CHAPTER I

How a Dove-cot was fluttered in Rossmoyne.

The old-fashioned clock is ticking loudly, ponderously, as though determined to betray the flight of fickle time and impress upon the happy, careless ones that the end of all things is at hand. The roses knock their fragrant buds against the window-panes, calling attention to their dainty sweetness. The pigeons coo amorously upon the sills outside, and even thrust their pretty heads into the breakfast-room, demanding plaintively their daily crumbs; but no one heeds.

A deadly silence has fallen upon this room at Moyne, albeit life is fully represented here, and two eyes, in which the light of youth is quenched, are looking anxiously into the two other eyes that have also seen the best and the sweetest of their days.

Hopelessly the golden roses scatter their petals. In vain the white and tawny birds entreat backsheesh. To no purpose does the elderly clock count out its numbers. The urn is hissing angrily, the two cups of tea so carefully prepared are growing cold. So are the crisp little hot cakes, so is the —

No! by the bye, it isn't! Honey can't. What a chance I was near giving the reviewers!

One bird, growing annoyed at the prolonged quiet, flies from the open window to the back of Miss Penelope's chair, and settles there with an indignant flutter and a suppressed but angry note. This small suggestion of a living world destroyes the spell that for the last few minutes has been connecting the brain with a dead one.

Miss Penelope, raising her head, gives words to her thoughts.

"Poor, poor Katherine!" she says, gently smoothing out the letter that lies upon her knee. "How her happiness was wrecked and what a sad ending there has been to everything! Her children coming home to us, fatherless – motherless! Dear child! what a life hers has been! It is quite twenty years ago now, and yet it all seems to me as fresh as yesterday."

"She shouldn't have taken things so easily; she should have asserted herself at the time," says Miss Priscilla, whose voice is always a note sharper than her sister's.

"It requires a great deal of thought and – and a great deal of moral courage to assert one's self when a man has behaved abominably to one, – has, in fact, jilted one!" says Miss Penelope, bringing out the awful word with a little shudder and a shake of her gentle head, that sets two pale lavender ribbons on her cap swaying mildly to and fro.

"Why was she so fatally silent about everything, except the one bare fact of his refusal, at the last moment, to marry her, without assigning any cause for his base desertion? Why didn't she open her whole heart to me? I wasn't afraid of the man!" says Miss Priscilla, with such terrible energy and such a warlike front as might well have daunted "the man," or indeed any man, could he have seen her. "She should have unburdened her poor bruised spirit to me, who – if my mother was not hers, and if I was many years her senior – had at least a sister's love for her."

"A true love," says Miss Penelope, with another sigh.

"Instead of which," regretfully, "she hid all her sorrows in her own bosom, and no doubt wept and pined for the miscreant in secret."

"Poor soul!" says Miss Penelope, profoundly affected by this dismal picture. Tears born of tenderness spring to her eyes. "Do you remember, Priscilla, how she refused to show his letter, wishing, I suppose, even then to spare him?"

"I forget nothing!" with some acerbity. "Often, when saying my prayers, I have wished I could forget him, but I can't, so I have to go on being uncharitable and in sin, – if indeed sin it be to harden one's heart against a bad man."

"Do you remember, too, my dear Priscilla, how she refused to go to church the Sunday after she received his cold-blooded missive telling her he wished his engagement at an end? I often wonder in what language he could have couched such a scandalous desire; but she tore the letter up. Dear! dear! it might have happened to-day, it is all so clear to me."

"Too clear," says Miss Priscilla.

"I recollect, too," says Miss Penelope, leaning her elbows on the table, pushing her untasted tea from her, and warming to the dismal memory, "how she would not come down to dinner on that eventful evening, though we had the red-currant tart she was so fond of, and how I took some up myself and knocked at her door and entreated her to open to me and to eat some of it. There was whipped cream on it; and she was very fond of cream, too."

"And she refused to open the door?" asks Miss Priscilla, with the satisfied air of one who has often heard the thrilling recital before, yet was never tired of it.

"Absolutely! so I laid the plate on a little table outside her door. Some hours afterwards, going up to bed, I saw the plate was gone and her door slightly ajar. Stealing into her room on tiptoe, I saw she was sleeping peacefully, and that she had eaten the red-currant tart. I felt so happy then. Poor dear child! how fond she was of that tart."

"She liked everything that had sugar in it," says Miss Priscilla, mournfully.

"It was only natural. 'Sweets to the sweet,'" says Miss Penelope, letting one little white jewelled hand fall slowly, sadly upon the other.

There is a lengthened pause.

