Norah: The Story of a Wild Irish Girl

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NORAH: THE STORY OF A WILD IRISH GIRL.

BY MRS. OLIPHANT

AUTHOR OF “MISS MARJORIBANKS,” “JOHN,” ETC.

Part I

CHAPTER I.

There is one thing about Ireland which I don’t remember ever to have heard any one notice but myself, which seems a conceited thing to say, as I really know so little about it. It is nothing political, though it may have a connection with Irish politics, for anything I can tell. It is the immense, the extraordinary number of Irish gentry afloat upon the world. I never was in a country neighborhood in England where there were not two or three families, at least; and every one who has ever lived abroad knows what heaps there are at every (so-called) English center, where living is supposed to be cheap, and there is a little society. One stumbles against them wherever one goes; and my opinion is, that it is very pleasant, generally, to make their acquaintance. But the fact has always surprised me. No doubt, one falls upon a Scotch house here and there in the quiet parts of England; but I never knew a village yet without its Irish family. And there was one accordingly at Dinglefield Green.

Almost as much as a matter of course, it was in the funny, tumble-down house at the east end of the Green, which somebody, I suppose in mockery, had nicknamed the Mansion, that they established themselves. The house must have had another name for formal purposes; but it never was called anything but the Mansion among us. It stood in a little, overgrown, very weedy garden; and I know it was damp. But of course, poor things, they could not tell that. It was partly built of wood, and partly covered with creepers; and between the two, you cannot conceive a more moist and mouldy place for people to live in. Creepers are very pretty, but they are not good for the walls, nor for one’s comfort I do not say it was not rather picturesque, when the Virginia creeper was growing scarlet, and the trees changing color. There were two very fine chestnuts on the lawn in front of the house, and a good deal of wood behind—rather more wood, indeed, than I should have liked. The garden was walled all round, except in front, where the chestnuts made a very nice screen, and showed a pretty peep of the house between them. I have no doubt it was that peep which determined Lady Louisa; and as she knew nobody on the Green, it was impossible for us to warn her that things were not quite so satisfactory within.

However, they came and settled down in summer; after the season, Lady Louisa said. “I hate it myself, me dear,” she informed us all; “I’m an old woman, and what’s thim balls and kettle-drums to me? Though I don’t quarrel with a good dinner when it takes that form, sure it’s for them, poor things. You can’t put an old head on young shoulders; and, upon me honor, I never was the woman to try.” So the Beresfords came and settled down among us after their gayeties. We are always curious about a new neighbor on the Green. There are not many of us, and nice people are always an acquisition; whereas, on the contrary, when they are not nice, as has happened now and then, it is very uncomfortable for us all. Personally, the first that I saw of the Beresfords was Norah. Every afternoon when I went out, for the first fortnight after their arrival, I met a young lady who was a stranger to me, and who must, I knew, be one of the new people at the Mansion. She had a quick way of walking, which made it difficult for a shortsighted person like myself to see her face. But when I began to compare notes with my neighbors, I found that everybody had seen her, and had noticed exactly what I did. We all called her the Girl with the Blue Veil. That was the most conspicuous point about her; and what was still more conspicuous was, that the veil had a hole in it. We made a little merry over this, I confess. One could not but say it was very Irish. Sometimes her veil was thrown over her face, and then the tip of a pretty little nose would be seen through the crevice, or a laughing, dancing, merry eye. I have no doubt she did it on purpose, saucy girl as she was. By degrees, the whole household became known. Lady Louisa herself was a stout little woman, very droll and dowdy; and her eldest daughter was exactly like her, and about the same age, I should think. They both dressed in the same way, and a very funny way it was; and they were exactly the same height, and trudged about everywhere together. Mr. Beresford was a quiet little old man with headaches, and we saw very little of him. Sometimes one of the sons came down from town, and sometimes other Irish families—very fine, shabby, homely people like themselves, with queer old gowns, and heavy old chains, and bracelets, and titles—used to come to see them. We all wondered, at first, how it was they were not ashamed to ask Countesses and Viscountesses, and all sorts of grand-sounding people, to go to the Mansion among the weeds and the damp, and with the remarkable furniture which we knew the house to contain. But, good souls, they were not in the least ashamed of anything; and the other lords and ladies took to it quite kindly too.

