Then Madam came in, and kissed and comforted the old woman, who
took but little notice of her or anything. And sending up Master Patrick
to the hall for fire and food, the sweet young lady never left her nurse
all that night. Next day, the Squire himself came down, carrying a
beautiful foreign picture—Our Lady of the Holy Heart, the Papists call
it. It is a picture of the Virgin, her heart pierced with arrows, each
arrow representing one of her great woes. That picture hung in Bridget’s
cottage when I first saw her; I have that picture now. Years went on. Mary was still abroad. Bridget was still and stern,
instead of active and passionate. The little dog, Mignon, was indeed her
darling. I have heard that she talked to it continually; although, to
most people, she was so silent. The Squire and Madam treated her with
the greatest consideration, and well they might; for to them she was as
devoted and faithful as ever. Mary wrote pretty often, and seemed
satisfied with her life. But at length the letters ceased—I hardly know
whether before or after a great and terrible sorrow came upon the house
of the Starkeys. The Squire sickened of a putrid fever; and Madam caught
it in nursing him, and died. You may be sure, Bridget let no other woman
tend her but herself; and in the very arms that had received her at her
birth, that sweet young woman laid her head down, and gave up her breath. The Squire recovered, in a fashion. He was never strong—he had never the
heart to smile again. He fasted and prayed more than ever; and people
did say that he tried to cut off the entail, and leave all the property
away to found a monastery abroad, of which he prayed that some day little
Squire Patrick might be the reverend father. But he could not do this,
for the strictness of the entail and the laws against the Papists. So he
could only appoint gentlemen of his own faith as guardians to his son,
with many charges about the lad’s soul, and a few about the land, and the
way it was to be held while he was a minor. Of course, Bridget was not
forgotten. He sent for her as he lay on his death-bed, and asked her if
she would rather have a sum down, or have a small annuity settled upon
her. She said at once she would have a sum down; for she thought of her
daughter, and how she could bequeath the money to her, whereas an annuity
would have died with her. So the Squire left her her cottage for life,
and a fair sum of money. And then he died, with as ready and willing a
heart as, I suppose, ever any gentleman took out of this world with him. The young Squire was carried off by his guardians, and Bridget was left
alone. I have said that she had not heard from Mary for some time. In her last
letter, she had told of travelling about with her mistress, who was the
English wife of some great foreign officer, and had spoken of her chances
of making a good marriage, without naming the gentleman’s name, keeping
it rather back as a pleasant surprise to her mother; his station and
fortune being, as I had afterwards reason to know, far superior to
anything she had a right to expect. Then came a long silence; and Madam
was dead, and the Squire was dead; and Bridget’s heart was gnawed by
anxiety, and she knew not whom to ask for news of her child. She could
not write, and the Squire had managed her communication with her
daughter. She walked off to Hurst; and got a good priest there—one whom
she had known at Antwerp—to write for her. But no answer came. It was
like crying into the awful stillness of night. One day, Bridget was missed by those neighbours who had been accustomed
to mark her goings-out and comings-in. She had never been sociable with
any of them; but the sight of her had become a part of their daily lives,
and slow wonder arose in their minds, as morning after morning came, and
her house-door remained closed, her window dead from any glitter, or
light of fire within. At length, some one tried the door; it was locked. Two or three laid their heads together, before daring to look in through
the blank unshuttered window. But, at last, they summoned up courage;
and then saw that Bridget’s absence from their little world was not the
result of accident or death, but of premeditation. Such small articles
of furniture as could be secured from the effects of time and damp by
being packed up, were stowed away in boxes. The picture of the Madonna
was taken down, and gone. In a word, Bridget had stolen away from her
home, and left no trace whither she was departed. I knew afterwards,
that she and her little dog had wandered off on the long search for her
lost daughter. She was too illiterate to have faith in letters, even had
she had the means of writing and sending many. But she had faith in her
own strong love, and believed that her passionate instinct would guide
her to her child. Besides, foreign travel was no new thing to her, and
she could speak enough of French to explain the object of her journey,
and had, moreover, the advantage of being, from her faith, a welcome
object of charitable hospitality at many a distant convent. But the
country people round Starkey Manor-house knew nothing of all this. They
wondered what had become of her, in a torpid, lazy fashion, and then left
off thinking of her altogether. Several years passed. Both Manor-house
and cottage were deserted. The young Squire lived far away under the
direction of his guardians. There were inroads of wool and corn into the
sitting-rooms of the Hall; and there was some low talk, from time to
time, among the hinds and country people whether it would not be as well
to break into old Bridget’s cottage, and save such of her goods as were
left from the moth and rust which must be making sad havoc. But this
idea was always quenched by the recollection of her strong character and
passionate anger; and tales of her masterful spirit, and vehement force
of will, were whispered about, till the very thought of offending her, by
touching any article of hers, became invested with a kind of horror: it
was believed that, dead or alive, she would not fail to avenge it. Suddenly she came home; with as little noise or note of preparation as
she had departed. One day some one noticed a thin, blue curl of smoke
ascending from her chimney. Her door stood open to the noonday sun; and,
ere many hours had elapsed, some one had seen an old
travel-and-sorrow-stained woman dipping her pitcher in the well; and
said, that the dark, solemn eyes that looked up at him were more like
Bridget Fitzgerald’s than any one else’s in this world; and yet, if it
were she, she looked as if she had been scorched in the flames of hell,
so brown, and scared, and fierce a creature did she seem. By-and-by many
saw her; and those who met her eye once cared not to be caught looking at
her again. She had got into the habit of perpetually talking to herself;
nay, more, answering herself, and varying her tones according to the side
she took at the moment.