled and her eyes filled with tears as she heard the brogue floating around her, and those persuasive tones which in Dublin always seem addressed only to one person, and that the listener, fell upon her ear. ”

“ I can help the poor a little; I shall either die young, or else remain till I am old, and be courted and flattered for my money, and not be able to make up my mind to whom to leave it. I wish I could fall in love; I wish I could like some one, as I think I liked Robert Somerford when I was a girl. Oh dear, what a beautiful world this is! Why are we not happier and more contented in it?”
And assuredly it was a lovely scene that on which Miss Moffat’s eyes rested, as she paused on her way to the Castle Farm to take in the beauty of land and sea stretching below her. ”

“ Robert Somerford, a man without a fortune, a profession, or a trade; no match, in my opinion, even for your pink-and-white beauty, certainly no match for my charming Grace.”
“I see nothing charming about her,” was the reply.
“That is because you are a man,” said Mrs. Perris calmly. “Give her the chance, and ten years hence she will be the queen of society; but that is just what men cannot understand. They want a woman ready made. They cannot believe that the sort of beauty they admire in a girl in her teens will not last, cannot last. Now Grace’s loveliness will ripen day by day.” ”

“ Brady’s life, and Nettie often wondered to herself whether the best thing she could do might not be to run away to the uttermost ends of the earth, taking the children with her.
“For if he ever finds it out he certainly will kill me,” thought the wretched woman, and she thenceforth lived in a constant agony of fright. After all, no matter how tired a person may be of the business of existence, one would like to have a choice as to the mode of getting rid of the toil and the sorrow; and perhaps the most repulsive way of having the trouble ended seems that of being murdered. ”

“ The sadder and the more hopeless the tone, the better the verses pleased Miss Moffat.
She did not often see Mr. Somerford, but what then? The pleasure was all the greater when she did see him; and ill-natured people would have added, she had the less opportunity of finding out that her idol had feet of clay.
There is a time of life when it is a positive luxury to be unhappy. Grace was unhappy, and rejoiced in her sufferings. It seemed to her that she was experiencing the common doom, that she was in her own person enacting a scene out of a life tragedy. ”

“ A face without a line; eyes without even a passing cloud; an expression perfectly free from shadow; and yet Grace Moffat described her favourite companion accurately, when in vague language she likened her to some fair tempting fruit, inside whereof there lurked a hardness, which friend, relative, and acquaintance, tried in vain to overcome. It had been the custom at Kingslough to regard Nettie as a limpid brook, through the clean waters of which every pebble, every grain of sand was to be plainly discerned. ”

“ But suppose a man in that rank offered himself to Grace Moffat? Why, there is not a labourer at Bayview who would not resent such an offer as a personal insult. Grace may marry whom she pleases. With Nettie it was a question of marrying whom she could. Of what use is beauty in a land where a poor man fears to admire? I put it to you, Lucy, is there a man in our station in Kingslough or twelve miles round, who could marry for love without money, unless he wished to make his wife and himself miserable. ”

“ For well-nigh half a century he had cured or killed the gentry of Kingslough and its neighbourhood, and there was comfort in that reflection. To be sure he knew nothing, and professed to know nothing, of new-fangled ways; but then the fashion of living and dying is one which knows little alteration. Being born, being buried, are matters susceptible of so little change that Grace might well be excused if in her extremity she fastened her gaze more confidently on the old light than on the new. Mr. Hanlon might be very clever, but after all he could not have Dr. Girvan’s experience. ”

“ I do not say you ever loved me much, but you were young, and I believed you might learn to love me more; but there is no use in talking about that now, the new love has ousted out the old. You can never be more than a friend to me; that is the phrase, is it not? But somebody else may be nearer and dearer than the man who has cared for no one but you—no one else, Grace, all his life. ”

“ Not much of an ear could John Riley boast, yet he loved to listen to Grace’s singing, and hearkened with something between a pang and a hope to the little thrills of melody into which she would break—just as a bird breaks into a vocal ecstasy—while they walked through the rose-laden gardens, or floated, oars uplifted, over the moonlit sea, the water diamonds dripping from them, making an accompaniment to the last soft notes of the duet sung by his sister and Grace. ”

“ Miss Moffat walked to the window and back again, thinking in what form of words to tell the girl what she wanted with her.
“Nancy,” she began, “if it had been only to nurse Mrs. Brady I required help, I would never have asked you to help me. Plenty of women older and more experienced than you could have been found for such a duty, but what I really require is a person whom I can trust to keep silence. I want you to promise me that to no human being now or hereafter—unless I give you leave—you will ever mention a word of what you may hear in Mrs. Brady’s room.” ”

“ GRACE VISITS MARYVILLE. With much the same feeling as a Gipsy, who has been compelled to live for a time amongst the house-dwellers, returns to the camp on the common, to the savoury supper furnished gratuitously from his nearest neighbour’s farmyard, to the bed on the green-sward, with heaven for a canopy and ferns for his pillow, so Grace, after a not disagreeable or uninstructive sojourn in the foreign land of England, beheld once more the fair shores and heard the familiar accents of her own country.
Home, after all, is home be it ever so homely ”

“ Some day, it might be, a new earl should come to his own, who would put life into all these sleeping apartments, people them—let in the sunlight—sweep off the dust; but so far, for generations past, the Glendares had cared nought for the place, which a former earl had when the title was still new built large enough to lodge a monarch and his suite, as was the fashion formerly in Ireland, where once every person who happened to be anybody, found himself over-housed and under-incomed. ”

