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.