We all called, of course, as soon as it could be supposed that they had settled down. If anybody else had gone to the Mansion in the same homely way, the ladies on the Green might have hesitated; but there could be no question about Lady Louisa. They were all in, as it happened, the day I made my visit. They were not the kind of people to throw any glare about the odd little place; but of course, with so many in the room, it could not help but look more cheerful. The windows were ridiculous little casement windows, but they were open; and Norah was there, without her blue veil. Now I don’t mean to say that she was beautiful, or even absolutely pretty, perhaps; but she was the kind of creature that takes you by storm. Her eyes laughed, as if life were the greatest fun in the world; and up to this time I think she had found it so. They were curious eyes. Some people called them green, which was a libel, and some called them gray, which was almost as bad. I have seen them look as near blue as green, and I have seen them darken into hazel for a moment, if any shadow flitted across Norah’s sky. But on ordinary occasions they were eyes of gold; they were like crystal, or sparkling running water, with a great yellow sunset shining through it. Her hair was of the Irish kind of hair which I have seen on many beautiful heads—dusky brown, neither light nor fair, with a certain paleness like dead leaves. And she was pale; her lips, even, were not too vivid in color,—everything about her toned down, except the eyes with the light in them, and the whitest teeth I ever saw. She was such a contrast to the others that I cannot help describing her. They were like two little steady old hens trolling about together, the mother and Priscilla; whereas Norah was like a bird and had wings. She was standing as I came in, which perhaps made me distinguish her the more; while Lady Louisa and Miss Beresford sat one on each side of my dear old Lady Denzil, who had called that afternoon too.

“Here’s Mrs. Mulgrave at last,” said Lady Louisa, as if she had known me all my life. “Me dear ma’am, don’t look so surprised. Haven’t I heard of you from me Lady here, and heaps of friends; and ye may imagine me feelings when I thought you were not going to call. Mr. Beresford has one of his bad headaches; so he’ll not have the pleasure of seeing you to-day. But here’s me girls, and very glad to make your acquaintance at last.”

“I am sure you are very good,” I said; and faltered out excuses (though I might have had the sense to see they were not necessary) for having let a whole fortnight pass. Lady Louisa did not pretend to pay the least attention. She was off at a tangent before I had said half a dozen words.

“He married an O’Farrell, me dear lady,” she said, “and Mr. Beresford’s grandmother, as ye may have heard, was step-daughter to old O’Farrell, of Castle Farrell; so he’s a near relation, though we haven’t seen much of him. They make fun of him because he’s a widower, poor man; but ye may take me word, a widower with ten thousand a year is as pretty a thing as ye’ll see in a day’s journey—and neither chick nor child. They’re silly girls, more’s the pity, as I tell them every day.”

“When a man is a widower so young as that,” said Lady Denzil, “I am always sorry for him. It is bad for people beginning over again, even if there was nothing more.”

“But he needn’t begin over again. Why can’t he stay as he is?” said Miss Beresford, with a little prim consciousness, and Norah clapped her hands and went off into wild laughter most exhilarating to hear.

“I would if I were him,” she said, “if it was only for the fun of cheating mamma and you. But the man is old,—he’s five-and-thirty. He might be one’s grandfather—and a widower. If I were Prissy, I know what I should say.”

“You would stop till you were asked, me dear,” said Lady Louisa; “and so will your sister—and sure it’s the height of bad breeding to be speaking of a thing Mrs. Mulgrave hasn’t heard of till now. It’s Col. Fitzgerald, me dear ma’am, that’s come to the Castle—a cousin of their own, and ye hear how they’re making fun of him. His wife, poor little soul, died within the year, and ye may take me word, being a young man, he’s looking out again. So I don’t see why they should not have the chance, as well as another. Now don’t ye agree with me?”

“It depends on what the young ladies think,” said I, so much amazed that I really could not for the moment see the fun, notwithstanding the dancing laughter in Norah’s eyes.

