The Earl's promise

At last General Riley appeared.

“It is all right, I am thankful to say,” he announced to his son, in a low tone. “He will marry her.”

“But I will not marry him!” exclaimed the person most interested in the matter. “I would rather work, beg, starve, die, than be thrust in this way on any man.”

“You ought to have thought of all this before you went away with him,” said the General bluntly. “We have made the best of a very bad business for you, and I must beg of you not to undo our work by any temper, or airs, or romantic nonsense. There is nothing left for you but to marry him, and a good thing it is that he is willing to take you for his wife.”

Swiftly Nettie rose from the ground and stood slight and erect before him. With one hand she swept back her hair, with the other she wiped the tears from her cheeks. Pretty she did not look, with her swollen eyelids and her face disfigured by grief and weeping; but there was something in the helplessness of her defiance, in the hopelessness of her struggle, in the prospective misery of her fate, in the utter ruin she had wrought for herself, so young, that made both men feel heart-sick at thought of their own inability to put this terrible wrong right.

“Are you going to turn against me?” she said, speaking to John. “Are you going to say there is nothing left for me to do but marry a man who does not want me, whose wife I thought I was, or you would never have seen me back here? Will you not help me, John? will you not take me away?”

“God knows, Nettie, I would help you if I only knew how. I would take you away if I knew where to take you, if I thought it would not make a worse scandal than there has been, and put everything more wrong than it is already.”

“I would go anywhere you told me,” she went on pitifully. “I would go where nobody knew me, and I would be a good girl and work hard.”

“You could not go anywhere that people would not know all about it after a little time,” answered her cousin. “There is only one thing for a girl who has made a mistake like yours, dear, to do, and that is, marry. What my father says is very true, you may be glad enough that Mr. Brady is willing to marry you.”

“Willing to marry me?” Nettie repeated drearily. “Willing to marry me? There go, both of you,” she added, turning upon them in a very access of passion. “I never want to see you again. I never wish to hear the voice of one belonging to me. If you had been in trouble, such trouble, I would have helped you; but there is nobody who cares for my trouble, nobody, no, not one.”

“Crying again, Annette,” exclaimed Mr. Brady, who, having only waited behind General Riley in order to refresh himself with a glass of whisky after their stormy interview, at this point joined the trio. “What is the matter now?” and he put his hand on her shoulder and would have drawn her towards him, but she shrank away, and looking at him through her tears, with hot angry eyes, began,—

“They say you are willing to marry me, and expect me to be thankful. They never asked me if I was willing to marry you.”

“There is no compulsion,” said Mr. Brady coolly; “you need not if you do not like.”

“Like? and you say that to me who have given up everything for you?”

“I am ready to marry you within the hour,” said Mr. Brady, with a shrug. “Can I say fairer than that, gentlemen? If Miss Annette like teaching better than marrying, far be it from me to balk her taste; if she like me better than teaching, I am ready to stand to what I have said, and make her Mrs. Brady.”

“And you do not care,” said Nettie, speaking with dry, parched lips and cheeks fever-flushed, “you do not care, and you call yourselves men?”

“We do care, Nettie,” answered John Riley, “and it is because we are men that we have tried to do all that lay in our power for you. It seems hard to you, and it is hard. You are angry with Mr. Brady and with us, but by-and-by you will thank us for advising you to marry him.”

“I never was an advocate for coaxing dogs to eat mutton,” remarked Mr. Brady, with a sneer. “I have offered to marry this independent young lady, and as she does not like to have me, why she had better leave me, that is if she has a clear idea as to where she means to go afterwards.”

“I will go to Bayview, to Grace Moffat.”

“I would, and let us know how Mr. Moffat receives you,” he laughed.

“My aunt, my poor old aunt that I deceived, she would not turn me from her door,” sobbed Nettie.

“Perhaps not, you might see.”

“Then, if all else fail,” she flashed out, “I will trust to Mrs. Hartley’s charity. I will ask her to take me in and find me work. I am neither kith nor kin to her, and she would think it no disgrace to shelter a girl who had been deceived like me. She would get me a situation in some place, and I will put the sea between myself and all of you, and none of you will ever hear of me again.”

Mr. Brady looked at the General and his son. He beheld consternation written on their faces.