Presently, stooping slightly towards her sister, Miss Penelope says in a mysterious whisper, —

"I wonder, my dear Priscilla, why she married James Beresford a month afterwards."

"Who can read the human heart? Perhaps it was pride drove her into that marriage, – a desire to show George Desmond how lightly she treated his desertion of her. And James was a handsome young fellow, whereas George was – "

"Ugly," says Miss Penelope, with quite an amazing amount of vicious satisfaction for her.

"Strikingly so," says Miss Priscilla, acquiescing most agreeably. "But then the Desmond estates mean half the county; and we used to think he was the soul of honor."

"It was our father's expressed desire upon his deathbed that Katherine should marry him."

"Yes, yes; a desire to be held sacred. And Katherine gave her promise to our dying parent. Nothing," says Miss Priscilla, in a solemn tone, "should induce any one to break such an oath. I have often said so to the dear child. But she appeared not only willing, but anxious, to marry George Desmond. His was the traitorous mind."

"I daresay he has had his own punishment," says Miss Penelope, mildly.

"I hope so," says Miss Priscilla, sternly. Then, with a return to sadness, "Twenty years ago it is, and now she has been a twelvemonth dead and in her quiet grave."

"Oh, don't, my dear Priscilla," says Miss Penelope, in a broken voice, burying her face in her pocket-handkerchief.

"Ah! well, well, we had better look to the future; the past has no charms for us," says Miss Priscilla, with a ghastly attempt at cheerfulness. "Let me see," referring through a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles to the letter in her hand: "That the dear children have landed we know, and – h'm – yes, this very – yes, plainly, very respectable person, the captain, writes to say they will be with us to-morrow."

"To-morrow! and that was written yesterday," says Miss Penelope, putting down her handkerchief and starting once more into life. "Why, at that rate, my dear Priscilla, they will be here to-day!"

"Bless me! you don't mean it!" exclaims Miss Priscilla, again applying her glasses to the letter. "Monday, and this is Tuesday: yes, sure enough you are right. What a head you have, my dear Penelope!"

"Oh, not at all," says Miss Penelope, flushing with pleasure at this tribute to her intellect.

"To-day, – in a few hours. Now, what is to be done about the beds?"

"But surely they are aired?"

"Aired? – yes. They have been aired every day regularly for the past two months, ever since I first heard the children were likely to come to us. But still I am uncertain about them. I know they will want hot jars; and then the rooms, they will want flowers and many things – and – "

"Can't I help you?" demands Miss Penelope, eagerly.

"My dear girl, not at all," says Miss Priscilla, with a calmly superior air, arising from the fact that she is quite eighteen months her senior. "You can assist me with your valuable counsel, but I would not have you disturb yourself for worlds. You must be cool and collected, and hold yourself in readiness to receive them when they come. They will be shy, no doubt, coming here all the way from Palestine, and it must be your part to make them feel quite at home."

This to Miss Penelope, who is afraid of strangers in any guise, appears such a fearful mission that she pales, and says, tremblingly, —

"But you too will be present at our first meeting? I must indeed beg you to be present, my dear Priscilla."

"Of course, of course," says Miss Priscilla, encouragingly. Then, doubtfully, "I hope the boy won't take a dislike to us."

"I wonder how we shall get on with children," says Miss Penelope. She is evidently growing extremely nervous. "It seems so strange they should be coming here to the old house."

"Monica cannot be a child now. She must be at least eighteen," says Miss Priscilla, thoughtfully. "It was in 1863 that – "

"1864, I think," interrupts Miss Penelope.

"1863," persists Miss Priscilla.

"You may be right, my dear," says Miss Penelope, mildly but firmly, "you often are, – but I know it was in '64 that – "

"What?" asks Miss Priscilla, sharply.

"The Desmond jilted our Katherine."

"You are wrong, Penelope, utterly wrong. It was in '63."

"I am nearly always wrong," says Miss Penelope, meekly, yet with a latent sense of suppressed power. "But I cannot forget that in the year George Desmond behaved so shamefully to our sweet Katherine, Madam O'Connor's cow had two calves, and that," triumphantly, "was in '64."

"You are right – quite right," says Miss Priscilla, vanquished, but not cast down. "So it was. What a memory you have, my dear Penelope!"

"Nothing when compared with yours," says Miss Penelope, smiling.

At this moment the door opens and an old man enters the room. He is clad in the garb of a servant, though such wonderful habiliments as those in which he has arrayed himself would be difficult to purchase nowadays: whether there are more wrinkles in his forehead or in his trousers is a nice question that could not readily be decided at a moment's notice.

