The Wardlaws

Part I Margery Wardlaw Spinster Cbap

PAGE I. MARGERY'S IMMEDIATE PREDECESSORS ... I II. THE SECOND MRS. WARDLAW 15 III. THE BOY'S PROSPECTS 23 IV. A LITTLE PAPIST 34 V. A BETTER PROSPECT FOR PADEEN .... 48 VI. A LOVER AND A FRIEND 55 VII. EXPLAINS HOW THE RECTOR FELL INTO DISFAVOUR . 65 VIII. AN ACCIDENT 84 IX. TRADE .... .... IOO X. THE RECTOR SETTLES HIS ACCOUNT . . . .Ill XI. MISS MARGERY RESUMES SOCIAL DUTIES . . -134 XII. THE DAWN OF FORTUNE . . . . ■ M5 XIII. YOUNG MRS. WARDLAW 159

Part II John Wardlaw Stockbroker And Benedict

I. A PROSPEROUS HOUSEHOLD 1 83 II. LOVERS IN LOW LIFE '95 III. TREATS OF A MARRIAGE 205 IV. MRS. BURR AT HOME 210 v VI CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE V. FATHER AND DAUGHTER 222 VI. GOOD COMPANY 237 VII. A BUSINESS TALK 242 VIII. MRS. BURR'S TROUBLES 252 IX. RECONSIDERING THE POSITION 266 X. A FAMILY DISCUSSION 274 XI. A SOLUTION OF THE DIFFICULTY .... 294 XII. SETTLING DOWN 305 XIII. TOM HEARS 322 XIV. MRS. BURR'S NEW DEPARTURE 331 XV. MARY McSWINE TAKES AN INTEREST . . . 345 XVI. KILMOON 360 XVII. MARY McSWINE FINDS SOMETHING TO BE THANKFUL FOR

PART I MARGERY WARDLAW SPINSTER CHAPTER

I MARGERY'S IMMEDIATE PREDECESSORS The shock had struck Wardlands dumb, but in a populous community, dumbness as an evidence of surprise cannot be of long duration. The village behaved somewhat Hke a startled bee hive; first there was a pause of absolute stupefac tion, then a universal buzzing and commotion, then short nights abroad to better consider the disturbing incident. " It will make the Wardlaws thurn in their graves," said the tailor. He stood at his own door in his stocking-feet, just as he had come off the tailor ing board, and he emphasised his observation with the big shears, which he had brought with him in absence of mind. " There's a dhirty dhrop in her, or she cudn't have thought of it," said Nancy Frank. Her real name was Nancy Gallagher, but as there was a multitude of Gallaghers in the district, her husband's Christian A name had been affixed to her for the sake of distinction.

Nancy had been shopping, and was on her way home when she stopped to discuss the question that excited the village. Having known the Wardlaws and their traditions for generations, it was felt that her opinions deserved attention. "Is it dhirty dhrops ye're spakin' of?" asked a woman on the outer edge of the little group assembled at the tailor's door. " Where's the dhirt in honest trade, I should hke to know ? It's meself has sowld apples and baker's bread, and terbaccy, and ginger-pop since I was left a widdy woman, and divil a man or woman ever said, ' IU ye did it, Mrs. Byrne ! ' " There was a laugh at this which Nancy Frank interpreted. "An' ye'd be afther evenin' yerself to the Wardlaws ? Well, to be sure ! Do ye know that the Wardlaws got the whole of nineteen townlands to their share at the time of the Plantation, an' that there's not wan here but yerself that doesn't mind their castle as if it was afore them this minnit ?

Av coorse ye're a new comer, Mrs. Byrne, an' can't be expected to know things like the owld residents," said Nancy patronisingly ; "but if ye hev anny cur'osity ye can see the holes for the joists of theh castle flures in the walls of Jamie Brady's garden this blissed minnit. There's some here as minds them dhrivin their coach wid theh man in green an' dhrab livery, an' this very Miss Margery that's goin' to disgrace the fam'ly had her powny to ride when she was six years owld, an' a man to ride behind her an' see that no harm happened to her. There's more titles in the family than ever there was apples in your basket, Mrs. Byrne, an' the whole of it writ in them pedigree books. An' it's yerself ye're evenin' to them, an' it's a lady hke that ye're defendin' for stoopin' to a common hucksthery !

