So I betook
myself to the nearest church I had seen, three miles back on the road I
had come, sure that close to that I should find an inn of some kind; and
early the next morning I set off back to Coldholme, by a field-path which
my host assured me I should find a shorter cut than the road I had taken
the night before. It was a cold, sharp morning; my feet left prints in
the sprinkling of hoar-frost that covered the ground; nevertheless, I saw
an old woman, whom I instinctively suspected to be the object of my
search, in a sheltered covert on one side of my path. I lingered and
watched her. She must have been considerably above the middle size in
her prime, for when she raised herself from the stooping position in
which I first saw her, there was something fine and commanding in the
erectness of her figure. She drooped again in a minute or two, and
seemed looking for something on the ground, as, with bent head, she
turned off from the spot where I gazed upon her, and was lost to my
sight. I fancy I missed my way, and made a round in spite of the
landlord’s directions; for by the time I had reached Bridget’s cottage
she was there, with no semblance of hurried walk or discomposure of any
kind. The door was slightly ajar. I knocked, and the majestic figure
stood before me, silently awaiting the explanation of my errand. Her
teeth were all gone, so the nose and chin were brought near together; the
gray eyebrows were straight, and almost hung over her deep, cavernous
eyes, and the thick white hair lay in silvery masses over the low, wide,
wrinkled forehead. For a moment, I stood uncertain how to shape my
answer to the solemn questioning of her silence. “Your name is Bridget Fitzgerald, I believe?”

She bowed her head in assent. “I have something to say to you. May I come in? I am unwilling to keep
you standing.”

“You cannot tire me,” she said, and at first she seemed inclined to deny
me the shelter of her roof. But the next moment—she had searched the
very soul in me with her eyes during that instant—she led me in, and
dropped the shadowing hood of her gray, draping cloak, which had
previously hid part of the character of her countenance. The cottage was
rude and bare enough. But before the picture of the Virgin, of which I
have made mention, there stood a little cup filled with fresh primroses. While she paid her reverence to the Madonna, I understood why she had
been out seeking through the clumps of green in the sheltered copse. Then she turned round, and bade me be seated. The expression of her
face, which all this time I was studying, was not bad, as the stories of
my last night’s landlord had led me to expect; it was a wild, stern,
fierce, indomitable countenance, seamed and scarred by agonies of
solitary weeping; but it was neither cunning nor malignant. “My name is Bridget Fitzgerald,” said she, by way of opening our
conversation. “And your husband was Hugh Fitzgerald, of Knock Mahon, near Kildoon, in
Ireland?”

A faint light came into the dark gloom of her eyes. “He was.”

“May I ask if you had any children by him?”

The light in her eyes grew quick and red. She tried to speak, I could
see; but something rose in her throat, and choked her, and until she
could speak calmly, she would fain not speak at all before a stranger. In a minute or so she said—“I had a daughter—one Mary Fitzgerald,”—then
her strong nature mastered her strong will, and she cried out, with a
trembling wailing cry: “Oh, man! what of her?—what of her?”

She rose from her seat, and came and clutched at my arm, and looked in my
eyes. There she read, as I suppose, my utter ignorance of what had
become of her child; for she went blindly back to her chair, and sat
rocking herself and softly moaning, as if I were not there; I not daring
to speak to the lone and awful woman. After a little pause, she knelt
down before the picture of Our Lady of the Holy Heart, and spoke to her
by all the fanciful and poetic names of the Litany. “O Rose of Sharon! O Tower of David! O Star of the Sea! have ye no
comfort for my sore heart? Am I for ever to hope? Grant me at least
despair!”—and so on she went, heedless of my presence. Her prayers grew
wilder and wilder, till they seemed to me to touch on the borders of
madness and blasphemy. Almost involuntarily, I spoke as if to stop her. “Have you any reason to think that your daughter is dead?”

She rose from her knees, and came and stood before me. “Mary Fitzgerald is dead,” said she. “I shall never see her again in the
flesh. No tongue ever told me; but I know she is dead. I have yearned
so to see her, and my heart’s will is fearful and strong: it would have
drawn her to me before now, if she had been a wanderer on the other side
of the world. I wonder often it has not drawn her out of the grave to
come and stand before me, and hear me tell her how I loved her. For,
sir, we parted unfriends.”

I knew nothing but the dry particulars needed for my lawyer’s quest, but
I could not help feeling for the desolate woman; and she must have read
the unusual sympathy with her wistful eyes. “Yes, sir, we did. She never knew how I loved her; and we parted
unfriends; and I fear me that I wished her voyage might not turn out
well, only meaning,—O, blessed Virgin! you know I only meant that she
should come home to her mother’s arms as to the happiest place on earth;
but my wishes are terrible—their power goes beyond my thought—and there
is no hope for me, if my words brought Mary harm.”

“But,” I said, “you do not know that she is dead. Even now, you hoped
she might be alive. Listen to me,” and I told her the tale I have
already told you, giving it all in the driest manner, for I wanted to
recall the clear sense that I felt almost sure she had possessed in her
younger days, and by keeping up her attention to details, restrain the
vague wildness of her grief. She listened with deep attention, putting from time to time such
questions as convinced me I had to do with no common intelligence,
however dimmed and shorn by solitude and mysterious sorrow. Then she
took up her tale; and in few brief words, told me of her wanderings
abroad in vain search after her daughter; sometimes in the wake of
armies, sometimes in camp, sometimes in city. The lady, whose
waiting-woman Mary had gone to be, had died soon after the date of her
last letter home; her husband, the foreign officer, had been serving in
Hungary, whither Bridget had followed him, but too late to find him. Vague rumours reached her that Mary had made a great marriage: and this
sting of doubt was added,—whether the mother might not be close to her
child under her new name, and even hearing of her every day; and yet
never recognizing the lost one under the appellation she then bore.