The mellow brogue of the old major had never fallen before with such a tender pathos upon the ear of his beautiful niece, as now that its rich current bore full upon her heart the unlooked-for words of kindness and comfort.
"Were not you always _my_ pet," continued he, with the same tenderness and pity in his tone, "from the time I first took you upon my knee, my poor little Mary? And were not you fond of your old rascally uncle O"Leary? Usedn"t I always to take your part, right or wrong; and do you think I"ll desert you now? Then tell it all to me--ain"t I your poor old uncle, the same as ever? Come, then, dry the tears--there"s a darling--wipe them away."
While thus speaking, the warm-hearted old man took her hand, with a touching mixture of gallantry, pity, and affection, and kissed it again and again, with a thousand accompanying expressions of endearment, such as in the days of her childhood he had been wont to lavish upon his little favourite. The poor girl, touched by the kindness of her early friend, whose good-natured sympathy was not to be mistaken, gradually recovered her composure, and yielding to the urgencies of the major, who clearly perceived that something extraordinarily distressing must have occurred to account for her extreme agitation, she at length told him the immediate cause of her grief and excitement. The major listened to the narrative with growing indignation, and when it had ended, he inquired, in a tone, about whose unnatural calmness there was something infinitely more formidable than in the noisiest clamour of fury,--
"Which way, darling, did his lordship go when he left you?"
The girl looked in his face, and saw his deadly purpose there.
"Uncle, my own dear uncle," she cried distractedly, "for G.o.d"s sake do not follow him--for G.o.d"s sake--I conjure you, I implore--" She would have cast herself at his feet, but the major caught her in his arms.
"Well, well, my darling." he exclaimed, "I"ll not _kill_ him, well as he deserves it--I"ll not: you have saved his life. I pledge you my honour, as a gentleman and a soldier, I"ll not harm him for what he has said or done this day--are you satisfied?"
"I am, I am! Thank G.o.d, thank G.o.d!" exclaimed the poor girl, eagerly.
"But, Mary, I must see him," rejoined the major; "he has threatened to set Sir Richard upon you--I must see him; you don"t object to that, under the promise I have made? I want to--to _reason_ with him. He shall not get you into trouble with the baronet; for though Richard and I came of the same mother, we are not of the same marriage, nor of the same mould--I would not for a cool hundred that he told his story to your father."
"Indeed, indeed, dear uncle," replied the girl, "I fear me there is little hope of escape or ease for me. My father must know what has pa.s.sed; he will learn it inevitably, and then it needs no colouring or misrepresentation to call down upon me his heaviest displeasure; his anger I must endure as best I may. G.o.d help me. But neither threats nor violence shall make me retract the answer I have given to Lord Aspenly, nor ever yield consent to marry _him_--nor any other now."
"Well, well, little Mary," rejoined the major, "I like your spirit.
Stand to that, and you"ll never be sorry for it. In the meantime, I"ll venture to exercise his lordship"s conversational powers in a brief conference of a few minutes, and if I find him as reasonable as I expect, you"ll have no cause to regret my interposition. Don"t look so frightened--haven"t I promised, on the honour of a gentleman, that I will _not_ pink him for anything said or done in his conference with you? To send a small sword through a bolster or a bailiff," he continued, meditatively, "is an _indifferent_ action; but to spit such a poisonous, crawling toad as the respectable old gentleman in question, would be nothing short of _meritorious_--it is an act that "ud tickle the fancy of every saint in heaven, and, if there"s justice on earth, would canonize myself. But never mind, I"ll let it alone--the little thing shall escape, since _you_ wish it--Major O"Leary has said it, so let no doubt disturb you. Good-bye, my little darling, dry your eyes, and let me see you, before an hour, as merry as in the merriest days that are gone."
So saying, Major O"Leary patted her cheek, and taking her hand affectionately in both his, he added,--
"Sure I am, that there is more in all this than you care to tell me, my little pet. I am sorely afraid there is something beyond my power to remedy, to change your light-hearted nature so mournfully. What it is, I will not inquire, but remember, darling, whenever you want a friend, you"ll find a sure one in me."
Thus having spoken, he turned from her, and strode rapidly down the walk, until the thick, formal hedges concealed his retreating form behind their impenetrable screens of darksome verdure.
Odd as were the manner and style of the major"s professions, there was something tender, something of heartiness, in his speech, which a.s.sured her that she had indeed found a friend in him--rash, volatile, and violent it might be, but still one on whose truth and energy she might calculate. That there was one being who felt with her and for her, was a discovery which touched her heart and moved her generous spirit, and she now regarded the old major, whose spoiled favourite in childhood she had been, but whom, before, she had never known capable of a serious feeling, with emotions of affection and grat.i.tude, stronger and more ardent than he had ever earned from any other being. Agitated, grieved, and excited, she hurriedly left the scene of this interview, and sought relief for her overcharged feelings in the quiet and seclusion of her chamber.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE SPINET.