“Ah, then, and what do they know?” said Lady Louisa, “a pack of girls! Norah, me child, sit down and be quiet, do, or the ladies will think ye a tomboy, and it’s not far wrong they would be. It’s a young woman’s duty to marry, as I always tell them, and I don’t see that there’s much prospect here, where you’ve no gentlemen to speak of—unless it’s the officers. We’d have laughed in my time to think of the men failing. They used to be as plenty as blackberries in the old days.”

“We have got our brothers,” said Miss Priscilla, “and I don’t know what more we want. You would not find it so easy to get on without us as you think, mamma.”

“1 don’t think of meself, me dear,” said Lady Louisa; and abandoned the subject abruptly, with that fine sense of the genius of conversation which belongs to her race. “Mr. Beresford would have called on Sir Thomas, me dear Lady, but for his headaches. Sure we all know what a man is when he is ill. I You can’t tell how I’m hoping the place will suit him. We’ve done nothing but wander about since me children were babies. As for our own country, it’s out of the question. The damp, and the heat, and the cold, and altogether. But I hear you’ve a fine bracing air on the Green?”

“Yes,” said Lady Denzil and myself, both together, but there was, of course, a certain hesitation in our voices, which Lady Louisa was much too sharp not to observe. We were thinking of the Mansion itself and the damp, but that we could not explain.

“Ah, well,” she said, looking at us. “It is not easy to know who to trust. Time will show. It is a droll little bit of a house, but we make it do. We had some friends over to lunch yesterday, our cousin Lady Langdale, and young Everton, her eldest son. That’s a fine young fellow now—very handsome, me dear lady, and I fear, if one must believe all the tales one hears, very fast too—but the best of sons. As pleased to come down here with his dear mother as if he had been going to—well, I was going to say the Castle, but that’s not very exciting now-a-days, me dear ma’am.”

“Why, he came to have some fun, mamma,” said Norah. “Don’t you know it’s great fun coming to this tumble-down old place? I like it of all things. One can skip about as one pleases, and nobody minds—instead of having to mend one’s glove, and put up one’s hair, and look as proper as four pins.”

“But we rather pique ourselves upon being proper all the same,” said Lady Denzil, “and you must not teach the girls to be wild, my dear, though it is very nice to see you skipping about—even with holes in your gloves.”

We looked at each other, my old friend and I, and had a little difficulty in keeping our countenances. It was all of a piece, somehow, and though one might be didactic as one’s duty, one had no particular desire to set it right.

After the little glimpse we had been having of the Mansion and its inmates, there was something quite harmonious in that hole in Norah’s veil.

“But Norah is quite particular about her gloves, I assure you,” said Miss Beresford. “She is not such a wild Irish girl as people think, though she will run about. Mamma has no proper maid just now—”

“Ah,” sighed Lady Louisa, “don’t remind me of it, me dear. I’ve never had a proper maid, me dear ladies, I give you my word, since that fool of a girl went and married under me very nose, as it were. They will marry, the fools! as soon as they’ve got to be a bit useful to ye. And to prove it, I’ve got no cook in the house at this minute, if ye’ll believe it, me dear ma’am, which is worse, when there’s a man to be fed, than the want of a good maid.”

“Oh dear, I am very sorry,” said I. “Can—one—be of any use, Lady Louisa? Of course it is strange on so short an acquaintance—but if my servants can do anything—”

“It’s like your kindness,” said Lady Louisa, pressing my hand. “But we do the best we can. There’s the lad that came with us; sure he’s the son of an old butler of ours, and he’s seen a good deal for his condition in life, and a very pretty notion of a dinner he has, I assure you; and me maid, such as she is—I don’t call her a clever maid—but she can take a turn at anything. It’s handy, me dear ladies, when you’re moving about, and can’t carry a full establishment at your tails. And we get along. Mr. Beresford’s an invalid, thank God, and not so unreasonable as most men about the cooking. And oh, I assure ye, we get along.”

Lady Denzil had turned to Norah, and was speaking to the child over her shoulder as this revelation was made to me, and I could do nothing but falter a hope that she would soon feel herself settled down, and be supplied with cooks and everything necessary, as I rose to go away.

