Honor Blake. The story of a plain Woman

Front matter

Henry S. King & Co.'s FORTHCOMING NOVKLS. i THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA. By Hesba Stretton. Author of "Little Meg," &c. &c. II. SEETA. By Col. Meadows Taylor. Author of " Tara," &c. In three vols. IIL A LITTLE WORLD. By Geo. Manville Fknn. Author of "The Sapphire Cross," " Mad," &c. IV. THE HIGH MILLS. By Katherine Saunders. Author of " Gideon's Rock," "The Haunted Crust," &c. V. OFF THE SEELLI6S. By Jean Ingleow. In four vols. VI. SQUIRE SILCHESTER'S WHIM. By Mortimer Collins. Author of " The Princess Clarice," "Marquis and Merchant," &c. Three vols. VII. VANESSA. By the Author "Thomasina," &c. Two vols. VIII. CIVIL SERVICE. By J. T. List ado. Author of "Maurice Rhynhart." Two vols. Henry S. King & Co. 65, Cornhill, London. THE STORY OF A PLAIN WOMAN BY MRS. R. H. KEATINGE AUTHOR OF ' ENGLISH HOMES IN INDIA.' VOLUME I. LONDON HENRY S. KING & CO. 1872.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO ittg Jttothcr WHO, THOUGH WELL FITTED TO CRITICISE IT, WILL, I KNOW, BE AS INDULGENT TO THIS, AS SHE HAS BEEN TO ALL MY ACTIONS THROUGH LIFE. The Residency, Mount Aboo, May 1870. CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

Chapter I. Kildaggan

• FJj^j|3j have been swinging you all the p^P^i morning, Conny, and you promised l__3 ___3 me you would let me have my turn soon.' ' I did not know then that the boys were coming out, Honor, and you know you are so fat, Phil does not like to swing you.' The first speaker was a clumsy, ungainly looking girl, seated in a swing in an old-fashioned orchard. She might, from her size and figure, have been thirteen years of age, but her face and manner were those of a child of eleven, or younger. VOL. I. A Her complexion, originally fair, was sunburnt and freckled ; her abundant hair, of a decided fiery red, was so untidily disposed that her head looked like nothing else except a furze bush, on which an old straw bonnet hung ; her Sfloveless hands, with untrimmed nails, were coarse and soiled ; her cotton dress, much too short and scant, gaped behind, where crooked pins strove vainly to do duty for missing hooks and eyes, and boasted besides a large rent in front ; her rough village-made shoes were worn and down at heel, and above them the thick ankles, liberally displayed by her position in the swing, were cased in dirty white stockings, so insufficiently gartered as to compel the wearer to keep them in their place by repeated hitches.

And yet, with all this, any one who could look below the surface might have judged that the girl was gently born. Decidedly plain as were her features, awkward and slatternly her figure, there was a witness of unmistakeable honour and candour on her open brow, and from the only beauty she possessed — a pair of dark blue eyes— shone forth a depth of vivid KILDAGGAN. 3 intellect, noble purpose, and warm, self-de voting love, while they looked straight in your face, as eyes belonging to true hearts alone can look. She had half whispered the words with which my story begins to a little sylph-like figure standing by her. That the two were sisters there was just enough likeness in their dress to suggest ; but the difference, even in that, was great as in the faces. The younger — she was evidently so, though her face, unlike that of her sister, looked older than her years — was singularly beautiful in every respect ; and, scanty as the means at her disposal for setting her face and figure off to advantage seemed to be, the spirit of feminine vanity had been at work to make the most of them.

Her dress was of the same coarse material as her sister's, but fitted her pretty figure per fectly, and was very neatly put on ; with a lace frill, which had belonged to one of baby's caps, and been beo-g-ed from the nurse, tacked round OO ' the slender white throat. Her fairy feet were the picture of neatness — even the village shoe maker having softened under the influence of such models, and brought forth a chaussure very different from that of poor Honor. Her bonnet was ornamented by a wreath of ivy leaves, which, however fantastic, formed a pleasant relief to its coarse plainness ; and round her carefully-arranged curls she wore a band of cheap blue ribbon, suiting exquisitely with their flaxen luxuriance and the delicate pink and red complexion of the finely moulded features beneath.

