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.