Chapter II (3)

“Whose likeness is it?” clutching her by the wrist.

“I dunno, sir.”

“You _don’t know_! Is it one of the family?”

“I dunno, sir.”

“Is—is there a Miss Darcy? Has Mr. Darcy a daughter?” his impatience wrestling with a desire to throttle the caretaker.

“I heerd that he has wan.”

“Heard! Don’t you know it?”

“I do not, sir. I’m a sthranger. I come from Stoneybatther, beyant the wather, but I heerd that Misther Darcy has a daughter, and that she is married—”

“Married!” reeling as if he had been struck a heavy blow.

“What’s all this, Bertie?” asked Kirwan uneasily.

“That photo there.”

“Yes, I see it.”

“It’s the photo of the girl I saw at the opening of the Paris Exhibition.”

“And a pretty girl she is!” exclaimed Kirwan, indulging in a prolonged whistle as he gazed at it sideways like a bird.

“I must have it,” said Bertram, a dogged resolution in his tone.

“How is that to be done? You can’t steal it, Bertie.”

“It shall be done fairly and squarely if possible; if not, I shall smash the glass.”

“Tut! tut! man, you’re not thinking.”

The wound had been nearly healed, the memory of that girlish face was fast becoming a sweet treasure of a by-gone time, to be lingered over at fitful intervals, and always with rapture, when this unlooked-for freak of destiny caused the wound to bleed afresh, and memory to burst into rich and fragrant blossom.

During each of the three days that he remained in Dublin Bertram Martin visited the deserted mansion in Merrion Square, to gaze at that photograph, all so near and yet so far. Could he have but obtained a solitary clue to the whereabouts of the Darcys no earthly power would have prevented his following them; but clue there was none.

* * * * *

The train clanked into the station at Killarney in a mist as thick as a ladies’ _tulle-illusion_ veil.

“If this sort of thing is going to last we sha’n’t see much of Kate Kearney,” laughed Kirwan.

“I wish I had never left New York,” said Bertie. “I did my very uttermost not to come, but you set your trap, all of you, and I go back—what?”

“You can run over again.”

“Never! Once back, my profession shall have all my energy, all my hope—my life.”

They put up at the Railway Hotel, and after dinner strolled out as far as Ross Castle. The mist had cleared away, and the view of Innisfallen sleeping in the moonlight, of the cluster of dreamy islands, the soft outlines of the Mangerton, the purple mountain and the Toomies bathed in liquid pearl, the twinkling lights along the shore, the mirrored waters of the lake shimmering in silver glory, sent a wave of delicious reverie over the hearts of the two men, as, seated in silence on a ruined wall of the ivy-covered keep, they gazed in solemn rapture upon a scene exquisite, soothing, sublime.

“I wish to heaven your aunt was here to see this,” said Kirwan, lighting a fresh cigar.

“I wish—” but Bertie did not utter another word.

The following morning was one in ten thousand—fresh, sunny, breezy, inspiriting, laden with the languor of summer, rippling with the coquetry of spring; a primrose light, a violet shade. Our two friends joined a party bound for the Gap of Dunloe. The ponies were sent on, and a boat ordered to meet them at the upper lake with luncheon. Bertie was unusually depressed, and, despite the vigorous efforts of his uncle to pull him together, he clung, as it were, to himself, avoiding all intercourse with his fellow-man, and especially his fellow-woman, a buxom, blithe, hearty English lady, who laughed with anybody and at everything, and whose whole trouble lay in a morbid terror lest any accident should happen to the bitter beer. After a two hours’ drive through lovely and matchless scenery the carriage arrived at the entrance to the Gap, and here the party dismounted.

“Where do we meet the ponies?” asked Kirwan.

“A little bit up the Gap, sir.”

“Any bitter beer up there?” laughed the English lady.

“Troth, thin, there’s not, but Kate Kearney’ll give ye a dhrop o’ the mountain dew, me lady,” replied the driver.

