The Martins Of Cro' Martin, Vol. II (of II)Lever, Charles
History
The Martins Of Cro' Martin, Vol. II (of II)
Lever, Charles
Ireland -- History -- 1800-1837 -- Fiction; Ireland -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
“I am not able to tell, had you even the patience to hear, of what
befell him there; the very strangest, wildest incidents are recorded
of his life, but they have no bearing on what we are now engaged in. He
came back, however, with a wife, to find his brother also married. This
is a period of his life of which little is known. The brothers did not
live well together. There were serious differences between them; and
Lady Dorothea's conduct towards her sister-in-law, needlessly cruel and
offensive, as I have heard, imbittered the relations between them.
At last Barry's wife died, it was said, of a broken heart, and Barry
arrived at Cro' Martin to deposit his infant child with his brother, and
take leave of home and country forever.
“Some incident of more than usual importance, and with circumstances
of no common pain, must now have occurred; for one night Barry left the
castle, vowing nevermore to enter it. Godfrey followed, and tried to
detain him. A scene ensued of entreaty on one side, and passionate
vehemence on the other, which brought some of the servants to the spot.
Godfrey imperiously ordered them away; they all obeyed but Catty. Catty
Broon followed Barry, and never quitted him that night, which he spent
walking up and down the long avenue of the demesne, watching and waiting
for daybreak. We can only conjecture what, in the violence of her grief
and indignation, this old attached follower of the house might have
revealed. Barry had always been her favorite of the two boys; she knew
his rights; she had never forgotten them. She could not tell by what
subtleties of law they had been transferred to another, but she felt in
her heart assured that in the sight of God they were sacred. How far,
then, she revealed this to him, or only hinted it, we have no means of
knowing. We can only say that, armed with a certain fact, Barry demanded
the next day a formal meeting with his brother and his sister-in-law. Of
what passed then and there, no record remains, save, possibly, in
that sealed packet; for it bears the date of that eventful morning.
I, however, am in a position to prove that Barry declared he would not
disturb the possession Godfrey was then enjoying. 'Make that poor
child,' said he, alluding to his little girl, your own daughter, and it
matters little what becomes of _me_.' Godfrey has more than once
adverted to this distressing scene to me. He told me how Lady Dorothea's
passion was such that she alternately inveighed against himself for
having betrayed her into a marriage beneath her, and abjectly implored
Barry not to expose them to the shame and disgrace of the whole world by
the assertion of his claim. From this she would burst out into fits of
open defiance of him, daring him as an impostor; in fact, Martin said,
'That morning has darkened my life forever; the shadow of it will be
over me to the last hour I live!' And so it was! Self-reproach never
left him: at one time, for his usurpation of what never was his; at
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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