At last Nettie was mistress of the position. She had mentioned the name of the only friend she knew who would be willing and able to save her, and the idea of the scandal which might ensue if she carried out her threat of appealing to Mrs. Hartley was as little agreeable to her relations as to the man who had flung a shadow over her life.

The girl was desperate, her pride had been humbled, her vanity hurt, her temper aroused, her love wounded, slighted. She meant to leave him, she did not want to be forced on any man. Mr. Brady suddenly awoke to a consciousness of both facts, and to a knowledge, also, that it would not suit him to lose her.

Never again would he, could he, hold such another card in his hands as Nettie O’Hara. If he played so as to let her and her wrongs slip away from his control, if once he permitted her to make a party against him, and backed by Mrs. Hartley he knew she could, he vaguely comprehended he would have raised a devil whom he might find it difficult to lay.

Besides, he was not yet tired of Nettie; her thoughts had not been his thoughts, her sole companionship had proved slightly monotonous; she had put, unwitting, a sort of restraint upon him; but still, if Daniel Brady had ever an affection for a woman into which a higher kind of love entered, he felt it for Nettie O’Hara.

Had Nettie only been possessed of the world’s wisdom in those days when surreptitiously she met him on the sea-shore, amongst the ruins of Ballyknock Abbey, and in the glens where, in her lonely childhood, she gathered wild strawberries, and made for herself swords and parasols and butterfly cages of rushes; had she, I say, then understood the ways of the world and the minds of men, she would never have gone off with Daniel Brady, trusting to his love to keep her safe, trusting to his gratitude to repay her for her faith.

After all, affairs of the heart are best to be put on a “commercial basis.”

When one man is, to use a vulgar expression, “chiselled” by another, the first dose of comfort administered by his friends is, “But why had you no agreement?”

If the unhappy wretch suggests that he thought he had to do with a man of honour, or an honest man, or a sincere Christian, he is at once informed, “It is well in money-matters to treat every man as if he were a rogue.”

And in love? you ask. Well, in love it may be as well to advise young persons about to form engagements for life to look upon all charming suitors as possible villains. It is not an amiable trait in the character of man or woman that which leads him (or her) to make himself (or herself) beyond all things safe, but it is necessary, nevertheless.

Suppose a man loses his money, or a woman her character, who shall recoup him, or her?

The colonies or the workhouse for the one; the streets or that exhilarating place of abode, a Refuge, for the other.

And yet, perhaps, neither might be a greater fool nor a greater sinner than Amos Scott on the one hand, or Annette, commonly called Nettie O’Hara, on the other.

Each had trusted to a promise. It is a foolish way some people have, as though there were something in the nature of a promise that made it as secure as a deed. Each found reason to repent that trust. Nettie’s repentance had begun already. Dimly she understood there had been a time when her terms would have ruled the day, when her beauty and her birth might have asked what they liked from this far-seeing lover, and received a charmed yea for answer.

But that time was gone and past. She could never dictate (legitimately) terms to any man again. She had lost caste, friends, and what was, perhaps, worse than either, her “future.” For even if she appealed to Mrs. Hartley and tried by that lady’s help to begin her life over again, she never could wipe out the blot on her former life; not all the waters of Lethe could wash out from her past that morning’s work, when, trusting to one untrustworthy, she went off to seek her ruin.

All this the girl dimly comprehended, grasped in a feeble passionate despair. No longer meek and demure, no longer smiling and self-contained, she stood there at bay, and for the moment, as has been said, she was mistress of the position.

True she could help herself little, but she could injure Mr. Brady much, and inflict, besides, considerable annoyance on her relatives. The bright hair might remain bright as ever, the blue eyes might look soft and sweet as before, but something had been aroused in Nettie O’Hara that might never slumber again.

“I want to leave Kingslough,” she went on, pursuing her advantage, “and I will leave it. I wish never to see one of you more, and I never will if I can help it.”

“But, Nettie, dear, only consider,” began her cousin, while the General muttered, “Never heard such nonsense in all my life,” but Mr. Brady, cutting across both their sentences, said,—

“Will you kindly walk to the other end of the garden? I should like to say a word or two to Mrs. Brady alone.”

She looked up at him quickly, and answered, as they complied, “I am not Mrs. Brady, and never will be.”

“You are,” he persisted, “and you can’t help yourself. You are my wife if I choose to claim you, and I do. You are mine, and I mean to keep you. Little as you may think it, I am too fond of you to let you go.”

“Fond!” she repeated contemptuously.