Bertie strode on before. There was a something exhilarating in speeding up the craggy pass, in bounding from rock to rock like a mountain deer, in plunging through the purple heather, and in leaping saucy brooklets flashing their glittering waters in the glorious sunlight. In vain did Kate Kearney assail him with blarney, blandishments, and bog oak, with “a dhrop o’ the craythur” under the thin disguise of goat’s milk. In vain did arbutus-wood venders, and mendicants, and wild-flower girls trudge by his side and cling to his heels. He distanced them all, leaving them standing at different places in the middle of the road, baffled and worsted in the encounter. Up against the sky line stood the ponies. Up against a sheer wall of dull gray rock covered with ferns, and mosses, and lichens leant a wooden shanty, and for this shanty Bertram Martin made.

A party had ascended before him; they were from the Victoria Hotel—two gentlemen and two ladies. One gentleman was seated on a granite boulder as Bertie reached this coigne of vantage.

“Glorious day, sir,” exclaimed the tweed-covered excursionist.

“Superb,” replied Bertie, flinging himself on the purple heather to await the arrival of Kirwan.

“You’re from the other side of the pond. Have a cigar,” flinging over his case in a right royal manner.

Bertie selected a weed.

“Have a light,” shying a silver fusee-box which the doctor dexterously caught.

“From New York?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know any people of the name of Joyce?”

“Daniel Blake Joyce, of Gramercy Park?” asked Bertie.

“Yes.”

“I know him and his family intimately.”

The tweed-arrayed stranger jumped to his feet.

“I call this jolly. My name is O’Hara.”

“Not Tim O’Hara?”

“Yes, Tim.”

“Why, my dear sir,” cried Bertie, “I’ve heard the Joyces speak of you fifty times.”

“This is first-class. Have a card. You’ll come and stop with me a week, a month—six. I live in the County Wicklow.”

“I most seriously wish I could,” said the physician, exchanging cards, “but I leave by the _Asia_ on Friday.”

“Not a bit of it. Hi, Dick! Dick! I say,” calling to a fat, jovial-faced, red-nosed elderly gentleman who had just emerged from the shanty. “Here’s a friend of Dan Joyce’s, of New York, who says he’s going to leave by the _Asia_ on Friday. Will that fit?”

“I should say not,” said the other, approaching.

Where had Bertram Martin seen that face?

“Any friend of Dan Joyce’s is our friend, and shame be upon us if we let you leave Ireland without at least giving us the opportunity of having a gossip and a bottle over Dan.”

Where had Bertram Martin seen that face?

In a few words, even while this perplexing thought was whirling through his brain, Bertie informed the new-comer—for O’Hara had disappeared into the shanty in search of the ladies with his news—of his doings since he landed at Liverpool.

“At what time were you in Paris?” asked the stranger.

“On the opening day of the Exhibition,” replied the doctor with a deep sigh, as his thoughts flew back to the lovely girl he was destined never, oh! never, to behold again.

“I was in Paris on that day,” said the stranger.

Bertie seized him by the wrist.

“You were? I have it all now. _Now_ I know where I saw you,” speaking with fearful rapidity. “It was at the entrance C——. There was a fearful crush. You were not alone. You were with a young lady. Who is that girl? Where is she?” And he stopped, a world of excited earnestness in his eyes.

“That young lady is my daughter.”

“Where is she?”

“She is here.”

“_Here_?” a mad throb at his heart.

At this moment O’Hara emerged from the shanty, accompanied by two ladies, one of them, young and fresh and lovely, hanging fondly on his arm.

Bertie saw it all now. One wild glance told him that she was as far from him as the fleecy cloud sailing above his head—that she was the wife of Tim O’Hara.

“I don’t think, Dick, that I introduced you to my young friend, Dr. Martin. Doctor, this is Dick Darcy, one of the gayest fellows in all Ireland. Get your legs under his mahogany in Merrion Square and——”

“I have been in your house in Merrion Square. I have a letter of introduction to you from Mr. Joyce,” burst in Bertie.

“And you shall be again, my young friend,” wringing his hand warmly. “Mary,” to the elder lady, “this is Dr. Martin, a friend of Dan Joyce’s. Doctor, this is my wife. And this,” turning to the girl, “is my daughter.”