" Mrs. Byrne drew her Connemara cloak more closely round her large person. Even in Wardlands this garment was considered old-fashioned, and an evidence of commonplace utilitarian ideas on the part of the wearer. "Folks be to live," she said, "an' the mimory of livery sarvants an' castles is not very fillin' when there's nothin' left o' the castles but a bit o' Jamie Brady's garden wall. It's ah very weU to be gran' if ye can, but folks need their dinner sometimes." " Oh ! get out wid ye," said the tailor ; " it's yerself has the common mind, Mrs. Byrne. Shure there's her beautiful house an' bit o' garden groun', an' hadn't she her eight cottier houses that she got her good ten shillin's a piece for ivery quarther-day, an' them sowld now to Thady GiUigan, an' grocery goods bought wid the price !

An' isn't she throwin' the best room in that bare, beautiful big house into a shop wid a parlour behind it, an' a beU on the shop-door, as common as iver ye see ! By the Lord, it's heart brekkin', that's what it is ! " " She has engaged Paddy Welsh to take down the shutters, an' put them up ivery night," said Mrs. Flannigan, another gossip; "an' all the rest av the work av the place she'll do wid her own han's, wid Mary McSwine to mind the kitchen, as in owld times." " Shure, John'U be ready to help her in the shop afther a httle," said Mrs. Byrne, with suavity that was possibly meant to be offensive. "Who is it ye're spakin' of?" said Nancy Frank ominously. " John indeed ! to think of dhurt like you takin' the name of Masther John Wardlaw into ye're mouth hke that ! Masther John is a gintleman, the raal stock through an' through, an' he's goin' to restore the fam'ly " " An' buUd the castle ?

" said Mrs. Byrne derisively. " Yis ! An' pay you for feedin' the pigs in the lower yard when the time comes." Under cover of the laugh this ehcited Nancy re treated triumphantly, indifferent to the fact that Mrs. Byrne shouted after her, " Manetime I'll buy me groceries of his sisther." The commotion excited in the vdlage had subsided in Margery Wardlaw's mind long before she gave orders to remove the frontage of the best parlour, to make way for a shop front and window. Every pre mise raised among the gossips, every disdain ex pressed by them, she had suffered and surmounted, in view of the insistent question, " How are we to Uve ? " To recapitulate the Wardlaw family history is un necessary, since it is written seriatim in Burke's " Irish Landed Gentry ; " but lest the reader of these pages should not have that work at hand for refer ence, it may be necessary to explain in brief why Miss Margery Wardlaw's decision in favour of trade as a means of hvelihood impressed the district exactly as if Queen Victoria estabhshed a staU on London Bridge that she might personaUy traffic in oranges and peppermints there.

The founder of the family was Hugues de Vardlais, who followed the Conqueror to England and fought at the battle of Hastings. Two de Vardlais took part in the Crusades, one de Vardlais signed Magna Charta, which facts were accepted by their descendants as naturaUy as that one should be christened or vac cinated nowadays. Where important deeds were to be done the de Vardlais had been to the front ; that was the merest matter of course. In the time of James I. the English Marquisate which the family held had dwindled considerably in acreage and commercial value, and therefore the Lord Wardlais had thankfully accepted the provision for a younger son which the Plantation of Ulster offered. But James Wardlais was no penniless adventurer when nineteen townlands in the disaffected province were offered to him.

Some inheritance from his father, added to his Scottish wife's large dowry, rendered him such a rich man that James Wardlais thought himself justly entitled to begin his Irish life en prince. But some two and a half centuries of princely lavish ness had had their usual result. The lesson of curtailment is a difficult one to acquire, and the Wardlaws — for so the name had become modified with lapse of time — had never learnt it. The fore closure of the last mortgage on the estate was within Margery's personal recoUection, and this swept all but the eight cottier houses already mentioned, and the family residence, out of their grasp. The house and cottages had been built with a section of her mother's fortune. That Mrs. Wardlaw had not been of old lineage. She was the daughter of a rich alderman in a neighbouring city, and the fifteen thousand pounds which constituted her dowry kept things going for many a day.

