Love of Brothers
by Katharine Tynan · English · Gutenberg #27445 · 438,245 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Love of Brothers
Author: Katharine Tynan
Release date: December 7, 2008 [eBook #27445]
Most recently updated: January 4, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27445
Credits: Produced by Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOVE OF BROTHERS ***
Produced by Al Haines
LOVE OF BROTHERS
BY
KATHARINE TYNAN
Author of "The Middle Years," "The Years of the Shadows," "The West
Wind," "Miss Gascoigne," etc., etc.
LONDON
CONSTABLE & COMPANY LTD.
1919
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I O'GARAS OF CASTLE TALBOT
II PATSY REMEMBERS
III A TEA PARTY
IV FROM THE PAST
V THE HAVEN
VI STELLA
VII BRADY'S BULL
VIII SIR SHAWN SEES A GHOST
IX THE LETTER
X MRS. WADE
XI THE ONLY PRETTY RING-TIME
XII MOTHER-LOVE
XIII THE OLD LOVE
XIV STELLA GOES VISITING
XV THE SHADOW
XVI THE DEAD HAND
XVII MISS BRENNAN
XVIII THE DAUGHTER
XIX ANGER CRUEL AS DEATH
XX SIR SHAWN HAS A VISITOR
XXI STELLA IS SICK
XXII A SUDDEN BLOW
XXIII THE HOME-COMING
XXIV THE SICK WATCHERS
XXV IN WHICH TERRY FINDS A DEAD MAN
XXVI MOTHER AND DAUGHTER
XXVII THE STORY IS TOLD
XXVIII THE VIGIL
XXIX THE LAKH OF RUPEES
INTRODUCTORY
It was a night of bright moonlight that made for pitchy shadows under
wall or tree.
Patsy Kenny was looking for the goat, she having broken her tether. He
had been driven forth by his fierce old grandfather with threats of the
most awful nature if he should return without the goat.
The tears were not yet dry on Patsy's small face. He had kneaded them
in with his knuckles, but the smears caused by the process were not
visible in the moonlight, even if there had been any one to see them.
It was not only the hardship of being driven out when the meal of hot
potatoes was on the table, to search for that "ould divil" of a goat,
and his sense of the injustice which had put the blame of the goat's
straying on to his narrow shoulders. The old, in Patsy's knowledge of
them, were crabbed and unjust. That was something for the young to
take in the day's work. It was Patsy's fears of the supernatural that
kept him creeping along in the shadow of the hedge, now and again
stopping to weep a little over his troubles, or to listen fearfully
like a frightened hare before going on again.
Why, close to the road by which he must go to seek the goat there was
the tomb in which Captain Hercules O'Hart lay buried. People about
Killesky did not take that road if they could help it. The tomb was a
terror to all those who must pass the road by night, and to their
horses if they were riding or driving. It was well known that no horse
would pass by the tomb without endeavouring to avoid it, and if forced
or cajoled into accomplishing the passage, would emerge trembling and
sweating. Some unimaginative person had suggested that the terror of
the horses was due to the thunder of the invisible waterfall where the
river tumbled over its weir, just below the Mount on which old Hercules
had chosen to be buried. The horses knew better than that. Nothing
natural said the people would make a horse behave in such a way. The
dumb beast knew what it saw and that was nothing good.
The anguish of Patsy's thoughts caused him suddenly to "bawl" as he
would have put it himself.
"Isn't it an awful thing?" he asked, addressing the quiet bog-world
under the moon, "to think of a little lad like me havin' to be out in
the night facin' all them ghosts and that ould heart-scald of a man
burnin' his knees at home be the fire? What'll I do at all if that
tormint of a goat is up strayin' on the Mount? It would be like what
the divil 'ud do to climb up there, unless it was to be the churchyard
below, and all them ould bones stickin' up through the clay.
"There isn't wan out this night but meself," he went on. "It's awful
to think of every wan inside their houses an' me wanderin' about be me
lone. It isn't wan ghost but twinty I might meet betune this an' the
cross-roads, let alone fairies and pookas. Won't I just welt the divil
out o' the oul' goat when I ketch her?"
A little whinny close to him made him look round with a fearful hope.
He saw neither pooka nor fairy, but the long horns of the animal he was
in search of.
He snatched joyfully at her chain, forgetting all his anger. Indeed
none knew better than the goat Patsy's gentleness with all living
creatures. Her mouth was full of grass. He remembered his
grandfather's speech as he tethered the little goat on the bare
hillside above the house.
"My poor girl," he had said, "you've got little enough to ate, but then
you've a beautiful view."
"Sure she strayed," said Patsy in extenuation, "because she was hungry,
the creature."
So he had not had to leave the brightly lit bog-road for that black
tunnel of trees just beyond which led to old Hercules' tomb, and the
well where the woman fell in and the fields where old Michael Halloran,
who had been steward and general overseer to the O'Harts, was reputed
to be seen night after night--hedging and fencing the lands and he
years dead.
"You was a good little goat," said Patsy in his great relief. "Come
home now and I'll milk you: and maybe that cross ould man would let me
have a sup o' tay for my supper."
He had pulled the goat down the bank into the dry ditch. It was a good
thing he had stopped to "bawl," else maybe he'd have missed the goat
who had been having her fill of Mrs. McEnroe's after-grass. Still he
wondered now at his temerity since the bawlin' might have brought
_them_ upon him disturbin' their sleep that way.
He suddenly caught the sound of horses' feet coming along the bog-road
towards him. He stopped and listened, holding firmly on to the goat.
The bog-road was light as day. Two people were walking their horses
side by side, a dog at their heels. "It'll be Mr. Terence Comerford,
an' Sir Shawn O'Gara, comin' home together," Patsy said to himself.
"What at all would be keepin' them out till this hour of the night,
unless it was to be talkin' to Bridyeen Sweeney? Quare ways young
gentlemen has that they'd be talkin' to a poor girl an' maybe turnin'
her head, let alone settin' the neighbours to talkin' about her. God
help her."
In this musing, be it said, Patsy was but repeating the talk of his
elders, although he was naturally what is called an old-fashioned child.
He crouched low in the ditch while the horses came on at a walking
pace. The riders were talking, one in a low voice, so low that Patsy
could not make out what he said. This one was slender and young. The
other, young also, but big and burly, was riding a horse which
apparently did not like the walking pace. She--it was a mare--curveted
and caracoled in the road, which was one reason why Patsy could not
hear what was being said. The boy peered out, with fear in his heart.
The knowledge of horses was born in him. His father had been
stud-groom to Mr. Comerford of Inch. By and by Patsy meant to escape
from his old tyrant and become a stable-boy at Inch or at Castle
Talbot. Perhaps in time he might come to be stud-groom, though that
was a dizzy height towards which as yet his imagination hardly carried
him.
"Mr. Terence has drink taken," said Patsy, in his own mind. "He's not
steady in the saddle. An', glory be to goodness, it's Spitfire he's
ridin'." Patsy was at home in many stables where the grooms and
stable-helpers condescended to accept his willing aid in running
messages or the like. "What would the Misthress or Miss Mary say if
they was to see him now? Look well to him, Sir Shawn, look well to
him, or it's killin' himself he'll be!"
This apostrophe was unspoken. Mr. Terence Comerford had brought
Spitfire under control and she walked more soberly. The talk had
ceased for moment. It broke out again. As the riders went on their
way Sir Shawn's voice sounded as though he was pleading hard with his
friend. They had always been the most attached and devoted friends
from boyhood.
Terence Comerford's laugh came back borne upon a little wind.
"It'll be," said Patsy in his thoughts, "that Sir Shawn'll be biddin'
Mr. Terence to have sinse. A quare thing it is, and he all but
promised to Miss Mary that he'd be down at Dowd's every night since she
and the Misthress went to Dublin, talking to poor Bridyeen. 'Tis
sorrow the crathur'll have, no less, if she goes listenin' to Mr.
Terence. 'Tis a wonder Sir Shawn wouldn't be givin' him better advice.
Unless it was to be--there's some do be sayin' he's fond of Miss Mary
too."
All gossip of his elders, told round the turf-fire at night when Patsy
was supposed to be fast asleep in the settle bed, instead of "cockin'
his ears" for grown people's talk.
He peered out with wide eyes in the direction the riders had taken.
His small bullet head and narrow shoulders threw a shadow on the
moonlit road.
"Sir Shawn 'ud have a right to be seein' Mr. Terence home to Inch
itself," he thought. "It isn't alone ould Hercules an' the river
tumblin' over the weir an' the terrible dark road, but there's ould
Halloran's ghost on the long avenue to Inch, and there's the ghost of
the minister's wife by the churchyard. And Spitfire, that would take
fright at a pinkeen much less a ghost, under him, and Mr. Terence be
the way of him none too steady."
Mr. Terence's laughter came back on the wind, and was caught up and
repeated by something that lurked in the Wood of the Echoes, as the
people called it, which grew on a spit of solid land that reached out
into the bog. Those echoes were difficult to explain. Why should a
little wood of slender trees within a low wall catch and fling back
human voices?
The echo repeating that mocking laughter, out there in the bog, was a
new element of terror to Patsy. He had better be getting away from
this queer unlucky place before the riders were out of hearing. The
little old grandfather, with his blazing eyes of wrath and the stick
concealed somewhere behind his coat-tails, his most familiar aspect to
Patsy, was better than this solitude, with that old Echo across the bog
there cackling in that unchancy way. Soon, very soon, the lower road,
overhung with trees, pitch-black, where one had to pass by old
Hercules' tomb, just above the fall of the river over its weir, would
swallow Mr. Terence, while Sir Shawn's way would wind upwards towards
the mountains. Unless indeed Sir Shawn was to go home to Inch with Mr.
Terence, seeing he was riding Spitfire and so many perils to be passed,
and him not too steady by the look of him.
Patsy trotted along in the wake of the riders, his bare feet making a
soft padding noise in the dust of the road. His way was Sir Shawn's
way. The wealth of the world would not have induced Patsy to go down
under the black shade of the trees into the assemblage of all the
ghosts.
The little goat followed with docility at his heels, uttering now and
again a plaintive bleat of protest at the pace.
Suddenly there came a sound which, filling Patsy's heart with a
concrete terror, banished all the shadowy terrors. It was the sharp
slash of a whip, followed by the sound of a horse in mad flight.
"It's Spitfire, it's Spitfire!" cried Patsy to the moon and the stars.
"She'll kill Mr. Terence. The world knows she'd never take the whip."
It seemed to him as though there were two horses in the headlong
flight, but he could not be sure. He stumbled along, sobbing in his
haste and calling out inarticulate appeals to Heaven, to Sir Shawn, to
save Mr. Terence, while the clatter of the horses' feet died in the
distance. He even forgot his terror of the dark road which closed
about him as he followed on Spitfire's track. It might be that Sir
Shawn was catching up with the runaway horse, ready to snatch at the
bridle if only he could be in time.
Suddenly Patsy, sobbing and shaking, cannoned into some one, something,
in the darkness of the trees. A man's voice cursed him low and
deep,--no ghostly voice, nor that of the countryside, an unfamiliar
voice and speech to Patsy. His slender little body was caught in a
fierce grip. He was lifted and dashed on to the road. If it had been
a stony road, instead of the yielding bog, there would have been an end
of Patsy's story. As it was he lay very quietly, while the little goat
went home without him.
CHAPTER I
O'GARAS OF CASTLE TALBOT
Patsy Kenny, stud-groom to Sir Shawn O'Gara, a quiet man, devoted to
his horses and having a wonderful way with them, sometimes allowed his
mind to wander back to the night Mr. Terence Comerford was killed and
the days that followed.
He could recall the inquest on poor Mr. Terence, himself, with a
bandaged head, keeping the one eye he had available fixed on the
gentleman who asked him questions. He knew that Sir Shawn O'Gara was
present, his face marble pale and his eyes full of a strange anguish.
Well, that was not to be wondered at. The gentleman who asked the
questions made sympathetic references to the unusual friendship between
Sir Shawn and Mr. Comerford. Patsy had been aware of the nervous
tension in Sir Shawn's face, the occasional quiver of a nostril, "Like
as if he was a horse, a spirity one, aisy frightened, like Spitfire,"
Patsy had thought.
He remembered that tense anguish of Sir Shawn's face now, as he sat on
the trunk of a fallen tree in the paddock of the foals at Castle
Talbot. The foals were running with their mothers, exquisite
creatures, of the most delicate slenderness. The paddock was full of
the lush grass of June. The mares were contentedly grazing. Now and
again one lifted her head and sniffed the air with the wind in her
mane, as if at the lightest sound she would take fright.
Patsy had had a hard tussle that morning with an ill-tempered horse he
was breaking, and he felt tired out. He had no idea of compelling a
horse with a whip. Sir Shawn had bought this horse at a fair a short
time before. He was jet-black and they had called him Mustapha. That
was Master Terry's name for him, a queer heathenish name to Patsy's
mind, but all Master Terry did and all the mistress, Master Terry's
mother did, was right in Patsy's eyes, so Mustapha the horse was called.
He was certainly an ill-tempered brute, with a lot of the devil in him,
but Patsy Kenny was never angry with a horse; it was an invaluable
quality in a stud-groom. Patsy was wont to say that when he found a
horse wicked he looked for the man. There was no evidence of the man
so far as their record of Mustapha went. He had been bought from a
little old man as pink as a baby and with a smiling innocence of
aspect, so small that when Mustapha tossed his head the little man,
hanging on by the rope-bridle, was lifted in the air and dropped again.
"That crathur," said Patsy to himself, "would never have done the horse
a wrong. I wonder where he got him from an' who had the rearin' of
him. I'm surprised the master cared to handle him. He's as like as
two pins to Spitfire. Where was it they said Spitfire went? Some
mountainy man bought her for a five-pound note I've heard tell."
He pulled out a fine red handkerchief and mopped his forehead with it.
He'd had two hours of it trying to "insinse some rayson" into
Mustapha's head. He had not made much progress. Mustapha was still
kicking and squealing in his loose-box. The sounds reached Patsy Kenny
where he sat on his log and made him sad. Gentle as he was he thought
he had an understanding of even Mustapha. The ears back, the whites of
the eyes showing, the wild nostrils, the tense muscles under the skin
of black satin, were something of an unhappiness in his mind. Some
time or other Mustapha must have been ill-treated.
He put his head down on his hand. He was really tired out. So he was
unaware of the approach over the grass towards him of two people till
their shadows fell upon him and he looked up.
"That brute has taken it out of you, Patsy," said the elder man, who
had a curious elegance of face and figure. Years had not coarsened Sir
Shawn O'Gara. He was still slight and active. His white hair was in
almost startling contrast with the darkly foreign face, the small black
moustache, the dark eyes, almost too large and soft and heavily lashed
for a man's eyes.
The boy who was with him was very unlike his father. He had taken
after his mother, who had once been Mary Creagh, of whom some one had
said she had the colour of the foxes. The boy had his mother's reddish
brown eyes and hair, something of the same colour underlying his fair
skin as it did hers. He had the white, even teeth, the flashing and
radiant smile. Mary Creagh had been a beautiful girl, with a look of
motherliness even in her immature girlhood. As a wife and mother that
aspect of her beauty had developed. Many a strange confidence had been
brought to Mary Creagh, and later to Lady O'Gara. She had a way of
opening hearts and lips with that soft, steadfast glance of hers. Her
full bosom looked as though it were made for a child's head or a man's
to rest upon.
"He'll come round, he'll come round," said Patsy. "He'll have been
hurted some time or another. Whin he gets to know me he'll be biddable
enough."
"Oh, I know your theories," Sir Shawn said, a smile breaking over the
melancholy of his face. "You'll never give in that a horse could be
cursed with a natural ill-temper. But there are ill-tempered people:
why not ill-tempered horses?"
"Bedad, I dunno!" said Patsy, scratching his head thoughtfully. He
stood up with a jerk. It had occurred to him suddenly that he was
sitting while the gentlemen were standing. "I never could see inside a
human. I don't know how it is at all that I can see the mind of a
horse."
"You're a wonderful man, Patsy," said the boy gaily. "You are wasted
as our stud-groom. The scientific beggars would like to get hold of a
man who could see into the mind of a horse. Only we couldn't spare
you. I'm afraid Mustapha would only listen to reason from you, and
I've set my heart on riding him this Autumn."
"You won't do that, Master Terry, till I've had a good many more talks
with the horse. I'd be sorry to see you ridin' him yet, sir."
Terry O'Gara, brilliant in white flannels,--he had been playing tennis
with his mother's distant young cousin, Eileen Creagh--seemed to draw
the afternoon sun on to his spotlessness. Patsy Kenny, a little dazed
with fatigue, blinked at his whiteness against the green grass.
A mare came trotting up to them with her foal. The mare allowed
herself to be fondled, but the little foal was very wild and cantered
away when they tried to stroke him.
The big paddock was a pleasant sight with the mares and their foals
wandering over the young grass. The trees surrounding the paddock had
not yet lost their first fresh green: and the white red-roofed
stabling, newly built to accommodate the racing stud, made a vivid high
light against the coppices.
The three wandered on from one mare and foal to another. Patsy,
chewing a straw, offered the opinion that Magda's foal was the best of
the lot. Magda belonged to her Ladyship.
"There won't be a foal in it like that little wan," said Patsy, looking
at a tall chestnut foal, the slender legs of which seemed as though
they might break with a little pressure, so delicate were they. "The
filly won't be in it, Master Terry, wid your Mamma's horse. I've never
seen a better foal. He'll win the Derby yet. Woa, Magda, woa, my
beauty."
He was trying to get close to the mare, she being restive. Suddenly
she uttered a joyous whinny and started off down the field, the little
foal at her heels, the long manes of both flying in the wind.
"She knows her Ladyship has sugar for her. An' there's Miss Eileen. I
never knew a young lady as much afraid of a horse as Miss Eileen. You
should tache her better, Master Terry."
They stood by a gate to look at the horses which at a little distance
beyond a small enclosure hung their long sleek noses across a five-foot
paling. The points of the horses had to be discussed. Patsy had quite
forgotten his fatigue. He opened the gate and they crossed the narrow
strip between that and the paling. A second gate was opened and they
passed through.
While they were looking at the horses they were joined by Lady O'Gara
and Miss Creagh, the latter, a delicately fair girl with a mass of fine
golden hair caught up with many hairpins a-top of her small head,
keeping close to Lady O'Gara.
Lady O'Gara was laughing. Her husband sometimes called her the
Laughing Goddess. She had two aspects to her beauty--one when she was
soft and motherly, the other when she rallied those she loved and
sparkled with merriment. Her still beautiful copper-coloured hair had
hardly a white thread in it. She was very charming to look at in her
matronly beauty.
"I've had to defend poor Eileen from the mares," she said. "They were
impudent, crowding around me for sugar and sticking their noses in my
pocket. Magda and Brunette nearly came to blows. I had to push them
off with my whip. Poor Eileen!"
"I'm so sorry you were frightened," Terry O'Gara said, drawing a little
nearer to the girl and looking into her blue eyes.
The others had gone on.
"You won't be afraid with me," said the boy, who had just passed out of
Sandhurst; and was feeling immensely proud of his commission and his
sword and all they betokened, although he talked lazily about "cutlery"
and the pleasure of getting into mufti, making his mother's eyes dance.
"If you like, we will keep behind," he said. "If you are not
accustomed to it, it is rather alarming to be caught into a herd of
horses. My mother is so used to them that she cannot imagine any one
being afraid."
The horses were coming in a long string from the other end of the
paddock, whinnying and neighing, shaking the ground as they came. The
girl drew back towards the hedge.
"It's only rough love," the boy said. "Patsy Kenny can do anything
with the horses. They quarrel if he takes more notice of one than
another."
"They won't hurt your mother?" the girl said anxiously. "There she is
in the midst of them. Is it safe?"
"Quite safe. Nothing will happen to Mother while Father and Patsy
Kenny are there. What a frightened child you are!"
Miss Creagh's soft red mouth widened into a smile which had amusement
in it. She was six years older than the boy who called her a
frightened child. The smile was gone before he could see it.
"I'm afraid I'm rather a coward," she said meekly. "Father has always
said that it was absurd for a soldier's daughter to be alarmed of so
many things."
Terry O'Gara thought at the moment that it was the most beautiful and
appealing thing in the world for a girl to be frightened of many
things, when the girl happened to be as pretty as Eileen Creagh, and he
was the valiant youth who was to protect her from her terrors.
Although he liked the feeling of protecting her he fell in with her
suggestion that they should go back and talk to the foals. Miss Creagh
was certainly a coward, for she cried out when a horse showed any
evidence of friendliness; but when Terry suggested that they should go
to the garden and look for strawberries she did not fall in with the
suggestion.
"Let us wait for your mother here," she said, having gained the safe
shelter of the space between the palings and the gate. "You are sure
she is quite safe? Just look at her among those wild horses! There
couldn't be ... an accident?"
He laughed at her terrors.
"Mother was born in a stable, so to speak," he said. "She has a way
with the horses. But how fond you are of her! I am so grateful to you
for appreciating my mother as she deserves."
"She is an angel," said the girl fervently.
"Well, I think so." He laughed rather shyly. "It would not be easy
for a boy to have better parents. Father is quite unlike Mother, of
course ... but ... I have a tremendous admiration for him, all the
same. I'll tell you a secret. I believe up to this time I have wanted
more than anything else to please my father. When I had to work for
exams. I hated, or any stunt of that kind, when I--oh, I oughtn't to be
talking about myself. It isn't that I love Mother less, but Mother is
so happy. She would always find something good in my failures.
