When their world came to an end for the widow, Lady Winifred O’Reilly,
and the widow, Katty Connor, the bog-land was just beginning to turn
springwards, and everything on it stirred under the strengthening
sunshine. Round about the Big House the birds, who now despised
breadcrumbs because other food wriggled abundantly in the dewy grass,
sang much and gleefully in the fresh mornings, and through the long
golden light as it ebbed off the lawn. But Lady Winifred, looking out
no more for letters, sought a refuge from it all in the bookroom,
which was a dusky brown place in the brightest hours. There she sat
on the floor in a corner before a far-stretching row of _Annual
Registers_, and read them volume by volume. She had chosen this
course of study just as she might have chosen the top of an adjacent
rubbish heap in a suddenly surging flood. Steadily through she read
them without skipping--_History of Europe_--_Chronicle_--_State
Papers_--_Characters_--_Useful Projects_, even when they included
the specification of Dr Higgen’s patent for a newly-invented water
cement or stucco--_Poetry_, even when it was by the Laureate William
Whitehead. That is to say, her eyes travelled down and down the double
columns where the faded ink was less distinct than the damp stains
which mottled the margin. It may be doubted whether they conveyed many
thoughts to her brain, but they blocked the way to others. One of the
most definite impressions she received was a feeling of resentment
towards those persons who were recorded to have lived a hundred years
and upwards in full possession of all their faculties.
One showery afternoon in the last days of May, Lady Winifred was
interrupted in the middle of the events of the year 1783 by the
entrance of Rose Ahern, the housemaid, who came to take leave of her.
Rose, who was now summoned home to tend an invalided mother, had lived
longer at the Big House than its mistress, and often remarked these
times that “anybody’d be annoyed to see her mopin’, and the two of
them that gay and plisant together only a half twelve-month back.” On
this occasion, having repeatedly said: “So good-bye to you kindly,
me lady, and may God lave your Ladyship your health,” she continued
inconsistently to linger in her place, making small sounds and
movements designed to attract attention. But Lady Winifred had reverted
to her volume twenty-six, and was inaccessible to any save point-blank
address. At last Rose went almost to the door, and turned round to say:
“I beg your pardon, me lady--beggin’ your Ladyship’s pardon--but what
colour might the Master’s uniform be, me lady? None of us ever seen his
Honour wearin’ it, it so happens.”
“It was scarlet, I believe,” Lady Winifred said, continuing to look at
the pages. “Oh, yes, scarlet.”
“There now, didn’t I tell Thady so?” said Rose. “And he standin’ me
out ’twas blue it was, the way it couldn’t ha’ been him we seen; and
declarin’ ’twas apter to be poor Terry Connor, thinkin’ of his mother.
But sure it’s a good step to her house from where we seen him--whoever
he was--last night.”
“_Saw him last night_,” Lady Winifred said, looking up (“And indeed
now,” Rose averred afterwards, “’twas like openin’ a crack of a
window--her eyes shinin’ out of the dark corner”). “Oh, Rose, what are
you saying?”
“’Deed, then, maybe I’m talkin’ like a fool, me lady,” said Rose, “and
you’ve no call to be mindin’ me. Only when I was seein’ me brother
Thady down to the back gate last night, there was somebody in a red
coat at the far end of the Windin’ Walk, there was so, and a big man
too. And this mornin’ I heard several sayin’ there did be a soldier
seen in it this while since of an evenin’. But sorra a one’s stoppin’
anywheres next or nigh Clonmalroan. It’s the quare long step he’s apt
to have come--between us and harm. And I dunno what should be bringin’
poor Terry Connor there, instead of to his own little place; but the
poor Master always had a great wish for the Windin’ Walk. Many a time
have I seen him meself smokin’ up and down it, before ever he got
married; and last year he was a dale in it along with yourself, me
lady, lookin’ after the wee bushes plantin’--beggin’ your Ladyship’s
pardon. And all the while very belike it might ha’ been just a shadow
under the moonlight; only red it was, that’s sartin. But people do be
talkin’ foolish, your Ladyship. And may God lave your Ladyship your
health. It was as like as not to be nothin’ at all.”
“Oh, very likely,” Lady Winifred said, indifferently, “nothing at all.”
V
But that evening she left the house once more. She had intended to wait
until dusk, but its slow oncoming wore out her patience, and there were
still rich gleams and glows receding among the furthest tree trunks
when she stole forth into the open air. It breathed freshly fragrant on
her, after her many weeks in the mouldering mustiness of the bookroom,
and the blackbirds were singing with notes clear as the gathering dews
and mellow as the westering light. The season was now the late autumn
of spring, when most blossoms are falling, though the young leaves are
yet in their first luminous green. On the lawn the laburnums and thorn
bushes stood with their outlines enamelled on the grass in gold and
pearl and pink coral. Along the shaded avenue and shrubbery paths lay
softly drifts of dimmer blossoms and blossom dust, in faint ambers and
russets and crimsons. But the white plumes of the Guelder roses were
still glimmering ghostly above her head as she went by, and some of the
firs were studded all over with little pale-yellow tapers like wild
Christmas trees.