She was a very beautiful little picture, and so seemed to think a youth of seventeen, who, approaching through the apple trees, caught her in his arms and kissed her repeatedly. He was followed by a younger boy, who called, - Come along, Conny ; Dick and I will swing you. — Get out of that, Honor ; ' and catching the seat of the swing behind, he pre cipitated Honor, ungracefully sprawling, on the ground. ' Don't be rude, Phil,' said the tallest youth. —'Come, my beauty, jump!' and he lifted Conny's graceful form lightly into the swing. KILDAGGAN. 5 Honor struggled to her feet with a very red face, and an additional tear in her frock. ' It is my turn to swing,' she remonstrated ; ' I have been swinging Conny all morning, and she promised I should have my turn when the shade of the great apple-tree came up to the wasps' nest.' ' I did not know Dick was coming out then,' said Conny, half closing her pretty eyes, with an expression of pleasure, as the swing carried her up towards the branches above. 'You shut up,' said Philip; 'who do you think would swing a porpoise like you ?

Get out of the way, will you!' and Honor scrambled to one side. In doing so she dropped from her pocket, torn in her late fall, a crumpled and blotted scrap of paper. ' What is this ? ' cried Phil, picking it up ; ' oh dear ! how grand ! ' and he began to read it aloud : — ' I love to hear the song of birds.' Poor Honor, who, busily occupied in the background pinning up her rents, had not discovered her loss, now sprang forward. ' That is mine, Phil ! Give it back to me ! You have no right to read it ! It is mine !' Phil held it high above his head, executing a triumphal dance, as he kept it out of her reach, and continued — ■ ' I love to hear the song of birds, The pleasant hum of bees, The murmur of the summer wind, Among the forest trees. I love to see all beauteous things, In air, and earth, and sky, The flowers that grow beside our path, The sun that shines on high.

But more than all, things bright and fair I love to see and hear ; The face of those whom I love well, The voices I hold dear. But ah ! I have so few to love, I feel so lone and sad ; I often think if I could die, I should be very glad. Only things beautiful are loved, And I was never fair ; And so, my heart is very lone, My life is very bare.' A roar of laughter from Richard and Constance formed the chorus to Phil's reading, and was echoed by a group, consisting of a pale, intelligent boy in an invalid-chair, pushed by a garden lad, a younger boy, and a nurse- KILDAGGAN. 7 maid carrying a baby, who had come up as the reading began. ' What fun ! ' cried Philip, as soon as he could speak for laughing. ' Porpoise is going to write poems like L. E. L. or some of those people, I suppose ! What will you call them ?

" The Puffings of a Porpoise" ?' and the whole party fell into renewed paroxysms of mirth. A wild light flashed from Honor's eyes, her cheeks flushed deeper crimson, and she sprang at her tormentor with cat-like fury, seized his hand and bit it, till he gave up his hold of the paper, and then, tearing it into shreds, she dashed them at him, stamped her foot, and bursting into tears, exclaimed, ' Mean ! dis honourable ! to read what is not yours.' ' You tiger cat ! ' said Phil, squeezing his bitten finger. ' I will whip you for that, Honor,' said Richard. Honor turned to fly, but Phil put forward his foot, and tripped her up, and Richard caught her, and, snatching off her bonnet, administered a castigation with it, as she lay struggling on the grass, and then pitched it into the tree above, while he secured her hands behind her with a handkerchief, and placing her under a tree ' to cool,' as he said, returned to his place at the swing. ' Master Richard, your mother is calling you,' said the nurse-maid, a few minutes afterwards ; ' dinner is ready,' and the whole party trooped towards the house, Richard first releasing Honor's hands, with a warning to keep her temper in future, and leaving her to climb the tree after her bonnet, which she did, cleverly enough, if not elegantly.