“Ah, then, it does not take so long to settle down,” said Lady Louisa, rising, “when ye are used to it like me. I come in, me dear ma’am, and I give meself a shake, and I’m at home, whatever the place may be. It isn’t a palace,” she continued, looking round, “and the furniture is old-fashioned, but we’ve put in some of our own knick-knacks, ye see, which I always carry about with me, and that does more than anything to give the home-look. Norah, ring for old Ferns to show me Lady Denzil the door.”

“Is this the man of all work, who has a pretty notion of a dinner?” I could not refrain from whispering as we went out. We had shaken hands and got quite clear of the drawing-room—indeed, we were outside the door; out of all possibility, as I thought, of being overheard. But before Lady Denzil could answer, a fresh, sweet, ringing peal of laughter came upon my astonished ear.

“Oh no, not that old fellow; but I’ll show him to you if you please,” said Norah Beresford, suddenly making her appearance round the corner. “He’s the stable boy, and the cleverest boy I know.”

You may suppose how I started! That Mansion is one of the most awkward places for back doors and side doors, so that you never know when you are safe. Of course I made some stupid excuses, but Norah only went off into another fit of laughing. The girl was wild with fun and spirits; she could not be more than eighteen—a kind of dancing fawn—and I took a fancy to the creature on the spot; though, no doubt, if she had been one of our own girls on the Green, who have always been brought up to behave themselves, one might have thought differently. But a young face of that age running over with fun and nonsense is pleasant, when it is sweet nonsense and not wicked. Norah laughed as most people breathe, and it was not from the lips outward, but with all her heart.

“What a light-hearted creature!” I said, with a little sigh, such as middle-aged people are apt to indulge in at such a sight. It meant poor thing, she knows no better! I suppose one cannot help that half-envying, half-melancholy thought.

Lady Denzil was old, not middle aged, and had ceased to feel this little prick of compassion and superiority. She smiled only, she did not sigh, as she waved her hand to Norah. “It is a nice, innocent, cordial sort of laugh,—it does one’s heart good to hear it,” she said.

“And what a household!” I went on, for we were now quite free of the Mansion and its inmates. “So frank and so queer about everything! Are they half out of their minds, do you think—or is it all a joke?”

“My dear, they are Irish,” said Lady Denzil quietly. “And then, why should they be ashamed? It is not their own house. I dare say their own place is very nice, if you could see it. And then they have a certain rank, you know. That makes people very easy about what they say. She is Lady Louisa if she lived in a garret. She can't be mistaken; and they take the good of their own mishaps, and see the fun of them just as we do, whereas our mishaps only amuse our neighbors, not ourselves,” Lady Denzil added. It was very true, perhaps; but one did not like to hear such a sentiment from my Lady's lips.

And before a week was over, as might have been expected, the Green rang with stories of the Irish family. “Fancy, she says Colonel Fitzgerald is a widower with £10,000 a year, and her daughters may as well have the chance as another,” Mrs. Stoke said to me, pale with consternation, though such calculations could not be absolutely foreign to her own experience. She was so shocked that it took away her speech for a whole evening: which was very different from its effect on Lady Louisa. “And the stable boy cooks the dinner,” said the Admiral, with a laugh that they must have heard on the other side of the Green, and shrugged his shoulders, and added, “Poor devil,”—meaning, no doubt, Mr. Beresford, whom Lady Louisa, on the contrary, thanked God was an invalid, and not so particular. Whenever we met, we had a new story to tell of the Mansion. But it did them no harm, as far as I could see. No cook ever came that we could find out, and no maid; and the hole in Norah’s blue veil survived triumphantly till Christmas, when she tied up the leg of a little table in the drawing-room with it, to the admiration of all beholders. “I never saw such furniture,” Norah said; “it breaks if you look hard at it. I suppose it must be made expressly for furnished houses;” and then she tied up the little table, which had a sprain, with the blue veil.

