Lady-bird, a tale

Chapter I

Gloom is upon thy silent hearth O silent house ! . . . . Sorrow is in the breezy sound Of thy tall beeches whisp'ring round ; The shadow of long mournful hours Hangs dim upon thy early flowers, Even in thy sunshine seems to brood Something more deep than Solitude. Mrs. Hemass. Come to the woods in whose mossy dells A light all made for the poet dwells ; There is light, there is youth, there is tameless mirth Where the streams and the lilies they wear have birth. Joyous and free shall your wanderings be As the flight of birds o'er the glittering sea. Come forth, O ye children of gladness, come, Where the violets lie may be now your home — Away from the chamber and the sullen hearth The young winds are dancing in breezy mirth, Their light stems thrill to the wild wood strains. » * » * * Bring the lyre and the wreath and the joyous lay, Come forth to the sunshine Ibid.

The old manorial residence of Lifford Grange was one of those habitations which have remained in the same family for many centuries, which have been two or three times rebuilt m the course of a thousand years, and each time have retained some portion of the old mansion ; the new one, as it was called, being — at the period of which we speak — about as deserving of that appellation as the Pont-Neuf at Paris, which happens B LADY-BIRD. to be the oldest of all the bridges that span the Seine. An avenue of yews led up to the house ; on each side of these sepulchral-looking trees was a row of fine beeches, whose light foliage contrasted with the hue and mitigated the gloom of the more solemn evergreens. ' La parure de l'hiver et le deuil de Fete.' The immediate approach to the house was through a square court equally divided by the carriage-road, on each side of which were two patches of grass, one of them adorned by a sun-dial on which the sun never shone, and the other by the dry bason of a fountain into which four hideous Tritons peeped, as if in the vain hope of discovering water in its recesses.

On the other side of the house there were broad gravel walks, and an extensive garden — if anything so flowerless could deserve the name. A river that looked like a canal divided it from the flat extent beyond. Deeply and sullenly flowed this stream, which had not the beauty of clearness although the rank weeds in its bed were easily discerned. There was neither life nor spirit in its rapidity : sullenly and silently it hurried along, as if in haste to exchange the open space it had to traverse for the shade of a dark thicket which lay between the park and the river into which it was about to flow. The most ardent admirer of old-fashioned places must have owned that there was something melancholy in the aspect of Lifford Grange, with its massive walls, its heavy portals, its projecting windows, all unadorned by the smallest sprig of jessamine, the least invasion of ivy, the slightest familiar touch of daring tendril or aspiring creeper.

The interior of the house corresponded with the exterior. It had large drawing rooms, and furniture which it would have required a giant's strength to move, light-excluding windows and unapproachable fireplaces. Heavy red woollen curtains descended to the floor in cumbrous folds. A regiment abreast might have marched up the stair-case, and moderate-sized houses have been built within the bed-rooms. There was a certain kind of grandeur LADY-BIRD. 3 about the old Grange, and none of the usual appendages of such a place were absolutely wanting, but there was a total absence of comfort in its arrangements, and of charm in its aspect both within and without. The character of the owner seemed stamped upon its walls, and inscribed on its portal. Mr. Lifford's family was as ancient as his house, and his pride as lofty as his rooms.

He was the last descendant of a race which had clung to the Catholic church, through the ages of persecution, with a fidelity which had given him an hereditary attachment to a religion, the pre cepts of which he did not observe, the spirit of which he certainly did not exhibit. He had not enemies, for he kept too much aloof from others to interfere with them, or to be interfered with himself. There was a kind of dignity and smooth coldness about him which repelled without rudeness, and chilled without offending. It would have been equally difficult to affront or to flatter him ; his heart (if he had one) was a sealed book which his few associates had never read ; none knew if its pages were inscribed with fair or foul charac ters, or were as blank as the handsome immovable face that, formed, as it were, its title page.

During a journey that he made into Spain soon after coming of age, he had married a Spanish girl of a family as ancient as his own. She was an orphan, and her guardians readily be stowed her hand on the young Englishman; whose quarterings, wealth, and religious profession answered the conditions they deemed indispensable to a union with a daughter of their house. Angustia was her name ; on the day of her marriage it sounded in strange contrast with the beauty of her face and the brilliancy of her prospects; — a very few years later, when a pale, suffering, and hopelessly infirm woman took possession of an apartment on the ground floor at Lifford Grange, from which she never emerged but to take a few turns in a garden chair on the sunny side of the house, it seemed more in accord ance with her destiny. b LADY-BIRD. 4 The first years of her marriage had been spent in Spain, and during that time she had two children, a girl called Gertrude and a boy two years younger.