“Yes,” he said, “fond. If I hadn’t been, do you think I would have made the fool of myself I have? What did I want with a wife? Why should I have burdened myself with you if it was not for fondness’ sake? If you had not listened, you would have known nothing of this. Listeners, you know, never hear any good of themselves. You are married to me safe enough, but I wanted to bring down the confounded pride of your people a peg or two, and I wanted, also, to get some money out of them for you and myself if I could manage it. That is the whole truth of the business, so you need not fret any more.”

“I do not believe a word of it,” was Nettie’s candid reply, “but I do not intend to fret, and I will go to Mrs. Hartley, and neither you nor all the Rileys in creation shall hinder me.”

“I thought you loved me,” he said, with an impatience he tried to control, but could not.

“Thought I loved you?” she echoed, “thought! I never loved anything before except a kitten, and I never mean to love anything again.”

“And yet you want to go and make a talk and a scandal over the place, and curse my life and your own.”

“Make a talk and a scandal? No. I only want to leave a man who could treat a girl as you have treated me. Did not I ask you if we were safely and truly married? and did you not swear to me on the Bible that not all the bishops in England could make us more man and wife than we were?”

“Nor could they,” commented Mr. Brady.

“And,” went on Nettie, “when I asked you to give me some writing that I could show to Grace and my aunt, and John, if he wanted to see it, you told me you would satisfy them all; that no writing would be of so much use as your simple acknowledgment that I was your wife; and this is how you acknowledge me. Well, I deserved it, I suppose, but I did not deserve it from you.”

She ought not to have “stood upon the order of going,” but have gone, if she meant to leave him. Her words were bitter, and her anger keen, but neither was bitter nor keen enough to win the day when once she began to argue with a man to whom her heart still clung, whom she loved as she had “never loved anything before.”

“You did not deserve it,” he answered, more quietly, for he saw she was wavering in her determination, and knew that now compliance was a mere question of time, “and I am sorry that for the sake of gratifying myself and annoying your upstart relations I placed you even for a moment in a false position. A man cannot say more than that he is sorry, can he? Give me your hand, and say you forgive and forget.”

But she twitched her fingers out of his, and sobbed, “It was cruel, it was cruel.”

“It was,” he agreed, “but remember, I never intended you to know anything about the matter. You would not have heard had you not listened. Put yourself in my place. Had a couple of women treated you as those two men treated me, should you not have tried to serve them out if you could?”

“And did not I stand up for you?” she exclaimed. “Oh! I would have been faithful to you till death, but you—”

“Annette, as true as death you are my wife. You are so much my wife, that if you went away from me now you could not marry any one else, and neither could I.”

“It does not matter,” she said. “I do not want to marry any one else, I only want to go away.”

“Well, then, go,” he exclaimed. “I will never beg and pray a woman to stay with me against her will. You are married to me safe enough, but I am ready, for all that, to satisfy you and your people by going through the ceremony again if you like. If you do not like, go to your friend Mrs. Hartley, and see what she will do for you. Only remember one thing, if you elect to leave me now, never ask me to take you back again. I would not do it if you came covered with diamonds.”

She was but a young thing, for all her defiance; for all her anger she was but as a reed in his hands, and so, when he gave her free leave to go, bade her spread her wings and return to that waste of waters from which she had flown to him, as to an ark of refuge, Nettie covered her face and wept aloud.

“There is nothing to cry about,” he remarked. “It is a matter for your own choice. Come now, be reasonable. What more could I do than I have done? What more could I offer than I have offered?”

Still no answer.

“Annette, do not keep on fretting,” he entreated; “try to put out of your mind every thing you heard me say to-day. I did not mean a word of it; I did not, upon my honour. I was angry and offended, and spoke without thought, but you should not bear malice. You will forgive and forget, won’t you?”

“I will for—give,” she said, after a pause, with a sob between each word.

“And forget,” he added, but Nettie shook her head doubtfully.

“I am not good at forgetting,” she answered. Poor Mrs. Hartley, could she only have heard that reply, it would have made her hair stand on end!

“I’ll chance that,” said Mr. Brady generously, and he walked off to the spot where the General and his son stood, surveying a wilderness wilder than any their own neglected estate could show.

