Strong as Death

Chapter I. Where The River Ran

There was once upon a time, as old story books say, a woman who lived in Garyana, and boiled the river Gary every day for her tea. It was not a river then ; only a little rill trickling from a large rock, in such a slender stream that it took ten minutes to fill the woman's tea-kettle. But it never ceased trickling for an instant ; therein lay its strength, and so, after a time, it was able to leave Garyana, and flow by many a devious channel, past the different places, where, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, the principal characters in this life drama had their dwellings. Garyana is a high rocky hill in the Irish county of Donagh. It is covered with furze and heather, and scarcely deserves the name of mountain, although of greater altitude than many of the range to which it forms a kind of supple ment, and which, from the name of its highest peak, is called the Slieve Cruib Mountains.

A My story, like the river, whose course it will follow, begins in this heath-covered hill. On the other side of the rock from which the Gary first oozes, and almost concealed by it, there used to be a small dwelling. The rock itself formed one of its walls, and sheltered it from the keen blasts that sometimes swept among the hills, tossing the heather like waves of purple sea, and scattering the flowers of the gorse in golden showers. The cabin — for it was little better — consisted of but two rooms, a kitchen and bedroom ; but in the bedroom was a recess hewn out of the rocky wall, where was a settle-bed, and several chests of household stuff. It had no light, except what it received from the small window of the outer apartment, from which it was divided by a line stretched across the entrance, whereon were hung various articles of female wearing apparel.

The cabin sheltered but one human inhabitant — a woman. None of her neighbours knew who she was, or whence she came ; she held no dealings with them that she could avoid ; a goat supplied her with milk, a small patch of shallow ground with potatoes, and she bought her meal from the miller of Drumbitter — a village about a mile from Garyana. The miller's boy who carried the meal home for her said her name was Mrs. O'Kane, but she was generally known as Mad Madge. The children feared her; the more timid fled in affright if they saw her approach, while the ruder ones would stand and jibe, and throw stones, that they might hear her curse as she had cursed once at some boys, who had ventured into her cottage to seek for a straying fowl. They forgot how kind she had been to little Kitty Doyle when a stone fell and crushed her ankle as she was climb ing a fence to reach a bunch of ripe blackberries ; how, hearing the child scream, Madge had run out, and oarrying her in, had bathed and bandaged her ankle, given her goat's milk, and finally taken her home in her arms to her mother.

Alas ! for human nature, that incident had made no impression in comparison with the other. Little Kitty was the first to fly if she saw her benefactress on the road, and little Kitty's mother firmly believed that the woman had cast an evil eye upon her child, because she had never been so strong since she met with the accident. Although they gave Mad Madge that name, few believed her to be really insane ; some did ; others said she was a miser, others a drunkard, and others still, a witch. But she was none of these things ; she was only a self-willed, passionate woman, who had been disappointed in her most cherished hope. In person she was tall, and, for a woman, strongly, though not ungracefully built. Her hair was black, turning to grey, her complexion high, and features well formed ; but a perpetual frown spoiled the expression of a face whose beauty had, at the best, been of that sensuous type which coarsens with years.

She was careless in her dress and arrangement of her hair, as if her personal appearance were a matter of indifference, but her clothes were of better material than those worn by the peasantry, and, although evidently not a gentlewoman, there was that in her air betokening one more accustomed to command than obey. Every morning Madge came out of the house with her little black kettle in her hand, her cat trotting before her, and, having stuck a piece of slate into the cleft of the rock, from which the water issued, she would hang the kettle on the slate, and, when it was full, take it in and boil the Gary for tea — a luxury little indulged in at that time compared with now, and much esteemed by both her and pussy. The cat was not black, as that of a reputed witch ought to have been, but a beautiful white animal, with soft thick fur, who went slipping about the house over chairs and tables, with a gentle gliding motion, like a soft-voiced, soft stepping woman in a sickroom.

It was the one creature in the world who loved Madge, and, so far as any one knew, it was the only one she loved. It ate off her plate, drank out of her saucer, and though the popular idea that cats sucked human breath prevented her having it to share her own bed at night, she always wrapped it up the last thing on the settle, in the recess, with as much care as if it had been a child. I should not have said that none of her neighbours knew who Madge was, or whence she came ; one did, the only near neighbour she had — Watty Wha, the blacksmith, to whom the Gary leads us next. The tiny rill could no longer be held in a tea-kettle when it reached the forge. It had shaped a channel for itself among the rocks, and could fill a large can for Watty twice a day, without retarding its course for more than half a minute.