“ Silence succeeds to speech, when once the solemn steps of the great conqueror are heard crossing the threshold. It is the same when a sore trouble menaces. In the presence of that enemy, even those whose happiness or misery is in no way concerned in his approach are fain to keep silence—and silence Kingslough maintained accordingly about the sad faux pas Nettie O’Hara had made.
But as yet Grace Moffat scarcely grasped the length and the breadth and the depth of the pit her old companion had dug so carefully for her future. ”

“ Ay, those were brave days, Miss Grace, brave, heartsome days. It was easy to feel good and Christian-like then, and wish well to everybody; but I can’t do it now, I cannot. When I’m sitting here all alone, texts come into my head; but they are all what I used to call bad ones, about vengeance, and hatred, and punishment. There are no others I can mind now. That thief of the world has destroyed us body and soul, but it will come to him. ”

“ A wrong had been committed which only one man living could put right, a wrong which, simple as it seemed, made her for the moment marvel how the earl could rest in his grave, considering the wretchedness his act had wrought. Never before had she touched that hard spot in the Irish nature which has puzzled the most thoughtful of psychologists, and baffles the wisdom of the wisest statesmen, which not time, or experience, or kindness, or remonstrance can soften, and which seems as indifferent to severe treatment as it is insensible to gentle handling. ”

“ Not merely were affairs no better than when he went away, but they were infinitely worse. The amount of the mortgage was increased, the land was deteriorated in value, the houses and cottages were dilapidated, and in many cases almost falling to ruin, whilst Woodbrook itself gave evidence at every turn, of neglect; shortness of money; lack of spirit to improve; lack of will to make the best of a bad position; lack of faith that time and patience and energy might work wonders in the way of repairing even the shattered fortunes of the Riley family. ”

“ Then, with a catching sob, she stopped, her eyes flashing, her cheeks aflame, while John Riley, preventing his father answering, and passing over the sting her words held, said,—
“No one will be better pleased than we to hear you and your husband are happy and prosperous, Nettie. It would be useless to deny that we did, and do, regret the step you have taken, but that step has been taken, and it behoves us, as your nearest male friends, to see that its consequences prove as little disastrous to you as may be.” ”

“ Every great virtue throws a shadow—the loftier the virtue the longer the shadow. Grace understood, who better?—the virtues of her hardworking, uncomplaining, patient, stubborn northern compatriots; but the dark shadows she had seen likewise; she was beginning to understand that the natives of no land are perfect, that God has conferred no more special patent of immunity from the taint of original sin on the poor than on the rich. ”

“ If Kingslough could only have kept silence; but then Kingslough never did keep silence. Well, he would try; he would take advantage of this terrible trouble which had befallen her friend, and avail himself of a time when he knew Grace must be full of sorrow, to speak to her about her own future and his.
Yes; whether together or apart, it meant hers and his. If she sent him adrift, he would try to make of that future something even she need not have been ashamed to share. ”

“ Hartley well knew, would welcome this prodigal with tears of rejoicing—with outstretched arms of love. She had been slow to share in the alarm caused by Nettie’s disappearance, by Nettie’s saturated scarf; now she could not resist a gradually increasing conviction that the girl’s conduct had belied her face, and brought discredit on her family; that she had stolen away with some one who, fancying the match would not be approved of by his own relatives, possessed power enough over her affections to induce her to consent to a secret marriage. ”

“ All the morning Maryville was besieged with callers, notes, cards, and inquiries.
“They can come now,” said Nettie bitterly, as she watched car and carriage and messenger depart unsatisfied. “They think I can go back and take the old up where I left off that morning. They do not know; how should they?”
Dinner-time arrived. With a bang, Susan set down on one side of the table at the other side of which Grace sat writing, a dish of potatoes piled high and another of herrings floating in a fresh sea of grease. ”

“ Amongst others he is intensely Irish—using that expression in its most disparaging sense. I do not mean that he is Irish in impulsiveness, recklessness, generosity or folly; but he is Irish in cunning, in hatred, in revenge, in acquisitiveness, in every undesirable quality the worst classes in Ireland hold in common. He has been waiting for this land for years; grudging Scott his possession, and yet gloating over every stone the poor wretch laid, one on the top of another, for his (Brady’s) benefit. You may give up the notion, Grace; money will not give Scott back the Castle Farm. ”

“ Kingslough felt the wisest course it could pursue, in the interest of itself and Nettie, was to ignore the probabilities of what that lot might be.
A great scandal had occurred—a scandal so great that, prone as Kingslough was to gossip, it felt disposed to maintain silence over the affair.
In slight illnesses people love to talk over the symptoms and exaggerate the danger, but when the sickness becomes mortal, there ensues a disinclination to speak of it. ”

“ Had she been deaf, humpbacked, lame, afflicted with a squint, eighty years of age, an heiress need not have despaired of attracting suitors.
When sons were shy or indifferent, when they seemed inclined to balk, as a hunting gentleman described their reluctance to go wooing, mothers courted sometimes not unsuccessfully in their stead; and had Grace been one of the blood royal, she could scarcely have had greater attention showered upon her than was the case once the funeral was over and the terms of her father’s will known. ”

“ If Grace had her ideal, that ideal certainly was not realized in the person of any man she ever expected to marry, or thought of marrying. She had not brought marrying home to herself in any way. She was romantic—given to solitary wanderings in the twilight and by moonlight along the terraced walk, 121bordered by myrtles, strewed with the leaves of the gum cistus flower, which blooms and fades in a day, fragrant with the scent of syringa,—that overlooked the bay. ”