In no very pleasant frame of mind did Lord Aspenly retrace his steps toward the old house. His lordship had, all his life, been firmly persuaded that the whole female creation had been sighing and pining for the possession of his heart and equipage. He knew that among those with whom his chief experience lay, his fortune and his coronet were considerations not to be resisted; and he as firmly believed, that even without such recommendations, few women, certainly none of any taste or discrimination, could be found with hearts so steeled against the archery of Cupid, as to resist the fascinations of his manner and conversation, supported and directed, as both were, by the tact and experience drawn from a practice of more years than his lordship cared to count, even to himself. He had, however, smiled, danced, and chatted, in impregnable celibacy, through more than half a century of gaiety and frivolity--breaking, as he thought, hearts innumerable, and, at all events, disappointing very many calculations--until, at length, his lordship had arrived at that precise period of existence at which old gentlemen, not unfrequently, become all at once romantic, disinterested, and indiscreet--n.o.body exactly knows why--unless it be for variety, or to spite an heir presumptive, or else that, as a preliminary to second childhood, nature has ordained a second _boyhood_ too. Certain, however, it is, that Lord Aspenly was seized, on a sudden, with a matrimonial frenzy; and, tired of the hackneyed schemers, in the centre of whose manoeuvres he had stood and smiled so long in contemptuous security, he resolved that his choice should honour some simple, unsophisticated beauty, who had never plotted his matrimony.
Fired with this benevolent resolution, he almost instantly selected Mary Ashwoode as the happy companion of his second childhood, acquainted Sir Richard with his purpose, of course received his consent and blessing, and forthwith opened his entrenchments with the same certainty of success with which the great Duke of Marlborough might have invested a Flanders village. The inexperience of a girl who had mixed, comparatively, so little in gay society, her consequent openness to flattery, and susceptibility of being fascinated by the elegance of his address, and the splendour of his fortune--all these considerations, accompanied by a clear consciousness of his own infinite condescension in thinking of her at all, had completely excluded from all his calculations the very possibility of her doing anything else than jump into his arms the moment he should open them to receive her. The result of the interview which had just taken place, had come upon him with the overwhelming suddenness of a thunderbolt.
Rejected!--Lord Aspenly rejected!--a coronet, and a fortune, and a man whom all the male world might envy--each and all rejected!--and by whom?--a chit of a girl, who had no right to look higher than a half-pay captain with a wooden leg, or a fox-hunting boor, with a few inaccessible acres of bog and mountain--the daughter of a spendthrift baronet, who was, as everyone knew, on the high road to ruin. Death and fury! was it to be endured?
The little lover, absorbed in such tranquilizing reflections, arrived at the house, and entered the drawing-room. It was not unoccupied; seated by a spinet, and with a sheet of music-paper in her lap, and a pencil in her hand, was the fair Emily Copland. As he entered, she raised her eyes, started a little, became gracefully confused, and then, with her archest smile, exclaimed,--
"What shall I say, my lord? You have detected me. I have neither defence nor palliation to offer; you have fairly caught me. Here am I engaged in perhaps the most presumptuous task that ever silly maiden undertook--I am wedding your beautiful verses to most unworthy music of my own. After all, there is nothing like a simple ballad. Such exquisite lines as these inspire music of themselves. Would that Henry Purcell had had but a peep at them! To what might they not have prompted such a genius--to what, indeed?"
So sublime was the flight of fancy suggested by this interrogatory, that Miss Copland shook her head slowly in poetic rapture, and gazed fondly for some seconds upon the carpet, apparently unconscious of Lord Aspenly"s presence.
"_She_ is a fine creature," half murmured he, with an emphasis upon the ident.i.ty which implied a contrast not very favourable to Mary--"and--and very pretty--nay, she looks almost beautiful, and so--so lively--so much vivacity. Never was poor poet so much flattered," continued his lordship, approaching, as he spoke, and raising his voice, but not above its most mellifluous pitch; "to have his verses read by _such_ eyes, to have them chanted by such a minstrel, were honour too high for the n.o.blest bards of the n.o.blest days of poetry: for me it is a happiness almost too great; yet, if the request be not a presumptuous one, may I, in all humility, pray that you will favour me with the music to which you have coupled my most undeserving--my most favoured lines?"
The young lady looked modest, glanced coyly at the paper which lay in her lap, looked modest once more, and then arch again, and at length, with rather a fluttered air, she threw her hands over the keys of the instrument, and to a tune, of which we say enough when we state that it was in no way unworthy of the words, she sang, rather better than young ladies usually do, the following exquisite stanzas from his lordship"s pen:--
"Tho" Chloe slight me when I woo, And scorn the love of poor Philander; The shepherd"s heart she scorns is true, His heart is true, his pa.s.sion tender.
