Volume 7 — Chapter VIII.

Nellie slept that night the peaceful slumbers of a child; but the habits of long weeks of care were not to be so easily shaken off, and the first ray of sunshine that found its way through the narrow window of her chamber roused her from her well-earned repose. Her first impulse was, as it had ever been of late, to spring from her couch with a painful sense of hard duty to be accomplished that very day; her next was to thank God with all the fervor of a young and innocent heart for the haven of safety into which he had guided her at last. Then she lay back upon her pillow, and, yielding to the delightful consciousness that there was now no immediate call upon her for exertion either of body or mind, glanced languidly round the dimly-lighted room, and endeavored to make a mental inventory of its contents. It was a square chamber, forming the second story of the old tower in which Roger had taken up his abode, and which was all that was yet remaining of the old stronghold of Grana Uaille. The apartment had evidently no furniture of its own to boast of, but, having been used as a sort of lumber-room, was abundantly supplied with articles brought hither from more favored mansions. Nellie soon perceived that much of this so-called lumber was of the costliest description, and represented probably the sum total of all that had been saved from the wreck of Roger's fortune. There were cabinets of curious workmanship, a table carved in oak as black as ebony, a few high-backed chairs of the same material, ornaments in gold and silver, some of ancient Celtic manufacture, others in their more delicate workmanship bearing marks of artistic handling, which, even to Nellie's unaccustomed eye, betrayed their foreign origin. There were pictures, too, most of them with the dark shadow of a Spanish hand upon them, and swords, bucklers, weapons, and armor of all kinds, old and new, defensive and offensive, piled up here and there in picturesque confusion in the corners of the turret. Nellie had been amusing herself for some minutes scanning all these treasures over and over, and guessing at their various uses, when her attention became suddenly riveted upon a huge coffer with bands and mouldings of curiously-wrought brass, which stood against the wall exactly opposite to the foot of her bed. She was still quite girl enough to be willing to amuse herself by imagining all sorts of impossibilities respecting the contents of this mysterious looking piece of furniture, and she was watching it as anxiously as if she half expected it to open of itself, when the door of the chamber was cautiously unclosed, and the old woman, who represented the office of cook, valet, and everything else in Roger's establishment, crept up to her bedside as quietly as if she fancied her to be sleeping still.

"God's blessing and the light of heaven be on your sweet smiling face," she ejaculated, as Nellie turned her bright, wide-open eyes with a grateful smile upon the old hag. "Lie still a bit, a-lannah, lie still, and take a sup of this fresh goat's whey that I have been making for you. It will bring the color, may be, into your pretty cheeks again; for troth, a-lannah, they are as pale this morning as mountain roses, and not at all what they should be in regard to a young and well-grown slip of a lassie like yourself."

Nellie took the tempting beverage, which Nora presented to her in an old-fashioned silver goblet, readily enough; but checking herself just as she was about to put it to her lips, she said, gayly:

"Thanks, a thousand times, my dear old woman, but I do not feel that I need it much, and this whey would be the very thing for my poor old grandfather. He was always accustomed to something of the sort in the days when we were able to indulge ourselves in such luxuries."

"Lord bless the child!" said the delighted Nora. "If she isn't as gay as a bird in its mother's nest this morning, for all the weary worry of her last night's travels. But there's no need to be sparing of the whey, my honey, for sure I've a good sup of it left on purpose for the old lord as soon as ever he awakens. So drink up every drop of this, if you wouldn't have the master scold me; for he sent it up himself, he did, and it's downright mad he'd be if it came back to him and it not empty."

Something in this speech, or in old Nora's way of making it, caused the blood, the absence of which she had been just deploring, to rush once more into Nellie's cheek; and perhaps it was partly to hide this weakness that she took the goblet without another word, and drained it to the dregs, playfully turning its wrong side up as she gave it back to Nora, in order to show her how thoroughly her directions had been complied with. Made happy on this important point, the old woman trotted gayly out of the room, and then Nellie rose, half-reluctantly, it must be confessed, and commenced the duties of the toilet. They were simple enough in her case, yet difficult, also, from their very simplicity. Her hair, long and smooth and shining, was easily enough disposed in braids, which, folded tightly round her head, gave a grace and elegance to her appearance none of the fantastic head-gear then in vogue could possibly have imparted; but when she came to inspect the habiliments she had worn the day before, and which perforce she must wear again that day, she became painfully, and, perhaps for the first time, fully conscious of the dilapidations which time and travel had wrought upon them. In vain she rubbed out mud and grass stains, in vain she plied her needle. The garments absolutely defied her skill, and, painfully conscious of the fact, she was about perforce to don them as they were, when Nora burst into the room with a look of gladness on her face, which vanished, however, to do her justice, as completely as if it had never been, at the sight of poor Nellie, shame-faced and sad, vainly trying to smooth her rags into something like decent poverty around her.

