The Poor Clare | Page 4

of anguish, so steady, so immovable--so the
same to-day as it was yesterday--on her nurse's face. The little creature
in her arms began to utter its piteous cry, as it shivered with the cold.
Bridget stirred; she moved--she listened. Again that long whine; she
thought it was for her daughter; and what she had denied to her
nursling and mistress she granted to the dumb creature that Mary had
cherished. She opened the door, and took the dog from Madam's arms.
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