THE SHADOW
One evening some ten days later Lady O'Gara, who had been out, arrived
home with the dressing-bell. Hurrying upstairs, she found her husband
in his dressing-room. He had had his bath: she noticed that his hair
was wet as he stood in front of the glass, knotting his white cravat.
He wore hunting things in the Winter evenings, and the scarlet coat,
with the little facing of blue, became his dark skin and eyes.
"Is it you, Mary?" he asked, without turning round. "What kept you so
late?"
"I forgot the time. I went to see Mrs. Wade, and found Stella there.
I did not know she had been there since we brought Mrs. Wade a puppy to
keep her company. Stella was on her way here. She had sent on her
luggage, meaning to follow."
Sir Shawn turned about completely and stared at her. She saw that his
face was disturbed.
"I wonder if it was wise to take Stella there!" he said. "Poor woman!
One would not deny her any happiness. But--I warn you, Grace Comerford
will not like it. There is another thing, Mary. Come in and shut the
door. In a few minutes we shall have to go downstairs and talk
platitudes. I could wish we were alone once more."
"Why, what is the matter, Shawn!" Lady O'Gara asked, coming forward in
some alarm. "You don't feel ill?"
"I feel as well as ever I feel. But I've been infernally disturbed.
Evelyn, quite gaily, and showing his white teeth, as he does when he
laughs--I've nothing against Evelyn--frightened me by talking about
Terry and Stella. He said it was delightful to see children so
thoroughly in love. I pulled him up, rather short. He turned it off
with a half apology, but I could see he did not believe me when I said
there was nothing. 'Oh, they haven't told him.' I could see by his
eyes that he thought that. I felt infernally frightened, I can tell
you!"
"Oh, but why, Shawn?" Lady O'Gara's eyes fluttered nervously in the
candlelight. She was frightened at her own complicity, really
frightened for the first time. "Why shouldn't the poor children be
happy? I know you like Eileen better than Stella. Still it is not a
question of our choice."
She had been strangely, implicitly obedient to her husband during their
married life, even when she might well have departed from obedience.
"What in God's Name are you talking about, Mary?" he asked and she felt
vaguely shocked. Shawn had always been reverent in using the Name of
His Creator. "It is not a question of my likes or dislikes. Why, for
the matter of that, I can see little Stella with the poor lad's eyes
well enough. But this thing simply cannot go on. It must be killed.
God knows I don't want to hurt the boy. I'd give my life to make him
happy, although I don't show him affection as you do, as you can. Is
it possible you did not understand? Was I stupid about explaining to
you? Don't you know that Stella is Terence's daughter?"
No; she had not known. That was plain enough in her face.
"Oh, no," she said in a bewildered way. "Stella is the daughter of
Gaston de St. Maur...."
"Grace Comerford said so, or she allowed people to believe it. Did she
ever say so? Stella is the daughter of Terence Comerford and Bridyeen
Sweeney, whom you know as Mrs. Wade. Don't you see now how impossible
it is? I wish to Heaven Grace Comerford had not come back."
A sense of the piteousness, the pitilessness, of it all came
overwhelmingly to Mary O'Gara. She had been learning to love Stella.
The fond, ardent little creature had pushed herself into her heart.
What was to happen to them all, to Terry, to Stella, to herself?
"You are sure, Shawn?" she asked, rubbing her hands together as though
she were cold. But while she asked the certainty was borne in upon
her. It was the starved mother-love that had burned in Mrs. Wade's
eyes as they rested on the girl. It was the unconscious daughterly
tenderness, the mysterious attraction which had made Stella chatter on
the homeward way of Mrs. Wade and how she pitied her, she knew not for
what.
She threw out her hands in a gesture of despair.
"It seems we are all going to be hurt," she said. "I would not mind if
it were not for the children. Why did Grace Comerford bring Stella
where she and Terry were certain to meet? The boy was bound to find
her irresistible?"
She remembered suddenly that the dinner bell might ring at any moment
and that the patient Margaret MacKeon was waiting to help her to dress.
She sighed. It was one of the moments when one finds the social
demands hard to endure.
"One of us will have to tell Terry," she said. "It is not a pretty
story. Poor little Stella!"
No one would have thought from Lady O'Gara's demeanour at the dinner
table that Black Care pressed hard on her white shoulders. Sir Shawn
had often said that when his wife chose she could put the young girls
in the shade.
She put them in the shade to-night. She had a deep, brilliant spot of
colour in either cheek. Her dress of leaf brown matched her eyes and
hair. She had laid aside her other jewels for a close-fitting antique
collar of garnets, the deep ruby of which suggested a like colour in
the gown as it did in her eyes.
Eileen was out of it with Major Evelyn and pouted. Terry was tired and
happy after his day of tramping over the bogs. He seemed content to
watch Stella across the bowl of growing violets which was between them.
Young Earnshaw talked nonsense and Stella dimpled and smiled. She had
gained the colour of the moss rose-bud since she had come back to
Ireland. There was a daintiness, a delicacy in her little face with
the softly moulded, yet firm features, the grey-brown eyes with dark
lashes, the arched fine brows, which would have made a plain face
distinguished. Her head as she moved it about in the lamplight--she
had bird-like gestures--showed a sheen like a pheasant's breast.