"God help you, a-cushla!" she cried in a tone of unfeigned compassion, laying at the same time her withered hand upon the tattered kerchief which Nellie was trying to fold round her stately shoulders. "God help ye! and is this all that them black scum of Saxon robbers left ye when they turned ye out upon the wide world to seek your fortune?"

"It cannot be helped," said Nellie with a little choking in her voice, though she tried hard to veil it beneath an assumption of indifference. "And after all, these rags do but make me seem what in fact I am—a beggar. Only I hope," she added, with a little nervous laugh, "I hope that Colonel O'More" (she had learned his military rank and his real name, Moore being only its Saxon rendering, the night before from Nora) "will not be utterly disgusted this morning when he finds out to what a pauper he extended his hospitality last night."

"The colonel? Is it the master that you mean? The master be disgusted! Ah! now, listen to me, asthore, and don't be filling your head with them ugly fancies; for you may just take my word for it, and don't I know every turn of his mind as well as if I was inside of it? You may just take old Nora's word for it, that he worships the very ground you tread on, and would, too, all the same, if you had never a brogue to the foot or a kirtle to the back. Beggar, indeed! Why, could not he see for himself last night that you had been just robbed and murdered like out of your own by them thieving Saxons, and wasn't it for that very reason that, before he went off to his fishing this blessed morning, he gave me the key of that big black box, and says—says he, 'Nora, my old woman, I have been thinking that the young lady up-stairs has been so long on the road that may be she'll be in want of a new dress like; so, as there is nothing like decent woman-tailoring to be found in the island, maybe she'll condescend to see if there's anything in my poor mother's box that would suit her for the present.' And troth, my darling," old Nora went on, "it's you that are going to have the pick and choice of fine things; for she was a grand Spanish lady, she was, and always went about among us dressed like a princess."

Nora had opened the box at the beginning of this speech, and with every fresh word she uttered, she flung out such treasures of finery on the floor as fully justified her panegyric on the deceased lady's wardrobe.

Nellie soon found herself the centre of a heap of thick silks and shiny satins, and three-piled velvets and brocaded stuffs, standing upright by virtue of their own rich material, and of laces so delicate and fine, that they looked as if she had only to breathe upon them in order to make them float away upon the air like cobwebs.

She was quite too much of a girl as yet to be able to resist a close and curious examination of such treasures; nevertheless, her instinct of the fitness of things was stronger than her vanity, and there was an incongruity between these courtly habiliments and her broken fortunes, which made her feel that it would be an absolute impossibility to wear them. Selecting, therefore, a few articles of linen clothing, she told old Nora that everything else was far too fine for daily wear, and began, of her own accord, to restore them to their coffer. Not so, however, the good old Nora. That any thing could be too fine for the adornment of any one whom "the master" delighted to honor, was a simple absurdity in her mind; and she became so clamorous in her remonstrances, that Nellie was fain to shift her ground, and to explain that she was bent at that moment upon "taking a long ramble by the sea-shore, for which anything like a dress of silk or satin (Nora's own good sense must tell her) would be, to say the least of it, exceedingly inappropriate."

At these words a new light seemed to dawn upon the old woman's mind, and, plunging almost bodily down into the deep coffer in her eagerness to gratify her protégé, she exclaimed, "So it's for a walk you'd be going this morning, is it? and after all your bother last night! Well, well, you are young still, and would rather, I daresay, be skipping about like a young kid among the rocks than sitting up in silks and satins as grave and stately as if you were a princess in earnest. Something plain and strong? That's what you'll be wanting, isn't it, a-lannah? Wait a bit, will you? for I mind me now of a dress the old mistress had made when she was young, for a frolic, like, that she might go with me unnoticed to a 'pattern.' And may I never sin if I haven't got it," she cried, diving down once more into the coffer, and bringing up from its shining chaos a dress which, consisting as it did simply of a madder-colored petticoat and short over-skirt of russet brown, was not by any means very dissimilar to the habitual costume of a peasant girl of the west at the present hour. Nora was right. It was, as ladies have it, "the very thing!" Stout enough and plain enough to meet all Nellie's ideas of propriety, and yet presenting a sharp contrast of coloring which (forgive her, my reader, she was only sixteen) she was by no means sorry to reflect would be exceedingly becoming to her clear, pale complexion, and the blue-black tresses of her hair. It was with a little blush of pleasure, therefore, that she took it from the old woman's hand, exclaiming, "Oh! thank you, dear Nora. It is exactly what I was wishing for—so strong and pretty. It will make me feel just as I want to feel, like a good strong peasant girl, able and willing to work for her living; and, to say the truth, moreover," she added, somewhat confidentially, "I should not at all have liked making my appearance in those fine Spanish garments. I should have been so much afraid of the O'More taking me for his mother."

