The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 10 December 1908, Page 3

The Storyteller

A MESALLIANCE

(Concluded from last week.)

' The man doesn't mend either as quickly as I'd like,' the doctor said to that faithful confidant, his wife. 'He won't be able for the same kind of work next winter. He's really a charming fellow. I begin to see, apart from his good looks why she married him. It's an idyll, Alicia. I hope those people of hers won't let it be spoilt by the pinch of poverty.' To that letter of hers to Miss Henrietta Crackenthorpe Muriel had received no answer. Xh, that was bad. It seemed as though the lady were unforgiving; and it was not the time to approach Patrick with the tale of his dwindling two hundred pounds being saddled with so heavy a debt. . When he was stronger— and the strength came back s_c slowly— it would be time .enough. The summer would surely make him well. again. She sent another letter to Miss Henrietta fVackenthorpe, asking time for the repayment of the dubt. Her husband had been ill; there had been a baby; their resources had been strained •to the uttermost. A few evenings afterwards they sat in the lamplight, the little family of three, who were sufficient for each other's felicity There was a little bright fire, for even summer evenings are damp in Ireland ; but the windows were open, and the summer nicdis came in and flutfjied abot-t the lar.p->, Muriel had the baby on her lap, his face in shadow away from the light. She was sewing, and Patrick was reading aloud, with deliberate carefulness, Miss Thackeray's • Village on the Cliff.' It was a portion of his education. Seeing how late it had begun, it made wonderful progress, and Muriel, with a fond smile, would declare herself proud of her pupil, learning seemed to come by second nature to Patrick. Only that day the doctor had suggested to her that it would be unwise for Patrick to remain in his present employment during .the winter, when there must be hardships. ' A winter abroad would set him up completely... After that I should have nothing to say.' ' Her rich friends will help her,' thought the doctor, nor guessed at the despair that filled Muriel's heart. Now, as he read, she put in her careful stitches, and glanced from time to time at her husband's face. His illness had left an unearthly kind of delicacy behind. It had refined away the last traces of the class in which Patrick O'Kelly had grown up —the class which misses the refinement of the peasant as mu-h as that of the gentry. Her mind was working upon itself. If they must leave the Colonel after all, they could only repay him the money whM, he had not withheld from Patrick during his long weeks of his illness and convalescence. And what was Patrick to do? How was she to give him the fallow time in which to grow strong As for going abroad, that was as unattainable as Heaven. Must they eat up the remainder of the two hundred pounds? If it were not for the baby : the coming of that small person had complicated everything. She no longer felt herself her own «o spend for Patrick. There was the baby to be thought of. Through the confusion of her thoughts, and that half-sense which listened to the fortunes of Dick Butler and -his Reine she had caught now and again a distant sound of wheels. She had only noticed it sub-consciously. This time of year tourists were common enough in the neighborhood. And presently the sounds died away. There was nothing outside but the broad silver shield of the lake in the full moonlight, and the sharp lights and shadows in the hills. Suddenly someone came into the room— a lady cloaked and bonneted, a traveller. She had opened the door herself, and entered unannounced. As she came forward to the lamplight she put back her veil, and displayed a 'brown,' elderly, shrewd kindly face., with white teeth showing in a smile. But there was a flush of tears in her eyes. ' 'My dear, forgive me for coming like this,' she said- «I saw your little maid was more pleasantly engaged sitting with a young man on a^fallen tree at the lake's edge. So I slipped ?n through the creditably clean litehen and found my- way, your husband s voice guiding me. lam your Aunt Henrietta. And so this is your baby. What an angel! And your husband has been very ,11. Never mind, I have come to take care of you all/ I have only just had your letter of last February I

was nursing your poor Aunt Sophy abroad. She died, my dear. And so your poor, dear father is gone, too. Dear George, what a beautiful fellow he was ! ' From the moment — iss Henrietta Crackenthorpe came info the room Muriel' had been feeling as though all her burdens were rolled away from her. It meant— why, surely, it meant that Patrick would grow strong-, and the child be provided for and educated and brought up as a gentleman. Aunt Henrietta had takgn the baby from her. arms, and was looking down at him with an almost maternal delight. Now and again she glanced at the child's father, and her glance was very benignant. ' My dear,' she said, when she had Muriel alone for a few minutes, ' it was a great shock to me when I learnt that you were in poverty. And how high-minded of you to scruple over that hundred pounds ! How it would have pleased poor Sophy, if only she had known it I It was your Aunt Sophy's wish that I should remain apart from your dear father. She knew how he fascinated me, and she always said he would make ducks and drakes of my money, as he had done of his own. You'll excuse my mentioning it, dear. And what a charming person your husband is ! One of those broken-down old Irish families. What a romance it is ! You see, we Crackenthorpe's don't care for money at all, although we happen to hive it. Blood is everything with us, and there is blood and breeding in his face. You are my concern henceforth. I have just bought a charming place in Warwickshire, and I was looking about for a man to take the management off my hands. How fortunate that your dear husband should be a practical man. 1

And so, like a fairy-tale, it ended. No one could have been better than Miss Henrietta Crackenthorpe to her adopted family, the possession of whom filled her with such happiness that she often said it had prolonged her life by at least thirty years. She never found any fault with Patrick, to whom it seemed easy to become a country gentleman. Privately, she thought him too good for her niece, but she never said as much. Fortunately, Patrick's children inherited their father's beauty, and Miss Henrietta Crackenthorpe was peculiarly sensitive to beauty. She often said that she could not have endured her money to go to Joe's children, who took after their mother and were lamentably plain-looking.— Catholic Weekly.