All Hallow Eve or The Test of Futurity Part 8

CHAPTER XII.

Winny lay for nearly an hour meditating upon the past, the present, and the future. Upon the whole she did not regret what had occurred, either before or after she had met Tom Murdock, and she cooled down into her accustomed self-possession sooner than she had supposed possible.

One grand object had been attained. Tom Murdock had come to the point, and she had given him his final and irrevocable answer, if she had twenty fathers thundering parental authority in her ears. A spot of blue sky had appeared too in the east, above the outline of Shanvilla mountain, in which the morning-star of her young life might soon arise, and s.h.i.+ne brightly through the flimsy clouds--or she could call them nothing but flimsy now--which had hitherto darkened her hopes.

What if Tom Murdock was a villain?--and she believed he was: what dared he--what could he do? Pshaw, nothing! But, oh that the pa.s.sage-of-arms between herself and her father was over! "Then,"

thought she, "all might be plain sailing before me."

But, Winny, supposing all these matters fairly over,--and the battle with your father is likely to be as cranky and tough upon his part as it is certain to be straightforward and determined upon yours,--there will still be a doubtful blank upon your mind and in your heart, and one the solution of which you cannot, even with Kate Mulvey's a.s.sistance, seek an occasion to fill up. Ah, no, you must trust to chance for time and opportunity for that most important of all your interviews. And what if you be mistaken after all, and, if mistaken, crushed for ever by the result?

Let Winny alone for that. Women seldom make a bad guess in such a case.

Winny's mental and nervous system having both regained their ordinary degree of composure, she left her room, and proceeded through the house upon her usual occupations. She was not, however, quite free from a certain degree of anxiety at the antic.i.p.ated interview with her father. He had not in any way intimated his intention to ask certain questions touching any communication she might have received from Tom Murdock, together with her answers thereto; and yet she felt certain that on the first favorable occasion he would ask the questions, without any notice whatever. She had subsided for the day, after a very exciting morning upon two very different subjects. Yes; she called them different, though they were pretty much akin; and she would now prefer a cessation of her anxiety for the remainder of that afternoon at least.

So far she was fortunate. Her father did not come in until it was very late; and being much fatigued by his stewards.h.i.+p of the day, he did not appear inclined to enter upon any important subject, but fell asleep in his arm-chair after a hasty and (Winny observed) scarcely-touched dinner.

Winny was an affectionate good child. She was devotedly fond of her father, with whose image were a.s.sociated all her thoughts of happiness and love since she was able to clasp his knees and clamber to his lap.

Even yet no absolute allegiance of a decided nature claimed the disloyalty of her heart; but she felt that the time was not far distant when either he must abdicate his royalty, or she must rebel.

"It is clearly my duty now," she said to herself, "not to delay this business about Tom, upon the chance of his being the first to speak of it: to-morrow, before the cares and labors of the day occupy his mind, and perhaps make him ever so little a bit cross, I will tell him what has happened. I am afraid he will be very angry with me for refusing that man; but it cannot be helped: not for all the gold they both possess would I marry Tom Murdock. I shall not betray his sordid villany, however, until all other resources fail; but I know my father will scorn the fellow as I do when he knows the whole truth--but ah, I have no witness," thought she, "and they will make a liar of me."

If the old man could have ever perceived any difference in the kind and affectionate attention so uniformly bestowed upon him by his fond daughter, perhaps it might have been upon that night after he awoke from a rather lengthened nap in his easy chair.

Winny had sat during the whole time gazing upon the loved features of the sleeping old man. She could not call to mind, from the day upon which her memory first became conscious, a single unkind or even a harsh word which he had uttered to her. That he could be more than harsh to others she knew, and she was now in her nineteenth year; fifteen clear years, she might say, of unbroken memory. She could remember her fifth birthday quite well, and so much as a snappish word or a commanding look she had never received from him; not, G.o.d knows, but he had good reason, many's the time, for more than either. And there he lay now, calm, and fast asleep, the only one belonging to her on the wide earth, and she meditating an opposition in her heart to his plans respecting her--all, she knew, arising from the great love he had for her, and the frustration of which, she was aware, would vex him sore. "Oh, Tom Murdock, Tom Murdock, why are you Tom Murdock? or Emon-a-knock, why did I ever see you?" was the conclusion to this train of thought, as she sat still, gazing on her sleeping father.

