Page images
PDF
EPUB

but you know as well as any one what Mr. Neave was like! Agatha has repaid my care, but Cicely, she's like her father, I ought not to have let those two go off in the boat! You must go to the farm and get the wagon to take our things to the station. I shan't feel The

safe till we are back at Bel Alp.

little wretch, pretending to be so quiet too!"

Lauriston

"My dear," began Mr. again; but his wife had only paused for breath, and realizing this he waited like a wise man till he might get some clue to her meaning. He looked more cheerfully at the scenery, for, whatever might be the catastrophe in question, it evidently had nothing to do with a Gladstone bag. Even in her wildest moments Charlotte, he felt sure, would never call him a little wretch.

"I never could have supposed it, never!" she continued with gathering vehemence. "That's what comes of reading Ibsen and living one's own life and going to picture-galleries on Sunday instead of taking a bible-class and reading the lessons and the collect. I always said I never liked her. She lonely! Whatever induced you to give way when they asked you, I don't know. You ought to have seen what she was like and never had her in the house. I despise a man who can't say Do. She lonely! She knows how to fill up her time well enough. I shouldn't wonder if she asked them all down here. Why else did they come down here at all?"

Mr. Lauriston passed a puzzled hand over his brow. What on earth was his wife talking about? Somebody, apparently, who read Ibsen, lived her own life and went to picture-galleries on Sunday. The means of identification were not sufficient; but he felt that he could dismiss his first suspicion that Cicely was the object of attack. She lived her own life gracefully enough, it was true, but he did not think she

could or would read Ibsen, though she had once been known to spend a morning over Hans Andersen in the German,

If I

Mrs. Lauriston continued. "Have you got the return tickets safe and the packet of labels in the left-hand bottom corner of your trunk? You must send a telegram for me to Martha to re-engage her to cook, as Eliza said she wouldn't come back again when I gave her notice a month before we left, -as if they expected to have boardwages and nothing to do all the time we were away! But Martha can cook fairly well now, and we'll have Martin's sister in to help her and a charwoman to do the house-work. could only trust the registry office, but after that drunken kitchenmaid they sent me and their refusal to return the fee, though they put it on their prospectus that they would if she didn't give satisfaction,-satisfaction, and she drank two bottles of your best port, and wouldn't look at the port at oneand-six I got for Eliza's cold, though it was easier to get at, not that Eliza was grateful either-no, I won't go there again. But if you go over and telegraph to Martha we can go back tomorrow."

Mr. Lauriston gasped in marital sympathy, but being no wiser on the main point he still refrained from suggestion. Mrs. Lauriston resumed: "We ought to send her home, of course, but we can't do that as it is. Fancy her being so sly. Sketching! I'm thankful Cicely rever would learn it if that's what it leads to. I should like to know how many of them have been helping her to sketch! You ought to go straight down and thrash the lot of them, Mr. Lauriston, that's what you ought to do. The-the-fellows!”

Mr. Lauriston began to have a glimmering as to the culprit, though he still could not deduce the crime. In any case the course of action suggested for

himself called for protest. "I hardly think, my dear, such violent-"

to

I

"You're too good-natured, Henry, too good-natured. Why you wanted keep Eliza just because she could do omelettes, and we none of us care for omelettes except you,-but if I see any of them, I'll say what I think of a set of idle, good-for-nothing young men, artists most likely and journalists that sit up to all hours and have breakfast in bed and call themselves Bohemian. And she'd be just such another. heard her ask Agatha if she's read Endymion, by that dreadful Lord Byron too, who ran away with somebody else's wife and got drowned in the Mediterranean-serve him right-and she wanted to see his statue, though they put it in an Oxford college because it hadn't any clothes on! Why even when they bathe in the morning -" but here Mrs. Lauriston broke off hurriedly. The vision of Charles on the house-boat was not a thing to talk about, least of all to a husband.

"My dear," said Mr. Lauriston, seeing that his wife had at last paused of her own accord, "I am quite prepared to agree with you as to what had better be done".

"I should hope you were," she said with decision.

"-but I really don't understand"Don't understand?" she exclaimed. "When I've been telling you all this time, that I saw that Miss Yonge walking along with a strange young man, who was carrying her sketching things as if he'd known her all his life, and they parted just near here, so that I couldn't have seen them unless I'd been going for a turn before luncheon-if you'd seen that, and seen her come back just as quietly as if nothing had happened (which shows how used she is to that kind of thing, and I shouldn't wonder if she goes out to work in the City and typewrites and smokes with stock-brokers when she's at home-you

know what the City is as well as I do, Henry!)-when I saw that I intended to tell her what decent people thought of such behavior, but I remembered that Martin can never be trusted with a stew, and then Cicely met her, and I didn't like to speak to her before Cicely-why you don't know what ideas it might not put into the child's head! -so I just waited till I could talk it over quietly with you and arrange about going back to Bel Alp."