Of thrift Mrs. Wardlaw had understood as little as her husband. To be the parish Providence, to whom appeal was never made in vain, was a constant factor in the sum of her ambition, and therefore, in spite of her dowry, she accelerated the final collapse of the family fortunes. Margery could remember her mother cutting the old tapestries off the castle walls to distribute as sampler-patterns among the farmers' daughters, and one of the last acts of her life was to order the oak-floors to be lifted because the mortality which succeeded a famine period in the district rendered it impossible to provide coffins for the poor. " As long as there is a floor at Castle Wardlaw no man or woman shaU go to the grave uncoffined," she said, with beautiful but very unpractical enthusiasm, and the spare rooms were stripped to the beams.

Perhaps the draughts thus generated kiUed her; at any rate, Mrs. Wardlaw died the following winter. Mr. Wardlaw did not bury his wife in the old fashioned way, with open house during the period preceding the burial, and lavish meats and liquors for aU who cared to partake of them ; as a matter of fact he could not afford this. But the funeral was never theless two miles long, a nhle of pedestrians followed by another mile of vehicles. " She had a great heart, and great and costly ideas," said the bereaved and impoverished gentleman. Two years later the castle passed out of Mr. Ward law's hands, and he and his daughter went to live in a plain two-storey house that stood flush with the neighbouring cottages in the village. The castle, being considered beyond repair by the new owner, was roughly patched together, and let in tenements; an insult to his former property from which Mr. Wardlaw only seemed to recover when an accident burned it to the ground one stormy March night.

The new home had none of the graces or traditions of the old. It was unpicturesque and everyday, flat fronted, small-windowed, with square apartments and a straight haU that divided it down the middle ; and Margery Wardlaw, a young girl budding into womanhood, used to look round its bare waUs in bitterness of spirit. "To think that we do not pos sess a family portrait, a morsel of plate, a sword, or a court garment ! " she said to herseh. She was romantic, and would have liked to see relics, as well as hear traditions, of the remote good times of which she possessed little recollection. "In time nobody wiU believe that we were a great family." No doubt it was the plebeian drop in her that spoke, a sensible drop dating from an earlier fount than ran in the veins of her silly mother. Of course the county acknowledged the status of the Wardlaws, but the ghl knew that vivd voce proof weakens through time.

" As a matter of fact, we are only a degree better than paupers," she said. Mr. Wardlaw cultivated the garden himself, aided by McCaUum, the son of an old retainer ; while Mary McSwine, who had once been laundry-maid to the family, was general servant, and minded the cow and the poultry. It was a patriarchal kind of life, and not devoid of dignity. As regarded the cdchet of distinction that was impressed on their personality, Mr. Ward law carried his handsome head like a man born to command, and Margery's slim figure and high featured face, to quote her own words when she was in lighter vein, claimed kindred with the Crusaders. No one deplored the departure of the good old times more than Mary McSwine, the maid-servant, or regarded Margery's economies as a sadder necessity ; but when McCaUum broached the same subject occasionally, Mary's scorn fairly overwhelmed him.

" Shure annybody would know what they are to look at them. It's born commanders that's written aU over them. Annybody can seem fine wid silks and satins, an' a gran' table an' that; but it's only the r'ale gentry that's fine wid nothin' at all." " But it's terr'ble aU the same," said McCaUum the practical. "Shure, they haven't even a blissed debt left." This last was the one consoling element in the case to Margery. To be out of debt, and out of dread, was such a joy to the alderman's grand daughter, that her young courage rose to face the future. The worst that could happen had happened ; at least Margery thought so. And if they could be satisfied to hve as peasant-proprietors there was no danger of starvation. Youth is naturaUy romantic, and Margery's ex periences had done much to favour romance.