“We have made up that little difference,” he said, with a smile and an easy familiarity which caused John Riley to wince, “and now I am ready to go through the rest of the business when and where you please. It is quite unnecessary, I may remark. At any rate we had better agree that it is, but that to satisfy your scruples I have agreed to ceremony number two. We may as well be married by the minister here, or at Woodbrook, which you please. It will make less talk than going to church, and you can have as many witnesses as you like. In for a penny in for a pound. Of course Mrs. Brady remains here. If she is to remain in my house I do not intend her to leave it except in my company. Scandal about your relation could not hurt me, but scandal about my wife I won’t have; besides, you have no place to take her to;” and Mr. Daniel Brady laughed triumphantly.

“Come, gentlemen,” he went on, “it is of no use making the worst of a bad business. You have checkmated me, I confess; and yet, still, I bear no malice. Bad blood is an evil thing, especially amongst relations. Can I offer you any refreshment—no? Then, Mr. Riley, I depend on your seeing the minister and arranging everything to your own satisfaction. You will shake hands with me now, I suppose,” and he stretched out his hand; but neither the General nor his son availed himself of the opportunity afforded.

A dark look crossed Mr. Brady’s face, as he said, in a tone of defiant mockery,—

“At least, you can never say it was not offered to you twice in one day.”

“I believe you to be a consummate blackguard,” remarked John Riley bluntly; “but still, for Nettie’s sake, I am willing to shake hands and let bygones be bygones.”

“And you, General?” asked Mr. Brady. Without a word the General stretched out his hand. “You won’t repent it,” remarked Mr. Brady consolingly.

“I shall be back as soon as I can bring a minister,” said John. Those were the days when marriage in Ireland was almost as easy as in Scotland.

“The sooner the better,” observed Mr. Brady; and he stood watching the pair as they trotted slowly down the moss-covered avenue, muttering to himself, “Now they are reckoning me up;” but he was mistaken, for the iron had entered too deeply into their souls to be lightly spoken of.

One thing, however, was significant. A mile from Maryville a stream, bright and sparkling, crossed the road.

“Hold my horse for a minute, John,” said the General; and dismounting, he put the hand Daniel Brady had grasped into the rivulet, and let the water flow over it.

“That is a good example, father,” he remarked laughing; “and I think I will follow it;” then, as he remounted, he said, in a changed tone, “God help Nettie,” to which the General responded, “Amen.”

Next day, one of the Woodbrook servants having driven into town to execute various commissions, called on his way back at “The Library,” for a book for Miss Lucy, who was the only reading sister of the Riley family.

After replying to such anxious inquiries concerning the health of Mrs. Riley and the General, and the young ladies, and Mr. John, and an antiquated gardener, and still more antiquated nurse, who had lived with the family for a few generations, nominally as servants, but in reality as masters, Patrick, who all the time had been panting to open his budget, began,—

“Ye’ll likely have heard the news, ladies?”

“That Miss Nettie, I mean Mrs. Brady, has come home, Patrick. Oh, yes! we knew that long ago,” said Miss Healey, with dignity.

“It was not that same I meant, Miss; they have been married again.”

“Married again!” exclaimed the two sisters who could hear, in chorus; “bless us, wasn’t one marriage enough?”

“The Gineral would have it, miss—ma’am: says he to Brady, says he, ‘I don’t like hole-and-corner weddings,’ says he, ‘and as you are an Irishman and have chosen an Irish wife, why, to make all sure, you had better marry her again, fair and above-board;’ and so he did.”

“When were they married? who married them? who was present?” the sisters were literally breathless with excitement, and shrieked out their questions, unheeding Miss Kate, whose inquiries of “What is he saying?” “What is the matter?” “Who is dead?” “Is it the General? Dear, what can have happened?” formed a running accompaniment to the trio which was being performed by Mrs. Larkins, Miss Healey, and Patrick.

“’Deed an’ they were just married at Maryville, and Mr. McKenna married them; and Mr. John, and me, and Mr. McKenna’s clerk, were the witnesses.”

“And were none of your ladies there?” inquired Mrs. Larkins.

“I do not think—asking your pardon, ma’am, for being so free—that it would be a very seemly thing for any of our ladies to be seen going to Maryville.”

From which remark it will be understood that Nettie’s relations did not intend to visit her, and that popular opinion already applauded their resolution.

And so Nettie’s return and marriage made a nine days’ talk, and caused a nine days’ wonder, at the expiration of which time another event occurred, which made a greater talk still.