All Hallow Eve or The Test of Futurity Part 9

"If you please, Winny dear." And the old man looked at his daughter with undeniable admiration.

They then enjoyed a neat and comfortable breakfast, which indeed neither of them seemed in a hurry to bring to an end. The old man was constrained and silent, and left all the talk to Winny, who, it must be admitted, never felt it more difficult to furnish conversation. Old Ned looked at her once or twice intently, as if wondering at her being much finer than usual; and then he looked at the breakfast gear; and the expression of his face was as if he suspected something. These looks, both at herself and the table, did not escape Winny's notice, but she never met them, always interrupting any exclamation which was likely to follow them with some question or remark of her own, such as, "Do you like that cake, father?" "That is the muil cow's b.u.t.ter; I always keep her milk by itself, and churn it in the small chum for you, father; you said you liked it." "Here, Bully-dhu, is a piece of cake for you."

With some such heterogeneous questions or remarks as these, she managed to parry his looks, or at all events the observations which were likely to follow them, and direct for the moment--ah, Winny, it was only for the moment!--his thoughts from whatever was upon them, and which Winny believed she knew right well.

But this suspense on both sides must come to an end. Old Ned, from his conversation with Mick Murdock, had determined not to speak to his daughter until he knew Tom had done so. But Winny did not know this, and dreaded every moment a thunder-clap would come which she was herself preparing for her father, and she was anxious, if it was only for the sake of propriety, to tell her story unprovoked.

The old man now stood up from the table, saying he would be likely to be out all day, as he was preparing to get down some wheat. But Winny, when it came to the point, could only stammer out in a feeble voice, that she wanted to speak to him before he went.

"Now's your time, Winny dear, for I have a great dale to do before dinner-time; an' I must be off to the men."

"Father dear, I may as well tell you at once--I'm in trouble--about --about--about--Tom--Murdock." And she threw her arms round his neck, and laid her cheek upon his shoulder.

"An' is that all, mavourneen? Ah, Winny, Winny, I knew it would come to this!--mavourneen macree, I knew it would. But there, Winny jewel, don't be crying--don't be crying; sure you know I'm not the man to cross your wishes; no--no, my own girl, I'd neither oppose you nor force you for 'the world; aren't you the only one I have on airth? an'

sure isn't your happiness mine, Winny dear? There, Winny, don't cry; sure you may do as you like, mavourneen macree, you may."

Winny knew that all this was uttered under a misconception, and it gave her but little comfort. There was _one_ part of it, however, she would not forget.

"Oh, father," she sobbed out upon his breast, "Tom Murdock has asked me to marry him." And the tears rolled down her cheeks.

"Why then, Winny dear, dhry up them tears; sure I know they're on my account, at the thoughts of partin' me; but won't you be livin' at the doore with me while I last? Isn't it what I always hoped an' prayed for?--och, Winny, Winny, but you're the lucky girl this day, an' I'm the lucky man, for it will add ten years to my life."

And he kissed her yielding lips over and over again. But she did not speak; while the big tears continued to course themselves down her pale but beautiful cheeks.

"Don't--don't, Winny asth.o.r.e; don't be crying on my account; sure I may say we'll not have to part at all. Mick an' I have it all settled, mavourneen; he's to build you a grand new house where th' ould one stan's, an' I'm to furnish it from top to toe; and Mick an' I will live here, not three hundred yards from the pair of you. Oh, Winny, Winny, but it's I is the happy man this day! There, don't be cryin', I tell you; sure I would not gainsay you for the world;" and he kissed her again. But still she did not speak.

"There, Winny, there; don't be sobbin' an' cryin', I tell you. Why, what's the matther with you, Winny mavrone?"

"Oh, father, father, it never can be!" she exclaimed in broken sobs, and clinging to his neck closer than ever.

"Nonsense, Winny! what's the matther, I say? why can't it be? Of course you did not refuse Tom's offer?"

"I'd, father--indeed I did. I never can care for Tom Murdock; father, I could never be happy with that man. Don't ask me to marry him."

"Is the girl mad? To be sure I will, Winny. There's but the two of you in it an' with Mick's farm an' mine joined,--the leases are all as one as 'free simple,'--you'd be as grand as many ladies an' gentlemen in the county;" and he disengaged himself from her arms, and strode toward the door.

Winny thought he was going; but he had no notion of it at so unsettled a point. She rushed between him and the door.

"Father, don't go!" she cried; "for G.o.d's sake don't leave me that way!"