To be hopeless is impossible when one is young, and where there is much to be done the young are never altogether unhappy. Some extraordinary good for tune might befaU the family any day, one could never teU. But the only immediate surprise was the repayment of a loan which Mr. Wardlaw had made, and never thought of since his prosperous days. A farmer's son gone abroad returned with interest the £50 Mr. Wardlaw had lent him years before. "It will furnish one of the rooms in a measure," said Margery, " and afford the price of another cow ; when Molly goes dry it is very awkward." Mr. Wardlaw turned the bill of exchange in his hand and looked at Margery wistfully. " One always scrapes, and saves, and is thrifty," he said, without the shghtest suspicion of anything absurd in his words, " and what does it aU come to ?

Now, if I might, I should just hke to have a fling for once." Margery's face grew a httle rueful. She hardly knew what kind of a fling lay within the scope of some eighty odd pounds. " It's years since the Blayneys of Fermanagh wanted me to visit them. You don't know, Margery," said Mr. Wardlaw, " how one longs now and then to be among gentlemen and ladies again." Margery stifled a thin little sigh. " I can imagine," she said. "An outing would make a new man of me," said her father persuasively. "Then you had better have it." Margery strove to render her voice cheery and matter-of-fact. " It would cost very little," Mr. Wardlaw went on with growing vivacity. " I should have no expenses but an outfit, and the cost of travel, and a tip here and there to servants. That's part of the pleasure of visiting ; it's quite cheap."

Margery was doubtful of this, but she was too wise to discuss a lost cause. " It's past belief," said Mary McSwine to herself, when she heard some of the particulars of the new scheme and inferred the rest. "He has no more sense than a paycock ! If it was his little bit of a girl he was takin' wid him, to dress her up and show her off among the quality, an' fin' a husband for her, one might say, ' He's doin' his best for the sake of his child ; ' but to think of spendin' the last penny they're iver likely to have on himseff an' his own gallivantin', it bates iverything ! " Mr. Wardlaw feigned not to notice Mary's hostile demeanour ; instead he assumed that she felt a great interest in County Fermanagh, where his friends hved, and promised her particulars of this and that branch of the family on his return.

" It's no good ragin' at him," Mary said to herself ; though as a matter of fact she had not permitted herself a disrespectful word. " Shure he's just a grown-up child that thinks of nothin' but the last toy he fancies." Then she set herself to prepare his linen philosophi cally, and watched McCaUum pohshing his hunting boots and rejuvenating his long-unused portmanteau. Had Mary followed her master she would have wondered less at the pleasure he found in his outing. The Fermanagh friends were not flourishing finan ciaUy either, but they had sacrificed no signs of their prosperity so far. Castle Blayney was not one of the Plantation edifices so often merely named castles, but a genuine castellated mansion, surrounded by exten sive and weUwooded parks, that sloped down to the placid waters of Lough Erne of the thousand islands.

The beautiful square mediæval haU was wainscoted to the raftered roof, and the pohshed oaken floor was diamonded with ebon squares of bog-oak inlaid among the lighter wood. Suits of armour stood imposingly against the dark background, and implements of the chase hung above the cowled chimney. On the wide hearth a peat fire, interspersed with bog-fir, resolved itself rapidly into feathery ashes. The wide staircase was cut off from the hall by a heavy curtain of faded velvet, employed more for purposes of draught pre vention than of decoration. The apartments opening off the hall were modern of aspect, spacious, and well furnished. Mr. Wardlaw felt at first as if he had died and got to heaven. To the Blayneys, Mr. Wardlaw was a welcome guest. He was one of themselves, and his circumstances mattered nothing.

There are no people among whom pedigree is accepted more as personal merit than among the decaying Irish gentry. " The son of old BiUy Wardlaw, who chummed with the Prince Regent," was the password whispered from hp to lip, in the wake of the absolutely ruined middle-aged man, who, however, did no discredit to his forbears. Mr. Wardlaw sat his horse hke a centaur, told good stories, played whist admirably, and distinguished between vintages. Furthermore, there was that indefinable something about him, peculiar to the man famihar with good society, that has yet never been too good for him, which estabhshes a kind of freemasonry with others similarly circumstanced. Fortune seemed to have turned her face again to smile on a Wardlaw, whom destiny had often brought within grasp of the highest, just that they might miss it.