But--to see Father's face light up...!"
"He looks rather sad," Miss Creagh said wistfully.
"Yes, though he can be uncommonly jolly. We have had such rags
together in London. Why, here is Shot." He stooped to fondle the head
of a beautiful red setter. "He must have got shut up in the garden.
What I can't understand about Shot is his indifference to you."
"He knows that in my secret heart I'm afraid of dogs,--a dreadful
admission, isn't it? I think it was our old nurse. I can always
remember her driving a dog out of the nursery. 'Nasty thing!' she used
to say. 'You shall not come near my baby.' I suppose I got the idea
quite in babyhood that a dog was something noxious. Not that the
others minded. The house was always full of dogs."
"Oh, you'll get over that. Won't she, Shot? Do you think his hair and
eyes are like my Mother's?"
"Like?" Miss Creagh was puzzled. "Oh, surely not! How could a dog's
hair and eyes be like a person's. Your beautiful mother! It seems
such an odd comparison."
"Oh, well--Shot is beautiful too."
Despite his infatuation Terry felt a little disappointed in Miss Creagh.
Sir Shawn and Lady O'Gara had gone on into the next paddock, which
belonged to the young mares. There was a momentary excitement. One of
the horses had got through after them and was racing up and down
between the hurdles whinnying loudly. By the time he was secured and
put back in his proper quarters the young people were out of sight.
CHAPTER II
PATSY REMEMBERS
"Shot's a good dog," Patsy Kenny was wont to observe in his slow way,
"an' his father before him was a good dog. Yet I wouldn't be sayin'
but what ould Shot, the grandfather, wasn't the pick o' the basket."
Old Shot had lived for five years after Sir Shawn O'Gara's marriage to
Mary Creagh, which had sorely offended and alienated Mrs. Comerford,
who had brought up the girl from childhood and loved her like a
daughter. When he had died it was by Lady O'Gara's wish that the dog
was buried in the grass-plot just outside the drawing-room window. She
could see the mound from the window recess, where she sat to write her
letters, in which she kept her work-table, the book she was reading,
and various other belongings; she had screened it off so that the deep
recess was like a little room to itself.
"When I look up and see the mound instead of Shot it always hurts me,"
she had said in early days. "But then I feel that he likes to be near."
"He was so fond of you, Mary," her husband often said, "fonder even, I
believe, than he was of me."
"Oh, no, Shawn, not that. No one could take your place with Shot. But
he accepted me, dear old dog, and I am very proud of it."
That was before Shot's son had aspired to take his father's place,
while he was still indeed one of a likely litter of puppies in the
stable-yard, just beginning to be cast off by Judy who had other things
to do in a sporting Autumn besides looking after a lot of sprawling,
big-pawed puppies, who were quite independent of her and becoming
rather unmanageable.
It was also before old Shot had begun to return to his friends as
nothing more tangible than a padding of soft paws on the stairs, a
movement under the dining-table, where he had been accustomed to lie in
life, a sound of a dog lying down with a sigh, or getting up from the
hearthrug before the billiard-room fire.
These manifestations had sometimes perturbed visitors to Castle Talbot;
but intimates at the house had come to accept as its owners did these
sounds of a presence that was never seen. No one was any longer
incommoded by it except young Shot, who would get up uncomfortably and
lie at a distance, his nose on his paws, regarding with a wistful
melancholy the place from which he had been driven forth.
"Meself an' ould Shot'll never lave the Master till we have to," Patsy
Kenny had said to Lady O'Gara, to whom he was as much attached as old
Shot had been.
"Me an' Shot'll stick by the Master," he had often said in his own
mind, and sometimes aloud, when he was out in the paddocks with the
horses and there was no human ear to listen to him. Then he would have
a vision of a young man in a grey suit, slender and elegant, face
downward on the grass and he calling out to some one to forgive him.
"Sure God help him, he has suffered," he would add as the memory came
to him.
Patsy, who had been taking a short cut by the wood to the stable-yard
when he had come upon that sight,--it was long ago--had gone away
terrified and aching with pity for the misery he had surprised. Sir
Shawn O'Gara had interfered once to save little Patsy from a beating
and had been rewarded disproportionately by a silent ardent devotion,
at which no one,--he himself least of all,--had ever guessed. Patsy
had liked Mr. Terence Comerford too. He was handsomer, the people
thought, than Sir Shawn, being golden-haired, blue-eyed and ruddy, and
very big and broad-shouldered, with a jolly greeting for every one.
Many a time he had let Patsy hold his horse and flung him a sixpence
for it. The peasants had no eye for the beauty and distinction of Sir
Shawn O'Gara's looks, his elegant slenderness, the somewhat mournful
depths of his eyes which were of so dark a grey that they were almost
black. Too foreign looking, the people pronounced him, their idea of
foreigners being bounded by their knowledge of a greatly-daring Italian
organ-grinder who had once come over the mountains to Killesky with a
little red-coated monkey sitting a-top of the organ, to the great joy
of the children. That had been a record rainy season, and the
organ-grinder and the monkey had both sickened for the sun, and would
have died if old Lady O'Gara, who was half-Italian herself, had not
heard the tale and sent the man back to his own country.
"He'd be askin' Mr. Terence to forgive him because maybe he was vexed
wid him about poor Bridyeen," Patsy had often thought since. "An'
maybe because Miss Mary Creagh had always liked him better than Mr.
Terence, though she was too much afraid of Mrs. Comerford, to say it.
Or maybe 'twas that he couldn't save him from Spitfire. Not but what
she was kind enough, the crathur, if he hadn't took to floggin' her."
Very rarely Patsy thought on the man who had cursed him in the ditch
that night long ago. He was only an accidental terror of the night
crowded with terrors, from which Patsy had reached his grandfather's
door and tumbled in "about the flure" in a fainting condition. He had
queer hazy memories that the old man was kind, that the two little eyes
which had often blazed fury at him, were dim with tears. He did not
know if he dreamt it or not that he had heard his grandfather telling
the other old men around the turf fire that he, Patsy, was a good
little lad, but that he had to be strict with him to keep him good.
When he had got about again he had heard that Sir Shawn O'Gara had been
very ill, that the shock of his friend's death had been too much for
him. Then one day the old Lady O'Gara had come to the cottage on the
edge of the bog to ask for him. It had got out that Patsy had seen
something of the terrible happening of that night, and she had been
very gentle and friendly with him, and had asked him if he would not
like to go to school; and afterwards what he would like to do.
He could see her delicate profile now if he closed his eyes, the olive
skin, the deep velvety eyes, the red lips. Even the country people did
not deny Lady O'Gara beauty, of a foreign sort. Though they would
never admire her as they admired Miss Mary Creagh.
Soon after Patsy had gone to school Lady O'Gara died, and a year later
Sir Shawn and Miss Mary Creagh were married. By this time Patsy had
become a favourite pupil with Mr. O'Connell, at the National Schools,
who thought that in time he might qualify for a "vit," seeing his love
for animals; but perhaps Mr. O'Connell's liking for Patsy was only
because he found in him an equal mind with his own about animals, Mr.
O'Connell's attachment to his dog, Sambo, being a cause of laughter to
most of his pupils. Patsy had a happy time with Mr. O'Connell; but the
necessary education for the veterinary profession in the matter of mere
book-learning he seemed either unable or unwilling to acquire, so he
went in time to the stables at Castle Talbot to qualify as he had
coveted for the hereditary position of stud-groom. Sir Shawn, since he
had married Miss Creagh, had taken to keeping racehorses; and Patsy
Kenny had a way with horses. He was a natural solitary as regarded his
kind. Many a pretty girl had looked Patsy's way invitingly, seeing in
him a steady, sober boy who might be trusted not to spend his wages in
drink, whose dreamy eyes and soft slow voice promised gentleness with a
woman; but Patsy never thought of the girls apparently. He was very
fond of his master, but his great devotion was for Lady O'Gara who, as
Miss Mary Creagh, had dazzled him when she came and went at Castle
Talbot, not forgetting if she met Patsy to stop and speak with him.
That devotion to Miss Mary, continued to Lady O'Gara, had perhaps
spoilt Patsy's chances of being happy after the manner of other men.
He would have said himself, perhaps, that with the horses to think of
he had no time to think about getting married. Certainly he did not
seem to find his bachelor state amiss. His little house, in the new
block of stabling, white walled, red-roofed, painted with cross beams
to its pointed gable, was kept with meticulous care. Patsy did his own
work. Lady O'Gara was right perhaps when she called him a natural
celibate.
Long, long ago old Judy Dowd and her granddaughter, Bridyeen, had left
Killesky,--for America. They had not gone away with the drafts of boys
and girls who went week after week during the Spring weather, leaving
Beragh station on their way to Liverpool with a great send-off from
friends and relatives, ending, as the train went, with cries of
lamentation that brought the other passengers to their carriage
windows, curious or sympathetic, according to their natures.
No: Judy Dowd and Bridyeen had gone off in an underhand manner, leaving
Mr. Casey, the solicitor, to dispose of the public-house and effects.
The neighbours had been rather indignant about it, and had made up
their minds as to the reason of this unsportsmanlike flitting. But by
the time they were saying to each other that Judy Dowd had a right not
to be spoiling her grand-daughter, making her pretty for the eyes of
gentlemen; that what could a girl want more than Barney Killeen, who
had a farm and an outside car, if he was sixty itself? that there was
no use humouring the fancies of girls: that they'd always known how it
would end: finally that it was well Bridyeen should be taken away
before she made a scandal in the parish--by that time the Dowds were no
more than a name and a memory.
Few people now remembered the old unhappy far-off things. Judy Dowd's
public-house in Killesky, which had been a very small affair, had made
way for Conneely's Hotel. There was not much hotel about it, but there
was quite a thriving shop, divided into two parts--one, general store,
the other public. If you were a person of importance and called at
Conneely's for refreshment you had it in "the drawing-room" upstairs,
where the Misses Conneely's drawings in chalk hung on the walls, and
their photographs adorned the chimney-piece, while their school prizes
were arranged neatly on the round table in the middle of the room,
flanking the wax flowers under a glass shade which made the centre
piece.
The Miss Conneelys had done well in the Intermediate. Their elder
brother was a priest. Father Tom's photograph was in the centre of the
chimney-piece a-top of the clock. They could play the piano and violin
and had fortunes when the time came for them to marry. Their mother
would never have permitted them to serve in the bar nor even behind the
drapery counter. They were black-haired, rosy, buxom girls, who set
the fashions in Killesky. There had been a sensation when Nora
Conneely came back from Dublin with a walking-stick, but after an
amazed pause Killesky--the young ladies of it,--broke out in
walking-sticks.
There was enough positive about the Conneelys, the priest, the
prosperous self-satisfied girls, the managing capable mother, to make
people feel that there had always been Conneely's Hotel in Killesky.
If the old people remembered Julia Dowd's little public-house with its
thatched roof, the low ceiling and the fire of turf to which you could
draw a chair while you had your drink, the little parlour beyond which
was reserved for customers of a superior station, they did not talk
about it.
Inch too was shut up. Mrs. Comerford had gone away after Mary Creagh's
engagement to Sir Shawn O'Gara. She had taken it very ill,--as a slur
to her dead son's memory. She had always been an austere, somewhat
severe woman, but she had taken Mary Creagh from her dying mother's
arms, a child of a few weeks old, had reared her as her own and been
tender to her, with the surprising precious tenderness of a reserved,
apparently cold nature. Mrs. Comerford had gone to Italy and had never
since returned. Perhaps she would never come now, although the place
was kept from going to rack and ruin by James Clinch, the butler, and
Mrs. Clinch, who had been cook and had married the butler after Mrs.
Comerford had gone away.
All these things came back to Patsy Kenny in his solitary hours. He
was very fond of sitting on a log or a stone between his strenuous
working times, going over old days in his mind.
This June afternoon, rather wearied still by his struggle with
Mustapha, he was sitting on a block in front of his little house in the
stable-yard. Judy, a half-bred setter--the names of the animals at
Castle Talbot were hereditary--was lying at his feet. The pigeons were
pecking about him daintily. Only Judy's watchful, jealous eye
prevented their flying on to his knee or his shoulder.
The memories unfolded themselves like the scenes of a cinematograph,
slipping past his mind. He remembered Bridyeen Sweeney, whose delicate
beauty used to draw the gentlemen to Dowd's long ago. He contrasted
her in his mind with Nora Conneely whom he had met that morning as he
went to the post-office, wearing what he had heard called a Merry Widow
hat, and a tight skirt, displaying open-work stockings and high-heeled
shoes, a string of pearls about a neck generously displayed by the low
blouse she was wearing, her right hand twirling the famous
walking-stick.
"I dunno what at all came to Bridyeen," he murmured to himself. "She
was as pretty as a picture,--like a little rose she was, and so modest
in all her ways. Even my grandfather used to say there was nothing
against Bridyeen. I wouldn't have thought it of Mr. Terence either
that he'd be tryin' to turn the little girl's head and he the
Mistress's cousin an' they as good as promised. I only hope Master
Terence had time to repent, if the stories were true itself that the
people told. Sure maybe there was nothin' in it."
He had perhaps dozed off. He came awake suddenly to Judy's snarling.
Judy never gave the alarm for nothing. A man had come into the
stable-yard, quite obviously a tramp. Behind him came a woman and a
child of the same fraternity. The woman stood humbly in the wake of
the man, and the boy kept close to her. The man was a bad-looking
fellow, Patsy said to himself. Half-consciously he noticed the man's
hands, wicked-looking hands, covered with hair, the nails stubby and
broken. The long arms were like the arms of a monkey. His tattered
coat was velveteen. Patsy remembered to have seen the material on the
game-keepers of a big estate in the next county.
"'Ullo, matey," said this uninviting person, with an attempt at
jocularity. "'Ave you anythink to give a poor man out of a job?"
The truculent voice, with its attempt at oiliness, the small red eyes
under the shock of hair, the thick purple lips, had an extraordinary
effect on Patsy. He hated the tramp, yet he felt a queer sick fear of
him. Once, when Sir Shawn had taken him to England for a big race, he
had seen a dog destroy an adder, with the same mixture of
half-terrified rage and loathing he was feeling now.
"There's nothing for you here," he said gruffly. "You don't look as if
you had much taste for work."
Then he looked beyond the tramp to the woman and child. She was
decent, the poor creature, he thought. Her poor rags were clean and
mended. She had a shrinking, suffering air. The boy, who was about
nine years old, seemed to cling to her as though in terror of the burly
ruffian. He was pale and thin and even on this beautiful June day he
looked cold.
Patsy was suddenly gentle. He saw the glare in the tramp's eyes.
"Here's a shillin' for you," he said. "I've no job you'd care about.
But the woman and the child might like a cup of tay."
"All right," said the tramp, placated. "Tea's not in my way. I'll be
back in 'arf a mo'. Don't you be makin' love to my ol' woman."
He flicked his thumb and finger at the woman with an ugly jocularity:
then went, with the tramp's shambling trot, out of the stable-yard the
way he had come, down the back avenue which opened on to the road to
Killesky.
CHAPTER III
A TEA PARTY
"I've seen that man of yours before," said Patsy, turning round and
gazing at the woman.
He felt the most extraordinary pity for her. She must have been a
pretty girl once, he thought, noticing the small pure outlines of the
face. The child was like her, not like the ruffian who had just set
off in the direction of Conneely's Hotel. A pretty boy, with soft,
pale silken hair and blue eyes that looked scared. Patsy remembered
his own childhood with the terrible old grandfather, and his heart was
soft with compassion.
"I don't think so, sir," said the woman. She was English by her voice.
"He hasn't been in these parts before."
Patsy noticed with the same sharp pity which seemed to hurt him, that
she trembled. She was tired and hungry, perhaps; not cold, surely, in
this glorious June sunshine.
"Sit down," he said, "sit down." He indicated a stone seat by the open
door of the house. "You are tired, my poor girl. I've put the kettle
on. It'll be boilin' by this time. I'll wet the cup of tay and it'll
do you good."
There was no one in the stable-yard to observe the strange sight of the
stud-groom giving a meal to the tramping woman and her child. He
brought out a little cloth and spread it on the stone seat. Then he
fetched the cups and saucers, one by one.
"Let me help you, sir," said the woman. "I was a servant in a good
house before I had the misfortune to marry."
There had been some strange delicacy in Patsy's mind which had induced
him to have the outdoor tea rather than a less troublesome arrangement
within doors. Perhaps he had an instinctive knowledge of what the
woman's husband might be capable of in the way of thought or speech.
"Sit down there, Georgie," said the woman to the child, with a kind of
passionate tenderness. "He's too little, so he is," she addressed
Patsy Kenny, "for the load o' cans and pots he has to carry. His bones
are but soft yet."
"Cans and pots?"
"There, beyond the gate. We sell them as we go along. When they're
sold we buy more. We had a donkey-cart, but ... we had to sell it. We
only take now what Georgie and me can carry."
"And your husband?"
"He carries nought. He doesn't hold with a man carrying things."
Patsy said nothing. What was the matter with him that he felt such a
pain of pity and such a rage of anger? He had felt the like before for
an ill-treated animal. Ill-treated humans had not often entered his
experience, since he lived so much to himself.
He went to the gate leading to the back avenue and looked out. Hidden
by the gate-post were a number of pots and pans and bright glittering
new cans. A little away lay another heap. He stooped. There was a
contrivance, something like a yoke for the shoulders, to which the cans
were attached. He had seen, also in England, gipsy carts covered with
such wares. He had not known that human shoulders could be adapted to
this burden.
"God help ye," he said, coming back. "'Tis too much for you, let alone
the child. The polis should see to it."
"He takes the load from the boy before we come to a village," she said,
nodding her head the way the man had gone.
It was wonderful to see how quickly and deftly the woman set out the
tea-things, made the tea, using much less than Patsy's liberal
allowance, and cut bread and butter. Patsy found a few new-laid eggs
and put them on to boil. The child sat in the shade: Patsy had found
him a chair, made of ropes of straw, to rest on instead of the cold
stone. He sat in a relaxed way as though all his muscles were limp,
taking no heed of the dog that sniffed about him. Dead-tired, Patsy
thought, and loathed the muscular ruffian who went free while a child
and a woman bore the burdens.
It was pretty to see the woman coaxing the child to eat, forgetting
herself. Patsy looked about the familiar place and saw it strange with
an appearance of domesticity. The creature was very gentle, he said to
himself, and she was decent. Her poor clothes were tidy, and the boy's
likewise. Their boots caused a queer pang in Patsy's heart. They were
disgraceful boots, bulging at the sides, broken: he had noticed that
the boy shuffled as he walked.
The woman sat holding her tea-cup in her hand, looking around the yard.
Patsy's house had a little yard to itself off the stable-yard proper.
In the middle was a bed in which there was a rose-tree with pinks and
pansies growing about its roots, Patsy's garden, of which he was very
proud.
"It's a nice little spot you have here," she said, with a sigh. The
canary, which hung by the door in a cage, sent out a hard bright runlet
of song. The dog lay on her side with one brown eye fixed on her
master. One of the big cats, which kept the stables free of rats and
made company for the horses in winter, came delicately and rubbed
himself against Patsy's blue hand-knitted stockings. Her eyes roved
enviously about, taking in the quiet peacefulness of the scene.
"I'll be washin' up for you before I go," she said.
"Sure I'm used to doin' for myself," returned Patsy.
"You've no wife?" she said; and looked down at the boy where he lay
back wearily in the straw chair.
"I'm a bachelor boy," said Patsy.
Her eye considered her host in a way that caused Patsy a curious
internal shyness, not altogether unpleasant.
"A pity," said she. "It would be a nice little place for a woman and a
child."
Then she straightened herself and stood up. She had made a very good
meal.
"I saw where the basin was in the scullery," she said. "Don't you
trouble. It's a woman's work, not a man's. You stay here and talk to
Georgie."
He carried in the tray when she had piled it with cups and saucers.
Otherwise he obeyed her. Better if that ruffian came back he should
find him talking to Georgie rather than helping the woman to wash up.
But Georgie was very uncommunicative. He seemed too tired to talk. He
too had not done so badly with the meal once he had begun. After a
while his head fell a little to one side and he slept.
Patsy sat where he was. He could hear the noise of water flowing
inside the house and the chink of cups and saucers in process of
washing up. Not for worlds would he have entered the house. He was
thinking strange thoughts. For the first time he was touched by a
woman, this poor, ill-clad, tramping woman, the wife of an evident
scoundrel, touched to the heart for her and her child. The happy,
pretty girls who had looked shy invitation at him had not appealed.
They had, one by one, put him down as a dry old bachelor and taken
their charms elsewhere. Patsy had never missed wife or child. He
would have said himself that he had enough to think of, with her
Ladyship and the Master and Mr. Terry, enough to fill his heart.
Not that he felt anything beyond an immense compassion for these poor
victims of man's cruelty. Perhaps with such a person as Patsy Kenny
compassion would serve for love always. "The creatures!" he said to
himself, "the creatures! Sure it isn't the hard ways of the world
they're fit for at all."
The woman emerged from the cottage, moving with a gentle softness.
There was nothing of the tramp about her beyond the broken boots, the
hat which had obviously been under the weather, the poor clothes. She
sat down beside Patsy Kenny and spoke in a low voice for fear of waking
the sleeping child.
"It is a hard road he has to travel for one so young," she said, and he
noticed that she looked quickly towards the gate.