"But poor Philander sighs in vain, In vain laments the poor Philander; Fair Chloe scorns with high disdain, His love so true and pa.s.sion tender.
"And here Philander lays him down, Here will expire the poor Philander; The victim of fair Chloe"s frown, Of love so true and pa.s.sion tender.
"Ah, well-a-day! the shepherd"s dead; Ay, dead and gone, the poor Philander; And Dryads crown with flowers his head, And Cupid mourns his love so tender."
During this performance, Lord Aspenly, who had now perfectly recovered his equanimity, marked the time with head and hand, standing the while beside the fair performer, and every note she sang found its way through the wide portals of his vanity, directly to his heart.
"Brava! brava! bravissima!" murmured his lordship, from time to time.
"Beautiful, beautiful air--most appropriate--most simple; not a note that accords not with the word it carries--beautiful, indeed! A thousand thanks! I have become quite conceited of lines of which heretofore I was half ashamed. I am quite elated--at once overpowered by the characteristic vanity of the poet, and more than recompensed by the reality of his proudest aspiration--that of seeing his verses appreciated by a heart of sensibility, and of hearing them sung by the lips of beauty."
"I am but too happy if I am _forgiven_," replied Emily Copland, slightly laughing, and with a heightened colour, while the momentary overflow of merriment was followed by a sigh, and her eyes sank pensively upon the ground.
This little by-play was not lost upon Lord Aspenly.
"Poor little thing," he inwardly remarked, "she is in a very bad way--desperate--quite desperate. What a devil of a rascal I am to be sure! Egad! it"s almost a pity--she"s a decidedly superior person; she has an elegant turn of mind--refinement--taste--egad! she is a fine creature--and so simple. She little knows I see it all; perhaps she hardly knows herself what ails her--poor, poor little thing!"
While these thoughts floated rapidly through his mind, he felt, along with his spite and anger towards Mary Ashwoode, a feeling of contempt, almost of disgust, engendered by her audacious non-appreciation of his merits--an impertinence which appeared the more monstrous by the contrast of Emily Copland"s tenderness. _She_ had made it plain enough, by all the artless signs which simple maidens know not how to hide, that his fascinations had done their fatal work upon her heart. He had seen, this for several days, but not with the overwhelming distinctness with which he now beheld it.
"Poor, poor little girl!" said his lordship to himself; "I am very, very sorry, but it cannot be helped; it is no fault of mine. I am really very, very, confoundedly sorry."
In saying so to himself, however, he told himself a lie; for, instead of being grieved, he was pleased beyond measure--a fact which he might have ascertained by a single glance at the reflection of his wreathed smiles in the ponderous mirror which hung forward from the pier between the windows, as if staring down in wondering curiosity upon the progress of the flirtation. Not caring to disturb a train of thought which his vanity told him were but riveting the subtle chains which bound another victim to his conquering chariot-wheels, the Earl of Aspenly turned, with careless ease, to a table, on which lay some specimens of that worsted tapestry-work, in which the fair maidens of a century and a half ago were wont to exercise their taste and skill.
"Your work is very, very beautiful," said he, after a considerable pause, and laying down the canvas, upon whose unfinished worsted task he had been for some time gazing.
"That is my _cousin"s_ work," said Emily, not sorry to turn the conversation to a subject upon which, for many reasons, she wished to dwell; "she used to work a great deal with me before she grew romantic--before she fell in love."
"In love!--with whom?" inquired Lord Aspenly, with remarkable quickness.
"Don"t you know, my lord?" inquired Emily Copland, in simple wonder.
"May be I ought not to have told you--I am sure I ought not. Do not ask me any more. I am the giddiest girl--the most thoughtless!"
"Nay, nay," said Lord Aspenly, "you need not be afraid to trust _me_--I never tell tales; and now that I know the fact that she is in love, there can be no harm in telling me the less important particulars. On my honour," continued his lordship, with real earnestness, and affected playfulness--"upon my sacred honour! I shall not breathe one syllable of it to mortal--I shall be as secret as the tomb. Who is the happy person in question?"
"Well, my lord, you"ll _promise_ not to betray me," replied she. "I know very well I ought not to have said a word about it; but as I _have_ made the blunder, I see no harm in telling you all I know; but you _will_ be secret?"
"On my honour--on my life and soul, I swear!" exclaimed his lordship, with unaffected eagerness.
"Well, then, the happy man is a Mr. Edmond O"Connor," replied she.
"O"Connor--O"Connor--I never saw nor heard of the man before," rejoined the earl, reflectively. "Is he wealthy?"
"Oh! no; a mere beggarman," replied Emily, "and a Papist to boot!"