Mr. Wardlaw's visit was protracted far beyond his first intentions. As the house party fluctuated he remained, and the reason was that another guest of consequence desired his company. "I don't mind telling you," said Mr. Blayney in confidence, " that Lady Margaret Brack thinks highly of you, and, my boy, she has five thousand a year ! And that is no hearsay — I know it." Mr. Blayney did not explain that a part of this income was derived from the interest he paid on the money he owed her. " But she wears a wig," said Mr. Wardlaw, as if this circumstance could not possibly have penetrated his friend's observation. " And where would you see a nicer wig ? Don't be an ass, there's a good fellow ! You foUow up the innings you have made ; it will make all the differ ence to your future years, and your daughter's pro spects, and many things."

" Oh, hang it ! a man cannot marry a woman just for money," said Mr. Wardlaw the unpractical. "I don't think any of us has ever done a trick quite so poor as that." " Everybody does it who gets the chance," said Mr. Blayney impatiently. " It's all very well to be choice if you are a millionaire, but few of us are that." " I could not marry a woman who wears a wig," said Mr. Wardlaw, with good-humoured disdain. " Each of us draws the Une somewhere ; I draw the line there ! " " He talks like a Sultan," said Mr. Blayney to his wife, when they discussed the matter afterwards. " Troth, you would think he owns the province. • But I suppose, when a man is on his way to the devU, there is nothing for it but to let him go ! " Mr. Wardlaw did not marry Lady Margaret Brack, but when he returned to Wardlands he brought a wife Avith him.

" Her family is as old as mine, and as good," he said, introducing the slender, large-eyed young woman to his daughter. " And as poor," Margery said to herseh. Looking back on it afterwards, Margery felt as if her spirit broke then. Our spirit breaks when we recognise the folly of hope in the case of those indissolubly bound to us. Margery was eighteen years of age, farmliar with loss and humiliation as with the days of the week, yet prepared to do and bear valiantly in face of any en couragement. But when, at the lowest ebb of their fortunes, a helpless fine lady drifted on to witness their destitution and accentuate it, how could one modify that fact or grapple with it ?

Chapter II The Second Mrs

WARDLAW Margery felt no indignation against her stepmother. It was not possible to be indignant with a woman who entered her new home with an air of dazed bewilder ment, and turned to Margery as to a companion in misfortune. " Is this the castle ? " she asked blankly. " The castle was burnt two years ago, but we were dispossessed of it before that." " But I do not see a trace of it in aU the neighbour hood. Where is the park ? " " There never was any park ; the vdlage surrounded the castle. The fruit-orchards used to belong to it, but they were sold by my grandfather, and this is aU that is left— aU." " And the income ? " " About thirty-six pounds a year. But this house is our own, and the meadow adjacent, and the garden produces a great deal with care." " And I am only twenty-eight," said Mrs. Wardlaw, refusing to be comforted.

She did not say she had been wooed under false pretences. She did not say she did not love her middleis aged husband, or that she had sacrificed much in accept ing him. She merely set herseh resolutely to die once she recognised the utter hopelessness of the position. She had known Mr. Wardlaw was poor — he had told her so ; but the information had not suggested to her the margin of destitution. She would not discuss the position, she would not contemplate it; she was in it, and there was but one outlet. " Could you not return to your own people ? " Margery suggested once. " I do not think father would hinder you, since he sees how unhappy you are." " I have no people. Had I had any, do you think they would have let me come to this without investigation ? I lived with an aunt by marriage ; she was only too thankful to see me disposed of anyhow."

" I am so sorry that father took advantage of you," Margery said. "I am not so sure that he did so. I liked and admired him, and I made no inquiries." Then she smiled involuntarily. " I suppose his very last sovereign paid the hire of the carriage that brought us home." With his wife's waning health, the last element of Mr. Wardlaw's courage evaporated. "There is no use in struggling," he said to his daughter; " life is a blunder, anyhow you take it. I don't wonder Edith is tired of it." Then he turned to Margery appealingly, " Do you think it was very wicked of me to marry her ? " he said. " I think you might have known she could not be happy here." THE SECOND MRS. WARDLAW 17 " But she was not happy where she was." Margery shook her head. " I cannot tell what she is suffering from," he said wistfuUy.