But notwithstanding, they were the greatest acquisition we had met with for a long while on the Green. Norah was a favorite everywhere; our pet, and the darling of the village, though she was not always perfectly tidy. And as for Miss Priscilla, though she was by way of being the precise and old-maidenly sister, even she had a suppressed sense of fun with all her primness. I do not believe they read three books from one year's end to another. The girls knew nothing to speak of, except a smattering of languages, which they had picked up abroad in their wanderings. Really, I cannot help thinking sometimes it is great nonsense, the fuss we make about education. Norah was a great deal nicer than if she had been well educated. I am old-fashioned, I suppose, but on the other hand I am very fond of books, which have been my closest companions for years; but yet—Those lively, keen, open eyes, seeing everything—that vivacious original mind, finding out the fun first of all, and then heaps of other meanings, if they were but ever so slightly indicated to her, in everything she heard or saw—are worth a great deal more than mere knowledge. I hate dull people, uneducated or not, which I fear is a very unchristian sentiment when one thinks how many of our fellow-creatures are very dull—and I love intelligence about all things, without caring much about its amount of education. “Ah, that is because you only see the pleasant side of it,” Mr. Damerel says to me. He is very highly educated, good man, and so are his children going to be. The girls (it is his pride) learn everything with their brothers. But, oh me, how heavy they all are! how it wears one out to spend an evening at the Rectory! whereas with those dear ignorant souls at the Mansion the moments flew.

It was July when the Beresfords came, so that they had still a good deal of the summer before them, and our young people did their duty in making them acquainted with all there was to be seen. They had brought a pony with them and a little carriage, not any bigger, and, I must say, very much more crazy and out of order than mine. The wheels had a jingle of their own, which distinguished Lady Louisa’s pony-chaise to the whole neighborhood. It was this that was the nominal occupation of the boy who cooked the dinner, and a very clever boy he was. I have seen him myself in the yard, polishing the chaise as if his life depended on it. “Sure and it’s joking my lady was,” he answered, when somebody congratulated him one day on his various accomplishments. He blushed, though Lady Louisa did not. And so the quaint, funny, candid household got settled down in the midst of us. Beside Lady Denzil, who was our queen in a way, Lady Louisa looked like an old washerwoman: but notwithstanding all her good-nature, there was one point she was stiffer upon even than Lady Denzil. We were all gentry, fortunately, and people whom one could visit, but nothing could be finer than the unconsciousness that came upon the lady of quality when an interloper of a lower order came in. She became blind, deaf, and stupid in a moment, though she was the very soul of good-humor and kindness. This is a mystery I don’t understand, though I am as fond of well-born people as anybody need be.

And alas! the autumn that the Beresfords came to the Green was the year that, after all his misdoings, Everard Stoke came home.

II

CHAPTER II.

Everard was Mrs. Stoke’s eldest son: they were people of the very best connections, but poor—so poor that they had to live in a little cottage and practice the most rigid economy, though they “counted cousins” with half the people in the peerage. Everard had had every advantage in education, people thinking naturally that the eldest son was his mother’s best prop, and that he would be glad to be able to help his own. And no doubt some boys are a help and comfort to every one belonging to them; just as there are others who pull everybody down who has ever attempted to help them. He was meant to go into the Indian Civil Service, that being the best way, as many people think, for a young man to get on. But he would not be a Civil servant. He insisted on going into the army, where, of course, he knew he could never keep himself, much less help his family. I don’t know what poor Mrs. Stoke, who was not a strong woman either in mind or body, was subjected to in the way of threats, and disobedience, and ill-temper, before she would consent. But she had to consent at last; and they got him a commission in a very nice regiment in the line. He wanted to be a Guardsman, the young fool! but of course her friends were not such idiots as that. I suspect Everard had thought of soldiering—for he was not much more than a boy, and could not be expected to have much sense—as nothing but a life of indolence and freedom, heaps of amusements and gay society. But when he found he had to obey as well as to command, it changed his ideas altogether. The way in which he tried to cover his insubordination at first was by calling his Colonel a snob, which he did whenever he came to see any of us. “His grandfather was a tailor,” he would say; “fancy gentlemen having to be under a fellow like that!” He tried after a while to get his friends to arrange an exchange for him into a different regiment: but it happened to be just at the moment when Willie, the second boy, was going out to India, and no one could pay attention to Everard’s grumbles. Then there came a dreadful explosion. Whether he refused to obey orders, or whether he was insolent to his commanding officer, one could never quite make out; but the result was that he was recommended to resign to avoid a court-martial. It was the 119th, and I knew one of the officers. His account was, that he never saw such an ill-conditioned cub. “Snob himself,” said my friend with indignation; “our old Colonel is a man to be proud of. The little brute never obeyed an order in his life, and wouldn’t—’twasn’t in him. What business had his mother to be a widow? Oh yes, I suppose she couldn’t help it: but she ought to have flogged the very life out of that little beggar all the same.” Poor, gentle Mrs. Stoke, to think of her whipping a boy! though I don’t doubt it would have done him good.