Soon after the birth of this last child, she and her husband came to England ; and at about the same period a paralytic stroke deprived her of the use of her limbs, while a complication of diseases reduced her to a state of almost continual suffering, and withdrew her entirely from society. Her husband shut himself up more and more in a proud retirement from the world, unsolaced, as it appeared, in that haughty seclusion by any engrossing pursuit or the per formance of any active duties. The only inmate of his house was his uncle, who had been educated in Spain, had there received holy orders, and since his nephew's return to England had inhabited the Grange and fulfilled there the office of domestic chaplain, occasionally assisting the priest of the neighbouring village of Stonehouseleigh.

His nature might have originally been cast in the same mould as his nephew's ; his manner indeed was rougher and more abrupt — but in his case the rock had been smitten, the rugged bark had been softened, the ice had been melted by that light which never shines in vain on the human heart, by that fire against which no adamant is proof, and which no natural bias can resist. That he had a heart no one could have doubted who had witnessed his solici tude, his almost paternal kindness for the pale invalid, who seldom conversed with any one but him, and who had no other comforter or friend. Her apartment was the least gloomy in the house, but at the same time its aspect was of the gravest character. A few valuable Spanish pictures hung on its walls, a large crucifix in carved ivory stood opposite to her couch, and some books of devotion, with heavy clasps and rich bindings, were always lying within her reach.

A bed of mignonette sent its sweet sober smell into this room, where, during the brief hours of winter sunshine, or the long afternoons of summer, wrapped in Indian shawls and propped up by cushions, she would sit at LADY-BIRD. 5 the window, her eyes fixed with an earnest and singular ex pression on the dull landscape, or the pale northern sky. The illness which had brought her to a premature old age had also slightly impaired her speech and affected her memory, and hence she had not learned to speak English fluently. This and the continual sufferings she endured had isolated her more and more from her children. She sent for them now and then, and silently pressed them to her heart, or for hours watched them at play on the terraces near her window ; but there was little intercourse between them and herself.

They bounded by her in all the recklessness of youth and health. They sometimes stopped to kiss her in that halffond half-impatient manner with which children return caresses which detain them from their sports. She had nothing where with to attract them but a love which was almost too timid to show itself. A barrier seemed to rise between her and those impetuAus young spirits which were rushing into all the fulness of that life which was decaying within her ; but who could count the prayers which rose from that lonely heart for those she scarcely dared to love as other mothers love ? — who can tell what mysterious deliverances from danger — what sudden arrests on the border of an abyss — what softenings of the heart when maddened by passion — what strange reactions from evil and aspirations towards heaven — may have been, in after life, the result of those prayers poured forth on a bed of pain by one who hardly counted in her children's existence, and the pressure of whose feeble hand was often the only token she could give them of her love ?

Once a day her husband came to see her, and sat by her for a few minutes. His presence seemed to impart a chill to the very atmosphere. Mrs. Lifford mechanically drew her shawl tighter on her breast during these visits, and her face became paler than at other times. Sealed were the secrets of those two hearts ; how little or how much they had cared for each other none of those about them seemed to know, ' rien LADY-BIRD. ne se ressemble comme le ne'ant et la profondeur.' The smooth surface of that monotonous existence might have covered a volcano, or concealed an abyss. The children of this marriage were strangely unlike each other. Born under the same roof, growing up amongst the same influences, they early exhibited the most striking dis similarity of character and of manners. Edgar was a fair and gentle boy, whose placid gaiety no grave faces could subdue, and no dull mode of life affect.

Docile and pliable, he readily received every impression, and adopted all the opinions which his father put forward. If Mr. Lifford cared for anything in the world, it was for his son. He talked to him of his ancestors, of his possessions, of the various honours which had been conferred on his family in past times, the alliances they had made, the historical records in which their names were emblazoned, the rank they held in the estimation of all who valued the real nobility of an ancient descent above the paltry distinction of a modern title ; and the child's large blue eyes expanded with wonder and admiration at the greatness of all the Liffbrds that had been, that were now, and that would be hereafter. He felt an innocent surprise at belonging himself to that favoured race, and a sincere com passion for those whose ancestors had not been Crusaders, whose quarterings were defective, and whose genealogy was imperfect.

There was truth and goodness in the nature of that child; and if, in his father's teachings, there had been something akin to it — a touch of feeling or a spark of enthusiasm — they might have kindled a noble ambition, and if in some respects visionary, would yet have taught a lesson which has redeemed from contempt many an illusion, and exalted many a delusion. ' Noblesse oblige ! ' — that old French motto — would have been the source of generous sentiments, the spur to high achievements; but pride in its coldest and hardest form, and in its most miserable proportions, was LADY-BIRD. 7 learnt as a lesson and adopted as a theory by a mind which it served to narrow, though it did not pervert it. But there was another mind and another heart of a far different stamp than that of Edgar, which was impressed, indeed, but never moulded by these teachings.