It also afforded an occasional draught to the horses that were brought to him to be shod ; but they were not many, for the forge was a considerable distance from any farmhouse, and the way was steep and rugged. If a horse was afflicted with corns, or "brushed," or had any other defect requiring careful shoeing to counteract, then he was brought to Watty, who was famed for his skill in that branch of his trade, as in every other. In general, however, it was found more convenient to have the horses shod at Drumbitter or Ballynahaugh, and Watty's chief business lay in repairing clocks, watches, guns, umbrellas, or anything else that a handy Jack-of-all-trades, as he was, could do. The more difficult a job was, the more pleasure he took in it, and many a piece of mechanism had been set to rights by him, after other tradesmen had pronounced it hopeless.

When he was not working for other people, he was generally to be found engaged on some work of his own, so that he was always busy, and always happy, whistling contentedly as he filed, and chiselled, and hammered bits of metal and wood into shape as industriously, and perhaps as effectively, as other workmen hammer thoughts and words. He was a big, broad-shouldered fellow, with very long legs and long head, surmounted by a shock of flaxen hair, standing on end. His face struck you, at first sight, as being more good-natured than clever, but there was an expression of droll intelligence in his blue eyes, combined with a capability of patient, persevering plodding, and perhaps it was that useful talent which passed for cleverness among his neighbours. He and Madge had come to Garyana about the same time, and from the same neighbourhood, but neither knew of the other's coming, and both were surprised when they found themselves neighbours again — Watty most so, because there was no good reason why Madge should have left a comfortable home and good farm in an adjacent county to come to live alone in this wild spot ; whereas Madge knew that Watty had been compelled to take a " moonlight flitting " because he was suspected of exercising his mechanical skill in the manufacture of pikes of improved construction.

It was for no good purpose that pikes were manufactured in those days, at least for no purpose that can ever be good again. Watty was a bachelor, and as he was the only one with whom his strange neighbour ever willingly exchanged words, he was often bantered about the intimacy, and asked when it was to be a match. But, more by sagacious shakes of the head than by words, he gave the jesters to understand that Madge aud the money she was supposed to possess were not for him, and that he would prefer one of the village girls with " only a shift to her back," to Madge with all her riches. Still, he did not ask any girl in that primi tive condition to come to the forge, but lived alone in his cottage as Madge did in hers, only that he had not even a cat to keep him company, except when he took charge of his neighbour's white beauty, as he always did when Madge was from home.

After the Gary left the forge it went skipping about among the rocks till, having gathered strength from the exercise, it felt inclined for a longer journey. It left the mountains then, and ran down to the low ground, where it wandered for a while here and there, without any definite object in view, unless to see how many turnings it could make to the mile, and laugh at its own vagaries, as it twisted and turned through the green meadows, which became greener wherever it touched them. When it had meandered in this idle and vagrant fashion for several miles, it became necessary, for the convenience cf the public, to throw a bridge over it. Many years had passed since this bridge had been constructed ; but it was none the less strong on that account. Builders built for posterity in old times, and although the requirements of the Gary at that place were limited to three low arches, yet the mason work was more solid than that of most modern bouses.

Whatever ravages time had made were repaired by clinging ivy, as thick as a man's leg at the root, which wound its long arms about the stones, and clung by its myriads of tiny feet wherever it could get a hold, making the old bridge beautiful with the sheen of its dark glossy leaves. Not far from the bridge, and taking its name from it, was, or rather is, an old house, called Garycross Cottage, or, more generally, Garycross. It was an old house nearly a hundred years ago, and tradition said that, when first built, there was not to be seen from its doorway the smoke of a single chimney, save its own, curling up into the clear mountain air. Garycross Cottage was a long, low building, with thatched roof and whitewashed walls. In the front of the house the whitewash was only put on in patches here and there, for it, like the bridge, was almost entirely covered with ivy.

Yellow and scarlet japonicas had also been planted against the wall. The ivy had been pruned away to make room for the pyrus, which, every year, made the early spring months gay with its beautiful scarlet bloom ; but the hardier corkorice had been left to make its own way, and, after fighting vainly for its place with the encroaching ivy, it had succumbed, as the weaker must always do to the stronger, and was dying decently for want of breath, when it could no longer wage the unequal war. A pyracantha had been more fortunate, and its bright red berries would have rivalled the flowers of the japonica could they have been seen together ; but, long before Christmas, the sparrows, that persisted in living rent-free in the eaves of the cottage, had extorted house taxes, instead of paying them, by devouring all the berries.

