CHAPTER XXVII.
About three weeks after the death of the Count de Valette, just as the last rays of daylight were vanishing from the sky, a figure wrapped in a cloak of grey homespun, the hood carefully drawn down, descended one of the flights of steps which lead from the upper to the lower town of Quebec. Hurrying on through dirty treats, in which at the door of some tavern or store an occasional oil-lamp was beginning to glimmer, this person stopped at the door of a small house close by one of the wharfs, and, without knocking, opened the door and went in. The room, thus unceremoniously entered, served at once for a kitchen, eating, and sitting-room, and would have been a comfortable apartment but for the disorder and want of cleanliness which appeared in everything it contained. The door of a bedroom was open, displaying some good furniture, and papered walls, on which several framed prints of saints, and one of Napoleon, were hanging, but the same want of neatness which disfigured the outer apartment was visible here also. Another room could also be seen, which appeared to be a store-room, and from thence a strong odour of fish, cheese, and brandy, proceeded. A candle was burning on a chair near the stove in the kitchen, and beside it an old man was sitting on a stool mending a fishing-net, and whistling an old Irish air; a woman sat in a rocking~chair, at a little distance, smoking a pipe, and a man, who seemed asleep, lay on a wooden settee—a glazed hat pulled over his head.
The opening of the door made the man at the stove look up, and the woman, taking the pipe out of her mouth, gazed curiously at the intruder, who looked round the room without speaking.
“Would you be pleased to say what you’re wanting?” said Nelly Brady, suspiciously eyeing the muffled figure before her.
The stranger answered by slipping off her hood and disclosing the rich fair tresses and gleaming eyes of Coral.
“Ah, then it is you, yourself, my honey,” said Nelly, “sure I can’t believe my eyes? What, in the name of goodness, could bring a young lady like you alone through the streets at night, like some poor body that hadn’t a copper to bless themselves with?”
“If you wanted me or Nelly, why didn’t you send for us?” said Uncle Nick.
“I didn’t want either of you, Uncle Nick; I want Denis.”
“Denis!” cried Nelly, “I’m sure I don’t know what’s come over him; he’s not like the same boy he used to be since he came back from them Indians. Some days he never opens his lips to speak a word, or let a bit of food cross them, and more times he never comes home at all; and no one knows where he is; but he’s at home to-night, at any rate.”
Yes, he was there, close beside her. He had started up when his mother’s exclamations told him who the visitor was, and now stood looking at Coral with a pale, haggard expression in his face as if he had not slept for many days.
“I was afraid you had forgotten your promise, and had gone away without coming to see me,” said Coral. “Why did you not come?”
“I meant to go every day,” said Denis, “but day after day I put it off; I thought, perhaps, it would be the last time I should ever see you, and every day’s delay was like a reprieve to the condemned. But why did you come here!—why did not you send for me?”
“Why should I not come, if I choose?” she asked, with that pretty, graceful, half child-like air of haughtiness which she sometimes assumed.
“Do you think, like others, that it is so easy to tame wild birds? But they shall see, Denis. I want to speak to you by yourself. Let us go out to the wharf, nobody will be there.”
“And why would you go out to the wharf in the cold night air, honey?” said Nelly. “Sure Uncle Nick and I will just go into the other room and shut the door till you have told your little secret to Denis, whatever it is.”
“No, no,” said Coral, “let us go into the open air, where I can see the blue sky and the free river; I hate these stone-houses and high walls, they make me feel as if I were choking;—come!” And putting her arm through that of Denis, she drew him towards the door. He opened it, and they passed out together.
Now, from the time, Nelly Brady had actually seen the proud and stately Count de Valette, and beheld the luxury with which he surrounded his daughter, the hopes she had cherished of seeing Denis married to the heiress had vanished.
Her Irish respect for high birth and ancient dignities, which a true Celt can scarcely ever throw off, began to assert its inborn power over the principles of liberty and equality she had imbibed from her republican neighbours; and congratulating herself upon the comfortable little house the Count had given her, and the stout schooner he had bestowed on her husband, she had confined her ambition for Denis within more reasonable bounds, and contented herself with hoping that the Count would put him in some way of making his fortune when he should come to Quebec. When he at last arrived, the Count’s death had disappointed her expectations, and to add to her mortification, he appeared so listless, moody, and careworn,—so changed from the handsome, merry, light-hearted youth he had been at Long Arrow,—that she could only account for the alteration by the supposition that some Indian sorceress had cast an evil spell over him. But now, as she noticed Coral’s affectionate manner to Denis, and the confidence that seemed to subsist between them, and remembered that her haughty father was no longer alive to keep them asunder, her old project returned to her mind.
“I wonder what she’s got to say to him?” she said to her husband, as soon as the door was closed on Coral and Denis.
“Some child’s nonsense, I guess,” said Uncle Nick, working away at his fishing-net.
“It mightn’t be such child’s nonsense, if the boy got a rich wife that might make an independent gentleman of him all his life,” said Nelly.
Uncle Nick gave a long and contemptuous whistle.