So Everard came home, more or less disgraced, his chosen profession thrown away, or throwing him away. By that time he was one-and-twenty, and a dreadful life he led his poor mother and sisters, grumbling at every thing. They had nothing on the table fit to eat,—they had nothing decent to put on,—they made a fellow wretched with their long faces, &c., &c. Once he did me the favor to take me into his confidence, but was sufficiently startled by my answer not to try it again. Then by immense exertions—it was before the time of examinations for everything, and interest did a great deal—a place was got for him in one of the Government offices. When Mrs. Stoke asked my advice, I was against this step from the beginning, for what was a young man of his habits to do in London, where everything would tempt him to go astray? “Ah, you don’t know my Everard,” said the misguided woman, with tears in her eyes. “He is very proud, I must confess. Yes, indeed, Mrs. Mulgrave, it is a grave fault, but all the Stokes are proud. How could he be expected to be superior to the character of the family? But he has no other faults, poor boy. I could trust him as I would trust one of the girls,” she said, drying her eyes. And I suppose, so strangely are people constituted, that she believed what she said.

Everard got the situation, and everything seemed to go well for a year or two. By degrees, he got quite out of the habit of coming to the Green. When he did come, they never could please him. When his poor mother remonstrated with him for neglecting her, he made her the cruelest answer. “You don’t think I could stand the Green all by myself?” he said; “and what fellow would care to come down with me to a hole like this?” It was Lottie who told me, in her indignation; but Mrs. Stoke bore it all, and never made any sign. And then2 It was a dreadful business; and nobody ever explained, in so many words, exactly how it was. It was not in the papers, which kept it from the knowledge of people out of society, at least As for people in society, of course the papers are nothing; and everybody knew. There was some public money that had to pass through his hands; and besides that, he was more than a thousand pounds in debt. It came upon the poor Stokes like a thunder-clap. That sort of thing is more dreadful to us, who have but a very little money, and that little our very own, than, I suppose, to mercantile people, who are used to have other people’s money in their hands. He had to go away, with just a telegram to his poor mother that he was ruined, and that she would never see him more. Of course it was some days before we heard; but we all noticed and wondered at the strange commotion in the cottage, and poor Mrs. Stoke, more dead than alive, going and coming constantly to town. As soon as the first whisper got abroad I went to them at once, which was rather a bold thing to do, and might have been badly taken. But they knew me, and that I meant only to serve them; and that is what Lottie means when she speaks of the time when I stood by them in their trouble. They had to make great sacrifices to pay up what they could. I know Mrs. Stoke sold her pearls, which she had always clung to through all their poverty, for the sake of her girls. And they sent away one of their servants, and lived more plainly, and dined more poorly than ever. And Everard disappeared for a long time, like a man who has gone down at sea. It was long before they knew even if he were alive, or where he was. I cannot tell how he lived, or what he did with himself; but at the time I am writing of, everything had quieted down and been forgotten; and he came back. His poor mother, somehow, had still a remnant of belief in her boy, and wept over him as did the father of the prodigal—though Everard was far too much a young man of the period to have any confession on his lips. I don’t believe he even said “I am sorry,” for all the dreadful trials he had dragged those poor women through. Oh, how many things such women have to bear that they cannot confide to their dearest friends! He took it all as a matter of course. He looked us all in the face, just so conscious of what we thought as to be defiant of our opinion. There had been no public stigma put upon him, no prosecution, nor anything of that kind. And now that it had “blown over,” as he thought, he had the audacity to come home.