Lady Winifred was going towards the back gate, and presently came where
the Winding Walk, under a dense canopy of evergreens, runs parallel
with the avenue, on the right hand, and on the left within hearing of
the fretted, rocky stream in the bit of a glen below. Once between
the screening laurels and junipers, you could see, however, only up
and down short curves of the waving path. About midway in it was a
rustic wooden seat, niched in a recess of the shrubs, and Lady Winifred
intended to sit down there and wait and watch. But when she reached it,
she found it already occupied by someone who had also been watching, as
was clearly seen in the look that leaped forward to meet the newcomer,
and at sight recoiled again. In this tall woman, with a black shawl
over frosted dark hair, Lady Winifred recognised the Widow Connor
concerning whom, ages ago, before the days of the _Annual Registers_,
she half remembered to have heard about the loss of a soldier son.
The older widow was rising up with many apologies for the boldness of
slipping in there, never thinking any of the family would be coming
out; and she would have gone away, but the other hastened to sit down
beside her, and kept a hand on her shawl. “I won’t stay myself unless
you do,” said Lady Winifred. “I only came out because it was so warm,”
she explained, as she had been explaining to herself, “and such a fine
evening.”
“Tellin’ you the truth, me lady,” said the Widdy Connor, “me poor
Terry himself would sometimes be smokin’ a pipe in here of an evenin’
when there was nobody about. I was tellin’ him he’d a right to not be
makin’ so free--but sure, after all, he done no harm. There’s great
shelter under the shrubberies when the weather does be soft--and be
the same token, we do be gettin’ a little shower this minyit, me lady;
that’s what’s rustlin’ in the laves. So ’twould be nathural enough if
Terry was mindin’ the place. But trespassin’ or annoyin’ the family
now, he’d never be intendin’. Just comin’ of an odd evenin’ he might
be, the way he used. Anyhow Paudeen Nolan and Jim M‘Kenna was positive
’twas him they seen, and they all goin’ home from the hurley match. The
other lads said diff’rint; but that Anthony Martin’s a big stookawn,
and his brother’s as blind as the owls. Nor I wouldn’t go be what Rose
Ahern says--”
“Rose has very good sight,” said Lady Winifred.
“Ah, then you’re after hearin’ the talk, me lady?” said the widow.
“Faix now, they’d no call to be tellin’ you wrong, and bringin’ you out
under the wet for nothin’, to get your death of cold. Because Terry
it was, whatever they may say. But there’s wonderful foolishness in
people. For some of them says they wouldn’t believe any such a thing;
so what _woula_ they believe at all? And more of them says it’s a bad
sign for anybody to be walkin’ that way. And what badness is there in
it, if a lad would be takin’ a look at a place he had a likin’ for, and
where he might get a chance of seein’ his frinds? And it’s the quare
sort of unluckiness ’twould be for one of _them_ to git a sight of
him, if ’twas only goin’ by, and ne’er a word out of him. That’s what
I was sayin’ this mornin’ to ould Theresa Joyce. For says she to me:
‘It’s unlucky,’ says she. ‘And you’d do betther to be wishin’ he’d bide
paiceable wherever he is, till yourself comes along to him,’ says she.
But it’s aisy for Theresa Joyce to be talkin’, and she as ould as a
crow. She can’t be livin’ any great while longer, so I was sayin’ to
her; and it’s somethin’ else she’d be wishin’ if she’d no more age on
her than meself. Sure I was reckonin’ up, me lady, accordin’ to things
that happint, and at the most I can make it I’m short of fifty years.
That’s lavin’ a terrible long time to be contintin’ oneself in.”
“And I’m twenty,” said Lady Winifred.
“Well, now the Lord may pity you, and may goodness forgive me,” the
widow said compunctiously as if she had somehow been an accomplice of
this cruel fate, and were all at once smitten with remorse. She seemed
to ponder for a while deeply, and at last said: “If be any odd chance
it isn’t Terry after all, and only the Captain--I won’t be grudgin’ it
to her; no, the crathur, I will not.”
Thereupon silence continued long between the two watchers, and nothing
befell them except that their blackness was gradually softened into the
shadows as cobweb-coloured dusk enmeshed them.