"It is," said Patsy Kenny. "Too hard. He had no right to be carryin'
all that tinker's stuff. That man of yours, my girl, oughtn't to be
let do it."
A little colour came to the woman's cheek.
"We've run away from him over and over," she said. "He's always
tracked us down. Time and time again I was doin' well and Georgie at
school, but he always found us: I used to say my prayers to be
delivered from him, but I never was: I don't suppose I ever will be
now. I can't hide from him. I wouldn't mind for myself, if it wasn't
for Georgie. He'll kill Georgie."
"How long have you been at it?" Patsy Kenny asked quietly.
"This sort of life? He found us in Leicestershire three months ago. I
was in a place with one lady. She was kind and let me have Georgie.
She always said she'd never have known there was a child in the house.
Georgie went to school and came home of afternoons. It was a quiet,
peaceful spot. Baker found me again. It wasn't the first time by many
he dragged us out on the road. He sold all my clothes as well as
takin' my savin's. He said there was money for him over here. I don't
see no sign of it. The life will kill Georgie. We tramped from
Dublin: with the last of my money Baker bought the tins to keep us
goin' on the road. It was bad in the cold, wet weather last month."
"Have you no one at all belongin' to you?" Patsy asked in a low voice.
"Sisters and brothers, all respectable. My parents are dead. When I
took Baker I turned my back on them all."
Patsy's mind was working hard. There must be some help for the woman's
case. It could not be law that this ruffian should have the power to
drag his wife and child after him, loading them with burdens they were
not fit to carry. The creature knew no better than to yield to him.
The Master was a magistrate and a kindly one. He was always settling
disputes of one kind or another. Patsy thought of bidding her wait
where she was till the Master could be found.
He looked up from his thoughts and saw that Mr. Baker had come back.
His face was very red and shiny. He wore a truculent look.
"'Ullo!" he said thickly. "'Ere's quite a family party. 'Ope you've
been enjoyin' of yourselves as I 'ave, subjec' to _re_strictions. A
bob don't go fur in liquor now-a-days. You might ha' made it two."
"One seems to have been quite enough for you," said Patsy, with a light
of battle in eyes no longer dreamy.
"I don't deny as I 'ad a bob myself to spend," said the ruffian.
"'Ere, you, Georgie! You wake up, you lazy young devil! 'Tis time we
was on the road."
Patsy stepped between the man and the child who had come out of his
sleep with a cry of fear. He put a open hand on Mr. Baker's chest and
pushed him backward. Somewhat contrary to his expectations the man did
not resent his action, beyond remarking that no one had the right to
interfere between a man and his kid.
"Now it comes to that," he said, with a sudden change to jocularity,
"if so be as you've a fancy for 'er I'd sell her for five quid an'
throw in the kid. It's no catch draggin' 'em round an' me 'avin' to
carry the cans 'arf the time because o' your blasted coppers."
The full enormity of the speech seemed to reveal itself only gradually
to Patsy's mind. He turned red and then pale. The poor woman was
quivering as though a lash had struck her.
"You're a bad brute," said Patsy quietly. "The woman's too good for
you."
"You can 'ave her for nothink if you like. She never was much good to
me."
He sat down suddenly in the chair Georgie had left empty.
"I want to see your boss," he said: and his tone was bullying.
"I was thinkin' about that myself," said Patsy.
"You go along the road an' wait for me," he said with a sudden ferocity
which made the woman start. "Off with ye now. I'll come up with ye:
unless this gentleman 'ud make it a matter of a five-pun' note."
"Hold your dirty tongue," said Patsy, and landed Mr. Baker one in the
chest.
The man rushed at him with his head down, a shower of foul words coming
from his lips. Before anything could happen some one
intervened,--Terry O'Gara, dazzlingly clean as he always looked.
"Here, you keep quiet, you ruffian!" he said, delivering a very neat
blow just under the man's chin. "What is it all about, Patsy? Hadn't
I better send for the police?"
Mr. Baker had fallen back against the stone bench and subsided on to
it, feeling his jaw bone.
"I'll make you pay for this yere conduck to an 'armless man wot was
doin' nothink," he growled.
Something floated into Patsy's mind, vague, terrible. Before he could
grasp it another person joined the group,--Sir Shawn O'Gara.
"What's the matter?" he asked. "Who is this person?"
His face changed. Patsy Kenny, who was watching him, saw the change.
He had grown livid, his lips blue. Was he ill? Was he going to fall?
Before Patsy could do anything he recovered himself and spoke.
"You have business with me?" he said to the tramp.
"Yes, sir." Mr. Baker was suddenly cringingly respectful. "I came
'ere to talk business an' was set upon by this yere man o' yourn
somethink crool. I'd sack him if I was you. Your 'orses wouldn't be
safe with 'im, 'im bein' so 'ot-tempered."
Sir Shawn still looked very ill. Patsy had once seen a person in a bad
heart-seizure. Was Sir Shawn's heart affected? Small mottled patches
of a purple colour had come out on the smooth darkness of his skin.
Angina. That was what the doctor called it in the case of that other
person. Had that mysterious, terrible disease laid hold on the Master?
He had not looked well for many a day. Patsy had wondered that the
Mistress did not see it, was not disturbed by it, seeing how fond a
wife she was. His heart sank with fear for the Master.
"Let me deal with him, father," said Terry, looking like a young god in
contrast with the unpleasant Mr. Baker.
"I know this man," Sir Shawn said, quietly. "He once rendered me a
service."
"When I were gamekeeper over to Ashbridge 'All," said Mr. Baker
eagerly, "you'd a bin shot but for me. Some gents will never learn 'ow
'to 'old their guns. I knocked the barrel up just in the nick. That
Mr. Lascelles, 'e weren't safe."
Ashbridge! Oh--so the man had been employed at Ashbridge Hall, Lord
Trentham's place, some thirty miles away on the edge of Lough Aske.
How long ago? Patsy kept asking himself the question. He looked after
Sir Shawn and Mr. Baker as they went away in the direction of the
house. Sir Shawn had an official room with a door opening out on to
the grounds, so that the many people who came to consult him on one
business or another need not enter through the house.
"That fellow's face would hang him anywhere," said Terry O'Gara. "I
wonder what amount of villainy lies between a gamekeeper's place at
Ashbridge and the brute he is to-day?"
"God help them that are in his power," Patsy Kenny said fervently.
Then he went to the gate and looked out. The pots and pans and cans
had disappeared. Down the long straight road there was no one in
sight. The woman and child had vanished.
Oddly enough he was disturbed by the noise Mustapha was still making in
his box-stall.
"I shouldn't be surprised now if he was to be a foal of Spitfire," he
said. "I did hear she was bought by a man somewhere about Lewy
mountain. The little man we bought him from was a mountainy man, if he
wasn't a fairy."
CHAPTER IV
FROM THE PAST
The morning after these happenings Lady O'Gara, turning over the pile
of letters on the breakfast table, changed colour at the sight of one
which bore an Italian postmark. It was addressed in a large firm
handwriting in which only very keen observation could have discovered
any sign of weakening. After that momentary glance she laid away the
letter with the superscription turned downwards while she read the rest
of her correspondence.
When she had finished breakfast she followed her husband into his
office, as that special room was called. The windows had not been
opened--they were French windows and they served as a door out on to
the gravel sweep which ran around the house--and she thought she
detected a faint disagreeable smell, as of drugs. She unbolted a
window and flung it wide and the warm June air came flowing in,
banishing the unpleasant sharp odour.
"You haven't been taking anything, Shawn?" she asked, looking at him a
little anxiously. "I thought I smelt something peculiar. You are not
looking well."
"I am very well, Mary," he answered. "Perhaps it was the person I had
here yesterday evening. I believe I closed the window after he went
out. He had been drinking. There was a horrible smell."
"I came to the door while you were talking to him and I heard you say,
'What do you mean by coming here?' Who was he, Shawn?"
Again Sir Shawn was suddenly pale. She was looking down at the letter
she had extracted from the pile, and he turned his back to the window,
so that when she looked at him again with her frank ingenuous gaze, his
face was in shadow.
"He was a man who saved my life, or thinks he did, at a shooting-party
at Ashbridge. There was a fellow there who had never handled a gun
before. He would have put a whole charge of shot into me if this chap,
Baker, hadn't knocked up his gun in time. I don't think it would have
killed me, although it might have been rather unpleasant. Baker likes
to think, for his own purposes,"--he spoke with a weary air,--"that he
saved my life. He may have saved my beauty. He considers himself my
pensioner."
"Ah!" Lady O'Gara was satisfied with the explanation. "What a pity he
should drink! Can we do nothing for him?"
"I'm afraid not. He would like to be my game-keeper, but that is out
of the question. He had not much character when he left Ashbridge. He
has had more than one job in England since then, and has lost them all.
He has come down very much in the world even since I saw him last."
"A pity," said Lady O'Gara, "since he rendered you a service."
"I gave him some money and got rid of him: it was the only thing to do."
Once again Lady O'Gara's frank eyes turned upon her husband.
"I don't think you ever told me about that thing before," she said. "I
should have remembered if you had told me."
"No," he said with an averted face. "It happened--the winter you were
in Florence. I came home and was met by the news that you were away.
The sun dropped out of my skies."
She blushed suddenly and brightly. Her husband had turned from his
gloomy contemplation of the lawn outside, on which a tiny Kerry cow was
feeding. He said to himself that she was more beautiful in her mature
womanhood than the day he married her. She had been soft and flowing
even in her girlhood, with a promise of matronly beauty. Now, with a
greater amplitude, she was not less but more gracious. Her bronze hair
which had the faintest dust upon it went back from her temples and ears
in lovely waves which no art could have produced. It was live hair,
full of lights and shadows. Her husband had said that it was like a
brown Venetian glass with powdered gold inside its brownness. There
were a few brown freckles on the milk-white neck. Her eyes were kind
and faithful and set widely apart: her nose straight and short: and she
had a delightful smile.
She came now and put her arms about his neck. They were in curious
contrast, she so soft, fair and motherly: he slender and dark, with
weary eyes and a look as though he had suffered.
"Shawn!" she said, "Shawn!" and there was a passionate tenderness in
her voice, as she pressed his head against her heart.
Then she let her arms fall and turned away, looking as though some
sadness had clouded her joy.
"Poor Terence!" she said.
There was the same thought between them, but they left it unspoken.
She had chosen Shawn O'Gara in her own heart even while she was
expected to marry Terence Comerford.
"Why do you talk of Terence now?" he asked.
"I have had a letter from Aunt Grace after all these years." She held
the letter towards him.
"She has forgiven you?" he asked, making no movement to take the letter.
"She is coming back to Inch. She writes that Stella, her adopted
daughter, is growing up. She has forgiven us. She is pleased that we
named our son after poor Terence. You remember you were rather opposed
to it, Shawn."
"I did not wish to be reminded of the loss of my friend at every
moment," he said. "The tragedy was too new."
Still he showed no indication of taking the letter from her hand.
"Read it to me," he said, in his weary voice. "I wonder how Stella
will like Inch after Italy. There is so much rain and cloud. One has
to be born to it to like it."
"When I was in Italy I simply longed for a day of Irish rain," Mary
O'Gara said: "it is good for us. We need it. We grow parched in the
dry climates."
"It has held the secret of perpetual youth and beauty for you, Mary,"
her husband said, looking at her with loving admiration.
She laughed and blushed. She was not beyond blushing at a compliment
even from her husband.
"We must make things as gay for the child as possible," she said. Then
she added:
"I wonder if Aunt Grace realizes that Terry is now a young man. He
seems _épris_ with Eileen, so I suppose he will not fall in love with
Stella?"
Sir Shawn looked startled.
"I hope not," he said. "Eileen seems to have him very securely in her
chains."
Lady O'Gara frowned ever so slightly. "I wish our children did not
grow away from us so soon," she said. "Terry might have continued a
little longer being in love only with his mother."
Sir Shawn lifted his eyebrows in a manner which accentuated his foreign
look.
"Jealous, Mary?" he asked.
"Not of Eileen. She allures him, but, I come first."
"You would always have your place. You are of the women who are adored
by their sons. You would not care for Eileen for a daughter-in-law,
though she has been almost your adopted daughter these ten years back?"
"She would not suit Terry."
"She is very fond of you."
"Yes, I think she is fond of me." Her voice was cold.
"I hardly know you, Mary, in this mood towards Eileen. You are usually
so sweetly reasonable."
"It is the privilege of a woman to be unreasonable sometimes."
The sunshine came back to her face, laughed in the depths of her eyes
and brought a dimple to either cheek.
"I suppose I am a little jealous of Terry," she said. "You see he is
very like you, Shawn. And I am fond of Eileen, really. Only, I
suppose all mothers are critical of the girls their sons fall in love
with, especially if it is an only son. It is odd how it has come
suddenly to Terry that Eileen is a pretty girl. Of course he has only
seen her in her vacations. Sit down now, Shawn, and I will read you
Aunt Grace's letter."
He sat down obediently in the revolving chair in front of his desk and
she came and stood by him. Her voice was a little disturbed as she
read the letter.
"MY DEAR MARY,--You will be surprised to hear that I am coming back
again to Inch. The years bring their dust, as some poet says: they
certainly soften griefs and asperities. When I left Inch I was
broken-hearted for my one boy. It was a poisoning of the grief at that
time to know that you and Shawn O'Gara were going to be married. I
felt that you had forgotten my beautiful boy, that his friend had
forgotten him: but that I acknowledge now to have been a morbid and
unreasonable way of looking at things. My boy never thought of any
girl but you, yet I could not expect you to go unmarried for his sake:
indeed I would not have wished it. You and Shawn must forgive that old
unreasonable bitterness of mine, the bitterness of a mother distraught
by grief.
"I have left you alone all these years, but I have not been without
knowledge of you. I know that your son is called Terence after my son.
I appreciate that fact, which indicates to me that you keep him in
loving remembrance.
"After all these years I am suddenly weary for home, so weary that I
wonder now how I could have kept away so long. Whether I shall end my
days at Inch depends on Stella. My wild experiment of adopting this
child, as some of my friends thought it at the time, has turned out
very well. Stella is a dear child. I send you a photograph which
hardly does her justice. As she is entirely mine she goes by my name,
although her father was French. I should like to say to you that
though I shall provide for Stella it will not be to your detriment. I
have a sense of justice towards my kin.
"I trust to you to receive Stella and me in a manner which will prove
that you have blotted out any memories of the past that are otherwise
than happy.
"Your affectionate cousin-aunt,
"GRACE COMERFORD.
"PS.--Stella has something of your colouring."
"Here is the photograph," said Lady O'Gara, handing it to her husband.
"Stella is very pretty, is she not?"
He twisted his chair so that the light from the window might fall on
the photograph. The face was in profile. It was tilted delicately
upwards. There was a little straight nose, a round chin, a mouth
softly opened, one of those mouths which do not quite close. The large
eyes looked upward; the hair was short and curled in little rings.
He looked at it and said nothing, but his eyes were tragic in the
shadow.
"The profile is quite French," said Lady O'Gara. "I remember the young
man who I think must have been Stella's father. He was a lieutenant of
Chasseurs. He was killed in Algiers--afterwards. I saw it in a
newspaper about four years after our marriage. He was going to be
married when he came to Inch. His mother, who was as poor as a church
mouse, had written a bitter complaint to Aunt Grace that Gaston was
about to marry a poor Irish girl, a governess, whose part he had taken
when he thought her unfairly treated. I think Stella must be Gaston de
St. Maur's child."
"Odd, not leaving the child her own name," Sir Shawn said, handing back
the photograph.
"Aunt Grace would want her so entirely for her own. She always had a
fierce way of loving. If she had loved me more reasonably and less
jealously she would not have quarrelled with me as she did. She was
always rather terrible in anger."
She gathered together a bundle of letters which she had laid down on
the table.
"I must go and write to Aunt Grace," she said. "She must not wait for
a letter telling her how glad I shall be to see her back at Inch, how
glad we shall all be. She was very good to me, Shawn." She sent a
wistful look towards her husband who sat with his back to her. "If she
had been the aunt she called herself, instead of a somewhat remote
cousin, she could not have been kinder. She treated us very
generously, despite her anger at our marriage."
"You brought me too much," said Shawn O'Gara, not turning his head,
"and it has prospered. You should have brought me nothing but
yourself. You were a rich gift enough for any man."
Lady O'Gara looked well-pleased as she came and kissed the top of her
husband's head, dusted over its darkness with an effect of powder as
contrasted with the dark moustache and dark eyes.
"I am glad for Terry's sake I did not," she said; and went out of the
room.
"Mr. Kenny wishes to see your Ladyship," said a servant, meeting her in
the hall. Patsy, perhaps by reason of his friendly aloofness, had come
to be treated with unusual respect by the other servants. "He is at
the hall-door. He would not come inside."
She found Patsy, playing with Shot's son and daughter--they were the
fourth generation from "Ould Shot" on the gravel sweep.
"Come in, Patsy," she said, and led the way into an octagonal room, lit
by a skylight overhead and walled around with ancient books which were
very seldom taken from their shelves.
"Sit down," she said, "and tell me what is troubling you."
Patsy sat down on the extreme edge of one of the chairs, which were
upholstered in scarlet damask. He looked up at her with blinking eyes
of worship, like the eyes of the dogs. The room, painted white above
the bookshelves, was full of light. He turned his cap about in his
hands. Obviously there was something more here than the business on
which he usually consulted Lady O'Gara.
"'Tis," he began, "a little bit of a woman, an' a child, no bigger nor
a robin an' as wake as a wran...."
With this opening he began the story of the woman and child, who had
come with the disreputable person the afternoon before. It appeared
that Mr. Baker had deserted his wife and son, flinging them the pots
and pans with a scornful generosity. He had apparently arrived at the
possession of money some way or other, and overtaking them on the road
at some considerable distance away he had bidden them, with threats, to
take themselves out of his sight, since he had no further use for them.
"He was full of drink," Patsy said, looking down. "Your Ladyship, his
tratement of them was something onnatural. She said she'd run away
from him often, but he'd always found her when she was doin' well an'
earnin' for herself an' the child. The people she lived with were
often kind and ready to stand by her, but sure, as she says, the
kindest will get tired out. He'd broken the spirit in her, maybe, for
she showed me his marks on the poor child. She said nothin' about
herself, but I could guess, the poor girl! The man that could lay his
heavy hand on a woman or a child is a black villain. I wouldn't be
comparin' him to the dumb bastes, for they've nature in them. The poor
little woman, she's dacent. It would break your heart to see how thin
she is an' how fretted-lookin' an' the little lad wid the scare in his
eyes."
"Has the woman come back?"
"Wasn't that what I was tellin' your Ladyship? Lasteways, she didn't
come back exactly. I found her on the road an' she not knowin' where
to turn to, in a strange country. There they were, when I found them,
hugging aich other an' cryin'. And the cans beside them in the ditch."
"What cans?"
"Wasn't I tellin' your Ladyship--the pots and pans and the few little
bright cans among them, and not a penny betune the two poor souls, nor
they knowing where to turn to!"
"Where are they now?" Lady O'Gara asked quietly.
"They're in my house, your Ladyship. I brought them back there last
night an' I gev it up to them. I slep' in the loft over the stables
myself."
"Oh, but, Patsy, they can't stay in your house! The people would talk."
"Sure I know they'd talk--if it was an angel in Heaven. That's why I
kem to your Ladyship."
"I'll come and see the woman, Patsy, and we'll decide what is best to
be done."
Patsy's face cleared amazingly.
"I knew you'd come," he said. "It'll be all right when your Ladyship
sees them, God help them."
CHAPTER V
THE HAVEN
Lady O'Gara came in by way of a little-used gate a few days later. She
had been to Inch, where the house was being turned out of doors and
everything aired and swept and dusted and repolished, for a home-coming
so long delayed that people had forgotten to look for it. Castle
Talbot had six entrance gates, each with its lodge: and this one was
rarely used.
Susan--as Mrs. Baker preferred to be called, Susan Horridge: she seemed
to wish to drop the "Mrs. Baker"--came out with a key to open the gate,
which was padlocked.
Such a different Susan! The old Susan might have been dropped with
"Mrs. Baker." She had been just ten days at the South lodge, and now,
in her neat print dress, her silken hair braided tidily, her small face
filling out, she looked as she dropped a curtsey just as might the
Susan Horridge of a score years earlier.
"You keep the gate padlocked, Susan?" Lady O'Gara asked, with a little
surprise. "This is a quiet, honest place. I hardly think you need
fear any disagreeable visitors."
"Oh, but, m'lady, you never know." Susan had admitted her by this
time. "A lone woman and a little boy, and him that nervous through
being frightened!" She hurried on as though she did not wish to make
any reference to the cause of Georgie's fright. "I heard men singin'
along the road the night before last it was. It fair gave me the
jumps. Glad I was to have that gate between me and them and the strong
padlock on it."
"This lodge is perhaps a little lonely for you. It's a very quiet
road. The people don't use it much. It runs down to a road where they
think there's a ghost. You're not afraid of ghosts?"
"No, m'lady. If but they'd keep the people from the road."
"Ah! you will find the people friendly and kindly after a time. You're
new to the place."
"Maybe so, m'lady. I always was one for keeping myself to myself. My
Granny brought me up strict. I wish I hadn't lost her when I did."
She heaved a deep sigh. "We had a sweet little place at home in
Warwickshire. Such a pretty cottage, _and_ an orchard, _and_ the roses
climbin' about my window."
What matter that she said "winder"! Her eyes, the pale large eyes, had
light in them as though she beheld a vision.