There were two en trances to the hall door of the cottage ; one from the yard, which was reached by a little green gate, with an arch of blue flowering tea-tree above it ; and another from the public road by a similar gate without an arch. From this second gate a narrow gravelled path, flanked on either side by laurels and box-trees, led up an incline, to a third green gate, arched over like the first, and exactly opposite to it, so that, whichever way you entered, an arch of tea-tree was the first thing that caught the eye. Everything, almost, about the cottage was green ; the hall door was green, the gates were green, the window sashes were green, and the grass plot before the door was very green. It was also very small, and a low wall ran round it, dividing it from the public road, which was so close to the house that anyone passing along it could be distinctly seen from the windows.

Round this wall was a row of old sycamore trees, where the bees and flies loved to buzz in summer-time ; and underneath the trees, and covering the top of the wall, was a thick mass of peri winkle, whose blue flowers were seldom out of blow, aud made the court — as the enclosed space before the door was called — look gay, when everything else was bare. Be tween the grass plot and the gravelled walk, leading from one gate to the other, were trim flower-beds, filled with many a dear, old-fashioned flower that one seldom sees now. Valerian, and white rockets, and hepaticas blue and pink, double and single, were there ; and small yellow polyanthi, with the sweetest of scents ; and white and brown hose-in hose, the proper name for which I do not know, and do not care to know ; to me they will still be hose-in-hose, the delight and wonder of my childhood.

The auriculas were there, purple and yellow and greenish buff ; and double daisies, white and red ; and star of Bethlehem ; and double violets ; and blush roses, that blushed till they became almost celestial in their hue ; and sweet-peas of many a colour, perfuming the air. I see them all — those dear old friends ; they are so plainly before my eyes that I cannot forbear to dwell upon them, although to others they may be but as names taken at random from a gardener's calendar, and not the fragrant distillation of sweet memories, that they are to her who records the lives with which the flowers are intertwined. For did not the first Mrs. Gregg plant those rose-trees, with her husband's assistance, the very day after she came to Garycross a bride % And did not her friend and successor pluck the white Christmas flowers to lay upon her breast when she lay dead four short years after?

And has not Letty Gregg robbed the plants of their finest blossoms to adorn her own black hair, and Ruth Holmes pulled off sprays of sweet-pea to stick in her belt? But these names are still unknown to the reader ; they are but names, as the flowers are ; let me hasten to present them. Mr Gregg, the owner of Garycross Cottage, and of part of the townland of Garycross itself, was agent for Lord Ballynahaugh, to whose country seat the river Gary will presently take us. He was a man beloved by his family aud friends, respected and trusted by his neighbours, and highly esteemed by the nobleman whose agent he was. When his young wife died, she left him two children, a son and daughter, to whom the lady he afterwards married faithfully fulfilled a mother's duty. She was not quite so strict in her training, however, as she would have been had they been her own children.

The second Mrs. Gregg, with all her quiet gentleness, could be very firm when she chose, but she knew that, with step-children, over-indulgence was better than over-strictness, and acted — or rather abstained from acting — accordingly. This want of restraint had no ill effect on the boy Frederick, who grew up steady and amiable, served in a volunteer corps while still a very young man, and when it was disbanded, joined the regular army, in which he hoped one day to win laurels for himself. But sober-minded matrons shook their heads over Letty Gregg, and returned mental thanks that their daughters were not like her. Had they been pressed to specify her misdemeanours, the A worst they could have said of her was, that she rode about the country by herself, instead of sitting decently behind her father or brother on a pillion, and that she received open admiration from all the young men for miles round, her name being given, in conjunction with that of a certain beautiful Betty Grey, wherever ladies were toasted.