It would have been difficult to determine whether the tacit antagonism which had established itself between Gertrude and her father was the result or the cause of the dislike he seemed to have taken to her. Was it because he did not love the foreign looking girl whose beauty might have gratified the most fas tidious paternal vanity, that she never, from her earliest child hood, adopted his views, imbibed his prejudices, or seemed impressed by his stateliness ? — or did he not love her because she was proud, though with a different kind of pride than his own : daring and untractable in spite of her slender form and delicate organisation ; and because her self-cultivated intellect exercised itself in independent thought, and even in disguised sarcasm ? If for a moment he unbended in conversation with his son, his rigidity returned the instant she entered the room, or that the sound of her voice reached his ear.

Was it acci dental, or from a strange instinct of revenge for his coldness, that, when scarcely old enough to appreciate the meaning of her words, she seemed to take pleasure in holding cheap all distinctions of rank, all ancestral pride, all the order of ideas with which her brother's ductile mind had been so easily impressed ? Almost before she could speak plainly, she had sung about the house — as if in defiance of the old family pictures, which seemed to frown upon her — the old rhyme which had marvellously taken her fancy : When Adam delved, and Eve span, Where was then the gentleman ? As she grew older, she sneered at heraldry, irreverently laughed at coats-of-arms, put embarrassing questions to Father Lifford, as to the real value of such distinctions in a religious LADY-BIRD. 8 point of view,— wondered if the apostles could have proved sixteen quarterings ; and, in reading history, it was always the interest of the people, the cause of Liberty — whether in the just acceptation of the word, or in the perverted sense in which it has too often been misapplied — that aroused her sympathy, and awoke her enthusiasm.

The misfortunes of kings, the heroism of loyalty, the prestige of great names, had not the same power to move her ; and her brother — not in malice, but in the simplicity of his indignation — often re peated to his father and to his uncle what appeared to him her enormities in these respects ; and the cold contempt of the former, the dogmatic manner in which the latter con demned them, without giving an explanation or permitting an appeal, only confirmed impressions which a more conde scending treatment might have effaced. Obliged to be silent at home on such topics, Gertrude' often gave vent to her feelings when in the society of the only companions which chance had placed within her reach. At an early age a severe illness endangered her life, and during her convalescence the doctor had insisted on her associating more with other children, as the only means of checking the premature development of her mind, and diverting her from the incessant reading which was rapidly exhausting her mental and physical strength.

Father Lifford, to whom the ques tion was referred, suggested that Mary Grey, a little girl a year or two older than herself, and the daughter of a widow who lived in the village of Stonehouseleigh with whom he had been acquainted several years, would be the fittest resource in such an emergency. He was aware how care fully Mrs. Redmond had brought up her child, and also the one which her second husband had bequeathed to her care, when— after a few months marriage — he had died, leaving her poorer than before, and with two children to support instead of one. Indeed, it was supposed by those who knew most of Mrs. LADY-BIRD. 9 Grey that, when she consented to marry Maurice Redmond, a poor artist whose face bore the impress of consumption, whose heart had been nearly broken by the loss of a beautiful young wife — an Italian singer — and whose last days were embittered by anxiety about his little son, it was not in ignorance or in recklessness that she did so ; but that if her heart had been touched and her feelings interested, it had been more through that pity which is akin to love, than from any more romantic motive ; that she wrell knew how few were the days of happiness that awaited her — if indeed with that knowledge a thought of happiness could exist — but that she also knew that she thus gained the right of soothing those few days of linger ing life, and of seeing a smile on the pale lips of the dying man when he heard his little boy call her mother.

Everybody said it was like Mrs. Grey to make such a marriage, and this was true. It was very like her, whether those who said it shrugged their shoulders as they spoke, or had a tear in their eye. She made many sacrifices, and worked hard in different ways to make the ends of her small income meet. Maurice always called her his mother, and when they were children it was almost impossible to make him and Mary understand that they were not brother and sister. The large village or small town of Stonehouseleigh, where they lived, was about a mile and a half distant from Lifford Grange. It consisted of one long street, on one side of which flowed the same stream that passed through the gardens of the Grange, now widened into a river, and on the other side rose some hills to whose breezy heights and sunny nooks an abundance of gorse, of heath, of sweet-smelling thyme, and of shining blackberries attracted the steps of little wanderers from the town.