"'Twere all peace with my Granny and me," she went on. "And her
Ladyship at the Court,--Mr. Neville was our Squire and her Ladyship was
Lady Frances Neville--used to drop in to see Granny, and she used to
say what a good girl I was, always busy with my needle and my book.
And our Rector's wife, Mrs. Farmiloe, she gave me a silver thimble when
I was nine--a prize for needlework. Lady Frances used to say, 'Don't
you keep her too close to work, Mrs. Horridge. A child must play with
other children.' But my Granny she'd up and say: 'She's all I have,
and I'd rather bury her than see her trapesin' about with boys like
some I know.' And there was Miss Sylvia peepin' at me from behind her
Ladyship and me peepin' at her from behind my Granny. I went to the
Court at sixteen as sewing maid, and at twenty I was Miss Sylvia's own
maid. She married Lord Southwater, and I'd have gone with her only I
couldn't leave my Granny. She was failin', poor old soul!"
She paused and again she heaved the deepest of sighs.
"Beggin' your pardon, m'lady, for talkin' so much. You'd maybe take a
look at the little place?" she said.
Lady O'Gara turned aside. She was in no great hurry home and she was
interested in Susan. Susan had padlocked the gate again and held the
key swinging from her finger, while she looked up at Lady O'Gara as
though her saying "yes" or "no" meant a great deal to her.
"I wonder what would happen if we wanted to get in or out by that gate
at night time," Lady O'Gara said. "We don't use it much. Still we
might want to and you might be in bed."
"I'd get up at any hour, m'lady," Susan said eagerly. "I'm a light
sleeper: and it would only be to throw on something in a hurry."
She looked scared, as though her peace of mind was threatened, and Lady
O'Gara felt a pity for such manifest nervousness. Susan would forget
her terror presently as she got further and further away from the bad
days. Obviously she was very nervous. Her eyes dilated and her breath
came and went as she gazed imploringly at Lady O'Gara.
"Don't look like that, Susan," Lady O'Gara said, almost sharply. "You
look as though I were judge and executioner. You shall keep your
padlocked gate. After all it is a bad road, I don't think Sir Shawn
will want to take it, though it is the shortest way to Inch. You did
not find the gate padlocked when you came?"
"No, m'lady. 'Twas Mr. Kenny. He guessed I'd be frightened, so he
brought the padlock and put it on himself."
The finest little line showed itself in Lady O'Gara's smooth forehead.
Her skin was extraordinarily unfretted for her forty-five years of
life. But now the little crease came, deepened and extended itself to
a line, where its presence had been unsuspected.
"Patsy is very kind," she said, with a penetrating glance at Susan.
What a pretty girl Susan must have been, so soft and pale and
appealing, a little human wood-anemone! She would be very pretty again
when she had got over the scared look and the thinness which was almost
emaciation. And how well that print suited her! Lady O'Gara had sent
down a bundle of things to the South lodge, so that Susan might not
appear as a scarecrow to the people. The print had pale green leaves
sprinkled over a white surface. It suggested a snowdrop, perished by
the winter, as a comparison for Susan rather than the wood-anemone one.
"Indeed he's very kind," said Susan; and dropped a curtsey. "The
clothes fitted Georgie as though they were made for him. I'll be able
to use all you sent, m'lady, I'm such a good needlewoman. I hope I may
mend your Ladyship's lace or any fine embroideries. Once we're
settled--with Georgie away at school all day--I'll have a deal o' time
on my hands. I'd like to do something for you, m'lady."
"So you shall, Susan. Margaret McKeon, who has been with me since I
was a child, is no longer able for work that tries the eyes. I promise
I'll keep you busy as soon as you get settled in here."
"Oh, m'lady! Thank you, m'lady!" said Susan, colouring as though Lady
O'Gara had promised her something very delightful. "I do love fine
needle-work, m'lady. Any fine damask cloths or the like I'll darn so
you'd hardly know. I'm never happier than when I'm sewin' an' my
Georgie reads a bit to me. He's a good scholar, is my Georgie,
although he's but nine."
"You've made a pretty place of it," Lady O'Gara said, looking round the
lodge with satisfaction. "I was afraid it was going to be a grimy
place for you, for it had been empty since old Mrs. Veldon died. You
see we didn't know you were coming. You've had it whitewashed."
"Yes, m'lady. Mr. Kenny came and whitewashed it. He was very good,
better than ever I can repay. He cleaned out the little place for me.
The pots and pans turned in well. And he lent me a few things
till,--maybe--I could earn a bit, washin' or mendin' or sewin'; I'm a
good dressmaker. Maybe I could get work that way."
"There hasn't been a dressmaker in the village since the last one went
to America. I'll ask the parish priest and the nuns to tell the women
you can dressmake. You'll have your hands full."
Again Susan flushed delicately.
"I'm never so happy as when I've no time for thinkin'," she said. "Any
work pleases me, but fine work best of all. I can do lovely work
tuckin' and veinin'. When I'm at it I'm happy. 'Tis like what drink
is to some people; it makes me forget."
The lodge was indeed altered from what Lady O'Gara remembered it, when
Mrs. Veldon lived there. Mrs. Veldon had been so piteously sure than
any washing or whitewashing would kill her with rheumatism that she had
been left to her murky gloom. Now, with a few gaily coloured pictures
of the Saints and Irish patriots on the walls, the dresser filled with
bright crockery, including a whole shelf of lustre jugs, the pots and
pans set out to advantage, to say nothing of the cans, a clean scrubbed
table, a few chairs, a strip of matting in front of the fireplace,
flowers in a jug on the table which also bore Susan's few implements of
sewing and a pile of white stuff, the place was homelike and pretty.
Lady O'Gara decided that Susan was one of the women who have the gift
of creating a home wherever they may be. So much the worse, she added
in her own mind, not particularizing what it was that was so much the
worse. Round Susan, standing meekly by the table while her Ladyship
sat, floated the mysterious aura which draws men and children as to a
warm hearth-fire.
So much the worse, thought Lady O'Gara, and commented to herself that
Patsy must have stripped his own house bare. Those jugs were his, the
gay crockery, and the pictures of the Saints and patriots--she wondered
what appeal these might have for Susan--and that shelf of books in the
corner. Patsy had a taste, laughed at by his fellows, for book-buying,
whenever the occasion arose. He was well-known at auctions round about
the country, where he bought miscellaneous lots of books, with some few
ornaments as well. She could see the backs of two books Patsy had a
great admiration for, "Fardarougha the Miser" and "Charles O'Malley";
and, on the chimney-piece, there were two large pink shells and a
weather house which she had often seen on Patsy's chimney-piece. The
more solid pieces of furniture and some of the plain crockery had been
sent down from Castle Talbot.
"I see Patsy's been lending you his treasures," she said.
"Yes, indeed, m'lady. I asked him not to, but he wouldn't take any
notice of me. He said he'd no use for the things. He's stripped
himself bare, m'lady. I didn't know men were like that. Small wonder
the dumb beasts love him. I wonder he has anything left to give."
She spoke with such fervour that Lady O'Gara was touched.
"You've had a sad experience of men, my poor Susan," she said. "But
you are quite right about Patsy. There are few men as gentle as he is.
We all look on Patsy as a dear and valued friend. I must find him some
other things to keep him from missing these. Not books--I know his
house is piled with books. He won't miss those, though he has given
you the ones he like best. I wonder whether I could find pictures like
those. I think I have seen that Robert Emmet, or something like it, in
a shop-window in Galway."
"I don't know who the gentlemen are," Susan said, looking from one
patriot to another, "and I didn't want to have them taken from his
walls. I expect they've left a mark on the wall-paper where they were
taken down, for he said he'd got to do some papering for himself."
It was on Lady O'Gara's tongue to utter a gentle warning that Patsy
must not be too much about the South lodge, but the warning remained
unspoken.
"He's the best man I ever knew," said Susan, "I didn't know there was
his like in the world. It's a strange thing, m'lady, that men can be
so different. Listen, m'lady,--if Baker was to come back--you wouldn't
let him claim me? The Master wouldn't let him claim me? I'd drown
myself and the child before we'd go back to him. He did knock us about
something cruel. And my Georgie, so gentle that he'd move a heart of
stone. I frightened Baker from laying a hand on Georgie; I told him
I'd kill him if I was to be hanged for it."
The woman's eyes, no longer gentle, blazed at Lady O'Gara.
"Hush! Hush!" she said. "He shall not trouble you. If he should come
back..."
"He's found us out no matter where we've been. Even good Christians
got tired at last of Baker comin' and askin' for his wife and son and
makin' a row and the police fetched, and it gettin' in the papers.
They give us up. Oh, Lord, if they knew what they was givin' us up to!
They'd better have shot us."
"If he comes back he will be prosecuted for deserting you. We shall
not give you up to him. You may be sure of that. Here is my hand on
it."
She held out a firm white hand which showed a couple of beautiful
rings. Susan looked at it for a moment in amazement before she took
it. The colour flooded back into her face. Her eyes became quieter.
Then she took the hand and kissed it, hard.
"Thank you, m'lady," she said. "I trust you."
Lady O'Gara walked to the door and paused to ask for news of Georgie,
who was already at school. He was doing very well. It was so easy for
him to reach the school by this gate, and he was beginning to get on
well with the boys; and Mr. McGroarty, Mr. O'Connell's successor, gave
a very favourable report of him.
"We feel so safe inside the big wall, me and Georgie," said Susan
Horridge. "It isn't likely he'd come on us from the Park." She looked
a little apprehensively over the beautiful prospect of trees in their
early Summer beauty, and the shining greensward; with the hills beyond.
Through an opening in the trees there was a glimpse of a deer feeding.
"No one here associates you with that man. Patsy and I have taken care
of that," Lady O'Gara assured her. "If he came back looking for you no
one could tell him where you were. Would you like a dog for company?
There is a litter of puppies of Shot's breed in the stable-yard. You
shall have one, if you like it."
"Is it like it?" asked Susan, her face lighting up,--"I should be very
pleased to have it. So would Georgie. That boy's fair gone on
animals."
"Those dogs make very good watch-dogs, though they are so gentle. You
should see how Shot keeps walking before and behind me if he thinks he
sees a suspicious character when we are out walking! I shall send down
a puppy, then."
Susan Horridge stood in her doorway shading her eyes with her hand, as
she looked after Lady O'Gara. There were tears in her eyes. "The Lord
didn't forget us," she said to herself.
"I shall have to speak to Patsy," Lady O'Gara was thinking as she
hurried along. She was a little late for lunch. "Poor Patsy! It
would be a thousand pities if his heart should open to that poor
creature for the first time."
CHAPTER VI
STELLA
Mrs. Comerford and Stella arrived unexpectedly. They found Lady O'Gara
at Inch. She had gone over, taking Susan with her, to give the
finishing touch to the preparations. There was a new staff of servants
under Clinch and Mrs. Clinch. There were things the new servants might
have forgotten: and Mrs. Clinch was old and rheumatic now--not equal to
much climbing of stairs. Lady O'Gara remembered many things which most
people would have forgotten, little things about the arrangement of
rooms and furniture, the choice of flowers, the way Mrs. Comerford had
liked the blinds drawn, all the trifling things which mean so much to
certain orderly minds.
She was in the bedroom which had been Mrs. Comerford's, was to be hers
again. The room which had been Mary Creagh's was prepared for Stella.
The pink curtains which she remembered as faded had been laid away and
new pink curtains hung up. The old ones were riddled with holes. She
hoped Aunt Grace--she went back to the familiar name--would not miss
them, would be satisfied with the room, which looked so fresh with its
clean white paper and the pink carpet and cushions and curtains. She
was filling bowls and vases with red and white roses, setting them
where the tired eyes of the travellers might rest upon them when they
came. Probably they would arrive about ten o'clock.
The room looked over the lawns and paddocks at the back of the house.
She had not heard any sounds of arrival,--but--the bedroom door opened
suddenly and Mrs. Comerford came in.
"Clinch told me I should find you here, Mary," she said: and the two
who had loved each other and parted, with cold resentment on one side,
tears on the other, were looking into each other's eyes.
Lady O'Gara had often wondered,--she had been wondering, wondering,
during the last few days--how they should greet each other, what should
be the first words to pass between them. The half-dreaded,
half-looked-for moment had come, and the greeting was of the tritest.
"We have arrived, you see," said Mrs. Comerford. "We caught the Irish
Mail last night instead of staying the night in London."
"Oh,--did no one meet you?"
"We left the luggage and came up on Farrell's car. It _was_ Farrell's
car, just as muddy and disreputable as I remember it. It was driven by
old Johnny's son. I am sorry Johnny is dead. Perhaps the car is not
the same--but there is nothing to choose between that and the old one."
The meeting had taken place. The great moment had come and gone: and
there was Aunt Grace talking about Farrell's car as though all that lay
between them had been but a dream.
Lady O'Gara's eyes suddenly filled with tears.
"Ah, you are tired," she said with soft tenderness, "you are tired!"
The change the years had wrought in the tall handsome woman who had
been queenly to her young mind overwhelmed her. She forgot the dread
she had had of the meeting, which had destroyed any happy anticipation.
"Come and sit down," she said. "Let me help you off with your cloak.
You will have breakfast? What a long journey for you!"
Mrs. Comerford allowed herself to be put into the softest of the easy
chairs. A look of gratification, of pleasure, came to her face. She
allowed Lady O'Gara to take off her hat and long travelling cloak, to
unlace her shoes.
"You were always a kind creature," she said, "and it is nice to be home
again. How beautiful the cloudy skies are! Many and many a time
during those years I have wanted grey skies. I've been sick even for a
whole wet day. Do you think, Mary, that if we Westerners get to Heaven
we will want a wet day now and again?"
So the old resentment had gone. How strange it was after all the grief
and estrangement to have Aunt Grace talking like this. It encouraged
Lady O'Gara, sitting on the floor at Mrs. Comerford's feet, to pat the
foot from which she had drawn off the shoe, with a tender furtive
caress.
"You'd better get up, Mary. I hear Clinch coming. You have hardly
changed from the girl of twenty-five years ago. Of course you are
plumper, more matronly. You have a boy of twenty-one."
Clinch came in with the bag, followed by Mrs. Clinch with a tea-tray,
smiling broadly.
"The young lady said she'd have a bath before her breakfast, ma'am,"
she said, and there was a radiance about her old face which had not
been there for many a day.
"Breakfast--we had breakfast in the train. Miss Stella cannot want
breakfast." Mrs. Comerford smiled as she said it. "She made a very
good breakfast in the train."
"She's young and the young want food. 'Tis a good day that's in it,
ma'am, to see you home again--with such a beautiful young lady too.
She'll make the house lively. The first thing she did was to fling her
arms about Shot's neck,--Lady O'Gara's dog, ma'am. For all he's a
proud, stand-off dog, he licked her face."
"Now, don't spoil Miss Stella. Every one spoils her, so I suppose
there's no use expecting you to be the exception."
"She brings her love with her," said Mrs. Clinch. "She's so delighted
with all she sees, and making friends with every one. They'll be won
over by her: even old Tom Kane will give her the key of his garden, as
he calls it, before she's an hour in the place. She'll be into his
strawberry beds that he's so jealous about, you'll see."
Mrs. Clinch went off. Lady O'Gara poured out a cup of tea,
remembering, over all the years, that Mrs. Comerford liked only a
little sugar. She found her slippers and put them on and brought a
footstool for feet to rest upon. She was thinking that this Stella,
the young adopted daughter, explained the change in the woman before
her. Mrs. Comerford had grown much softer. She was still a
remarkable-looking woman, the wreck of stately beauty. In her black
garments, which fell about her in flowing lines, she had the air of a
priestess. Her age showed in her thinness, which was almost
emaciation, and her face was wrinkled and heavily lined. Yet her smile
was more ready than Lady O'Gara remembered and her eyes quieter. They
had been very blue eyes once upon a time--her son had had such blue
eyes--now, they had faded almost to lavender, and they were almost
gentle. Yet there was something in the face, some suggestion of
burnt-out fires, which forbade the idea of a gentle nature, and the
lips were too thin for softness.
"Am I a wreck, Mary?" she asked. "Yes, I know I am. Some one took me
for a Duchess the other day, addressing me as 'Your Grace.' Italy has
dried up my skin. It will hardly revive at my time of life. But I am
happy: you cannot imagine how Stella makes for happiness. Stella and
age between them have broken me down. A child could play with me."
She laughed as she said it. Grace Comerford had not laughed much in
the old days. Mary had adored her, with an adoration tinged with awe.
She had always felt in those days that it would be an awful thing to
offend Aunt Grace. She had offended her and it had been awful.
"I am longing to see Stella," she said.
"She is very joyous. I was becoming morose when I found her--like a
rogue elephant. I was wrong, Mary, to make such a grievance of your
marriage. You were a good child to me, and you would have pleased me
if you could. I know better now than to be angry with you for caring
more for Shawn O'Gara than for my son. You should have told me at the
time. You shouldn't have let me believe that you cared for Terence.
Was I an ogre? Perhaps I was. I must have been."
"I wanted to please you _dreadfully_ in those days. You had been
everything to me."
"You and Terence were everything to me. Still--I should not have been
so unreasonable as to expect you to marry Terence to please me when you
liked Shawn O'Gara better. I ought to have known that love does not
grow up like that. You and Terence were almost brother and sister."
"Yes," said Lady O'Gara. "We were so used to each other. I was
eighteen when I first saw Shawn and we fell in love at first sight."
She blushed, with a startling effect of youth. "Terence and I were
like brother and sister. It would not have worked. We were very fond
of each other, but no more than that. You were wrong when you thought
Terence would have cared."
She had expected some disclaimer, remembering Mrs. Comerford's bitter
anger because her son had been supplanted by his friend, even while he
was yet in the world; but no disclaimer came.
"Yes, I was wrong. I see it now. I ought to have come back long ago
and said I was wrong. I could not bring myself to do it, and--there
were other reasons. It is very good to come back and to see you so
bonny, Mary, and to feel that we may live in love and peace as long as
I am here."
She drank her tea and looked round the room, with a sigh as though her
heart rested on what she saw.
"You have made the old room very sweet, Mary," she went on, "and you
have remembered my tastes. Dear me, see those old things on the
chimney-piece! Those crockery dogs,--how fond Terence was of them when
he was a child! And that piece of agate, and the Rockingham lambs! I
had almost forgotten them."
"You, had better come over to Castle Talbot to lunch," Lady O'Gara
said. "I want you to see my boy. He has just passed out of Sandhurst."
"A soldier? How strange that I should have had to ask! I left your
letters unanswered, but I always read them. That was how I knew that
you had called your boy after my son."
"Yes, Terence has chosen to be a soldier, for some years, at least.
There is not very much doing now. After a few years his father thinks
he might take to politics."
"I want to see him. And I want you to see my girl."
She glanced towards the door as though she expected it to open.
"Eileen Creagh is with us. You remember her father, Anthony Creagh.
He came here once or twice in old days. She has lived with us for a
long time. Terry was always at school. It would have been lonely for
me without Eileen."
"Yes, I remember I did not like Anthony Creagh because I thought he
came for your sake. He married a fair girl, very unlike you. I've
forgotten her name."
"Eileen is very pretty, like her mother. Beautiful soft silver-gold
hair and greyish blue eyes: she is very gentle."
"Characterless?"
Lady O'Gara smiled ever so slightly. "Oh, she has character, I think."
"No one will look at her when Stella is by. You will see. She has no
animation; I know her kind. By the way, you have Patsy Kenny still
with you? You told me about Patsy in the letters I did not answer."
"Still with us. He is an institution--like the Shots. I have a Shot
still--the great-grandson of old Shot. I don't know what we should do
without Patsy. He has such a wonderful way with the horses,--with all
animals, indeed."
"He'll adore Stella. She's so fearless with animals. Many a fright
she gave me when she was a child. But the animals, even when they were
savage with others, never hurt her. There was an awful day when we
found her with the boarhound puppies at Prince Valetti's Villa in her
arms, and the mother looking on well-pleased. She was a savage brute
to other people. The Prince was ready to shoot her if she had turned
nasty with Stella: but there was no occasion. Stella scrambled through
the barrier when we called her name."
"Is she like a French girl?"
"No: why should she be?"
"I suppose I was wrong. I thought she was the child of Gaston de St.
Maur, who used to visit us here."
"Her mother was Irish," Mrs. Comerford said.
"And she is like her mother?"
Before Mrs. Comerford could answer there came a knocking as of knuckles
on the door.
"Come in, my darling," Mrs. Comerford said, her face lighting up.
A charming girlish face looked in at the open door.
"May I? Is it Lady O'Gara whom my dearest Mamma so greatly loves?"
There was the slightest foreign intonation in the voice,--something of
deliberate utterance, as though English was not the language of the
speaker.
The girl came into the room and towards them. She was charming. Her
hair curled in rings of reddish brown on her little head. Her eyes
were grey with something of brown in the iris: her eyebrows strongly
marked. She had a straight beautiful little nose, lips softly opening,
a chin like that of the Irish poet's "Mary Donnelly," "round as a china
cup." There was something softly graceful about her as she came into
the room. She looked down, then up again. Her eyes,--were they grey?
They were brown surely, almost gold. Her little head was held as
though she courted a caress.
"I am so glad you have come back, Stella," Lady O'Gara said, fascinated
straight off by this charming vision.
"I wonder how Mamma stayed away so long," Stella returned. "The sweet
house, the beautiful grey country." She took Lady O'Gara's hand and
kissed it lightly; yet with an air of reverence,--"the beloved people."