Now a little time ago Mr. Lauriston had said in his heart that he wished nothing better than to be back in his pleasant residence of Bel Alp. Were there not his morning paper at breakfast and his evening stroll in the garden seasoned with interchange of courtesies over the wall with Mr. Waterhouse of Minnehaha, his completely detached neighbor? Was there not his own armchair in his study with the innocent-looking cabinet constructed for documents beside it, the cabinet whose contents were not entered in Mrs. Lauriston's weekly accounts? All these things he had in the past regretted; but now the country had claimed him and he was beginning to enter into the spirit of the life. If he was not staying long enough to turn farmer he had an occupation more engrossing than any dreamed of by the notoriously fortunate agriculturist. He had a pur pose in life, a definite daily task, and a congenial fellow-laborer and leader. He felt that he could not without unending regret leave undecided the precise spot in the wood, which he and Charles were searching in systematically parcelled plots, where lay concealed the Gladstone bag. Wherefore Mr. Lauriston temporized. "Is that all you saw, my dear?" he hazarded.

"All?" demanded his wife in a tone which showed that he had opened ill. "All? What more do you expect, I should like to know? Do you think I was watching for more? Why he

might have kissed her in those thick hedges and I should never have known it. I saw him take off his hat." Mrs. Lauriston's voice was full of horror.

"It may have been an accidental meeting; perhaps she was tired."

"Accidental! I can't have five idle, good-for-nothing actors making accidents like that. She led him on as likely as not. I'm sure I can't imagine what any man could see in her, except her eyes; I suppose she's got good eyes. You men never seem to care about anything else but a baby face with big eyes in it. Agatha and Cicely are much better looking, and five young men don't come down into the country to look accidentally into their eyes. I should think not, indeed; they've been properly brought up. I never had such a thing happen to me."

"Yet if it comes to looks, my dear Charlotte" artfully insinuated her lord and master.

"All the less excuse for her," continued his wife a little more calmly. "If she'd been a really pretty girl one might excuse her flirting a little, but to flirt with five men on a house-boat! And she's only got her eyes, as I said, though she seems to know how to use them, in spite of looking so demure. Five men indeed!"

Mr. Lauriston felt that this was a little unfair, but he knew not quite how he could explain it with the tact so necessary in domestic life. He was suffering from the usual masculine inability to follow the rapidity of the Macmillan's Magazine.

feminine intelligence, and realized not for the first time how inferior is mere logic to the unerring brilliancy of intuition. He caught, however, at statistics. "You said you only saw one young man with Miss Doris, my dear, and after all he may not have been one of the party on the house-boat."

"I'm certain of it," asserted Mrs. Lauriston.

This should have satisfied any reasonable husband, but Mr. Lauriston, with a prospect before him of returning to an Eliza-less and therefore omelette-less Bel Alp, was evidently not reasonable just now. "How can you be certain, unless he was the man you saw"

"Mr. Lauriston!" exclaimed his indignant spouse. "Mr. Lauriston! Did you suppose I stopped? After we've been married twenty-three years next October too! I shall go and consult my niece. Miss Agatha Neave at least understands what is proper; I have brought her up myself. All you men are alike. All you want to do is to smoke your abominable tobacco, and you don't care if fifty house-boats come here. I believe you would like to Join them yourself." With this Mrs. Lauriston returned to the camp, just in time to find the paragon Agatha drying the last salt-spoon.

Mr. Lauriston at last lit his cigar. "I shall never understand Charlotte," he observed to the curling blue smoke. "But all the same I don't think we shall go back to Bel Alp."

(To be continued.)

THE LAST O'HARA.

"Ay, it still goes by the name o' the O'Hara's Leap among the folk biding about here. My father was gey fond o' telling how it came to be caa'd that.

He was in Colonel Adair's corps at the time, and so saw the whole thing." We had toiled up the long steep road, and were now on the top of the

highest cliff. The old schoolmaster was tired; so we sat down on a grassy dyke, with our backs towards the Glens of Antrim and our faces towards the laughing sea. He was in reminiscent vein, and while we sat there in the sunshine he told me the story.

The O'Hara it's named after was ane o' the auld reduced native Irish gentry. There was a sma' wheen o' them in these parts in my father's young days, but they are a' gone now, and naebody kens or cares whar. It was very different in my father's time. Then they were reverenced by their ain folk, and hated by the new gentry as the rightfu' owners o' a' the broad lands o' the North.

He was the head and the last o' the family that caa'd themselves the O'Haras o' Slemish.

Slemish is that bauld peak ye can see the tap o' on either side o' the Glens. Ah, mony's the merry hour I hae spent amang its bonny banks and braes years lang-syne, when my father had settled doon on a bit farm halfside on it; and mony's the time as a wean hae I wondered ower the story o' the long standing-jump that the deevil took frae it till Skerry Hill five miles or mair awa', when St. Patrick wanted to talk to him on the error o' his ways. That's the story as Presbyterian folk tell it. The mark o' the deevil's hooked snout is still on the stane on the tap o' Skerry whar he lit: I hae seen it mysel'.