He is quite ten years older than either of his mistresses; and, indeed, both he and his garments belong to a by-gone generation. His knees are bent, so is his back; his face is like a Ribston pippin, his coat is a marvel both in cut and in texture, but his linen is irreproachable, and what hair nature has still left him is most carefully brushed. There is, too, in his small gray Irish eyes a mischievous twinkle, and a fund of honest good humor that goes far to defy the ravages of time. In spite of his seventy years and his quaint attire, he still at times can hold his own with many a younger man.

"Well, Timothy," says Miss Priscilla, looking up as he approaches the table, "we have had news of Miss Katherine's – I mean Mrs. Beresford's – children."

"Rest her sowl!" says Timothy, in a reverential tone, alluding to that part of the late Mrs. Beresford.

"It seems they have landed and will be with us to-day."

"The day, miss?" growing brisk at this unexpected announcement.

"Yes, they have reached England in safety, and are now in Dublin. What a long, long journey it has been for them," with another dreamy glance at the letter, "all the way from Palestine!"

"An' so it has, miss, poor little crathurs!" says Timothy, who knows as much about the whereabouts of Palestine as he does about the man in the moon.

"You mustn't think they are very young, Timothy," says Miss Penelope, hastily. "Miss Priscilla and I have been talking it over, and we believe Miss Beresford must be now seventeen, Master Terence sixteen, and Miss Kate fourteen."

"And so of course they must be, miss. Thrue for ye, ma'am. Dear, dear, though only to think now; it seems only the other day the dear young lady was married to Mister Beresford. But you aren't eating a bit, miss," anxiously; "you haven't tasted a morsel, ma'am. What can I get ye now?"

"Nothing, Timothy. The fact is – "

"There's an iligant ham downstairs, ma'am," says the old man, now really concerned for the mistresses, who still always appear to him as "the young ladies: " "let me bring it up to you."

"No, thank you, Timothy: we are just a little upset by this sudden news. We cannot help wondering how the old house will be with children in it, after all these years of calm and quiet."

"Sure an' a grand change it will be for us all, miss; 'twill indeed, ma'am," says Timothy, cheerfully, though his mind misgives him. "There's nothing like children, when all's told: sure's there's music in every sound of their footsteps."

"I hope they will be good," says Miss Penelope, with a doubtful sigh.

"Faix, what else would they be, miss?" says the old man, with assumed reproach. "'Tis well I mind of poor Miss Katherine herself, – the soft tongue she had in her head, an' never a cross word out of her, save to Nelly Doolin – an' she was the divil herself, savin' your presence, miss, and enough to provoke all the saints – glory be – "

"I trust they will be happy here," goes on Miss Penelope, still wistful.

"An' why not, miss? Sure the counthry is the finest place at all for the young; and where's a finer counthry than ould Ireland?"

"Much can't be said for it of late, Timothy," says Miss Priscilla, sadly: "all it can boast of now is rebellion, sedition, and bloodshed."

"Sure every one must have a kick up sometimes, miss," says Timothy, with youthful lightness; "an', afther all, isn't the ould place only doin' what she can for herself, more power to her?"

"Ryan," says Miss Priscilla, sternly, addressing her butler by his surname, – a thing that is never done except in dire cases, – and fixing upon him an icy glance beneath which he quails, "I regret you should so far forget yourself as to utter such treasonable sentiments in our presence. You ought to be ashamed of yourself."

"So I am miss. I humbly ask yer pardon, ma'am," says Mr. Ryan, promptly. "But all the different opinions one hears addles the brain. 'Twas only last night the Murphys had a meeting, and they do say, miss," lowering his voice confidentially, "that the Squire down there," pointing apparently through the breakfast-room wall, "is in a bad way with the League boys."

"The Desmond?"

"Yes, miss. He's been evictin' again, ma'am, an' there's queer talk about him. But," with a relapse into former thought, "if he's a bad landlord, what can he expect?"

"No, no, Timothy. He is not a bad landlord," says Miss Priscilla, hastily, though this allowance of grace to her enemy causes her a bitter pang. "He has been most patient for years. That I know."

"Well, maybe so, miss," says Ryan, deferentially, but with a reservation in his manner that speaks volumes. "It isn't for the likes of me ma'am, to contradict the likes of you. But did ye hear, miss, that Misther Desmond's nephew has come to stay with him?"

"At Coole?"

"At the Castle. Yes, miss. Faix 'twas meself was surprised to hear it. But there he is, safe enough, an' another gentleman with him; an' they do say that the old masther is as proud as Punch of him. But his blood's bad, I'll no doubt."

"No doubt," says Priscilla, severely.

Miss Penelope sighs.