Nellie Netterville; or, One of the Transplanted, Chapter III-V [pp. 175-190]

Nellie Netterville.
in a group of tall Irish trees, which
sheltered its little cemetery. This was
not the parish church, but a private
chapel, built by the Netterville family for their own particular use; and
here their infants had been baptized,
their daughters married, and their
old men and women laid reverently
to their last slumbers, ever since
they had established their existence
in the land.
Mrs. Netterville could not resist a
sigh as she glanced toward its venerable walls. It seemed as if it were
only yesterday that she had gone there
to lay down her husband in his lowly grave, hoping and praying, out of
the depths of her own great grief,
that she might soon be permitted to
sleep quietly beside him. And now,
even this sad hope was to be hers
no longer; this poor possession of six
feet of earth was to be wrested from
her; strangers would lay her in a distant grave, and even in death she
would be separated from her husband.
The thought was too painful to bear
much lingering upon it, and turning
her back upon the church, Mrs. Netterville followed a path which lay
close under the castle walls, and led
to a court-yard at a considerable distance. Round this court-yard were
grouped stables and other offices,
which, having been built at different
periods and without any consecutive
idea as a whole, presented rather the
appearance of a collection of stunted
farm-houses, than of the regular outbuildings of an important mansion.
Each of these houses had a private
entrance of its own; and opening the
door of one of them, Mrs. Netterville
looked in quietly and entered. The
interior was a room, poorly but yet
decently furnished, and on a low settle-bed at the farther end lay a young
man, who, with his sunken eyes and
hollow cheeks, had all the look of a
person just rescued from the jaws of
death. A knapsack on the floor, a
pike and musket in one corner of the
room, and a steel cap and buff coat
in another, seemed to announce him
as one of the band of successful soldiers who were even then in possession of the castle.
Poor fellow! he lay, with closed
eyes, wan and weary, on his bed, looking, at that moment, like anything
rather than like a successful soldier;
but he lifted his head as he caught
the noise of the door creaking on its
hinges, and his face brightened into
an expression of joy and gratitude
pleasant to behold when he discovered Mrs. Netterville standing on the
threshold.
"Can you ever forgive me?" she said,
going up to him at once. "I cannot
easily forgive myself for having left
you so long alone. In the grief and
anguish in which I have been plunged
all day, I had well-nigh forgotten your
existence, and you must be faint, I
fear me, for want of nourishment."
"Nay, madam," he answered, gently, indeed, but yet with a good deal
of that comfortable self-assurance
in spiritual matters which seems to
have been an especial inheritance of
"Cromwell's saints." "If you have
forgotten, the Lord at least hath been
mindful of his servant, and hath cast
so deep a slumber on my senses, that
I have been altogether unconscious
of the lapse of time, or of the absence
of those carnal comforts which, however the spirit may rebel against them,
are nevertheless not altogether to be
despised, as being the means by which
we receive strength to do the bidding
of our Master."
Mrs. Netterville could not help
thinking that the posset-cup and
soothing draught, which she had administered the night before, might
have had as much as any especial interposition of Providence to say to
his seasonable slumbers; but the