For which last sin Letty could hardly be held accountable, for, with her tall, exquisitely-proportioned figure, regal carriage, purple black hair, and brilliant dark blue eyes that never seemed the same colour for two consecutive minutes, he would have been an insensate mortal who could have helped admiring her. To be sure, the rich colouring of her cheeks would have been thought a little too high by some. Miss Hickory, an old friend of the family, said it was not genteel to be so red, and that Letty looked like a milkmaid beside Lady Charlotte Ballynahaugh, or any of the county gentry; but Lady Charlotte's gay and widowed father had, on the other hand, been heard to declare that there was not a belle in Mayfair who would not look washed-out when compared with the brilliant Miss Gregg. And everyone acknowledged his lordship to be a good judge of female beauty, although his peculiar susceptibility to it made him too enthusiastic to take note of defects that were apparent enough to others.

Stricter connoisseurs complained that Letty's nose was too small, and was not drawn according to any approved model, and that her mouth was larger, and lips fuller, than the standard of beauty required. But although they were correct in both particulars, any alteration of the condemned features would have detracted from Letty's beauty, instead of adding to it, for her nose suited the rest of her face so well that the irregularity only enhanced the harmony of the whole ; while the other defect served, every time she laughed, to make more conspicuous a row of such white, even teeth as are seldom to be seen in any lady's mouth nowadays, unless when supplied by the dentist. The river turned away to the left when it passed Gary cross Cottage, as if intending to add its small quota of water to a lake that lay at the back of the house, down to which sloped a steep bank, where hazel bushes and bilberries grew, with wild white anemones and purple orchids nestling among the foliage of the one, and at the roots of the other.

But it changed its mind before it reached the lake, and shaped its course instead toward the town of Ballynahaugh, passing through a marshy ground planted with young osiers, and receiving various little rivulets and drains in its course till it became quite a respectable stream in a small way. It made one other detour before reaching Ballyna haugh, in order to call at Ebnebady, where beautiful Betty Grey lived with her hard-headed old father and gruff brother, and then it flowed direct through the grounds of Lord Ballynahaugh, widening its bed there, and forming mimic islands where, on hot days, the cattle in the park loved to stand and cool themselves under the shadow of the great trees that dipped their branches in the water. The channel deepened, and the bed narrowed when it left the park.

It seemed to feel it was no longer for ornament but use, and hurried on to Mr. Holmes's bleach-green, and from thence past the gardeu attached to his private house, divid ing it from the fields beyond, but affording communication with them, when communication was desired, by means of a rustic bridge. After that the course of the Gary and of this story run no more together. The family at Holmefield consisted of Mr. Holmes, his wife, one daughter, and two sons. Mr. Holmes had made money in the linen trade, and would have made more had not his employees insisted on him becoming a United Irish man. He did not give in, like many of the manufacturers of Ulster, but indignantly dismissed all his hands and closed his factory and bleach-green, to the disgust of his two sons, who had been his assistants in the business, and were now left without either a business or profession to occupy their time.

Mr. Gregg and Mr. Holmes had been friends in youth, and the friendship had descended to some of their children, while it had cooled into mere intimate acquaint anceship between themselves. It had not so cooled on Mr. Gregg's part ; his affection was as warm as when they were boys together ; but Mr. Holmes had hardened as be grew older, and had wrapped himself in a cloak of proud reserve that the beams of friendship could not penetrate. The beams of love might have done it, but Mrs. Holmes, although she idolised her husband in a meek fashion, had never made the discovery that his heart was a fountain sealed. Ruth Holmes was Letty Gregg's friend of friends, dearer to her, as she often declared, than all her numerous lovers put together. There was one whom she left out of the scale when she so balanced love and friendship, although in the year 1794, when this chronicle of her life and that of other lives begins, she had not acknowledged to herself that there was any exception.

But Ruth suspected it, and would shake her head playfully when Letty professed how happy she could be on a desert island with only her for company. She knew she was none the less loved on account of the new love ; Letty was one of those strong, self-sustaining women who love with a cherishing, protecting love like that of a man ; and now that she had herself commenced to cling round a stronger nature, she had never for a moment relaxed her hold of those who had twined about her own heart ; and no one in the world had twined more closely than sweet and saintly Ruth Holmes. That Letty was neither sweet nor saintly, but a grand woman, full of faults, though comparatively free from fail ings, will soon be evident enough to the reader, if she shows herself in these pages as she seems to the writer, and as she was when she bore her part in the unrecorded history of that eventful time. And now the characters have made their bow, draw up the curtain and let the play begin.