"Winny, it's what I'm greatly surprised at you, so I am. My whole life has been spent in puttin' together a dacent little fortun' for you; I never had one on airth I loved but yourself an' your poor mother--G.o.d rest her sowl! I never spoke a cross word to you, Winny jewel, since I followed her to the grave, four days after you were born; an' now, in my old days, when I haven't long to last, you're goin' to break my heart, an' shorten them same. Oh, Winny, Winny, say it's only jokin'

you are, an' I'll forgive you, cruel as it was."

"No, father, I'm telling you the real truth; people seldom joke with the tears running down their cheeks; look at them, father. I know all you say is true; and indeed it will break my own heart to oppose you, if you do not yield. But listen here, father dear; sure after all your love and kindness to me for the last eighteen or twenty years, I may say, you won't go now and spoil it all by crossing my happiness without any necessity for it. Tom put all the grandeur and wealth before me himself, that the joining of the two farms and marrying him would bring to me. But it is no use, father; I never liked that man, and I never can. Oh, don't ask me, father asth.o.r.e; I'm contented and happy as I am."

"Winny, I never found you out in a lie since you could first spake, an' I'm sure you won't tell me one now. Listen to me, Winny. Tom Murdock is a fine, handsome young fellow, an' well to do in the world, with a grand education, an' fit to hould his own anywhere; and I say he's any young girl's fancy, or ought to be, at any rate. You an' he have been reared at the doore with each other. What you are yourself, Winny asth.o.r.e, I need not say, for every one that sees you knows it; and well they may, for sure you spake for yourself. It seldom happens--indeed, Winny, I never knew it--that a boy an' girl like you an' Tom, reared at the doore that way, fail but what they take a likin' to each other. It seems Tom done his part, both as to the likin' an' spakin', as he ought to do in both; but you, Winny, have done neither. Now, Winny, I can't but think that's very strange, an' I have but the one way to riddle it. Tell me now, honestly and plainly, is there any one that c.u.m afore Tom in his request? Answer me that, Winny?"

"I win, father, honestly and truly. It is not that any one has come between me and Tom that made me refuse him. The very thing that you say, of our being reared at the door with one another, has made me dislike him. I have seen too much of his ways, and heard too many of his words, ever to like him, father; there is no use in trying to make me, for I never can."

"But, Winny jewel, you have hardly answered my question yet. Are you secretly promised, Winny, to any other young man that you're afeard I wouldn't like? that's the plain question. The truth now, Winny,--the truth, Winny!"

"No, father, certainly not. Tom Murdock is the only man that ever asked me."

"Was there ever anything betune you an' young Lennon, Emon-a-knock, as I have heard you call him myself?"

"Never, father; Emon never spoke to me upon such a subject, and further than that, he has paid me less compliments and spoken less to me upon any subject than fifty young men in the parish."

It so happened, however, that the name had hightened Winny's color, and her father, looking at her with an admiring and affectionate smile, said:

"Fifty, Winny! well, in throth, I don't wonder at it, or a hundred an'

fifty, if they were in the parish."

Winny took advantage of his smile.

"There, father dear, don't be angry with your poor colleen; she'll do better than to marry riches with misery. Thank G.o.d, and you, father, she will have more than enough without coveting Tom Murdock's share."

And she held up her beautiful lips, and looked in the old man's face with eyes swimming in tears.

Old Ned had fought the battle badly, and lost it. He bent down his head to meet his daughter's caress, and pressed her to his heart.

"There, Winny mavourneen," he exclaimed; "I have not loved you as the apple of my eye, since your poor mother died, for me to thwart you now. You shall never marry Tom Murdock except with your own free will and consent, asth.o.r.e. As you say, Winny dear, we neither want nor covet his share. But sure, Winny dear, I thought you were for him all along."

"Oh, thank you, thank you a thousand times, father dear; that is so like you. I knew you would not break your Winny's heart."

But Winny Cavana was too honorable, even toward the man she hated, to tell her father of the conversation she had overheard between old Murdock and his son at the gate. She had gained her cause without that.

CHAPTER XIV.