"The country will not prove too grey for you, I hope, Stella," Lady
O'Gara said, feeling touched and pleased by the girl's air of homage.
"My husband's mother, who was an Italian, said that the grey skies made
her weep when first she came to Ireland. They were so unlike Italian
skies."
"I must be Irish then," said the girl, "for I adore them. Even when it
rains I shall not weep."
"She has something of your colouring, Mary; don't you think so?" Mrs.
Comerford asked.
"Yes, perhaps--more golden."
She was feeling surprised at herself. This girl made more appeal to
her than Eileen Creagh whom she had had with her from childhood. This
girl touched some motherly chord in her which Eileen had never
awakened. She wanted to stroke her dear curls, to be good to her. Yet
she had been telling herself all those years, that she had no need for
a daughter, having Terry.
CHAPTER VII
BRADY'S BULL
The meeting between Eileen Creagh and Stella Comerford brought the
flying dimple to Lady O'Gara's cheek. She watched them as though they
were young children meeting in the shy yet uncompromising atmosphere of
the nursery.
Stella was inclined to be friendly and then drew back, chilled by
something she detected in Eileen's manner. Eileen was indifferently
polite.
Terry and his father were out when the party arrived for luncheon, but
they returned very soon afterwards. Lady O'Gara's attention was
otherwise absorbed so that she did not notice the sudden delighted
friendliness in Terry towards Stella nor the quick withdrawal into
sullenness which spoilt Eileen's looks for the luncheon-hour.
Lady O'Gara was wondering about her husband. Why should he have looked
so startled when his eye fell on Stella? He had known that she was
coming. To Lady O'Gara's anxious eye Sir Shawn looked pale. He had
been pale of late, with curious shadows about his face, but when she
had asked him if he was not feeling well he had answered with an air of
lightness that he felt as well as ever he had felt.
At the luncheon table he sat with his back to the light. The
persistence of those shadows in his face worried her loving heart. She
wondered if Mrs. Comerford saw a great change in him. It ought to have
been a very happy occasion. Mrs. Comerford had met Shawn with an air
of affection mingled with deprecation, as though she asked pardon for
the old unreason. If she saw that the years had changed him she made
no sign.
"I have stayed away a long time from you and Mary," she said. "I had
made it difficult for myself to come back: but I have wanted to come
back. Now I hope we shall remain neighbours to the end."
Sir Shawn had not responded as he ought to have done. He had worn a
queer look. After a while his wife had found the proper adjective for
it: his eyes were haunted. He might have seen a ghost. It distracted
her from her talk across the table with Mrs. Comerford, happy talk of
friends long parted and re-united, full of "Don't you remember?" and
"Have you forgotten?": arrears of talk in which so much had to be
explained, so many fates elucidated. It might have been so happy if
only Shawn had not worn that odd look.
Once Lady O'Gara thought she caught his eyes fixed with a gloomy
intentness on the group of young people at the other end of the table.
She glanced that way, and the ready smile came. Terry was making
himself very agreeable to the two pretty girls. It was obvious, even
at a glance, that Eileen had little chance against the new-comer's
vivacity. She sat with her lips pursed a little and something of gloom
on her face. Terry, between his sallies with Stella, who was at once
shy and bright, full of those charming glances out of the eyes which
were grey at one moment, golden brown at another,--sent now and again a
tenderly apologetic look Eileen's way, trying to draw the sulking
beauty into the conversation. There was nothing for Shawn to be gloomy
about in this little comedy. Terry was always so sweetly amiable.
In the days that followed the comedy unfolded itself. Stella was very
often at Castle Talbot, or they were at Inch. Terry was evidently
drawn towards Stella, while loyally endeavouring to keep up his former
attitude towards Eileen. If Eileen wished to keep him she went the
worst possible way about it, for she sulked, and sulkiness did not
become her. Her fair skin took on a leaden look. She repulsed
Stella's advances till Stella was hurt and vexed.
"Eileen will not be friends with me," she complained to Lady O'Gara.
"She is so cold. That lovely pale hair of hers I took it in my hands
one day when it was undone, and it was cold as ice. Her heart is like
her hair. Why will she not like me?"
Why not, indeed? Apart from the fact that Stella chattered, pretty
chatter like the singing of a bird, and was so quickly intelligent
about everything, and so interested in the new life that the slower
Eileen was rather left out of things, her attitude towards Eileen was
most disarming. She admired her greatly and was evidently quite
unaware of her own good looks. She tried to win her over with gifts,
which Eileen accepted, while she was not propitiated.
"She will not like me," Stella complained with a flash of tears in her
eyes, "if I was to give her my heart she would not like me."
"You should not have given her your seed-pearls," said Lady O'Gara.
"It is too valuable a gift to pass from one girl to another."
It was beginning to dawn on her that Eileen was greedy and selfish.
Perhaps she had had intuitions of it when Eileen had disappointed her.
Eileen was only friendly to Stella when she wanted something. Once she
had obtained it she relapsed into her former coldness. Lady O'Gara
realized that Eileen had always been greedy. She had laid Terry under
heavy toll for small attentions and such gifts as he might give her.
Eileen's incessant eating of chocolate had made Lady O'Gara wonder how
she could give so good an account of herself at meal-times. She
smoked--it was a new fashion of which Lady O'Gara did not altogether
approve--a cigarette now and again and Terry supplied the gold-tipped,
scented kind which Eileen took from a cigarette case of platinum with
her name in turquoise at the corner. The cigarette case was a new
possession. Lady O'Gara supposed that it came from Terry. She had not
asked. A violet scent, so good that on its first introduction Lady
O'Gara had cried out that some one was wearing wet violets, now always
heralded Miss Creagh's coming into a room.
There were some things which had not come from Terry. When Lady O'Gara
had noticed them Eileen had said carelessly that they were given her by
Robin Gillespie, the son of the doctor at Inver, and a doctor himself
in the Indian Army. Anthony Creagh and his wife had an overflowing
quiverful. Lady O'Gara made excuses for the girl who must have had it
in her blood to do without. Still, Robin Gillespie, the doctor's son
at Inver, could not have much to spare, but apparently he had given
Eileen a good many trinkets.
"When does Terry join his regiment?" Sir Shawn asked his wife one day
with a certain sharpness.
"Not till September."
"And it is now August. A pity he should waste his time philandering."
"Does he philander?"
Lady O'Gara's voice had a hurt sound in it. She found nothing amiss in
her one child.
"He philandered with Eileen till Stella came. Now apparently he
inclines to Stella. He mustn't play fast and loose with girls."
"It sounds so ugly, Shawn. Terry is incapable of such a thing,--as
incapable as you yourself. He is not the flirting sort. He is just a
simple boy."
There was something piteous in her voice.
Her husband lifted her face by the chin till he looked down into her
eyes.
"If he were like me he would only have one love," he said. "You made
your own of me, Mary, altogether, from the first moment I saw you."
Stella had made friends with every one round about her. She was in and
out of the cottages. She knew all about the old people's ailments and
nursed all the children. Eileen complained with a fastidious disgust
that Stella did not seem to know whether the children were dirty or
clean. She kissed and hugged them all the same. In likewise she loved
and petted the animals and so commended herself hugely to Patsy Kenny.
"She's worth twenty of Miss Eileen," he said. "All I'm afeard of is
she'll run herself into danger. She doesn't know what fear is. She
ups and says to me the other day whin I bid her not make too free with
the mares that the only rayson the crathurs ever was wicked was that
men wasn't good to them."
"I've heard you say the same yourself, Mr. Kenny," said Susan Horridge,
over the half-door of whose lodge he was leaning. He often paid Susan
a visit in this uncomfortable fashion, refusing a chair in the kitchen
or even one outside.
"So you have," Patsy acknowledged, and made as if to go; but lingered
to ask what Mrs. Horridge thought of Miss Stella.
"I like fair hair best myself," he said, with a shy glance at Susan's
hair, neatly braided around a face that began to have soft, even plump,
contours once more.
"Miss Eileen has a lovely head of hair," Susan acknowledged.
"And yet," said Patsy, "Miss Stella's my choice. Did you ever take
notice of her side-face? It's the purtiest, softest thing I ever seen.
I think I seen somethin' like it wance, but where I disremimber."
"Which of the young ladies is Mr. Terry sweet on, Mr. Kenny?"
"Bedad, I don't know, ma'am." Patsy scratched his head. "I wouldn't
be sure he's not sweet on the two o' them."
A day came when the two girls, crossing the fields by a short cut,
found themselves face to face with a very fine bull. They had not
noticed him till they came quite near him. Their path wound round by a
little wood which, since it belonged to the paddock of the mares, was
surrounded by high hurdles. The bull must have broken into the field,
for he had no right to be there. The piece of rope hanging from his
neck showed that he had escaped from bondage.
The path curved gently by the edges of the coppice. They came upon the
bull unawares. He was grazing when they first saw him, his fine curled
head half-buried in the long grass.
"It is Brady's bull," Eileen said in a whisper. "He is not to be
trusted. And--he sees your red cloak."
The bull lifted his head and stared at them. Eileen had slipped behind
Stella and had begun to retreat backwards.
The bull stamped with his foot and emitted a low roar. Stella did not
seem to feel afraid. She kept her eye steadily on the bull. The day
was chilly and Lady O'Gara had wrapped the girls up in Connemara cloaks
of red and blue flannel. She had put the blue one about Eileen's
shoulders, remarking that it matched her eyes.
"Run, Eileen, run," Stella said quietly without taking her eyes from
the bull. "Keep the gate open for me."
Eileen ran with a will, never looking back to see what was happening.
Stella took off the red cloak. The bull had put his head to the earth
as though about to charge. He roared, a roar that seemed to shake the
ground. As he came on she flung the offending garment on to his horns
and stepped to one side.
She did not wait to see the result. She could run like Atalanta. It
was a pretty good sprint to the gate, which closed and opened by an
iron switch. As she ran, the roars of the bull followed her. He was
rending Lady O'Gara's Connemara cloak. Presently he would discover
that the perpetrator of this outrage upon his dignity was yet in sight.
She was some distance from the gate when she heard the thudding of the
bull behind her. For a second or two she did not discover that Eileen
was not holding the gate open for her. It was apparently shut to.
Would she have time to open it before the bull came up! The switch,
which was new, took some pressure to move. Would she have time?
She had just a wild hope that Eileen might have left the gate
unfastened. She flung herself against it. No, the switch had fallen
into its place: there was no time, no time even to climb the gate. The
bull was upon her with a rush. She felt the wind of his approach. She
closed her eyes and clung to the gate. Her mind was never clearer.
She saw herself trampled and gored, flung in the air and to earth again
a helpless thing for the bull to wreak his wrath upon.
Suddenly there was a shout, close at hand, almost at her ear.
Something hurtled through the air, a stone flung with an unerring aim
which struck the bull in the forehead. The gate opened with her and
she felt herself drawn through the opening while the switch fell with a
sharp click.
"I say, that was a near thing!" said Terry O'Gara. "You're not going
to faint, are you? Just look at that chap tearing up my old football
blazer. Thank God, it isn't you."
"Where is Eileen?" she asked. "She was terribly frightened."
"I know," he answered, somewhat grimly. "I dare say she has done a
faint. I left her over there by the stile. She was sitting down,
recovering herself. Lucky I heard the roars of the bull and was so
close at hand. I suppose it was Eileen who shut the gate. She made
some sort of explanation, but there was no time to listen. What a
fright you've had, you poor child!"
The bull, having reduced the blazer to rags like the Connemara cloak,
had trotted away and was grazing quietly, some of the tattered pieces
still hanging to his horns, with an odd effect of absurdity.
"I never thought an animal could be so alarming," said Stella.
"You must be more careful in future," he answered. "Not that I want
you to be afraid--like Eileen. This brute had no business here. He
must have broken through the hedge. He might have got into the foals'
paddock. There's a way in for anything very determined where the water
runs in that far ditch."
"Oh, I'm glad he didn't get in among the pretty foals."
"It would have been a horrible thing, but better the foals than you."
He looked at her with a simple boyish tenderness. There was something
childish about her beauty, something boyish about the slight figure and
the curly head, borne out by her frank gaze.
"I wish I had killed the brute," he said, with a vengeful glance in the
direction of the quietly-feeding bull.
"You probably cut him with that stone, poor beast."
"Yes: it had a good sharp edge. How lucky I found it just there!"
He noticed that she turned very pale. Quickly his arm went round her
to give her support.
"You poor little thing!" he said. "I am so sorry. Are you better now?"
The colour came back to her face. She withdrew gently from his arm.
"I am all right," she said. "It was splendid how you came to my
rescue."
Her frank eyes thanked him in a way he found bewildering. He was very
goodly in his flannels, with his alert slender darkness and his bright
eyes, softened now as his gaze rested upon her.
"It won't make you afraid?" he asked anxiously. "I mean, of course,
you must be cautious; but any one would be afraid of Brady's bull.
Don't be timid like Eileen, who screams if a foal trots up to her, and
is afraid even of Shot."
He had quite forgotten the time when he had found Eileen's timidity
pleasing.
"Oh, I shall not be afraid of Shot, or the foals," she said, and
laughed. "After all," she lifted her eyes to him as though she asked
for pardon--"any one might be afraid of a bull. I'm not a coward for
that."
"Of course you're not," he answered, with a sound in his voice as
though she was very pleasant to him. "Bulls are treacherous brutes."
They went back slowly to where Eileen sat watching their approach
gloomily.
"Well!" she said. "You've been a long time. Wasn't that a horrid
brute? I never ran such danger in my life before."
"Stella ran a greater because you had taken care to slam the gate after
you," Terry said, with young condemning eyes. "I was only just in time
to save her from that brute."
"Oh well, I was frightened. I only thought of getting away as far as I
could from him. I shan't walk in the fields again in a hurry. If it
isn't horses, it's bulls."
Eileen's face kept its unbecoming gloom on the homeward way, even
though she pressed very close to Terry for protection whenever they
came near the feeding horses, or one of them trotted up to be petted
and stroked. She knew she was disapproved of, and the knowledge was
unpleasant to her, although it did not cause her any searchings of
conscience. Eileen always took the line of least resistance, as her
clever sister, Paula, who was a B.A. of Dublin University, had said.
CHAPTER VIII
SIR SHAWN SEES A GHOST
"There's a blast o' talk goin' through the place like an earthquake,"
said Patsy Kenny to Sir Shawn, "that the little cottage down by the
waterfall is took by a stranger woman."
There was "a blast of talk" even about trifles among the
country-people, from whom Patsy kept his distance with an abhorrence of
gossip and curiosity about other people's business. Many a one had
tried to pump Patsy,--the people had an inordinate curiosity about
their "betters"--and of late tongues had been very busy with the return
of Mrs. Comerford and the reconciliation with Lady O'Gara: also with
Miss Stella and her parentage. Those who tried to pump Patsy Kenny
about these matters embarked, and they knew it, on perilous seas.
Patsy's stiff face as he repelled the gossips was a sight to see. He
had also to keep at bay many questions about Susan Horridge and her
boy, in doing which he showed some asperity and thereby gave a handle
to the gossips.
"I should have thought the cottage by the waterfall a damp place," said
Sir Shawn, indifferently. He was not much interested in the petty
happenings of the neighbourhood.
"She won't stay," Patsy went on with a shake of his head. "They'll get
at her about ould Hercules. A lone woman like that will be scared out
of her life. I saw her in Dunphy's shop buyin' her little bits of
food. She's not the common sort. She was all in black, with a veil
about her face. She'll have no truck with them long-tongued people
about here."
"Oh, a superior class?" said Sir Shawn, now faintly interested. The
Waterfall Cottage was his property. He supposed Norman, who lived in
the town and did his legal business, had let it.
"Not to say a lady," said Patsy, "but nigh hand one. She have the
little place rale snug and comfortable. She'll keep herself to
herself. There's two lone women in it now, herself and Mrs. Horridge.
Mrs. Horridge do be drawin' the water from the well behind the
Waterfall Cottage, and this Mrs. Wade kem out an' spoke to her. She
took great notice of Georgie. The schoolmaster's well contint with
Georgie. He takes to the Irish like a duck to water. The master do be
sayin' he's better at the language nor them that should be spakin' it
be rights. He'll have him doin' a trifle o' poetry in it by the
Christmas holidays."
"Oh! So the two lonesome women have made friends with each other.
Between them they'll be a match for Hercules' ghost," Sir Shawn said,
faintly smiling.
By this time Terry had joined his regiment, and Eileen had gone for a
time to her parents. She usually went home rather unwillingly,
complaining of the discomfort of the tightly packed house. Apparently
she did not add to the joy of her family during those periodic visits
and she made no pretence of eagerness about going. But this time, for
some reason, she was quite pleased to go. She even set about
refurbishing her wardrobe, and was not above accepting help from
Stella, who was very quick with her needle and possessed a
Frenchwoman's art in making excellent use of what materials came her
way. These preparations somewhat mystified Lady O'Gara, for usually
Eileen took only her less reputable garments when she went home,
because she had to live in her trunk, or share a wardrobe with two
sisters, who would hang their roughest garments over her evening frocks
if she were to bring them.
Lady O'Gara sometimes wondered if she had chosen wisely in selecting
Eileen from Anthony Creagh's quiverful to be her companion during the
years Terry was at school and college. The others had been tumbling
over each other like frolicsome young puppies when the choice was made;
Eileen had been sitting placidly eating bread and honey. She
remembered that Anne Creagh had said that Eileen would always get the
best of things! To Lady O'Gara's eyes, the demure little girl, with a
golden plait hanging down each side of her face, and the large blue
eyes, had looked like a little Blessed Mary in the Temple of Albrecht
Dürer.
Perhaps she had not chosen. Perhaps Eileen had chosen her, when she
said to Anne Creagh, "Dear Anne, you have so many girls. Lend me one
for company. I shall be very good to her and shall only keep her
during your pleasure."
Eileen had heard the speech, and had seized on Lady O'Gara, not to be
detached. When it had come to longer and longer visits, so that Eileen
was oftener at Castle Talbot than at home, Anne Creagh had said, "Ah,
well, Eileen knows what is good for her. The others don't. They've no
worldly wisdom. There is Hilary, who runs away from every school we
send him to. They are all like Hilary, except Eileen. She's a
changeling."
With Terry gone, Eileen had put off her sulkiness. Lady O'Gara came on
the two girls one day at work on a pink billowy stuff, which was
evidently going to be an evening-frock. At least Stella was at work,
and Eileen was looking on. Eileen usually commandeered some one to her
service when any sewing was to be done. She had confessed that she
could not endure to have her forefinger pricked by the needle.
"You are going to be very smart, Eileen," Lady O'Gara said. "This
looks like gaieties at Inver."
"There may be some," answered Eileen, colouring slightly. "There are
some soldiers under canvas at Inver Hill."
Lady O'Gara referred to Eileen's preparations a little later in talking
with her husband. Sir Shawn had got a bee in his bonnet about Terry
and Eileen. For the first time during all their years of love he had
been irritable with his wife about Terry--Terry, who had given them so
little trouble in his twenty years of life.
"I am glad she has the spirit," he said. "A pretty girl like Eileen
need not go wasting her charms on a young ass who doesn't know his own
mind."
"Oh, Shawn! Poor Terry!"
"Terry has been playing fast and loose with Eileen."
"He would not like to hear you say so," Lady O'Gara said, with a proud
and wounded air.
"There you go, Mary, getting your back up! Your one son can do no
wrong. Do you deny that he was philandering after Eileen before Stella
came, and that he has been philandering after Stella since?"
"Do you know, Shawn," Lady O'Gara said, with sudden energy, "that, fond
as I am of Eileen, I think she has not the stuff in her to hold a boy
like Terry. There is something lethargic in her. I'm afraid she is a
little selfish. She can be very sweet when she likes, but I think at
heart she is cold."
"This is a late discovery, Mary."
Lady O'Gara laughed, a little ruefully.
"I think it is a very old discovery," she said. "Anne said to me
once--she never pretended that she loved Eileen as well as some of the
others--that Eileen had a way of looking at her when she was in high
spirits or something of the sort that was like a douche of cold water.
I have had the lame experience myself. Eileen said something the other
day about 'at your age.' I felt ninety, all of a sudden."
"Nonsense, Mary! Eileen adores you."
Lady O'Gara said no more. She let pass, with a shrug of her shoulders,
her husband's accusation that she was fickle like Terry, putting away
the old love for the new.
Suddenly Sir Shawn asked a direct question.
"Are you quite certain about Stella's parentage, Mary? She _is_ the
child of that French soldier, St. Maur, was it? and the Irish
governess?"
"Of course, Shawn."
It had never occurred to Lady O'Gara to doubt it.
She looked at her husband with wondering eyes. The lights in her brown
eyes were as deep and quiet now as when she was in her young beauty.
She had a sudden illumination. Was _that_ the bee in Shawn's bonnet?
There had been a certain silence about Stella's parentage. She thought
she understood it. Mrs. Comerford had always been jealous of her
loves. She did not wish it recalled that Stella, whom she adored, had
not belonged to her by any tie of blood. Shawn must have got it into
his head that the mystery might cover something disgraceful.
"You may be quite sure, Shawn," she said, her candid eyes fixed on him:
"There was nothing to conceal. Aunt Grace has told me _everything_."
His face cleared. "Then I confess," he said almost gaily, "that Stella
is a young angel. Perhaps I was too hard on Terry."