Mrs. Redmond's cottage was on the outskirts of the High Street. Every inch of the small garden that separated it from the road was encumbered with flowers; lilacs and laburnums, Guelder roses and seringa, dahlias, and hollyhocks LADY-BIRD. succeeded each other in endless variety. Convolvulus and heartsease struggled together, sweetbriar and jessamine hust led each other. They overran the paths, and climbed to the windows. Roses, also, in all their rich and common variety, not the pale hectic tea rose, or the triumph of horticultural art and Nature's degradation, the black rose, but the glorious blooming cabbage rose, the beautiful moss rose, the lovely blush rose lent their perfume to the air, and their bright colours to the aspect of the little garden. Mrs. Redmond had lived in Normandy at the time of her first marriage, and had imported thence a number of rose cuttings, and a great respect for tisanes, those simple medi cines of the French peasantry.

There were few of her poor neighbours who had not applied to her for remedies against their various ailments, and if her skill was not always success ful, her tender charity and sympathy were seldom unavailing. Gertrude Lifford's acquaintance with Mary Grey, when once it had begun, soon ripened into intimacy. For some weeks they played together every day in the gardens of the Grange ; and, when she was quite recovered, she often walked to the cottage, and persuaded her maid to leave her there while she visited her own friends in the village. Maurice Redmond, as well as Mary Grey, looked forward to these visits with the delight which children feel in companions whose society is an unexpected pleasure, an unlooked-for event. Edgar sometimes came with his sister, and they met in their walks on the hillocks of the downs and the green alleys of the Chase.

Some of the village children were occa sionally called upon to join in their sports, which were at once of an active and of an imaginative character. Gertrude was the chief object, actor, and ruler in these childish pastimes. Her beauty, intelligence, and waywardness exacted a sort of homage which they all instinctively paid her. The high spirited Maurice, the gentle Mary, the shy daughters of the tenant of Leigh House Farm, and the sturdy boys of the LADY-BIRD. 11 gamekeeper at the Lodge owned her sway, and submitted to all her caprices. If there was a dispute about the distance between the pink thorn and the acacia-tree — which was to be the starting-point and the goal of a race — it was her verdict that settled the question. If they played at holding a mimic court, she was always the Queen, and thrones of moss were erected, and crowns of wild flowers woven for her girlish majesty.

They called her ' Lady-Bird,' — a name which Maurice had given her one day, when after a quarrel he sought to appease her. She had been bent on some rash experiment, against which Mary had remonstrated ; provoked at her interference, the impatient little beauty had pointed to a sober-looking insect on an ivy-leaf, exclaiming at the same time, ' You are like that dull moth, Mary !' At that moment a gorgeous butterfly, with gold and purple wings, had dived in the bosom of a red rose in her hand, and Mary rejoined, ' And you are like that gay butterfly ; ' but Maurice cried out, ' No, Mary is a humble-bee, and you a stinging wasp ! ' Upon which the offended beauty burst into tears, and to make his peace with her, he had called her ' Lady-Bird.' There was some thing appropriate in this name. She was, in a restricted sense, the only little lady amongst them.

In her looks and in her manner, there was a mixture of reserve and vivacity, of impetuosity and timidity, which answered to it singularly. She looked so proudly and so gracefully shy if a stranger addressed her ; she was so pas sionate and easily ruffled, so pretty in her anger and eloquent in her wrath, wild in her mirth and restless in her move ments. All the children in the neighbourhood soon knew her by that name, even though they were not — like Mary and Maurice — her associates and playfellows. The urchins at the cottage doors used to call out as she passed, ' There goes the Lady-Bird.' As time went on, the intercourse between Ger trude Lifford and Mrs. Redmond's children became more LADY-BIRD. habitual. It was far more so than any one was aware of, except the maid who accompanied her in her walks.

Her father knew nothing of it, and her uncle had no idea of its extent, or that Maurice was as often her playmate as Mary. He was one of those boys who show early the gists with which Nature has endowed them, whose genius is apparent to the most common observer, to whom everything seems easy, and nothing unattainable. With few facilities for education, he had managed to learn a great deal. He had read all the books within his reach, and at the age of thirteen had made himself acquaintanced with most of the principal English writers, especially the poets ; had learned some Latin and some French, and made such progress in music — which had been his father's and his mother's art — that many of those who heard him play the organ and the pianoforte augured fol ium the distinctions, the advantages, and sufferings of an artist's life.