Tom Murdock had no fixed purpose in anywhere he went after Winny Cavana left him discomfited upon the road. He wandered on past Kate Mulvey's, on toward Shanvilla, but not with any hope or wish to come across Edward Lennon. His intentions of "dealing with him" were yet distant and undefined. What naturally occupied his thoughts was the humiliation he felt at Winny Cavana having refused him. Although he had complained to his father "that he did not think she was for him," yet upon a due consideration of his personal appearance, and his position in the country, he felt persuaded in his own mind that his father was right, and that nothing was required to secure success but to go boldly and straightforward to work. Tom had hinted to his father, although the old man had not observed it, or if so, had taken no notice of it, that there were more reasons than he was aware of for his wis.h.i.+ng to secure Winny Cavana's ready money at all events; and his exclamation when his father spoke of only the interest, might have awakened him to the dread, at least, that there really was some cause, with which he was unacquainted, why he dwelt so much more on the subject of her fortune than the land. The fact was so. Tom Murdock was a worse young man than any one--except his immediate a.s.sociates--was aware of. In addition to his other accomplishments, perhaps I should rather say his attributes, he possessed a degree of worldly cunning which would have sufficed to keep any four ordinary young men out of trouble. But he required it all, for he had four times more villany--not to answer for, for it was unknown, but on his conscience--than any young man of like age in the parish.

One great keeper of a secret--for the time being, at least--is plenty of money. With plenty of money you can keep people in the dark, or blind them with the brightness of the glare. You can keep them in the country, or you can send them out of it, as circ.u.mstances require. You can bribe people to be silent, or to tell lies, as you like. But a villain who has not plenty of money cannot thrive long in his villany.

When his money fails, his character oozes out, until he becomes finally exposed.

Tom Murdock had practically learned some of the above truths by his experience in life, short as it was, better than anything he had learned at Rathcash national school. The later part of it was what he now feared, but did not wish to learn.

Tom could not have been in the habit of going to Dublin, to Armagh, and Sligo (no one knew in what capacity), three or four times a year, where he played cards and bet high, without money of his own; supposing even that his expenses of the road (which was shrewdly suspected) had been paid. He could not have sent half-a-dozen young _friends_ to America, and compromised scores of actions ere they came before a court of law, without money. He could not have kept a brace of greyhounds, and a race-mare, at Church's hotel in Carrick-on-Shannon, as "Mr. Marsden's," without money; and more money in all these cases, from the secrecy which was required, than almost the actual cost might involve. There were other smaller matters, too, which increased the necessity for Tom Murdock to be always in possession of some ready cash. This, from his position as heir to Rathcashmore, and heir presumptive, if not apparent, to Rathcash alongside of it, he had as yet found no difficulty in procuring upon his own personal security; and to do him justice, he had hitherto avoided mixing up his father's name or responsibility in any of his borrowing transactions. Then there was the usurious interest which these money-lenders, be they private or public, charge upon loans, to be added to Tom's liabilities. If he was pressed by Paul, he robbed Peter to pay him; and when (after long forbearance) he was pressed by Peter, he robbed Paul back again. Upon all these and such-like occasions, Winny Cavana's fortune, which he said would be paid down, was the promptest guarantee he could hold out for payment; for ultimately, he said, they could not lose, as he must some day or other "pop into the old chap's shoes," and in the meantime he was paying the interest regularly.

Winny Cavana's instinct had not deceived her; but had she known one-half as much as some of Tom Murdock's bosom friends could tell her, she would have openly spurned him, and not have treated his advances with even the forced consideration she had done.

He wandered on now toward Shanvilla, without, as we have seen, any fixed purpose. Personally humiliated as he had been by Winny's refusal of him, his thoughts dwelt more upon the fact that he could no longer reckon upon her fortune to pay off the tormenting debts which were every day pressing more heavily upon him; for he could not but believe that her refusal of him would get abroad. The Peters had been robbed often enough, and they would now let the Pauls fight their battle the best way they could with Tom Murdock himself; they were safe now, and they would keep themselves so. They had told Tom this,--"not that they doubted him, but their money was now otherwise employed." Tom began to fear, therefore, that an exposure must soon break out.

How could he face his father, too? He would undoubtedly lay his failure to the score of his own impetuous and uncouth manner of seeking her favor; for he had often charged him with both, particularly toward Winny Cavana. One or two of his creditors had given up even the pretence of being civil, and had sworn "they would go to his father for payment, if not promptly settled with."

It was no great wonder if Tom wandered through the country with no fixed purpose, and finally arrived, tired and ill-humored, at his father's house.

The old man had missed him "from about the place" all the forenoon, and had naturally set down his absence to the right cause. He had been candid in his advice to his son, "to spake up bowldly, and at wanst, to Winny;" and he was sincere in his belief that she would "take him hoppin." This day, suspecting he was on the mission, he had "kep'