The evenings began to draw in. Sir Shawn missed his boy. The hunting
season was at hand. The opening meet was to be at Dunmara Cross-Roads
in a fortnight's time. Lady O'Gara went out perhaps once a week. The
other days Sir Shawn would miss Terry jogging along beside him, on the
way to the meet in the morning, full of cheerful anticipation; riding
homewards, tired and happy, in the dusk. Stella had never ridden to
hounds. She had done little riding, indeed, since the days at the
advanced Roman Convent when the girls went out on the Campagna in a
flock, in charge of a discreet riding master, of unimpeachable age and
plainness.
He was thinking as he rode home one evening, with the dusk closing in,
that it would be pleasant to have Stella with him when Mary was not
available. It was one tangible thing against Eileen that she did not
like horses. Anthony Creagh's daughter! It seemed incredible to Sir
Shawn, as it did to Patsy Kenny, that any one should not like horses.
There was a little mare not quite up to racing standard which he
thought would just do for Stella. Indeed, though he did not know it,
Patsy Kenny had put the idea into his head.
"That wan 'ud carry a lady in less than no time," Patsy had said, "A
lady about the size of Miss Stella. She'd take the ditches like a
bird."
But Patsy was always talking in his slow way, and Sir Shawn was not
always listening to him, or he seemed not to listen. He had a way of
forgetting his surroundings and travelling off to a distance where even
she who loved him best could not follow. But sometimes he heard when
he did not seem to hear and was unconscious of having heard. He was
going to ride Mustapha this Winter as soon, he said with his slow
smile, as Patsy Kenny would permit it. Mustapha, although a beautiful
creature to look at, had not yet been "whispered" by Patsy. He had
still an uncommonly nasty temper, and indeed most of the tricks a horse
could possess. Sir Shawn thought some hard work would improve
Mustapha's temper, but Patsy remained oddly unwilling. "Give me a week
or two longer to get over him," he would say when Sir Shawn proposed to
ride Mustapha.
He had lunched one day with Sir James Dillon, fourteen miles off, and
had waited for tea, and on the way home his horse had lost a shoe. He
hoped Mary would not be anxious. He had said he would be home by five,
and had meant it; but Lady Dillon, who was, her friends said, the
wittiest woman in Ireland, had so beguiled the time in the
billiard-room after lunch that he had not noticed it passing. And,
since he was not the man to ride a horse who had lost a shoe, he had
walked the last six Irish miles of the road.
Very seldom did he take the road on which Terence Comerford had been
killed, more than twenty years back. One could avoid it by a détour,
so he had only taken it when necessity called for the short road, and
he had always found it an ordeal. But he was not going to put an extra
mile on to the tired horse because of his own feelings.
He had come near the dreaded spot where Terence Comerford had been
flung on to the convenient heap of shingle. Already he could hear the
roar of the water where it tumbled over the weir like long green hair.
Above it on either side the banks of the river rose steeply. On the
side nearest to him was the Mount, in the heart of which Admiral
Hercules O'Hart had chosen to be buried. It was covered thickly with
trees. In Spring it was beautiful with primroses which showed not a
leaf between, a primrose sea which seemed in places as though a wave
had run forward into the lower slopes of green grass and retreated
leaving a foam of primroses behind.
The horse pulled up sharply at the sound of the waterfall and stood
quivering in the darkness. There was a glimmer of light overhead, but
because of the thick trees this road was very dark.
"It is only the water falling over the weir, you foolish thing!" he
said, caressing the long brown nose of the little horse.
The horse answered with a whinny and, talking to him to distract his
attention, Sir Shawn got him along. Perhaps the horse knew that his
master's heart was cold. It was a well-nigh unendurable pain to Sir
Shawn to pass the place where the friend of his youth and boyhood had
been killed.
Suddenly the horse jibbed again. A long ray of light had streamed out
on to the darkness of the road. At first Sir Shawn thought it was a
hooded lantern. Few came this road, unless it might be a stranger who
did not know the countryside traditions. But the light was steady; it
did not move as a lantern carried in the hand would have done.
It flashed upon him what it was. The woman in the Waterfall Cottage
must have lit her lamp, forgetting to shutter her window which looked
upon the road. The cottage turned a gable to the road, from which a
paling divided it. Otherwise the little place was hidden away behind a
wall, approached by a short avenue from a gate some distance away. A
pretty place, with a garden that looked on to the fields, but very
lonely for one woman, and too near the water.
The light remained steady. As though it gave him confidence, the horse
went on quietly, feeling his master's hand upon him. Just opposite the
gable of the cottage a wall of loose stones led into the O'Hart park.
The house had been long derelict and was going to be pulled down, now
that the Congested Board, as the people called it, had acquired the
O'Hart property.
Any one who wanted to go that way knocked down a stone from the wall.
There was a little cairn there always, though the employees of the
Board were constantly putting back the stones.
The light from the cottage fell full on the cairn. Sir Shawn's eyes
rested on it and were quickly averted. There the heap of stones for
mending the road had lain that night long ago when Spitfire, had run
away with Terence Comerford and thrown him. There had been blood on
the stones--blood and ... and ... brains. Horrible!
Sir Shawn had come level now with the long ray of light. At the edge
of it he paused. He could see plainly the interior of the room. The
unshaded lamp threw its bright light into every corner of the room. It
was comfortable and homelike. The furniture had belonged to the
previous tenant of the cottage and had been taken over by the estate.
It was good, old-fashioned furniture of a certain dignity. The
grandfather clock by the wall, the tall mahogany bookcase, the sofa and
chairs covered in red damask, were all good. There was a round convex
mirror above the fireplace and some pictures on the wall. The fire
burned brightly, toning down somewhat the hard unshaded lamplight.
A woman was sitting by the fire. She was in black with a white collar
and cuffs. Her hair was braided about her head. She sat with her
cheek resting in her hand, a pensive figure.
As though she knew she was being watched she started, turning her face
sharply towards the window. Evidently she had forgotten to pull down
the blind. As she turned, her face was in the full lamplight.
"My God!" Sir Shawn said to himself. "My God!"
He stood for a few seconds as though in pain, leaning against the
horse's side, before he went on. When he lifted his head darkness had
come again. The window had been shuttered.
CHAPTER IX
THE LETTER
From the pile of her letters one morning a month or so later, Lady
O'Gara picked out one and eyed it with distaste. It looked mean. The
envelope of flimsy paper was dirty. Some emanation came from the thing
like a warning of evil: she laid it on one side, away from her honest
respectable letters.
While she read through one or two of these the disreputable letter
awaiting her attention worried her. It was something importunate,
disagreeable, like a debased face thrust in at her door. With a sigh
she turned to it, to get it out of the way before she opened Terry's
letter, clean and dandyish, written on the delicate paper the Regiment
affected.
She held the thing gingerly by the edge, and, going away from the
table, she stood by the fire while she opened it. A smell of
turf-smoke came out of it,--nothing worse than that. Perhaps, after
all, it was only one of the many appeals for help which came to her
pretty constantly.
"HONOURED MADAM,--This is from one who wishes you no harm, but onley
good. There is a woman lives in the Waterfall Cottage your husband
goes to see often. Such doins ought not to be Aloud.
"From your sinceer Well-Wisher,
XXX."
If it had been a longer letter she would not have read it. It was so
short and written so legibly that the whole disgraceful thing leaped at
her in a single glance.
As though it had been a noxious reptile which had bitten her she flung
it from her into the heart of the brightly burning fire of wood and
turf. A little flame sprang up and it was gone, just as Sir Shawn came
into the room.
They had the breakfast room to themselves now that there were no
visitors, but Lady O'Gara hesitated to speak. She had no intention of
keeping the matter of the anonymous letter from her husband, but she
wanted to let him eat his breakfast in peace, and to talk later on,
secure from possible interruptions.
She gave him scraps of news from her letters, and from _The Times_ of
the preceding day, which reached them at their breakfast table. She
felt disturbed and agitated, but only as one does who has received an
insult. She would be better when she had told Shawn about the horrid
thing.
Her restlessness, so unlike her usual benign placidity, at last
attracted her husband's notice.
"Any disturbing news, Mary?" he asked.
"Nothing." Her hand hovered over Terry's letter. "Terry thinks he can
get a few days' leave next week for the pheasants and bring a couple of
brother-officers with him."
"H'm!" Sir Shawn said, a little grimly. "He hasn't been away very
long. I suppose Eileen is coming back."
"She comes on Monday."
"I expect he knows it."
"Perhaps he does. Have you finished, Shawn? Another cup of tea? No?
I want to talk to you, dear. Will you come out to the Robin's Seat.
It is really a beautiful morning."
"Let me get my pipe."
Unsuspiciously he found his pipe and tobacco pouch and followed her.
The Robin's Seat was a wooden seat below a little hooded arch, under a
high wall over which had grown all manner of climbing wall-plants. The
arbour and the seat were on the edge of a path which formed the
uppermost of three terraces: below the lowest the country swept away to
the bog. The wall, made to copy one in a famous Roman garden, was
beautiful at all times of the year, with its strange clinging and
climbing plants that flourished so well in this mild soft air. In
Autumn it was particularly beautiful with its deep reds and golds and
purples and bronzes. The Robin's Seat was a favourite resting-place of
these two married lovers, who fed the robins that came strutting about
their feet, and even perched on their knees, asking a crumb.
Despite the disturbance of her mind Lady O'Gara had not forgotten her
feathered pensioners. She threw crumbs to them as she talked, and the
robins picked them up and flirted their little heads and bodies
daintily, turning a bright inquiring eye on her when the supply ceased.
"Well, Mary?"
"I hate to tell you, Shawn." She brushed away the last crumbs from her
lap. "I did not tell you the truth when I said there was nothing
disturbing among my letters."
"I knew there was something. We have not lived so long together for me
not to know you through and through. And you are as open as the day."
"It was a horrid thing, a creeping, lying thing."
"An anonymous letter." His eyes fluttered nervously under the droop of
the long lashes. "You should have put it in the fire, darling."
"I did. There was so little of it that unfortunately I saw it all at a
glance. It is horrid to think that any one about here could do such a
thing."
Suddenly she laughed. She had a peculiarly joyous laugh.
"They,--whoever wrote it--should have said something more likely to be
believed. They said--I beg your pardon for telling you, Shawn--that
you were visiting a lady at the Waterfall Cottage."
She was looking at him and suddenly she saw the shadows come in his
face which had had the power to disturb her before: or she thought she
did. The upper part of his face was in shadow from the balsam that
dropped its trails like a fringe over the arch.
"You did not believe it, Mary?"
"What do you think? Would you believe such a story of me?"
"Don't!" he said, and there was something sharp, like a cry, in the
protest. "No reptile would be base enough to spit at you."
They were alone together. Below them the terraces fell to the coloured
bogs. A river winding through the bog showed as a darkly blue ribbon,
reflecting the cloud of indigo which hung above the bog. Beyond was
the Wood of the Echoes, the trees apparently with their feet in the
water in which other trees showed inverted. Not a creature to see
them, but the robins.
Suddenly he put his head down on her shoulder, with the air of a tired
child.
"Your correspondent was not a liar, Mary," he said. "I have visited
Mrs. Wade at Waterfall Cottage, at night too, and only not by stealth
because I thought that Hercules' ghost--" he shivered a little--"would
have kept spies and onlookers from that place."
Lady O'Gara shifted his head slightly with the greatest gentleness, so
that she might caress him, stroking his hair with her fingers.
"Well, and why not?" she asked, with her air of gaiety.
"There never was such a wife as you, Mary," he said. "Go on stroking
my hair. It draws the pain out."
"You have neuralgia?" she asked with quick alarm.
"No: it is a duller pain than that. It is a sort of congestion caused
by keeping secrets from you."
"Secrets!" Her voice was quite unsuspicious. "You could not keep them
long."
He sat up and looked at her, and she saw that there was pain in his
eyes.
"I have been keeping secrets from you all our wedded life together,
Mary."
She uttered a little sound of dismay--of grief. Then she said, with an
assumption of an easy manner:
"And if you have, Shawn, well--they must be things I had no right to
know. There are reticences I can respect. Other people's secrets
might be involved...."
"That was it," he said eagerly. "There was another person's secret
involved. I kept it back when it would have rested my heart to tell
you."
"I shall not ask you to tell me now unless the time has come to tell.
I can trust you, Shawn."
"The time may have come," he answered, drawing down her caressing hand
to kiss it. "Another man might have told it to win you the more
completely, Mary. He might have found justification for betraying his
friend. I thought at one time you must have cared for Terence
Comerford and not for me. It was the strangest thing in the world that
you should have cared for me. Terence was so splendid, so big, so
handsome and pleasant with every one. How could you have preferred me
before him? And I knew he wasn't fit for you, Mary. I knew there was
another girl,--yet I held my peace. It tortured me, to keep silence.
And there was the other girl to be thought of. He owed reparation to
the other girl. But his mother had her heart set on you for a
daughter-in-law. I believe he would have done the right thing if he
had lived,--in spite of all it would have meant to his mother. He had
a good heart,--but--oh, my God!--he should not have lifted his eyes to
you when there was that other poor girl!"
He spoke in a voice as though he were being tortured, and her caressing
hand felt the cold sweat ooze out on his forehead. How sensitive he
was! How he grieved for his friend after all those years!
"He did not really lift his eyes to me as you say," she said. "His
mother wanted it. He never did. A woman is not deceived."
"But you cared for him--to some extent?" he asked jealously.
"I never cared for any man but one," she answered. "I used to think
you would never ask me. Perhaps you never would have only that I came
to you when you were so broken down after your illness; and you had not
strength enough to resist me."
She finished with a certain pathetic gaiety. With all his deep love
for her she had not brought him joyfulness. Many people had noticed
it. Her own well-spring of Joy had never run dry. It had survived
even his sadness, and had made the house bright for their one child,
but there had been moments, hours, when she had felt oddly exhausted,
as though she had to bear a double strain of living.
"You saved me from utter despair,--'an angel beautiful and bright.'
That is what you seemed to me when you showed me your exquisite pity."
"Poor Terence!" she said softly. "Do you know, Shawn, I believe he was
often on the edge of telling me his secret. Over and over again he
began and was interrupted, or he drew back."
"Hardly, Mary. Men do not tell such things to the ladies of their
family."
"Oh!" She coloured like a girl. "It was,--that. I thought it was ...
a lady ... some one he knew in Dublin perhaps."
"It was a girl in Killesky. Her grandmother kept a little
public-house. She looked like an old Gipsy-Queen, the grandmother.
And the girl--the girl was like a dark rose. All the men in the county
raved about her--the gentlemen, I mean. It was extraordinary how many
roads led through Killesky. The girl was as modest as she was
beautiful. Terence was mad about her. He knocked down a Connaught
Ranger man who made a joke about her. That last leave--before he was
killed--he was never out of the place. She had been at a convent
school--the old woman had brought her up well--and she used to go on
visits to school friends in Dublin. Terence told me he met her in
Dublin when we were at the Royal Barracks. I implored him to let her
alone, but he was angry and told me to mind my own business. That last
time it was more serious. Poor little Bridyeen! I told him he ought
to marry her. I think he knew it. It made him short-tempered with me.
But ... I hope ... I hope...--" the strange anguish came back to his
voice--"that he would have married her."
"I remember now," Lady O'Gara said. "I remember the girl. Aunt Grace
thought very well of her; she told the old woman she ought not to have
Bridyeen serving in the bar. She was a beautiful little creature, like
a moss rosebud, such dark hair and the beautiful colour and the ardent
look in her eyes. Old Mrs. Dowd answered Aunt Grace with a haughtiness
equal to her own. Aunt Grace was very angry: she said the old woman
was insolent. I did not learn exactly what Mrs. Dowd had said, but I
gathered that she said she knew how to keep her girl as well as Aunt
Grace did."
"I sometimes thought the old woman was ambitious," Sir Shawn went on,
dreamily. "She used to watch Bridyeen while all those fellows were
hanging about her and paying her compliments. I have sometimes thought
she meant Bridyeen to marry a gentleman. Several were infatuated
enough for that. The old woman was always about watching and
listening. I don't think any of them was ever rude to the little girl.
She was so innocent to look at. If any man had forgotten himself so
far he would have had to answer to the others."
"What became of them--afterwards? Killesky seldom came in my path. I
did not know that the picturesque old woman and the little
granddaughter had gone till after we were married, when I drove that
way and saw the garish new shop going up.
"It was like the old woman to carry off poor Bridyeen from all the
scandal and the talk. You remember how ill I was. I thought that as
soon as I was well enough I would go and see them--the old woman and
the poor child. I would have done what I could. They were gone. No
one knew what had become of them. They had gone away quietly and
mysteriously. The little place was shut up one morning. You remember
how pretty it was, the little thatched house behind its long garden.
They had gone to America. Fortunately the people had not begun to
talk."
"That poor little thing!" Lady O'Gara said softly. "She looked as shy
as a fawn. I wonder what became of her."
"Don't you understand, Mary? She has come back. She is ... Mrs. Wade."
"Oh! She married then? Of course you would want to be kind to her. I
suppose she is a widow!"
"I don't think she married. I don't know what brings her back here,
unless it is the desire to return which afflicts the Irish wherever
they go. She has fixed herself in such a lonely spot. After all, she
is my tenant. It is my business to see that she wants for nothing. I
recognized her one night I came that way--when I was late and had to
take that road. I saw her through the unshuttered window with a strong
light on her face. I went back there in daylight and came upon her
drawing water from the well. She was frightened at first, but
afterwards she seemed glad to see me. She is very lonely. No one goes
to see her but Mrs. Horridge,--a good creature--but Bridyeen is a
natural lady. I must not go there again though she is a grey-haired
woman older than her years--it was strange that I recognized her after
twenty years; there are beasts who will talk."
"I shall come with you, Shawn," said Lady O'Gara. "That will be the
best way to prevent their talking."
CHAPTER X
MRS. WADE
A friendship had sprung up between Mrs. Horridge and Mrs. Wade, as Sir
Shawn had said--a curious friendship, not altogether equal, for Mrs.
Wade had a certain amount of education and was curiously
refined--America had not altered her even to the extent of affecting
her speech; and that was a very exceptional thing, for the returned
Americans usually came with a speech altered out of all recognition.
When Lady O'Gara came into the little sitting-room at the cottage,
having knocked with her knuckles and obtained no answer, she found
Susan Horridge there. Susan stood up, making a little dip, took the
boy's garment she had been mending and went away, while Mrs. Wade
received her visitor with a curious air of equality. It was not such
an equality as she might have learnt in the United States. There was
nothing assertive about it. It was quite unconscious.
She seemed profoundly agitated by Lady O'Gara's visit, her colour
coming and going, her eyes dilated. She had put out a hand as Susan
Horridge went away, almost as though she would have detained her by
force.
"Please forgive my coming in like this," Lady O'Gara said. "I was
knocking for some time, but you did not hear me. My husband, Sir Shawn
O'Gara, has told me about his tenant, and I thought I would like to
come and see you."
"Thank you very much, Lady O'Gara. I am sorry you had to wait at the
door. Won't you sit down?"
"May I sit here? I don't like facing the light. My eyes are not
over-strong."
"Dear me. They look so beautiful too."
The naïve compliment seemed to ease the strain in the situation. Lady
O'Gara laughed. She had sometimes said that she laughed when she felt
like to die with trouble. People had taken it for an exaggerated
statement. What cause could Mary O'Gara have to feel like dying with
trouble? Even though Shawn O'Gara was a melancholy gentleman, Mary
seemed very well able to enjoy life.
"How kind of you!" she said merrily. "I might return the compliment.
What a pretty place you have made of this!"
"I brought a few little things with me. I knew nothing was to be
bought here. And the things I found here already were good."
"It is a damp place down here under the trees. Now that you have made
it so pretty it would be hard to leave it. Else I should suggest
another cottage. There is a nice dry one on the upper road."
"Oh! I shouldn't think of leaving this," Mrs. Wade said, nervously.
Still her colour kept coming and going. America had not yellowed her
as it usually had the _revenants_. Her dark skin was smooth and richly
coloured: her eyes soft and still brilliant. Only the greying of her
hair told that she was well on towards middle age.
"But it is very lonely. You are not nervous?"
"I like the loneliness."
"You should have a dog."
Her tongue had nearly slipped into saying that a dog was the kind of
company that did not ask questions.
"I should have to exercise a dog."
A queer look of fear came into her eyes. Lady O'Gara could have
imagined that she looked stealthily from one side to another.
"But you must go out sometimes," she said.
Again the look of fear cowered away from her. What was it that Mrs.
Wade was afraid of?
"I was never one for walking," she said, lamely.
"You don't like to tear yourself from this pretty room?"
It was very pretty. The walls had been thickly whitewashed and the
curtains at the window were of a deep rose-colour. A few cushions in
the white chairs and sofa repeated the rose-colour. The room seemed to
glow within the shadow of the many trees, overhanging too heavily
outside.
"You have too many trees here," Lady O'Gara went on. "It must be
pitchy towards nightfall. I shall ask my husband to cut down some of
them."
She was wondering at her own way with this woman. Gentle and kindly as
she was, she had approached the visit with something of shrinking, the
unconscious, uncontrollable shrinking of the woman whose ways have
always been honourable and tenderly guarded, from the woman who has
slipped on the way, however pitiable and forgivable her fault. It is
the feeling with which the nun, however much a lover of her kind,
approaches the penitent committed to her care.