Then a happier train succeeded, and a fond smile lit up her handsome face. "Ah no, no! I am the only being belonging to him, the only one he loves. The father who for nearly twenty years never spoke an unkind word--and if he had reason to reprove me did so by example and request, and not the rod--has only to know that a marriage with Tom Murdock would make me miserable to make him spurn him, as I did myself. As to the other boy, I know nothing for certain myself about him, and I can fairly deny any accusation he may make; and I am certain he has been put up to it by old Murdock through his son. Yet even on this score I'll deny as little as I can."

Here it was her father awakened; and Winny had only time to conclude her thoughts by wondering how that fellow dare call Emon "a whelp."

"Well, father dear," she said, "you have had a nice nap; you must have been very tired. I wish I was a man, that I might help you on the farm."

"Winny darlin', I wouldn't have you anything but what you are for the world. I have not much to do at all on the farm but to poke about, and see that the men I have at work don't rob me by idling; and I must say I never saw honester work than what they leave after them. But, Winny, I came across old Murdock shortly after I went out, and he came over my land with me, and I went over his with him, so that we had rather a long walk. I'll engage he's as tired as what I am. I did not think his farm was so extensive as it is, or that the land was so good, or in such to-au-op caun-di-shon." And poor old Ned yawned and stretched himself.

Winny saw through the whole thing at once. The matter of a marriage between herself and Tom Murdock, and a union of the farms, had doubtless been discussed between her father and old Mick Murdock, and a final arrangement, so far as they were concerned, had been arrived at. A hitch upon her part she was certain neither of them had ever dreamt of; and yet "hitch" was a slight word to express the opposition she was determined to give to their wishes.

She knew that if her father had got so far as where he had been interrupted by the yawn when he was fresh after breakfast, the whole thing would have come out. She was, however, a considerate girl; and although she knew there was at that moment a good opening, where a word would have brought the matter on, she knew that the result would have completely driven rest and sleep from the poor old man's pillow for the night, tired and fatigued as he was. She therefore adroitly changed the conversation to his own comforts in a cup of tea before he went to bed.

"Yes, _mavourneen_" he said, "I fell asleep before I mixed a tumbler of punch, and I'll take the tea now instead; for, Winny, my love, you can join me at that. Do you know, Winny, I'm very thirsty?"

"Well, father dear, I'll soon give you what will refresh you."

While Winny was busying herself for the tea, putting down a huge kettle of water in the kitchen, and rattling the cups and saucers until you'd think she was trying to break them, the old man wakened up into a train of thought not altogether dissimilar to that which Winny herself had indulged in over his sleeping form.

Winny was quite right. The whole matter had been discussed on that day between the old men during their perambulations round the two farms; the respective value and condition of the land forming a minute calculation not unconnected with the other portion of their discourse--settlements, deeds of conveyance, etc., etc., had all been touched upon.

Winny was right in another of her surmises, although at the time she scarcely believed so herself. Old Murdock, taking his cue from Tom, told old Ned that if he found Winny at all averse to marrying Tom, he was certain young Lennon would be at the bottom of it--at least Tom had more than hinted such to him.

Old Ned was furious at this, declaring that if Tom Murdock was never to the fore, his daughter should never bestow his long and hard earnings upon a pauper like that, looking for a day's wages here and there, and as often without it as with it; how dare the likes of him lift his eyes to his little girl! But he'd soon put a stop to that, if there was anything in it, let what would turn up. Every penny-piece he was worth in the world was in his own power, and there was a very easy way of bringing Miss Winny to her senses, if she had that wild notion in her head.

Poor old Ned, in his indignation for what he thought Winny's welfare, forgot that she was the only being belonging to him in the world, and that when it came to the point he would find it impossible to put this threat of "cutting her off" into execution.

Old Murdock was delighted with this tirade against young Lennon, whom he looked upon as the only real obstacle to Tom's acquisition of land and money, to say nothing of a handsome wife.

"Be studdy with her, Ned," said he, "she has a very floostherin' way wid her where you're concerned; I often remarked it. Don't let her come round you, Ned, wid her pillaverin' about that 'whelp,' as Tom calls him."