Though the O'Haras caa'd themsel's the O'Haras o' Slemish, their stronghold was at Duncairn-a mile or twa up the Glens. It was at ane time a grand place, and the O'Haras were aye mating and fechting wi' a' the best families in the county. But they were an unfortunate lot. There was never trouble in the country but they maun be in it, and they never were in trouble but they came ill out o' it. Their sairest trial was after the siege o' Derry, when King William blew up their

stronghold, seized their lands, and outlawed the whole jing-bang o' them. It was thought that, like mony ither ancient races at that time, they wad hae to seek their fortunes in foreign parts, and maybe it wad hae been better for them if they had; but they had friends at court that got the outlawry withdrawn and part o' their land restored to them-the part the Scots and English newcomers disdained to tak', that is, four or five thousan' acres o' mountain land, maist o' it too poor to grow thistles on. So they built themsel's a new mansion, little better nor a good farmhouse, out o' the ruins, and under the shadow o' their auld castle, and lived there a mournfu', secluded life, revered by their ain folk and hated and avoided by the new gentry and settlers about them.

My father, before he entered the service o' Nabob Starkie, was for a time wi' a sma' landowner by the name o' Montgomery, whose land marched wi' that o' the O'Haras. Mr. Montgomery was a liberal-minded man and had very nee'bourly relations wi' the last O'Hara, though he was no Irisher or papist. And my father was often sent on his business, and sometimes went on his ain, to Duncairn House. Ye ken the last O'Hara's right-hand man was a big soft-faced carle caa'd Eagan MacEagan, who aye had a jug o' whusky handy when a friend happened to caa'. And though, in general, my father only kept company wi' his ain folk, the Scots or Protestants as they're now known, still he was no sae bigoted that he couldna see merit or find pleasure onywhar else.

Ye maun ken my father was a much more intellectual man than maist men o' his position. He took great interest in the auld legends and literature o' the Irish, and big Eagan MacEagan was just fu' o' these. He and his fathers had been hereditary bards to the O'Haras o' Slemish time out o' mind,

and a' the songs that his ancestors had sung, and a' the stories that they had told to the honor and glory o' the O'Haras, he kent by heart. And when the nights were lang and dark, and things were ganging dully at his maister's house, mony a time my father wad slip ower to Duncairn and spend a pleasant and profitable hour or twa ower a basin o'smoking punch, listening to Eagan MacEagan's tales o' the time when the O'Haras were kings in their ain country, and had their ain castles, and their ain soldiers, and their ain hangman, like the best in the land.

Sometimes when my father went ower to Duncairn he wad meet the O'Hara himsel'. He pictured him as a wee bit body, not much better nor a crowle, very cauld in manner and very hot in temper. His hair was redbrown, and so was his beard, which he let grow long, contrary to the custom o' that day. But the queerest thing about him was his eyes. They seemed ower big for his wee face, and aye to be gazing at something awa' in the distance which you couldna see. And their color was red-brown like his hair, and an uncanny light aye shone in them, just as if there was a candle burning behint each o' them; and when he got angry, the candle went up in a bleeze that made you grue a' doon the back.

Then his way o' life was curious. They said that his father, after having his carriage-horses seized by the Orangeman, Lawyer Hogg, at Ballymena, for five punds apiece, had in his fury put his son under an oath never to leave his ain grund except to renew the auld struggle wi' England. However that may be, he never left it, but spent his days and nights reading auld Latin and Irish history books, and doing kindnesses to his ain folk, who, poor bodies, aften sairly needed them. They fairly worshipped him; and weel they might, for he was the only ane o'

a' their ancient gentry about here who, through weal and woe, peace and war, remained true to the auld race and the auld religion.

But the Scots farmers were very suspeecious o' him. Ye ken the Protestant gentry o' that day were a very wild set. They were aye fechting or gambling or drinking or rioting a 'ower the country, and the farmers thought it was an unnatural thing that the O'Hara shouldna take a hand in the pleesures o' his class. Then they seldom saw him, save when they were coming hame late and took the auld Duncairn Road-and a rough bit road it was-for a short cut; and he a'ways hated to see them on it. And when. they wad meet him in the gloaming, and he wad glare at them wi' those red-brown flaring eyes o' him flashing oot ower his big red-brown beard, they fairly shivered wi' dread. Mony o them held that he wasna merely a papist, but had sold himsel' to the evil ane, body and saul. Ay, and mair nor the farmers shared this view, for twice the Presbytery o' Ballymena discussed in secret session whether he shouldna be delated as a warlock. But my father, who, as I told you, was a very intellectual man, aye maintained it was easy enough to explain his strange way o' life wi'out throwing out ony reflections on his character. When ane thinks o' the insult an Irisher and a papist was in those days liable to be treated wi' when he went amang Protestants, ye can speer why a spunky man like the last O'Hara chose to bide at hame and amang his ain folk.

Weel, as I told you, the O'Hara's right-hand man was big Eagan MacEagan. He was caa'd the steward, but the relation between him and the O'Hara was no the ordinary ane o' maister and servant. MacEagan looked on the O'Hara mair as his owner nor onything else. He wad hae died a dog's death to save him an

« PreviousContinue »