She suddenly realized that in this case she did not shrink. Whatever
difference there might be between her and Mrs. Wade there was not
_that_ difference. They met as one honourable woman meets another.
Lady O'Gara was glad that she had forgotten to shrink.
"Thank you very much," said Mrs. Wade. "It is kind of you to think of
it. But--I like the trees. You are very kind, Lady O'Gara. About the
dog,--if I had a little gentle one, who would stay with me while I
gardened and not want too much exercise, I should like it."
"I believe I can get you such a one. My cousin, Mrs. Comerford, or
rather her adopted daughter, has Poms. There is a little one, rather
lame, in the last litter. His leg got hurt somehow. I am sure I can
have him. You will be good to him."
Mrs. Wade had drawn back into the shadow. The one window lit the space
across by the fireside to the door and the other portion of the room
was rather dark. But Lady O'Gara had an idea that the woman's eyes
leaped at her.
"I saw the young lady," she said. "She came to Mrs. Horridge's lodge
one day I was there. She was so pretty, and the little dogs with her
were jumping upon her. Little goldy-coloured dogs they were."
"Yes, that would be Stella. She loves her dogs: I know she would be so
glad to give you one, because you would be good to it."
"Maybe she'd bring it to me one day? She's a pretty thing. It would
be nice to see her in this house."
The voice was low, but there was something hurried and eager about it.
Lady O'Gara imagined that she could see the heave of the woman's breast.
"Certainly. We shall bring the puppy together. I shall tell Stella."
A sudden misgiving came to her when she had said it. Perhaps she ought
to be too careful of Stella to bring her into touch with a woman who
had slipped from virtue, however innocently and pitiably. It was a
scruple which might not have troubled her if Stella had been her own
child. There was another thing. Would Grace Comerford, if she knew
all, be willing that her adopted daughter should be friends with Mrs.
Wade?
Again something leaped at her from the woman's eyes, something of a
gratitude which took Lady O'Gara's breath away.
"It will be nice to have a little dog of my own," she said. "It will
be great company in the house at night. A little dog like that would
be almost like a child. And in the daytime he'd give me word if any
one was coming."
Suddenly she seemed to have a new thought. She leant forward and said
in the same agitated way:
"You wouldn't be bringing Mrs. Comerford?"
"No, no," said Lady O'Gara. "I shall not bring Mrs. Comerford."
"I knew her long ago. She was kind, but she was very proud," Mrs. Wade
said, dropping back into the shadow from which she had emerged.
So it was of Mrs. Comerford she was afraid! What was it? Conscience?
Did she think Terence Comerford's mother could have heard anything in
that far away time?
"I shall not bring Mrs. Comerford," she said. "Stella is much with me
at Castle Talbot."
Again she wondered why she had said "Stella." It would have been "Miss
Stella" to another woman of Mrs. Wade's class.
"Might I be making you a cup of tea, Lady O'Gara?" Mrs. Wade asked with
a curiously brightening face. "I had put on the kettle in the kitchen
for Mrs. Horridge. It will be boiling by this time."
Lady O'Gara was about to refuse. Then she changed her mind. A refusal
might hurt Mrs. Wade. Beyond that she had a sudden curiosity,--her
husband had often said that she had a touch of the _gamin_--as to how
Mrs. Wade would give her tea. Would she sit down with her in the
equality of an afternoon call? There was a little twitch at the
corners of her lips as she answered that she would like tea. Sir Shawn
was away shooting wild duck, and she would be alone at tea if she went
home.
While she waited, still with that half-delighted feeling of curiosity,
she went and stood before the old-fashioned bookcase which contained
Mrs. Wade's library. Very good, she said to herself. There were odd
volumes of Thackeray and Dickens, Mrs. Gaskell and Charlotte Brontë.
Her dimples came and were reflected as she turned about in the convex
glass, with an eagle atop, over the fireplace. Outside a couple of
stone eagles perched on the low roof, after the fashion of a bygone
day. Far away in the silvery distance of the convex mirror a miniature
Lady O'Gara dimpled.
She was remembering a pretentious lady who had called on her a few days
earlier--the wife of a newly rich man who had taken Ardnavalley, a
place in the neighbourhood, for the shooting. Sir Robert Smith, the
multi-millionaire, was very simple. Not so Lady Smith, who had
remarked that Bront was always readable.
There were also a few volumes of poetry, not very exacting,--Tennyson,
Adelaide Procter, Longfellow, and some Irish books--"The Spirit of the
Nation," "Lady Wilde's Poems," Davis, Moore: a few devotional books.
Ah well, it was very good--gentle and innocent reading. And there was
Mrs. Wade's prayer-book--The Key of Heaven,--on a small table, the
"Imitation of Christ" beside it. By these lay one or two oddly bound
books in garish colourings, Lady O'Gara opened one. She saw it was in
French--an innocuous French romance suitable for the reading of
convent-school girls.
Mechanically she looked at the flyleaf. It bore an inscription; Miss
Bride Sweeney, Enfant de Marie, had received this book for proficiency
in Italian, some twenty-two years earlier at St. Mary's Convent.
She held the book in her hand when Mrs. Wade appeared, carrying a
little tray of unpainted wood, on which was set out a tea for one
person, all very dainty, from the small china cup and saucer on its
white damask napkin to the thinly cut bread and butter.
Lady O'Gara had been thinking that if Mrs. Wade did not wish to be
identified with Bride Sweeney, she should not leave her school-prizes
about.
"Ah, you are looking at that old book," Mrs. Wade said, setting down
her little tray, while she spread a tea-cloth on the table. "They are
very dull stories. Even a convent-school girl could not extract much
from them. I'm sorry it's so plain a tea. If I'd known your Ladyship
was coming I'd have had some cakes made."
"This home-made bread is delicious," Lady O'Gara said. "But, won't you
have some tea too?"
"No, thank you. I am not one for tea at every hour of the day like
Mrs. Horridge. I take my tea when you are taking your dinner. You
wouldn't like a boiled egg now? I've one little hen laying."
Her voice was coaxing. Now that Lady O'Gara could see the face in full
light she thought it an innocent and gentle face. The eyes still
looked upward with a kind of passion in their depths. She remembered
her husband's epithet,--"ardent." It well described Mrs. Wade's eyes.
Just now the ardour was for herself. She wondered why.
"Thank you so very much," she said sweetly. "I don't think I could eat
an egg, though. Your tea is delicious."
"The cream is from your own Kerries. Mrs. Horridge arranged it for me
that I could get the milk from your dairy. It would make any tea good.
She brings me the milk twice daily, or her little lad does."
"Susan seldom ventures out, I think," Lady O'Gara said, while she
sipped her tea. "I am glad you get her beyond her own gate."
"She's a scared creature. She dreads the road. Mr. Kenny gets her all
she wants from the village. She comes to me across the Mount. She
doesn't mind that way even in the dark, though the people about here
wouldn't take it on any account. Perhaps she doesn't know the stories.
Perhaps, like myself, she thinks a ghost is better company than humans
sometimes."
"Ah; you are not afraid of ghosts!"
"If I was," Mrs. Wade's eyes suddenly filled with tears,--"would I be
settled here? It's not thinking of the Admiral's ghost I'd be. Maybe
there's some you'd welcome back from the grave, if you loved them well
enough. I can't imagine any one not wanting the dead back, if so be
that you loved them."
Her voice died off in a wail, and suddenly it came to Lady O'Gara that
just outside, where the water fell over the weir, Terence Comerford had
met with his death.
"No," she said softly, "I cannot imagine any one being afraid of the
dear dead."
As she said it she remembered the shadows about her husband's face and
her heart was cold.
It was only later that she wondered if Mrs. Wade had chosen that lonely
spot to return to because there Terence Comerford's handsome head had
lain in its blood. It occurred to her at the same time that not one
word had passed between them which could indicate that she knew
anything of Mrs. Wade beyond that she had been a dweller in these parts
long before she had come to be a tenant of Sir Shawn O'Gara at the
Waterfall Cottage.
A curious thing that there should be there side by side, thrown into an
odd companionship, two women who had reason to be afraid and had chosen
these lonely places to hide. Poor Susan! The reason for her hiding
was obvious. With Mrs. Wade it was another matter. Why need she have
come back if she so dreaded her past? Or was it the memory of Terence
Comerford that drew her, the thought of the old tragedy and the old
passion?
CHAPTER XI
THE ONLY PRETTY RING-TIME
Castle Talbot took on new lightness and brightness when Terry came
home. His mother said fondly that it was like the Palace of the
Sleeping Beauty where life hung in suspense between his goings and
comings. The mere presence of this one young man seemed to put all the
servants on their mettle. The cook sent up such meals as she did not
at any other time. "Sure Sir Shawn and her Ladyship never minded what
they would be atin," she said. The gardener, a gruff old cynic
usually, gave his best grapes and peaches for "Master Terry"; even the
small sewing maid who sat in a slip of a room at a remote corner of the
house, mending the house-linen under the supervision of the
housekeeper, was known to have said that though she never _saw_ Master
Terry she _felt_ he was there.
The dogs were aware of his coming before he came. They had their own
intuitions of the joyful expectancy in the house and what it meant.
Shot would take to lying in the hall, with one wistful eye fixed on the
open hall door, while Lady O'Gara's two Poms became quite hysterical,
rushing out when there was no one at all or some one they were well
accustomed to, assailing them with foolish shrieks.
"It is all right when Terence is coming home," Lady O'Gara said,
smiling. "I can forgive Chloë and Cupid for yapping. It is when he is
gone and they rush out at every sound that I find it unbearable."
"You will kill the fatted calf for Terry," Sir Shawn grumbled, "as
though he had been a year away. The youngster does nothing but amuse
himself. When I was his age we got in some hard work at soldiering."
"Every generation says the same of the one that comes after it," Lady
O'Gara rejoined. "Terry loves his work, though he manages to enjoy
himself."
"Too much of a golden youth," grumbled his father. "You spoil the boy,
Mary!" But his eyes were glad all the time, and the grumbling was only
a pretence.
"You'll see what the golden boys are capable of if the war they are
always talking about comes in our time," Lady O'Gara said, and a swift
shadow passed over her face. "I hope there will be no more wars, even
to vindicate them. I suffered enough in those years of the South
African War when you were out and Terry and I were alone."
Eileen arrived a few hours earlier than Terry. She clapped her hands
to her ears when she arrived, and the Poms broke out into shrill
chorus. Shot, who began already to be very dim-sighted, came to the
door to see what the clamour was about, and with the most indifferent
movement of his tail returned to his place on the rug before the fire.
"Little beasts!" said Eileen, poking viciously at the Poms with her
umbrella. "I don't know how you endure them, Cousin Mary; I can hardly
tell which is the worst, Chloë or Cupid."
Eileen had never liked the dogs any more than she liked the horses.
She was fond of cats and had a favourite smoke-blue Persian, between
whom and the Poms there was an armed neutrality. The cat's name was
Cleopatra, and she deserved it. Her green eyes shone like emeralds
when she curled boa-fashion about her mistress's white neck and looked
down at the Poms.
Lady O'Gara had come out on the steps to meet Eileen and had kissed her
on each cold satin cheek, making a tender fuss about removing her
wraps. Her coldnesses were easily dispelled.
"Come right in, darling, and have some tea," she said fondly. "Why,
you are perished! It is very cold. We shall have a frost to-night.
And how are all at home?"
"Oh, much the same as usual. Mother has rheumatism. Dad is grumbling
over his large and expensive family and the bad year it has been for
everything. It is always a bad year with farmers, isn't it? The house
is tight-packed, as usual. They always have visitors. I _was_ glad to
escape to this delicious roominess. They are all outrageously well and
hungry, as Dad says. And some of them will love to come after
Christmas, if you can _really_ have them. They _must_ be at home for
Christmas, they say. I am sure some of them could well be spared."
A momentary vision passed before Lady O'Gara's inner eyes. It was of
Mrs. Anthony Creagh and the quiverful, three boys and five girls then,
to be increased later. Mrs. Anthony sat in her armchair, one child on
her lap, a second with its face buried in her trailing, somewhat shabby
silk skirt, two others peeping from behind her chair. The boys were at
a table with books open before them. Eileen, aged eight, and already
the beauty of the family, stood by her mother's knee, eating an apple.
"Cousin Mary wants one of my little girls to go home with her," Mrs.
Creagh had said, rather tearfully. She was an incurably motherly
person, whose heart expanded with the quiver--"She wants one of my
little girls to play with her Terry. Who will go?"
The boys had looked indifferent. The child whose face was buried in
her mother's skirts seemed to burrow a little further in, while the two
standing behind the chair disappeared. The baby on its mother's knee
only gurgled cheerfully, as though at the best joke in the world.
Then Eileen had laid down her half-eaten apple, and turning, had thrust
her moist little hand into Lady O'Gara's, warm from her muff. Dear
friendly thing! Lady O'Gara had brought her back in triumph to Castle
Talbot, feeling that she could never do enough to make up to the child
for forsaking for her that long family, happy and happy-go-lucky.
Eileen had become conventional in her growing-up, not much like the
others, who frolicked like puppies and grew up pretty well at their own
sweet will.
"I told Mother she should not fill the house with visitors in addition
to her long family, if Dad had had a bad year," said Eileen, putting
off her furs in the hall. "She said that what people ate never
counted. Isn't it just like Mother? What a jolly fire, darling Cousin
Mary! And how sweet to see you again!"
She took up Lady O'Gara's hand and kissed it. She had done the same
thing that evening long ago when she had come for the first time to
Castle Talbot, and had snuggled against Lady O'Gara in the brougham,
warming her heart, which was chilly because in a very short time Terry
was to go off to his preparatory school for Eton. It was his father's
will and she had not grumbled, but she had often felt in her own heart
that she had had very little of Terry since he was eight years old.
"Come and eat something," she said, leading the girl into the
drawing-room, where the lamps had been lit and the tea-table drawn near
the fire. "I told Cook to send up an extra good tea, knowing you would
be cold and hungry after your journey."
"How delicious!" Miss Creagh said, lifting off one cover after another.
"I haven't had a decent tea since I went away. We are such a hungry
family, to say nothing of the visitors."
"Terry will be here in time for dinner," Lady O'Gara said, her eyes
joyful. "So put on your best bib-and-tucker. We don't get many
occasions to wear our finery. I shall wear my Limerick lace and
emeralds."
"And Terry won't see them because he will be thinking only of
yourself," Eileen said, devouring sandwiches and hot cakes. For a girl
of her slender delicacy she had a very good appetite and usually
indulged it, although there were moments when she tried to hold it in
check, having detected, as she said, a tendency to _embonpoint_.
"I can really afford to be greedy, Cousin Mary," she said, with a
laughing apology. "I've been _starved_ at Inver. How the _stacks_ of
food went! They have such healthy appetites. I _couldn't_ eat
potato-cakes, soaked in butter, nor doorsteps as the boys called them,
of bread and jam and honey. Fearfully fattening food."
"You remind me of when you came to me and started to grow out of your
clothes with such alarming rapidity. When your white satin,
long-waisted frock grew too small for you, you said, for you did not
like giving it up, 'I can really get into it if I hold myself in like
_this_. And anyhow I've given up pudding!'"
"Ah, that was the worst of me," said Eileen mournfully. "I could never
continue long doing without pudding."
She came down to dinner wearing a pale green frock with a prim fichu of
chiffon and lace. Terry had already arrived and was in the
drawing-room, standing on the hearthrug with his back to the fire.
"Hullo, Eileen!" he shouted, "How stunning you look! You grow prettier
every day!"
The compliment was too brotherly in its easy candour to please her
altogether: but she knew very well she was "stunning." She could see
herself in a long old-fashioned mirror on the wall. Her hair was like
gold floss. There was no sign of the embonpoint she feared in the
slender grace of her figure. The pearls about her neck became her
mightily, as did the green ribbon, the same shade as her dress, snooded
in her hair.
She lifted her eyes to the boy's frank gaze in a way which she had
usually found very effective. She had been able to do anything with
Terry when she looked at him like that, and she had tried the same
allurement on others than Terry.
"You're only just back," he went on. "Jolly nice of you to come for
me. The mater must have missed you."
"They insist on my presence at Inver now and again. I don't know why.
It is very unreasonable of them!"
She put out a satin slipper and stirred Shot with it.
"The only drawback to this dear house," she said, "is that there are
dogs everywhere."
Shot growled in his sleep. Perhaps she had not touched him in quite
the right way. She withdrew her foot in alarm, more alarm that she
felt, and turned eyes of a child-like fear upon Terry. "Oh! Shot is
cross," she said innocently. The man in Terry answered. He bent
towards her as though drawn irresistibly.
There was a flutter of feminine garments in the doorway of the room.
Some one looked in and withdrew. Sir Shawn, coming down the stairs,
did not notice the small figure by the fire in the hall, fast fading to
ashes, the centre of a circle of adoring dogs, who had withdrawn
themselves from Miss Creagh's unfriendliness.
He went on to the drawing-room door. He too was attracted by the
tableau. Nothing could have been prettier than the boy's bold advance,
the girl's withdrawal. They were too engrossed in each other, or
appeared to be, to notice his face in the doorway.
With a deep sigh, as of relief, he turned away. Then he caught sight
of the pink blob by the fireplace in the hall. Stella was down on her
knees feeding the dying fire with sods of turf. Her rose geranium
frock made what the children call a "cheese" about her. Her golden
brown head was charming against the audacious colour of her frock. The
dogs had taken advantage of her position to press about her. Now and
again she pushed off Cupid, who was the bold one, with the sod of turf
in her hand.
Sir Shawn felt particularly kind towards the girl.
"Hullo, Stella," he said: "I didn't know you had come."
"Some little time ago," she replied. "Grannie is with Lady O'Gara. Do
you mind my making up the fire?"
"Not a bit." His heart was light within him, almost to the extent of
taking Stella into his confidence. Discreet little thing! She, too,
had surprised the pretty picture in the drawing-room, and had
withdrawn, leaving the lovers to themselves.
"The lovers." He said the words over to himself, mouthing them as
though they were sweet. He had been unnecessarily alarmed. Things
were arranging themselves beautifully. He believed in early marriages.
The happiness of the youngsters would keep him young. He would get
away from his shadows. After a while Terry must come home and settle
down somewhere near. A few years of soldiering in these piping times
of peace were as much as the boy need do.
So his mind ran on into the happy future while he sat on the arm of one
of the red-leather chairs and beamed at Stella, who had always been
rather alarmed of Sir Shawn, and came out now as prettily as a flower
in the warm sun.
He looked at his watch. It was a quarter to eight. Dinner-time. A
pity the youngsters had not more time to settle their pretty affair.
He began to think of what gift he would give Eileen. His mother's
pearl cross--large pearls set _en cabochon_. Mary had so many things.
She would not grudge that to Terry's wife.
There were Mary and Grace Comerford coming down the staircase, talking
as though they did not see each other constantly. How well Mary looked
in the brown silk! It brought out the dear shades of red in her hair
and eyes.
He went over and joined the two ladies.
"Only _just_ in time!" he said, in rather a loud voice, as he opened
the drawing-room door.
He intended it as a warning, but it was apparently not necessary.
Terry was sitting in a chair at one side of the fireplace with Shot's
head on his knee. Miss Creagh, a cloud on her face, was in the
opposite chair, caressing Cleopatra. Sir Shawn's heart sank. Had they
been quarrelling, silly children? He began to tremble for his dream.
"Cleopatra scratched Shot's nose," said Terry, holding up the
liver-coloured nose for inspection. "See, it has bled. Eileen will
have it that it was Shot's fault. Of course it was not. Shot is so
gentle."
He stood up to meet the ladies and, swift as an arrow from the bow, he
went to Stella's side.
Poor Sir Shawn! Poor gentleman! The fabric of his rosy dreams had
faded to ashes. He looked almost piteously towards Eileen: and,
unreasonably, was angry with her because with that sullenness of
expression her beauty had departed: she was almost plain. Under his
breath he damned Cleopatra.
CHAPTER XII
MOTHER-LOVE
Somehow or other Lady O'Gara found it difficult to get Stella to
herself in the days that followed. There were times when she almost
thought that Stella deliberately kept away. Sir Shawn had often said,
rallying his wife, that Mary never saw further than her own nose. She
was a little bewildered about the young people. Terry and Eileen
seemed to have quarrelled. Eileen found occupations that kept her in
her own room. She had suddenly developed a desire to make herself a
coat and skirt, and Lady O'Gara had gone in many times, to find her
pinning and fitting on the lay-figure which occupied the centre of the
room, surrounded by all manner of snippets and pieces.
This ridiculous pre-occupation of Eileen's gave Lady O'Gara something
she did not complain of. She had more of her son than otherwise she
would have had. Terry had never looked for better companionship than
his mother's, but he grumbled about Eileen nevertheless.
"She used to be always ready to come anywhere," he said. "I know I
can't always have you, because Father needs you so much. We have
always torn you in pieces between the two of us. I asked Eileen to
come out shooting on the bog with me and she wouldn't. She just opened
her door and I saw a horrid thing, an indecent thing that pretended to
look like a woman's body, taking up the middle of her room."
"It's for fitting dresses on, you ridiculous boy!" Lady O'Gara said
laughing.
"It gave me a shock. A horrid, stuffed thing. I shall not be able to
look at Eileen again without seeing that. Why does she want to make
her dresses? Can't your maid do it? Industry in Eileen is quite a new
thing. Not that she's half as good a companion on the bog as you are,
darling. I've always had to carry her over the pools. She said she
couldn't jump."
Lady O'Gara's face at this frankness was a study.
