The Poor Clare | Page 5

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. It was no wonder that those who
dared to listen outside her door at night believed that she held converse
with some spirit; in short, she was unconsciously earning for herself the
dreadful reputation of a witch.
Her little dog, which had wandered half over the Continent with her,
was her only companion; a dumb remembrancer of happier days. Once
he was ill; and she carried him more than three miles, to ask about his
management from one who had been groom to the last Squire, and had

then been noted for his skill in all diseases of animals. Whatever this
man did, the dog recovered; and they who heard her thanks,
intermingled with blessings (that were rather promises of good fortune
than prayers), looked grave at his good luck when, next year, his ewes
twinned, and his meadow-grass was heavy and thick.
Now it so happened that, about the year seventeen hundred and eleven,
one of the guardians of the young squire, a certain Sir Philip Tempest,
bethought him of the good shooting there must be on his ward's
property; and in consequence he brought down four or five gentlemen,
of his friends, to stay for a week or two at the Hall. From all accounts,
they roystered and spent pretty freely. I never heard any of their names
but one, and that was Squire Gisborne's. He was hardly a middle-aged
man then; he had been much