He met with great kindness in the neighbourhood. Books were lent him ; opportunities of hearing good music afforded him. An organist in a neighbouring town gave him gratuitous instruction. But from the first moment that he became acquainted with the little girl from Lifford Grange, the beautiful Lady-Bird of his childhood, a new impetus was given to his imagination. She entered with delight into all the schemes of childish amusement which his fancy could suggest. He entertained her. her little brother, and Mary with stories which he remembered or invented about Knights and Princesses, Fairies and Enchanters ; with verses which — though rude and in correct — were not without a vein of poetic genius. He taught them to sing old ballads, to recite poetry, to act historical scenes. All this was particularly congenial to Gertrude's lively imagination.

She liked to enact Queen Margaret meeting the Robber in the forest, or Amy Robsart disappear ing through the trap-door of the castle ; scenes from the ' Midsummer Night's Dream,' or passages from the life of LADY-BIRD. 13 Robin Hood. But their grandest and favourite performance, reserved for the long summer evenings and the prospect of an uninterrupted holiday, was Campbell's ballad, ' O'Connor's Child,' dramatised by Maurice to suit their exigencies. With a bunch of shamrock in his cap and a wooden sword in his belt, he knelt on the greensward to ask of Edgar the hand of his sister, while the little boy was taught to stammer out in answer — Away, and choose a meaner bride Than from O'Connor's house of pride ; Our name, our tribe, our high degree, Are sung in Tara's Psaltery. Witness to Eath's victorious brand, , And Cathal of the bloody hand.

Glory, I say, and power, and honour, Are in the mansion of O'Connor, But thou dost bear in hall and field A meaner crest upon thy shield. In what they called the second act, Gertrude, with a veil tied round her head and a cloak loosely thrown on her shoulders, leant her head on her hand and her elbow on a stile, while Maurice sang the lines in which Connocht Moran tempts his mistress to fly with him. Come far from Castle Connor's elans, Come with thy belted forester, And I, beside the Lake of Swans, Will hunt for thee the fallow-deer, And build thy hut, and bring thee home The wild fowl and the honey-comb. In the third act of this childish drama they flew together through the green alleys of the Chase, her feet scarcely touch ing the grass as she ran, repeating — And I pursue by moonless skies The light of Connocht Moran's eyes.

LADY-BIRD. Then they stopped under some hazel-trees, and built themselves a cabin with the boughs; and he went out to search the game with knife and spear, and she ' his evening food to dress would sing to him in happiness,' Sweet is to us the hermitage Of this untried untrodden shore, Like birds all joyous from the cage, For man's neglect we love it more. Then came the fourth act with its death-scene. How tragic they all thought it ! In an old hollow tree they sat, Gertrude with her finger on her lips and her glancing eyes looking timidly about her. Then, with her mouth close to Maurice's ear, she whispered, ' I hear the baying of their, beagle,' and he answered in the same key, ' 'Tis but the screaming of the eagle.' Then a great effort was made to stir up an old dog who had been pressed into the service to enact the ' Couchant Hound' that starts up and listens, but this generally failed, and Edgar and Mary with hats on and with sticks, personify ing the murderous brothers, rushed upon Maurice, who always fought too long and would not let himself be killed, which, as Mary observed, was very unreasonable, as it was part of the play, and Gertrude screamed, 0 spare him Brazil, Desmond fierce ! till she grew tired and hoarse, and fainted away before her lover was fairly killed.

The last act, however, was Gertrude's delight. She recited wonderfully well the spirited lines in which the daughter of O'Connor, in the madness of her passion and the delirium of her anguish, presents to her assassin brothers ' the standard of O'Connor's sway,' and pronounces a curse, which is to be fatally fulfilled on that battle-day, and which dooms their whole race to destruction. Her eyes flashed, her cheeks glowed, her slender childish form trembled as she cried LADY- BIRD. 15 Go then, away to Athunree, High lift the banner of your pride, But know that where its sheet unrolls, The weight of blood is on your souls. Go, where the havoc of your kerne Shall float as high as mountain fern ; Men shall no more your mansion know, The nettles on your hearth shall grow, Dead as the green oblivious flood That mantles by your walls shall be The glory of O'Connor's blood.

Away, away to Athunree. Many a famous actress might have won applause for the look and tone of wild inspiration with which she swore That sooner guilt the ordeal brand Should grasp unhurt than they should hold The banner with victorious hand, Beneath a sister's curse unrolled. Such were the amusements of these children during about two years, and to Gertrude they were the happiest she had known. Then Edgar went to school, and soon after Maurice went to a school in London, and seldom came to Stonehouseleigh. Everything changed, — Gertrude and Mary were still friends, but there was no excitement to the former in their intercourse, and the latter took life very much in earnest, and had a great deal to do in her own home, and many cares and thoughts and occupations which Lady -Bird did not understand, and in which she had no sympathy.