The annunciation of this grave anxiety set off old Nora in a fit of laughing, under cover of which Nellie contrived to complete her toilette. Madder-dyed petticoat, and, russet skirt, and long dark mantle, she donned them all; but the effect, though exceedingly pretty, was by no means exactly what she had expected; for Nora, turning her round and round for closer inspection, declared, with many an Irish expletive, which we willingly spare our readers, "That dress herself how she might, no one could ever mistake her for anything but what she really was, namely, a born lady, and perhaps even, moreover, a princess in disguise." With a smile and a courtesy Nellie accepted of the compliment, and then tripped down the winding staircase of her turret, took one peep at Lord Netterville as he lay in the room below, in the "calliogh" or nook by the hearth, which, screened off by a bent matting, had been allotted to him as the warmest and most comfortable accommodation the tower afforded, and having satisfied herself that he was still fast asleep, stepped out gayly into the open air. She was met at the door by "Maida," who nearly knocked her down in her boisterous delight at beholding her again, and she was playfully defending herself from the too rapturous advances of her four-footed friend when Roger ran his fishing-boat alongside the pier, and, evidently mistaking Nellie for some bare-footed visitor of Nora's, called out in Irish:

"Hilloa, ma colleen dhas! run back to the tower, will you, and tell Nora to fetch me down a basket, and you shall have a good handful of fish for your pains, for I have caught enough to garrison the island for a week."

Guessing his mistake and enchanted at the success of her masquerade, Nellie instantly darted into the kitchen, seized a fishing-creel which was lying near the hearth, and rushed down to the pier. Roger was still so busy disentangling the fish from the net in which he had caught them, that he never even looked at Nellie until he turned round to place them in her basket. Then for the first time he saw who it was whom he had been so unceremoniously ordering about upon his commission. Had Nellie been rich and prosperous, he would probably have laughed and made exceedingly light of the matter; but poor, and almost dependent on his bounty as she was, he flushed scarlet to the forehead, and apologized with an eager deference, which was not only very touching in itself, but very characteristic of the sensitive and generous-hearted race from which he sprung. "But, after all," he added, in conclusion, smiling and laying his finger lightly on the folds of Nellie's mantle, "after all, how could I dream that, her weeks of weary wandering only just concluded, Mistress Netterville would have been up again with the sun, looking as fresh and bright as the morning dew, and masquerading like a peasant girl?"

"But I am not masquerading at all," said Nellie, laughing, and yet evidently quite in earnest. "I am as poor as a peasant girl, and mean to dress like one, ay, and to work like one too, so long as I needs must be dependent upon others."

"Not if I am still to be master here," said Roger, very decidedly, taking the fishing-creel out of her hands. "Like a wandering princess you have come to me; and like a wandering princess I intend that you shall be treated, so long as you condescend to honor me by your presence in this kingdom of barren rocks."

"But the fish," said the laughing and blushing Nellie; "in the meantime, what is to be done with the fish? Nora will be in pain about it; for she told me last night that there wasn't a blessed fish in the bay that would be worth a 'thraneen' if only half-an-hour were suffered to elapse between their exit from the ocean and their introduction to her kitchen."

"Nora is quite right," said Roger, responding freely to the young girl's merry laugh; "and it has cost me both time and pains, I do assure you, to impress that fact upon her mind. But Maida has already told her all about it; and here she comes," he added, as he caught a glimpse of the old woman descending leisurely toward the pier. "So now we may leave the fish with a safe conscience to her tender mercies, and, if you are inclined for a stroll, I will take you up to yonder rocky platform, from whence you will see the Atlantic, as unfortunately we but seldom see it on this wild coast, in all the calm glories of a summer day."

To Be Continued.