"AU I have in the world" — then he stopped — the offer he was about to make to destiny was really too absurd. He sold his watch, the last article of any value he possessed, and with the proceeds accompanied his wife to the best physician available. When he returned there was a curious frightened elation in his bearing. " She wiU be better by-and-bye, the doctor said. Oh, Margery, why is it not old times with us ? " " Could you not get somethmg to do, father ? You are a young man, and among aU the people you have known surely there is some one who requires a gentle man in some capacity. Could you not get a land agency, or something simUar ? " It was a new thought, and Mr. Wardlaw grasped it eagerly. The next four months were spent in letter writing, in offers of service to one and another in his former rank of life — offers at first good-humouredly gracious, latterly timid and pathetic.

When he secured the position of sub-agent at last on Lord Kilmoon's estate, with a salary of two hundred a year, he was as elated as if he had been given a dukedom. " It is only a kind of clerkship, you know, really, but I won't teU that to the Uttle lady," he said to his daughter, whom he seemed to regard as the practical partner in the firm. "I'U tell her that it is the B grandest thing and just suits me, and I'U work Uke a nigger for her sake. And when the baby is born, and she is strong and weU again, then I wUl come for you aU, and we will have a happy time at Kilmoon, please God ! " He was as happy as a child, as fuU of dreams as a lover or a poet, and his descriptions of the scene of his new labours were fuU of satisfaction and praise of everything. Lord KUmoon was a nobleman of the most distinguished parts, remarkably appreciative of his sub-agent, and fuUy aware of the fact that a gentleman was a gentleman, whether he was down on his luck or not.

The estate was a dream of beauty, the tenantry was prosperous and devoted, and the sub-agent's house would be fit for a prince, once it had a few improvements added. "You'U be queen of the county yet, my darhng," he wrote to his whe buoyantly. " It's a great hunting county this, and I have already spotted a blood-mare that wiU carry you Uke a Uly, once you are able to take to the saddle again. Our good times are returning, and the httle boy, bless him ! wUl step into a world in which he wiU find his people are of some account still." Mrs. Wardlaw read the letter, then handed it to her stepdaughter with a certain wistful light in her eyes. " I am very glad he is so happy, and I hope aU his anticipations wiU be reaUsed," she said, " but I shall never follow the hounds at Kilmoon." " The worst is over," Margery said soothingly.

THE SECOND MRS. WARDLAW Mrs. Wardlaw shook her head. " I shaU not sur vive baby's birth; the responsibility with him wUl be aU yours. Curious how I have always assumed it wiU be a boy," she went on smiling. " In the earlier days the thought of the child used to break my heart, but now I think there wiU be room for him in the world, and that you wUl perhaps be a httle happier for one source of hope." Then she laid her hand on the girl's. " Margery, you are reaUy the head and guide of the family, and it is to you I look for the training of my baby. Make him a good man, and teach him to earn his right in the world. Tell him as few of the old traditions as possible ; tell him none unless you beheve they may act as an incentive to effort for the future. Convince him of what I did not learn until too late, that man is master of his fate."

" You wiU Uve to train him yourself," Margery said with sad eyes. Mrs. Wardlaw shook her head. " If I were a braver woman no doubt I should, but my spirit was crushed in my girlhood, and the disappointment about my marriage literaUy kided me. I have never rallied from the ignoble kind of shock I suffered at my home coming. I have not your force of character, Margery. I suppose races grow decrepit like individuals with lapse of time. You have drawn from a fresh source in your mother's family. Were you a man you would go far." " Then I shaU have to help the men that can go far," Margery said, and the talk lapsed into tenderer topics, the baby's clothing, his nursery, how much Mary McSwine could be expected to do for him in addition to her present duties, and his name, provided he had not perversely determined to be a ghl.