"An' he calls him quite right. If he daars to look up to my little girl, he'll soon find out his mistake, I can tell him."

"Nothin' would show him his mistake so much as to have Tom's business an' hers settled at Shraft, Ned."

"I know that, Mick; an' with the blessing I'll spake to her in the mornin' upon the subjict. I dunna did Tom ever spake to herself, Mick?"

"If he didn't he will afore to-morrow night; he's on the watch to meet with her by accident; he says it's betther nor to go straight up to her, an' maybe frighten her."

"Very well, Mick; I'll have an eye to them; maybe it would be betther let Tom himself spake first. These girls are so dam' proud; an'

I can tell you it is betther not vex Winny."

Of course these two old men said a great deal more; but the above is the pith of what set old Ned Cavana thinking the greater part of the night; for the tea Winny made was very strong, and, as he said, he was thirsty, having missed his tumbler of punch after dinner. He fell asleep, however, much sooner than he would have done had the sequel to his plans become known to him before he went to bed.

CHAPTER XIII.

The next morning Winny presented herself at the breakfast-table, looking more attractive and more tidily dressed, her rich glossy hair better brushed and smoothed down more carefully than was usual at that hour of the day. Her daily custom, like all other country girls who had household concerns to look after, was not to "tidy herself up"

until they had been completed. She was not ignorant, however, of the great advantage which personal neatness added to beauty gave a young girl who had a cause to plead. And although the man upon whom she might have to throw herself for mercy was her father, she was not slow on this occasion to claim their advocacy for what they might be worth.

But she had also prayed to G.o.d to guide her in all her replies to the parent whom she was bound to honor and obey, as well as to Love. She had not contented herself with having set out her own appearance to the best advantage, but she had also set out the breakfast-table in the same way. The old blue-and-white teapot had been left on the dresser, and a dark-brown one, with a figured plated lid, taken out of the cupboard of Sunday china. Two cups and saucers, and plates "to match," with two real ivory-hafted knives laid beside them. There was also some white _broken_ sugar in a gla.s.s bowl, which Winny had won in a lottery at Carrick-on-Shannon from a "bazaar-man." There was nothing extraordinary in all this for persons of their means, though, to tell the truth, it was not the every-day paraphernalia of their breakfast-table. Winny had not been idle either in furnis.h.i.+ng the plates with a piping hot potato-cake, a thing of which her father was particularly fond, and which she often gave him; but this one had a few carraway-seeds through it, and was supposed to be better than usual. Then she had a couple of slices of nice thin bacon fried with an egg, which she knew he liked too. All this was prepared, and waiting for her father, whose fatigue of the day before had caused him to sleep over-long.

While waiting for him, it struck Winny that he must think such preparations out of the common, and perhaps done for a purpose. Upon reflection she was almost sorry she had not confined her embellishments to her own personal appearance, and even that, she began to feel, might have been as well let alone also. But she had little time now for reflection, for she heard her father's step, as he came down stairs.

She met him at the door, opening it for him.

"Good morrow, father," she said; "how do you find yourself to-day? I hope you rested well after your long walk yesterday."

"After a while I did, Winny; but the tea you made was very strong, an'

I didn't sleep for a long time after I went to bed."

"Well, 'a hair of the hound,' you know, father dear. I have a good cup for you now, too; it will not do you any harm in the morning when you have the whole day before you. And I have a nice potato-cake for you, for I know you like it."

"Troth I b'lieve you have, Winny; an' I smell the carraways that I like. But, Winny, sure the ould blue teapot's not broken, is it?"

"No, father; but I was busy with the potato-cake this morning, and had not time to wash it out last night, so I took out number one to give it an airing; and I put down the other things to match."

The portion of this excuse which was true was far greater than that which was not; and Winny, who as a general rule was truthful, was satisfied with it--and, reader, so must you be.

"Never mind, Winny, you are mistress here, an' I don't want any explanation; it wasn't that made me spake; but I'd be sorry th' ould blue teapot was bruck, for we have it since afore you were well in your teens. You're lookin' very well this mornin', Winny agra."

"Hush, father; eat your cake, and don't talk nonsense. There's an egg that black Poll laid this morning, and here's some b.u.t.ter I finished not five minutes before you came in yesterday evening. Shall I give you some tea?"