Dinner was partly over when she reached the house, and after receiving a reproof for her want of punctuality and disordered hair, she seated herself in silence. Richard sat at one end of the table, opposite his mother — a fair, faded, fretful woman, with weakness and indolence written in her face. A worse person, perhaps, could hardly have been found to fulfil the duties of mother to that young family, placed in the false position so common in Ireland twenty years ago — that of well-born gentry, possessed of nominal pro perty, but actually with hardly means to procure the necessaries of life. KILDAGGAN. 9 Mr. Blake's ancestors having at one time been people of fortune, he laboured under a perpetual delusion that all society was bound to treat him as though he were the heir to the ancient wealth as well as to the name of Blake.

There were but two, or at most three, profes sions a Blake could adopt without losing caste, and somehow the entrance to these seemed all to require more energy or more interest than he possessed ; so Mr. Blake had never found any work by which to mend his fortunes. He had married, eighteen years before, the daughter of another Irish gentleman — a girl as poor, as well-born, and as ill-educated for all the realities of life as he was himself, — and had lived ever since in a yearly strengthening con viction that the world was in a state of rapid degeneracy. A grievous sign of this he con sidered it to be, that the vulgar tradespeople round Kilda°sp-an should ask for the settlement OO of their long-standing accounts, and actually refuse further credit unless their claims were attended to. Still more pitiably demonstrative of the national falling away from all good he counted the fact that the Government would neither endow him with a lucrative post, nor yet pro vide for any of his sons.

And so the young Blakes received the most erratic education : placed at a school recommended by its cheap ness for part of a year, and suddenly with drawn for some frivolous reason ; then allowed to idle in the Kildaggan stables for six months, and again another school tried, with like result. The only wonder was that they had grown up as gentlemanly as they were. As for the daughters, they received no education at all. Several times within Honor's recollection she had been placed under the care of a resident governess, this being con sidered, in those days, the only way in which an Irish gentleman's daughter could be educated ; but whether it was that Kildaeean OO did not prove an attractive home to those ladies, or whether the limited salary offered them failed to secure one who was desirable, none of them entered on a second quarter in the place; and, at the time my story opens, Honor had long been without any instruction, except an irregular form of lessons, to be KILDAGGAN. 11 learned for her mother, and recited amid so many interruptions, and such a Babel of noise, that neither pupil nor teacher could hear her own voice, and such self-culture as she could pick up from the very limited supply of books the house afforded her.

The girl was possessed of strong mental powers, and a very tender, affectionate heart ; but while the former were thus left without culture, the latter was daily stung and wounded by the want of love which en veloped her life. Mrs. Blake was an affectionate woman in her way. She was proud of her fine, noble-looking elder sons and her beautiful Constance, and had that peculiar fondness which weak natures share with the lower animals for her youngest boy and girl, still of the nursery age ; but the whole strength of her love, if such a term as strength may be used to express any emotion of hers, was bestowed on her third son, Newton. He was almost the handsomest of all her children, and certainly, with the exception perhaps of Honor, the most intellectual ; but an accident some years before had injured his spine, and rendered him a partial cripple.

This circumstance had only redoubled his mothers affection; and indeed it was the great re deeming point in her character that she loved Newton better than herself. As for Honor, it is not too much to say that Mrs. Blake had no affection for her. The child's plainness and awkwardness were a perpetual source of morti fication ; her very name — an old family one, which Mr. Blake had insisted on — her mother deemed common and vulgar ; and when she said, as she often did, that the girl reminded her of her Aunt Honor — a maiden sister-in-law with whom she had had a life-long feud — her feelings at the moment were something near akin to dislike. Nor was there any one among her brothers and sisters to whom Honor could turn for that missing love. The Blakes had not been educated in any principles of family affec tion ; no doubt, they were all fond of one another in a certain way, but not so as to make them patient with the shortcomings which in Honor provoked her mother.