Then there came a moment when the older woman saw the younger start,
and, quivering like a bough after it has bent to a waft of wind, look
fixedly in one direction. “In the name of God, do you see anythin’,
me lady?” Widdy Connor whispered, and as she spoke she saw too. For a
small rent in the straggling laurel on their right made a spy-hole,
which brought within view a curve of the Winding Walk near its gate
end, many yards away, and there, moving and glimpsing in the twilight,
from which it seemed to have absorbed the last lingering brightness,
went a gleam of scarlet. It was coming towards the seat, and the faces
turned that way looked as if a white moonbeam had fallen across them.
Almost immediately branches rustled close by, and out into the path
a girl hooded with a fawn-coloured shawl stepped warily on the left
hand, and stood poising herself for a swift dart past the recess,
unintercepted if not unobserved. Lady Winifred could not have noticed
the leap of an ambushed tiger; but her companion sprang up and caught
the girl by the wrist. “Norah Grehan,” said the widow. “And who at all
are you watching for this night? Me son Terry was spakin’ to ne’er a
girl, I well know. He’d have told me, so he would. Who are you lookin’
to see?”
“Och, Mrs Connor, ma’am, lave go of me,” the girl said, twisting her
arm and struggling. “And don’t let on to anybody that you seen me, or
there’ll be murdher. It’s Jack M‘Donnell that’s waitin’ for me below
there. He that listed about Christmas, and now they’re sendin’ him to
the war. He and me are spakin’ this good while back, unbeknownst,
be raison of me father makin’ up a match for me wid some other man;
I dunno who he is, but I won’t have him, not if he owned all the
bastes that ever ran on four legs. So I do be slippin’ across the
steppin’-stones of an evenin’ for to get a word with Jack, that comes
over the bog from the dear knows how far beyant Lisconnel. And if they
knew up at the farm I’d be kilt.”
“And maybe the best thing could happen you,” said the widow.
“Ah, don’t say so, woman dear. He’ll be comin’ back one of these days
for sure, a corporal maybe, or a sargint, with lave to marry. And he’s
plannin’ to conthrive for me to be livin’ wid his mother’s sisther in
Sligo till then, the way they won’t get me married on him while he’s
gone--no fear. He’ll be tellin’ me about it to-night--and bedad there
he is whistlin’ to me. Ah, let me go, Mrs Connor; but whisht, like a
good woman,” said the girl, wrenching herself free, and speeding away
between the half visible dark foliage.
Then Lady Winifred, who had heard the last part of this colloquy, got
up also and said: “I think I’ll go home now. It’s a very pleasant
evening, but the air feels rather cold.”
“’Deed now you’d a right to not be out under the rain, wid nothin’ on
the head of you, me lady, but the little muslin cap,” said the widow,
and added as Lady Winifred went: “And, troth, it’s the cruel pity to
see the likes of her wearin’ any such a thing, ay indeed is it. Nora
Grehan and Jack M‘Donnell, sure now the two of them’s at the beginnin’,
and she’s at the endin’. But there’s an endin’ in every beginnin’, and
maybe, plase God, there’s a beginnin’ in every endin’.”
Lady Winifred, meanwhile, was not pitying herself. As she walked slowly
back to her empty Big House, along paths odorous with the rain whose
drops began to pierce their leafiest roofs, she felt again a stunned
disappointment, only vaguer and more chilling than the overdue letter
had caused her. And there were no little birds about now to mock her
into keener consciousness. After all, things were just as they had been
when she set out, no worse surely, and how could they be better, except
in a dream? But a dream she might have before to-morrow came, and
brought back her long day in the brown bookroom with the companionship
of the _Annual Registers_. There were still so many unread of the dusty
volumes, clasped with blackish cob-webs, made ghastly now and then by
the shrivelled skeleton of the dead spinster. She need not yet consider
what she should do when they were all finished.
As the Widdy Connor went towards her little silent house, she was
saying to herself: “Jack M‘Donnell bedad! Sure the height of him isn’t
widin the breadth of me hand of Terry; everybody knows that. It’s my
belief ’twasn’t Jack they seen that time at all. They couldn’t ha’
mistook him for Terry, the tallest lad in this counthryside.... And
says I to Theresa Joyce: ‘The heart of me did be leppin’ up wid pride
every time I’d see him have to stoop his head, comin’ in to me at our
little low door. But it’s lower his head’s lyin’ now,’ says I, ‘low
enough it’s lyin’,’ And says she to me: ‘If ’twas ever so low, the
heart of you’ll be leppin’ up twice as high wid joy and plisure,’ says
she, ‘the next time you behould him.’ But, ah sure, it’s aisy talkin’.
I’ll see him come stoopin’ in at it no more.”
[_A dramatised version of this story will be found in the author’s
volume_: “Ghost Bereft, with Other Stories and Studies in Verse,”
published by Messrs Smith & Elder.]