Chapter II

A comedy of errors. " Mamma, I am going to ride to Ballynahaugh to look for a letter from Fred ; he promised there should be one this week. And I shall call and see Ruth when I am there." It was Letty Gregg who spoke, appearing in her riding habit at the door of the parlour of Garycross Cottage, where her step-mother sat spinning flax. Mrs. Gregg had no need so to employ her time ; but she was mindful of Solomon's description of a good wife, and every bed in the house, and piles of home-made linen in the presses of the store-room, gave evidence of her industry. "Very well, dear," she answered, rising from her wheel, and following Letty out to the horse-block to see her mount ; and as she arranged the folds of her habit, she added, " But your father would like you to be here when he comes from Newry."

" I shall be home as soon as he is," Letty answered, kissing her hand, as she cantered out of the yard, and away along the road that led to Ballynahaugh. The birds were singing gaily, the air was soft and balmy, and it being the last day but one of April, the hawthorn hedges were covered with white bloom, not yet fully burst. Letty looked on every side, with a look of keen enjoyment as she rode, and when she spied a sprig of hawthorn more nearly blown than any she had seen that year, she pulled up, and stretched her arm till she reached it ; and did not know till she had placed it in her breast, where the deep green leaves and milky white flowers were shown off to per fection against her dark habit, that she had obtained it at the cost of a torn hand. "Curious fact," she soliloquised, removing her glove to examine the extent of the damage, " that people cannot pluck flowers in this world without scratching themselves with thorns.

Ruth would say it is because they are so eager to get the flowers that they don't look out for the sharp prickles they conceal. But little Ruth is a goose, or a Christian, or some such sort of old-fashioned being, and is so conscientious that she would scarcely put out her hand to pluck a flower if it were offered to her, lest it should be a sin ; yet she does not escape the prickles of life, poor child ; that grim old father must be a thorn in her flesh continu ally, driving the boys to destruction by his over-strictness — though she would deem me a blasphemer if I hiuted at such a thing, for she is so fond of him she thinks every thing he does must be right, even when he goes fair against nature ; while Mrs. Holmes — but there is no use in talking about her ; if ever a man married an embodied echo it was Mr. Holmes when he took to himself his wife.

If papa had chosen one like her wouldn't I have led her a life? But pappy knew better what was good for him than to do anything so foolish ; he knew that no matter how good or wise a man is, he needs a woman to be a help to him, and mamma is that to him without any doubt. " I do not believe there is any use in always being on the look-out for thorns ; it would only keep one from being able to enjoy the flowers, and what is the use of life without enjoyment ? If ill comes — and, seeing it has somehow got to be the common lot of mortals, I suppose it must come to everybody some time — let us bear it with the dignity and fortitude becoming human beings, and be glad that we took our full dose of pleasure as long as we could get it, without allowing it to be alloyed by the anticipation of pain.

Get on, Whitefoot. We live in the age of reason, and there is not a mystery in this world or the next that philosophy cannot explain, nor an ill nor a pain — paradoxical as it may seem — that Payne cannot overcome — to his own satisfac tion at least ; but there is a yearning in the soul that he or such as he can never satisfy any more than salt water can quench thirst. Get on, Whitefoot ; what are you dreaming about ? " And she struck the horse with her whip, and rode on faster than before. She did not draw bridle again till Ballynahaugh was in sight, when she allowed the mare to slacken her pace to a walk, and proceeded slowly under the shadow of the old chestnuts that stretched their branches over the high wall surrounding Lord Ballynahaugh's demesne. She pulled up opposite the entrance gate of the park, at the signal of a young lad dressed in livery, who had just ridden up to it.

" Well, Tibbs, what is it ? " she inquired rather sharply. " Please, miss," he answered, touching his hat, " I am going to join my lord at the Maze races, and Mrs. Dixon E asked me to call round by your place, and say that she has got the influenza, and wants to see you badly." " Very well, I shall go now," Letty answered, turning the mare's head to the gate. " None of the family are at home, I suppose 1 " "No, miss. Lady Charlotte is not expected till next month, and my lord won't be home till the end of this week, when the races are over." Mrs. Dixon, the housekeeper at Ballynahaugh Castle, was the widow of one clergyman, and mother of another, and Letty, being a great favourite with her, was a frequent visitor at the castle when the family was from home. In Lady Ballynahaugh's lifetime she had often been there as Lady Charlotte's playmate, but since the girls grew up the intimacy between them had gradually died out, and for the last year Letty had ceased entirely going to the castle when Lady Charlotte or her father was there.