To her elder brothers she was a sort of butt KILDAGGAN. 13 — to their school-boy minds nothing womanly or sensitive could co-exist with her clumsy exterior, so they teased and bullied her, with no intention of absolute unkindness, exactly as if she had been another boy. Constance felt little else but contempt for her sister. The little beauty was growing up in all the selfishness the constant praises she heard of her own charms, with no mental train ing to balance the evil, were sure to produce. She patronized Honor condescendingly at times, and 'snubbed' her when less amiably disposed, but always insisted on the lion's share of every indulgence for herself. Newton was too much wrapped up in himself and his sufferings to care greatly for any one else ; and the little ones, young as they were, showed a preference for every one above clumsy Honor.

Nor had the girl ever been trained to any of those useful offices which purchase love from the young and weak. She could no more help to tend Newton than she could nurse the baby, and sooth to say, had little inclination for those or any other feminine tasks. She was never so happy as when she could escape from all restraint, and, either crouching in a lumber-room, devour some precious volume she had got hold of, or when, wandering through the fields and woods, she would sit for hours among the branches of trees, which she climbed like a squirrel, little heeding the torn and soiled clothes she would bring home, or the lectures she was sure to receive for her unfeminine predilections. Her supply of books was, as I have said, very limited, but she had a boundless, never failing resource, when these were exhausted, in the world of fancy wherein her soul used to wander during those lonely hours.

It was seldom she wrote down her thoughts, for writing was a slow and painful operation to her, but not the less diligently did she manu facture pages of childish verses and high-flown romances, which she would repeat to herself till the woods and meadows were all peopled with the beings of her imagination — and, strange to say, Honor's loneliness had not made her selfish. In her conduct she might be so, from sheer want of knowledge how to do better. KILDAGGAN. 15 No one had ever told her how she might lighten the hours of Newton's confinement, by sharing some of her visions with him, or make her home more happy by a useful feminine attention to trifling duties — it was not part of the Kildaggan training to esteem such things — but in heart Honor was not selfish. She would have given her life to serve those she loved, and she did love all her unloving rela tions warmly.

She never blamed them for not loving her. The child's heart was all humility, and she sincerely believed that their estimate of her was the true one, and that if she were less ugly, less awkward, and more worthy, they would have loved her better. She often shed bitter, lonely tears over her own deficiencies, but accepted them and their consequences as entirely her own fault. Her father was the person in the house who loved Honor best. The name, which excited her mother's disgust, was dear to him ; and, while he was sometimes provoked at the child's faults, he had too much generosity to resent her plainness, and he appreciated her mental powers more than his wife could do. In return, Honor worshipped her father, but it was with a trembling, undemonstrative wor ship, for Mr. Blake was a violent-tempered man, more feared than loved by his children, and of late years pecuniary embarrassments had not sweetened his disposition.

He had grown disagreeable and imperious to all, and had quarrelled with his nearest neighbours. The county society, like most such in Ireland, was very scattered, and Mrs. Blake never had a carriage at her command now, so the family gradually dropped out of all intercourse with others in their own rank — a circumstance little regretted by its head, whose pride was sorely wounded by the contrast of his own poverty with the wealth of some who were more pros perous. And so, on the day of which I write, it was a strange and exciting event when the noise of wheels was heard in the avenue, and a barouche stopped at the door. ' There is Lady Erinmore and her two daughters, and their governess,' said Philip, who sat nearest the window. Mrs. Blake rose to repair to the drawing-room. Conny laid down her knife and fork, smoothed KILDAGGAN. 17 her curls, and re-arranged her hair-ribbon.

A flush came into Honor's face, and she looked timidly at her mother. ' Miss Scott, Lady Erinmore's governess, promised to come and see me,' she said. ' We met her in Grady's shop, mamma. I liked her and Florence Erinmore so much that day, and they said they would bring me some books. May I come into the drawing-room ?' ' Well, I suppose you must,' said her mother, ' if the visit is partly for you ; but, dear me, Honor, how untidy you are !' ' She can't go in, mother !' broke in Richard. ' She is not fit to go into the drawing-room. Only look at her ! she is not a bit like a lady,' and he pointed to her torn dress. Mrs. Blake shook her head. ' Your brother is right, Honor; stay and finish your dinner. Conny shall come with me. She is always tidy. I wish you would try to be more like her,' she sighed, as she left the room.