"She's so helpless. Not like a country girl, at all. You remember
that day with the bull. She left Stella to be gored by the bull and
expected to be admired for it."
There was certainly a change in Terry's attitude towards Eileen. Lady
O'Gara sighed, because of what she knew was in her husband's mind
rather than for any disappointment in herself. Eileen was not her
ideal wife for Terry.
"Eileen will go with you all right," she said. They were standing in
front of the house on the gravel-sweep. "I've just told her she was
injuring her complexion by staying indoors. She has gone to put on her
hat. I did not like to tell her that Margaret McKeon lamented to me
that Eileen was cutting out that beautiful Foxford tweed so badly.
We'll go and rout out Stella. She has not been over here for five
days."
Terry's face lit up.
"I don't know why Stella's out with me," he said. "She is always
hiding behind your skirts or Mrs. Comerford's when I am about and want
to talk to her."
His mother looked at him, with the yearning tenderness of the woman who
would give all the world to her beloved man if she only might.
"You like Stella?"
"Yes: she's a little darling. Don't you?"
"I am very fond of Stella. Perhaps ... she thinks ... You like Eileen
very much?"
After all, if her boy wanted Stella, why should even his father's
preferences prevail? She had surprised a glance in Stella's eyes when
they rested on Terry for a brief moment before they quickly veiled
themselves. The child had something Southern in her. So, for the
matter of that, had Terry. She was fond of Eileen, but, simple as she
was, she had not had Eileen with her pretty constantly for many years
without being aware of a certain shallowness in the girl. The blood
under the fair skin ran thinly, coldly.
His face lit up with such a light that she was alarmed at what she had
done. What would Shawn say if he knew? But, after all, Shawn had
married where he loved. Why should not the boy have the same felicity?
Stella had been pushing her small soft way into Mary O'Gara's heart.
She knew now that Eileen could never have been the little daughter she
wanted.
"You think she would mind that?" His eyes leaped at her.
She felt like one who had burnt her boats. She would not look before
or behind. Shawn was wrong, she said vehemently to herself. Eileen
was not the girl for Terry.
"I will tell you a secret, Terry," she said. "The first evening you
came back, in the drawing-room before dinner, there was something that
might have passed for a love-scene between you and Eileen. Your father
opened the door and withdrew. Then he discovered that Stella had come
downstairs before him and was playing with the dogs in the hall by the
dying fire. He supposed that she had surprised that scene before he
did."
Oh, poor Shawn! What a use she was making of his confidence! But men
never knew about their sons as mothers did. She would give anything,
except her own soul, to procure Terry the joy he desired. And it was a
good joy. She loved Stella. Of course, she would be very good to
Eileen, but she did not want Eileen for a daughter-in-law. Shawn did
not look very deeply. He had hardly considered Eileen except as
something pretty and gentle, who was pleasant in the house and sang him
Moore's Melodies of evenings in a small sweet voice. He missed her
when she returned to her own people.
"I was an idiot for a second," the boy said, shamefacedly. "I don't
suppose you understand, Mother, but men are like that. Eileen can be
very alluring when she likes and..."
"Don't tell me any more. I can imagine," Lady O'Gara said and laughed,
a laugh which had a certain shyness in it.
"Then we fell out over the cat and dog," he said. "Eileen was rather
rude. Perhaps I was a little rough with Cleopatra, but she had
scratched Shot's nose. You know what Shot is! It was an entirely
unprovoked attack. I believe I did say that Cleopatra should be sent
to the Cats' Home."
Eileen appeared at this point, coming with an unwilling air. It was
true that her staying within-doors so much had not improved her looks.
She had not a very good circulation at any time. That, or her mood,
had given her rose and white a dull, leaden look. Her discontented
little face was lifted towards the dappled sky. It was really a
beautiful day of Autumn. There was a little wind, and the last yellow
leaves on the branches tinkled like so many small golden cymbals. A
pale gold sun was going low amid oceans of amber touched with rose, and
above dappled clouds were floating as though the day was February.
"It is so cold," said Eileen, and shivered. "I don't see how Margaret
can get on without fitting me. She had made up such a nice fire in my
room. I cannot see why any one wants to go out in such weather."
"Oh, come along, you little grumbler!" Lady O'Gara said with her
infectious gaiety. "Come for a good trot. I know what will happen to
you: you'll get chilblains if you sit by the fire in cold weather.
Your hands will be dreadful to look at, and your feet will be a
torture."
Eileen looked down at her feet and then at her hands, childishly. She
had very pretty feet and hands.
"They are all right so far," she said.
"You and Terry had better race each other to the bridge," Lady O'Gara
said. "I want to see the colour in your face, child."
"Come along," said Terry, and caught at Eileen's hand.
Half-unwillingly she ran with him, but when Lady O'Gara caught up with
them, Eileen was laughing and panting.
"This wretched son of yours," she said, "has run me off my feet."
"And you look the better for it," Lady O'Gara answered, her brown eyes
merry and her cheeks dimpling like a girl's. "We are going for Stella,
to bring her back to tea. She has not been near us for some days."
"Oh!" Eileen had gone back to the chilly voice. "She doesn't want to
come. She finds us rather dull, I think."
Lady O'Gara laughed.
"I don't believe any one could find us dull," she said merrily, "least
of all Stella."
"Oh well, I suppose I'm not telling the truth," Eileen said huffily.
"All I know is she asked me the last time I saw her if Terry ever
brought any of his brother-officers home with him."
Terry's candid face clouded over ever so slightly; while his mother
remarked that, of course, three was an awkward number for games. They
wanted another man. She believed she had been talking about it.
"You might ask Major Evelyn," she said to Terry. "It is still possible
to have golf when there is fine weather."
"I wonder if he would come?" Terry said ingenuously. "Think of a
second-lieutenant like me asking a swell like Evelyn! Why, his
decorations make a perfect breastplate when he chooses to put them on.
Not that it is a matter of choice. He only does it when he can't help
it. He did so splendidly in South Africa."
"I dare say he'd condescend to come," Lady O'Gara said. "Few sportsmen
can resist the Castle Talbot duck-shooting."
"Do ask him," said Eileen, becoming animated. "Two's company, three's
none. Everything is lop-sided without a second man."
"I'll ask him, of course," Terry said. "But I don't suppose he'll
come. It is like a kid in the Lower School asking a prefect to tea.
He may come--for the grub. On the other hand he may give the kid a
kicking for his impudence."
After all, they had not to go as far as Inch. They met Stella
exercising her dogs about half a mile from her own gates. She would
like to come to tea if she might first take the dogs home and leave
word as to where she had gone.
To Lady O'Gara's mind she looked small and unhappy as soon as the flush
had faded which came when she saw them. She clung to Lady O'Gara, and
could not be detached from her. The dogs, surrounding her, made a
barrier between her and Terry, who, at first, kept as close to her as
he could, leaving Eileen to walk the other side of Lady O'Gara.
But Stella did not seem to have much to say to him. She was too
engrossed with the dogs and with his mother to spare him a word. The
eager light which had come to his eyes when he had first caught sight
of her faded. His candid face was overcast. She had been keeping him
at arms-length ever since he had come back.
His mother watched him with a comprehension which was half tender
amusement, half compassion. He was becoming a little sullen over
Stella's persistent disregard of him. She watched the set boyish
mouth, the pucker of his forehead--her baby. Terry had always had that
pucker for perplexity or disappointment. Why, he had had it when the
first down was on his baby head, as soft as a duckling's.
The road grew narrow. He began to lag behind, to veer towards Eileen.
"Is it worth while for us all to go on to Inch?" he asked in his
discontented young voice. "Supposing Eileen and I go on by the river,
while you and Stella take back the dogs! They wouldn't follow me or
I'd offer to go home with them. It must be nearly a mile to the house
from the gate."
"I've a better way than that," Lady O'Gara said on a sudden impulse.
She had taken Stella's cold little hand in hers, and it made a mute
appeal. She was sure Stella was unhappy, poor little motherless child.
The two poor children, fretting and worrying each other about nothing
at all! Her comprehending, merry, pitiful gaze went from one to the
other young face.
"Suppose Eileen and I walk back. You'll overtake us before we get
home. You two are such quick walkers."
Eileen's lips opened as though to protest. Her face had brightened at
Terry's suggestion. She closed them again in a tight snap.
"I never _can_ see the good of walking about wet roads," she said
crossly. "It must be nice to live in a town, where there are dry
pavements, and people, and shops."
A robin rained out his little song from a bough above her head, and
behind the trees the sky broke up into magnificence--the sun looking
from under a great dun cloud suffused with his rays, while all below
him was a cool greenish bluish wash of sky, tender and delicate.
"You would not find that in a city, Eileen," Lady O'Gara said, pushing
away gently Stella's cold little hand that seemed to cling to hers.
"Make her trot, Terry," she said. "Her hands are cold as little frogs,
like the child's hands in Herrick's 'Grace for a Child.'
"Cold as paddocks though they be,
Still I lift them up to thee
For a benison to fall
On our meat and on us all."
She saw the sudden rush of joy to her son's face and she was a little
lonely. She felt that she was no longer first with Terry.
CHAPTER XIII
THE OLD LOVE
Sir Shawn was still out when they got back, after a brisk walk. The
laggard young people made no appearance for tea, though they waited a
while. Eileen grumbled discontentedly over everything being cold and
suggested a carelessness in Stella about other people's convenience.
The tea-cakes had been kept warm over a spirit-lamp, but she was in a
captious mood. Lady O'Gara wondered at the girl, who had sometimes
been embarrassingly effusive in the display of her affection. Had she
spoilt Eileen? or was the girl feeling sore and a little out of it?
The suggestion that Eileen might be feeling Terry's desertion of her
was enough to soften his mother's heart towards the captious girl, who
as soon as she had finished her tea,--and a very good tea she
made--went off to see how Margaret McKeon was progressing with her
skirt.
At the door she turned about.
"Do you think I might have a new evening frock, Cousin Mary?" she
asked. "My pink has gone out of fashion. There are such beautiful
blues in some patterns I have got from Liberty's: I could make it
myself, with Margaret's help. It would only need a little lace to trim
it, or some of that pearl trimming Liberty's use so much."
"Certainly, my dear child. Let me know what it will cost. I have a
piece of Carrickmacross lace somewhere which would make a fichu. You
must remind me, Eileen. We live so quietly here that I do not remember
how the fashions change."
"I've hardly noticed, either," said Eileen, with a hand on the door
handle. "The pink does very well for home-wear. But if Terry is going
to have friends, I should want something a little smarter."
Lady O'Gara smiled. So Eileen was interested in the coming of Major
Evelyn! And she had made so good a tea that any one less
ethereal-looking than Eileen might have been considered greedy! She
had left very little of the abundant tea to be removed.
"We'll have a turning-out one of these days," she said. "I noticed
your wardrobe was very full the other day when I was in your-room. We
can send off what you don't want to Inver, and I shall add a few
lengths of that Liberty silk. Brigid and Nora are so clever with that
little sewing machine I gave them last Christmas that they'll turn out
something very pretty for themselves."
"They've no occasion for pretty things," said Eileen. "There never was
any young man there but Robin Gillespie, the doctor's son. He is in
India in the R.A.M.C. Brigid liked him, I think, but he was not
thinking of Brigid."
Then she closed the door on her departing footsteps, leaving Lady
O'Gara to her thoughts.
She put the consideration of Eileen from her a little impatiently. She
was afraid Eileen was selfish. She did not seem to have any desire to
share her good things with her family, not even with her mother, yet
Mrs. Creagh was a very sweet mother; Mrs. Comerford who had a cynical
way sometimes had remarked one day when Eileen had been very caressing
with Lady O'Gara: "If your mother is like what I remember her you need
not go further for some one to love."
It was the day on which Lady O'Gara had given Eileen her necklet of
amethysts and seed-pearls--a beautiful antique thing, of no great
intrinsic value beyond its workmanship.
It suddenly came to her that, for a good while past, she had got into a
way of propitiating Eileen with gifts. It had not occurred to her
exactly as propitiation, but she had learnt that when Eileen was out of
sorts the gift of some pretty thing worked wonders. Had she been
spoiling the girl? Was she herself responsible for the whims and
fancies which Eileen took so often nowadays? In the old days it had
not been so. Eileen had been sweet-tempered and placidly selfish.
There was a change in her of late. It was quite unlike the old Eileen
to go away and leave her sitting alone in the drawing-room with only
two watchful Poms, each with a bright eye upon her from their
respective chairs, and Shot stretched at her feet, to keep her company.
She acquitted herself. Love and generosity ought not to spoil any one:
they ought to lift up, to awake their like. Was Eileen in love with
Terry and resenting his desertion? No; she said emphatically in her
thoughts. She would have known if Eileen cared. If it had been _that_
she could have been very tolerant.
Her thoughts went back to the first beginnings of difficulty with
Eileen, and she fixed them at the date of her return from her visit
home during the preceding summer. The fatted calf had been killed for
the girl's return. Lady O'Gara remembered how she had anticipated it,
and had thought of what Eileen liked, the special food and sweets, and
so on. She had kept Margaret McKeon busy with the new chintz curtains
and cushions for Miss Eileen's room, and when it was all finished had
fussed about doing one little thing and another till the privileged
maid had been moved to protest.
"Hasn't Miss Eileen had everything she wanted from the lucky day for
her that she came here? Don't be robbin' yourself, m'lady."
Lady O'Gara had taken some of her own pretty things, a crystal clock, a
silver and tortoiseshell box for the toilet table--things Eileen
particularly admired--and had added them to the other pretty things,
her gifts, of which the room had many. She had brought an armful of
her dearest books: and she had insisted on pink roses because Eileen
particularly liked pink.
After all Eileen had been cold when she came. It had been like a douch
of cold water. She had not recovered her sweet placidity since that
time. Lady O'Gara had commented on the change to her husband, but he
had not seen it. He was fond of Eileen, in a superficial way. Indeed
his devotion to and absorption in his wife were such that almost all
other affection in him must be superficial by contrast. To two people
his love had been given passionately, to Terence Comerford and to his
wife. He never spoke of the dead friend. It was a well-understood
thing in the circle that Terence Comerford was not to be spoken of
carelessly, when Sir Shawn was within hearing.
Sitting alone in the firelight, except for the adoring dogs, Lady
O'Gara let her thoughts wander on away from Eileen. How deep and
passionate was Shawn's love when it was given. He had shrunk from that
first meeting with Mrs. Comerford after all those years. He had turned
pale when she had taken his hand in hers, looking at him with a long
gaze that asked pardon for her past unreason and remembered that he and
her dead son had been dearer than brothers. After all those years that
touch with the past had opened the floodgates of grief in Shawn O'Gara.
Only his wife knew the anguish, the disturbed nights and the weary days
that followed. Grief in him was like a sharp physical suffering.
Dear Shawn! How glad she was that she was so strong and healthy and
had such good spirits always, so as to be able to cheer and comfort
him. She smiled to herself, remembering how some of her friends had
pitied her because she must always be uplifting his mood. She had
never wearied nor found it an irksome effort. A serious sad thought
came to her; when the hour of the inevitable parting came she prayed it
might be her lot to be left desolate rather than his.
She looked at her little watch, a delicate French thing, with a tiny
painted picture on the back framed within pearls ending in a
true-lovers'-knot, one of Shawn's many gifts. Six o'clock. It was
time Shawn was home. She was very glad he had not ridden Mustapha, as
he had wanted to. Patsy Kenny had dissuaded him. Terry must have
stayed on at Inch for tea. It had been a cold bright day, and it must
be turning to frost, for the fire was burning so redly. The cold was
on the floor too, for the little dogs had left their baskets and taken
to the chairs, a thing supposed to be strictly forbidden, although as a
matter of fact Chloë and Cupid were always cheerfully disobedient. She
wished Shawn was home. He had gone up the mountains to a
shooting-lodge, where was a party of men gathered to shoot red deer.
He had been out overnight and he would be very tired when he came home
after a long drive on an outside car. Well, after all, it was better
than Mustapha. Patsy's unwillingness to see Sir Shawn go out on
Mustapha had infected her, little nervous as she was where horse-flesh
was concerned.
She comforted herself. It was not like those dreadful days when there
had been trouble with the tenants, and she had sat in this very room,
listening in anguish for the sound of the horse's hoofs coming fast.
Terry had been away at his preparatory school then. She had never told
any one her terrors. Perhaps some of the servants had guessed them.
She remembered the night of the Big Wind, when Shawn had been out, and
the house had shaken in the first onslaught of the hurricane, before he
came.
There was a butler's pantry close to the drawing-room door which had
always an open window. She had often stolen in there in the dark to
listen for the sound of the mare's trot. Fatima had been Shawn's
favourite mount in those days, and no one could mistake the sound of
her delicate feet in the distance. There, with her ear to the night,
Mary O'Gara had listened and listened, her heart thumping so fast
sometimes that she could not be sure if she heard the horse's hoofs.
Only, as she used to say joyously afterwards, there was really no
mistaking Fatima's trot when she _was_ coming.
Once, Rafferty, the old butler, who was dead now, had opened the pantry
door suddenly, and had all but let the tray of Waterford glass he was
carrying fall, for the fright she had given him.
She remembered how on that night of the Big Wind, when her terror was
at its worst. Patsy Kenny had asked to see her about something or
other; how she had gone into the office to talk to him; how he had
talked gently about Fatima, how sure-footed she was and how wise, and
how little likely to be frightened as long as she was carrying her
master. He had wandered off into simple homely talk, about the supply
of turf, how the fair had gone, the price the people were getting for
their beasts; now and again leaving off to say, when the moan of the
wind came and the house shook: "Glory be to God, it's goin' to be a
wild night, so it is!" Or "That was a smart little clap o' win'. It's
a great blessin' to be on dry land to-night."
Patsy's way with the dumb beasts was well known; and Lady O'Gara had
said afterwards, when she had her husband warm and dry by the fire, and
she too happy, being relieved of her terrors, to mind the storm which
had not yet reached anything like its height, that Patsy had soothed
her as though she were a nervous horse.
Shawn had been younger and stronger then. He had laughed at her fears
and had insisted on making a night of it, keeping a roaring fire and
lamplight all through the terrifying din, while the servants in the
kitchen said their Rosary and prayed for the night to be over.
Sometime in the wild late dawn, when the wind was subsiding, Shawn had
made her go to bed, saying he would follow. But he had not come for a
long time, and she had dropped asleep and wakened to his weary face
beside her bed, and to hear him saying that, thank God, they had got
out the horses, although the stables were all but in ruins.
As she thought over these things the fulness of her love for her
husband swept her heart like a Springtide. It was sweet yet poignant,
for she had the pity beyond all telling in her love for Shawn.
Suddenly she began to be a little in dread because she had been going
against what she knew were his wishes. Would he mind very much if
Terry's choice were Stella and not Eileen? She hoped he would not--at
first. Later on, when he knew little Stella better, with her soft
appealing ways, he would be glad. Eileen would never be such a dear
little daughter. Stella had not those ardent eyes for nothing.
Her disinclination to let the winds of heaven blow too roughly on the
men she loved, for whom she had always the maternal pity, brought a
sharp revulsion of feeling. After all, the world was for the young.
They had never refused Terry anything. In a detached way the father
was very fond of his boy. He was not necessary to him. No one was
that except his wife: but he had been a kind, indulgent father. Why
should not Terry wait a little till his father came to know Stella
better? Things would be all right then. Shawn had seemed to avoid
Stella, perhaps because he avoided Mrs. Comerford.
At last there was Terry's ringing step in the hall. There could be
little doubt to the mother's mind of what tidings he brought. There
was triumph in the step.
He burst in on his mother like a young wind.
"Darling," he said, "I'm so very sorry not to have come home for tea.
I simply couldn't induce Stella to: she's so dreadfully shy, but she
adores you. Congratulate me!"
He placed his two young firm hands on his mother's shoulders, and
stooping, he kissed her.
"I shall never love you any less, you know," he said boyishly. "You
angel, how you helped us! Not many mothers of an only boy would have
done it."
To their ears came the sound of wheels, approaching the house, now
near, now far, as the long avenue turned and twisted.
"It is your father," said Lady O'Gara. "He will be very tired. Don't
tell him yet, Terry. He hardly knows Stella. You are very young. It
will have to be something of a long engagement."
"Oh!" he said, but less disappointedly than she had feared, "You too!
Mrs. Comerford said we must wait. I don't want to wait. I want to
shout out to the whole world that Stella is mine, but, of course, I
know. Father would rather have had Eileen. I have known Eileen since
I was eight years old. Love does not come that way."
He was repeating her own words, her own thought. She was relieved that
he was so amenable.
"After all," she said roguishly, "there have been moments when you
seemed on the edge of falling in love with Eileen. Last June we
thought it was all but settled, your father and I."
"Oh," he said shamelessly, "when the true gods come the half-gods go."
Sir Shawn came into the room. He was pale and tired and the shadows
crept in the hollows of his cheeks. She was glad he was not to be
disturbed by Terry's love-story to-night. She wondered if he would
notice the shining radiance of the boy's face. Joy--the triumphant joy
of the accepted lover--dazzled there to her eyes. She was relieved
when the boy went away and left them alone. When Shawn was tired he
was irresistible to her tenderness. For the moment even Terry was out
of it.
CHAPTER XIV
STELLA GOES VISITING
Lady O'Gara had met Stella, had drawn her to her and kissed her warmly
and softly.
"Your Granny will not have it just yet, Stella," she said, "so we need
not announce it, need we?
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