Bertie took her courteously-proffered hand, and held it for one instant in his. He looked down, down into those Irish gray eyes, where truth and innocence and purity lay like gems beneath crystal waters; he gazed with a wild rapture upon the beauteous face that had haunted him day and night in its rosy radiance, and then with a muttered exclamation was about to turn away when O’Hara exclaimed:

“Miss Darcy looks as if she had seen you before.”

“_Miss_ Darcy?” cried Bertie.

“Yes; you wouldn’t have her Mrs. Darcy, would you?”

Oh! the weight lifted off his heart. Oh! how gloriously shone out the sun, how blue was the sky, how radiant the flowers, how sweet the song of the mountain thrush, how delightful everything. The great black shadow which had hung over him like a pall had passed away before the dayshine of her presence, and, borne on that sunlight, came the message to his heart that Kitty Darcy was to be wooed, and—possibly to be won.

Kirwan’s pleasure knew no bounds as he clasped the hand of Dick Darcy.

“What a sorry opinion you would have had of the old country if you had only known its hospitality through the medium of a hotel, Mr. Kirwan!” laughed Darcy as the party mounted their shaggy mountain ponies.

Of course Bertie rode beside Miss Darcy, and descanted not as eloquently as he could have wished upon the glorious bits of scenery that revealed themselves at every turn in the Gap. He spoke glowingly of home, of the lordly Hudson, the dreamy Catskills, the White Mountains, and the Yosemite.

“Oh! isn’t that gloriously gloomy,” cried Miss Darcy, as they emerged from the granite-walled Gap to the ridge overlooking the Black Valley to the right, stretching away in gray sadness, locked in the embraces of mountains standing in ebon relief against the blue yet lustreless sky.

“Not unlike my own reflections for the last six weeks,” laughed the doctor; “they were gloriously gloomy.”

“See the sunshine over the upper lake.”

“I accept the omen.”

“And the Eagle’s Nest, how superbly it towers over the water! What greens!—from white to russet. How charmingly the foliage of the arbutus seems to suit this lovely scenery!”

And what a scene in its brilliance, its repose, its poetry! Verdure-clad mountains dreaming in the haze of summer, lifting themselves to the blue vault of heaven, the tender green mixing with the cerulean, as a spring leaf with the forget-me-not; mirror-like lakes reflecting every crag, every tree, every bud with that fidelity only known to nature’s mirrors; the path winding tortuously down to the lake, now disappearing in a patch of wood, now meandering through a waving meadow as yet uninvaded by the ruthless scythe. Away stretched the lakes, away the old Weir Bridge—away in shimmering loveliness all too lovely to describe, all too lovely save to gaze and gaze upon, until heart and soul absorbed it in a thirsty greed.

Three days spent in Kitty Darcy’s society—three days in wandering through the ruins of Muckross Abbey, that home of silent prayer, that “congealed _Pater Noster_,” by the low, dulcet murmur of O’Sullivan’s Cascade, amid the leafy dells of “Sweet Innisfallen,” up the steep ascent of Mangerton, on the fern-caressed road to the police barracks, stopping at the exquisite little chapel perched like an eerie up in its wooded nest and uttering an _Ave_, always by Kitty’s side, always inhaling the subtle perfume of her presence—three centuries compressed into three days.

The Darcys were _en route_ to a fishing-lodge at Valentia, out where the cable flashes into the wide Atlantic, and the day arrived when farewell—a word that must be, and hath been, a sound that makes us linger—must be said.

“Are you going by the _Asia_ on Friday, uncle?” asked Bertie.

“Why, of course.”

“I am not.”

“No!”

“I go on to Carrick-na-cushla with the Darcys.”

“I thought as much, Bertie. What shall I tell them in New York?”

“That I shall bring home a young, lovely, pure, and charming wife, if I can. I have two letters for you, one for my mother and one for my father. If things turn out—all right, I’ll return; if—” here he paused with a writhe—“all wrong, you won’t hear of me for some time.”

* * * * *

Dr. Bertram Martin’s three months’ vacation is not yet over. It threatens to lengthen into six, possibly into nine months; and when he returns he will not return alone. His uncle Kirwan has had a sad time of it ever since; and Dr. Martin’s fair patients are inconsolable.

ROSARY STANZAS.