Bitter tears welled up into Honor's eyes, but the fear of her brothers' ridicule forced her to swallow them. However, as the elder boys left the room for a nearer look at the carriage- VOL. I. B horses, and Newton was wheeled to the drawing-room, to join his mother, and the children carried away by the nurse, she stole from her scarcely tasted dinner, and escaped by a back-door into the orchard, where she threw herself on her face in the long herbage, and yielded to a very tempest of sobs and tears, clutching the grass and moaning, as if in bodily pain.

Chapter II. How To Be

A LADY. he had lain thus for nearly half-anhour, and the storm had almost spent itself, when the noise of a wheelbarrow coming along the path, and a voice whistling, caused her to look up. The new comer was a man in the dress of the better class of Irish peasants, and bore in his face that expression of thoughtful intelligence so common among them. ' Is that you, Miss Honor?' he cried, as he came suddenly upon her. ' Sure, ye startled me ! I did not think to find you lying here yer lone. Miss Conny and the young gentle men are up at the house, with the little Miss Erinmores, who have come to see yees.' Then, for the first time seeing Honor's red eyes, and observing the sobs that still burst u from her at intervals, he w*ent on with native delicacy — ' But sure it 's always fonder of the fields nor the house you are, Miss Honor!

Will ye get in the barrow, and I will give ye a ride ?' ' Where are you going, M'Carthy ?' ' Down to my mother's for a load of blue emperors. Master Newton won't eat the other potatoes, nurse says ; and indeed they are mostly touched with the blight.' Truly most things in Kildaggan were so, and the produce of those overtired and scantily dressed lands was at times hardly worth the trouble of cultivation. M'Carthy was, as his father and grandfather had been before him, the steward of the Blakes, and though possessed of a far higher and better cultured intellect than had been the lot of his ancestors, he inherited from them the one quality of feudal devotion to his master's falling house. Had Laurence M'Carthy earlier succeeded his father in his office of steward, he might have arrested Mr. Blake's coming ruin, but the younger man had passed the years that followed his boyhood away from Kildaggan, living with an old priest, a distant relation of his mother's, and receiving an education which Father Monaghan had fondly hoped would fit the clever youth to follow in his own steps.

The bright eyes of a little neighbour, who had been the lad's earliest playmate, had come between him and that view of life ; so the good Father was forced regretfully to let his protege return home on old M'Carthy's death, two years before, to take up the hereditary post, and betroth himself to pretty Ellen Daly. On investigating the affairs committed to his charge, Laurence found that the ruin of the old family he served was too imminent for any efforts of his to avert it. All he could do he did. He lent the whole powers of his mind, and everything else he possessed, to the work, but it was beyond him ; and the utmost he could effect was to stave off for a time the inevitable end, and to eke out of the wasted property such comforts as were possible for Mrs. Blake and her children. To this object his own little all was ungrudg ingly devoted, and that with a delicacy which could not wound the most sensitive pride.

On one excuse or other, the produce of his fields and small dairy mostly found its way to ' the house ;' his hands tilled the garden, and tended the cattle, and his wages he never touched. His mother and sister were able to support themselves by their work ; and Ellen Daly had cheerfully consented to wait for her lover's hand till 'better days' should dawn for 'the family.' Laurence M'Carthy's heart often misgave him that these better days could only be attained through the dark pathway of utter ruin and dispersion. Better read than his compeers, the coming shadow of that hard but needful mea sure, which was to clear Ireland of such ' en cumbered estates' as Kildaggan, was already looming before his mind's eye. He would have died to save the old place for the old stock ; but there were moments when M'Carthy's better sense told him, that if this were indeed to be, it would be better it should come soon, and set Richard and Philip Blake free to make their way in life unshackled by the hollow tradition of hereditary property, while yet so young that they would fall easily into a new order of thino-s. Still, whenever the blow fell, sooner or later, it must be a terrible one, and no exertion on M'Carthy's part was wanting that could help to mitigate or defer it ; but he might as well have tried to regenerate Ireland single-handed as to evoke anything like prudence or foresight in Mr. Blake.

The man was blind, and could not, or would not, see how the reckless, wasteful disorder of his affairs must end ; and all M'Carthy's efforts were thwarted by his master's obstinacy and folly. The reputation of M'Carthy's superior train ing had spread into the nursery at Kildaggan. Honor had heard the nurse-maid say he had ' got a power of larnin' from the priests,' and her mother express a hope that he had not been ' educated above his position ;' and therefore, as soon as she was comfortably seated in the wheelbarrow, she turned to him for the solution of a question which had occupied her thoughts during the last half-hour. ' M'Carthy, I want to ask you a question; I daresay you can answer it.' 'What is it, Miss Honor?' ' I want,' said the girl, turning her earnest face round so as to look into that of her charioteer, ' I want to know how I am to learn to be a lady, M'Carthy?' 'A what, Miss Honor?' ' A lady ; a young lady.' ' Sure then it 's joking ye are,' cried the Irish man, who retained the full flavour of the national dialect in spite of his education, as indeed I have noticed that higher born and better schooled men have done, — ' Sure, Miss Honor, it's joking ye are now!

There never was a Blake yet, man or woman, God bless them, but were ladies and gentlemen born ; and it 's not the hard times that are on us, more 's the pity, would hinder them being that! ' I know that, M'Carthy,' said the girl proudly. ' I was not talking of that sort of thing ; I meant, not how people are born ladies-, but how do they learn to be ladies themselves, like other people. Richard says I am not,' and tears filled her eyes and choked her voice. ' I know, I know, Miss Honor,' hastily put in the good-natured man ; ' I understand what you mane now : it 's not how to be a lady born you're asking — for that you are, and no mistake, — but how to get the taching that 's fitting for ye ? ' Honor nodded assent, and M'Carthy, after musing a minute, went on — ' What would ye think, now, of a boarding school in Dublin for a year or two, if the master would send ye there ?' Now M'Carthy was perfectly well aware that his suggestion was an infringement on the traditionary dignity of the Blakes.

Not Mr. Blake himself could have been more alive than ,he was to the difference between a daughter of Kildaggan and the youthful bourgeoisie to whose use in those days the girls' schools of Dublin were supposed to be exclusively de voted ; but the servant, having that sense and discernment which his master lacked, knew that a second-rate education was better than none. This was not the first time he had thought of the necessity of some teaching for Honor and her sister ; and, as a good governess was out of the question, a school seemed the only thing left. ' It will cost a power of money,' he mused ; 'but we must try to do it somehow;' and then he reflected how a neighbouring grazier had offered a larg-e rent for the use of two pasture-fields of Mr. Blake's, hitherto reserved for their own animals. ' We can sell the cows,' he thought, ' and my mother must spare milk enough for the house, as well as the butter she sends now.

They must pinch a bit in the kitchen, that 's all, and I '11 see if I can't buy that heifer of Barney Flanagan's cheap, to help us through the winter.' Meantime Honor had caught at the idea with hungry avidity. She was too young to understand the ' caste question ' involved in the school plan, and to her mind it was one full of unalloyed delight. A journey to a new place, new companions, and, above all, boundless facilities for learning, and unlimited books — these things crowded rapidly aud vividly on her active imagination, making a picture of surpassing happiness. She chattered on about it all, asking ques tions, and building airy castles, till her quick eye caught the expression of M'Carthy's face, and read it in part aright. He was thinking how likely it was the girl might be disappointed, how little he could hope, if the money were raised, that Mr. Blake could be induced to spend it on anything so reasonable. ' Will it cost a great deal ?' asked Honor. ' Fifty pounds a year, maybe, or more,' said M'Carthy. ' And for how long ought I to go ?' 'Two years,' M'Carthy said.