Watching her miserably Sir Shawn O'Gara said to himself that Terence
Comerford's red hair had come out as golden bronze on his daughter's
pretty head.
He had a girl at either hand, as Lady O'Gara had the two male visitors.
Terry, the odd man, had come round and slipped in between his father
and Eileen, moving her table-napkin so that she sat between him and
Major Evelyn. He and his father were almost equally silent from
different reasons.
Eileen at first had been crumbling her bread, sending her food away
untasted or only just tasted. She was vexed about something. It was
not like Eileen to be capricious over her food.
Perhaps Lady O'Gara noticed the dissatisfaction and ascribed it to the
fact that Eileen was not having the attention she desired, so she drew
gently out of a very interesting discussion she was having with Major
Evelyn and turned to little Earnshaw, an agreeably impudent boy, with
cheeks like a Winter apple and an irresistibly jolly smile. He seemed
to have got over his first shyness with Stella and was conducting his
veiled love-making with a rather charming audacity. Lady O'Gara had
glanced a little anxiously once or twice at Terry, but there was
obviously only amusement at young Earnshaw's way in Terry's face. He
must be very sure of Stella.
"Don't mind him," he said across the table while she watched. "He's
very young and he's apt to get excited when he stays up for dinner.
Very often the Mess has to pack him off to bed."
Mary O'Gara smiled at the banter between the two boys. Now and again
she inclined an ear to the conversation of Major Evelyn and Eileen.
The big, handsome, jovial man of the world, whom his subalterns, while
evidently deeply admiring him, called "Cecil," did not find much to
interest him in Eileen, though he was too well-bred to show it.
Stella, laughing, put down her head with one of her bird-like
movements. Her hair was parted in the centre and the thick masses of
it, so much like plumage, went off in silken waves and curls and was
looped behind her little ears where it was combed up from her white
neck. She was wearing green tonight, a vivid emerald green which would
have tried a less beautiful complexion.
The movement, the close fine ripple of the hair, were like Mrs. Wade's;
there was no reason to doubt the relationship. Would others see it?
But Mrs. Wade hardly ever walked abroad. She seemed as much afraid of
her fellow-creatures as any one could wish her to be.
Lady O'Gara found herself seeking for another likeness. No; except for
that slight redness in the hair there was nothing she could discover of
Terence Comerford. She wondered vaguely whether Grace Comerford had
looked for such a likeness and been disappointed.
She let her thoughts slip away from things around her. She asked
herself whether in the circumstance Mrs. Wade was a fit companion for
her daughter, and answered herself, with a little scorn, that there was
nothing to fear from the mother's influence. She remembered something
she had caught sight of at the end of a little cross-passage in
Waterfall Cottage. There was a statue, a throbbing rosy lamp in the
darkness. Mrs. Wade was at 7 o'clock Mass at the Convent every morning
despite her recluse habits. She was a good woman, whatever there was
in her past.
Lady O'Gara recalled herself with a start to the things about her. How
long had her thoughts been straying? Not very long, for the plates
were being taken away that had been full when last she was aware of
them.
Her eyes rested on Eileen's face. A name caught her ear--Robin
Gillespie. Oh, that was the doctor's son of whom Eileen had spoken
with a certain consciousness. Eileen's manner had suggested that Robin
Gillespie was in love with her, while she said: "Of course he has not a
penny and never will have."
Eileen was listening now, absorbed in what Major Evelyn was saying.
Her lips were parted, her eyes and colour bright. The air of slackness
which so often dulled her beauty had disappeared. For once she was
animated.
Major Evelyn perceived that his hostess was listening and turned to her
with a courteous intention to include her in the conversation. He was
charming to all women, this big man, with the irresistible gaiety.
Poor Eileen, she had been playing off all her little charms upon him,
and in vain. He showed openly his preference for an old woman, as Mary
O'Gara called herself in her thoughts, wincing a little.
"I've discovered that Miss Creagh knows Gillespie, the young doctor who
has defied all the Army Regulations. It was quite an excitement in
India. The Rajah of Bundelpore had a very bad attack of Indian cholera
one night. His own doctors could do nothing for him. Some one--the
Rajah's heir who had been at Harrow, probably--sent over for the
regimental doctor, who happened to be Gillespie. He found all sorts of
devilry going on while the Rajah writhed and turned black and green.
Gillespie took him in hand--I heard his treatment was nearly as weird
as that of the native doctors. There was something about blackberry
jam stirred in boiling water for an astringent drink. Anyhow the Rajah
pulled through. He's got a constitution like a horse. And as soon as
he was well he presented Gillespie with a horse that was the very
Kohinoor of horses--Gillespie sold him, for a preposterous sum I
believe, to Lord Nutwood--magnificent jewels and a lakh of rupees."
"How much is a lakh of rupees?" Eileen asked with breathless interest.
"Oh, a big sum--somewhere about fifty thousand pounds. The jewels are
worth as much. Then came in the Indian Government and the Army
Regulations. They ordered Gillespie to return the Rajah's gifts.
Gillespie, who hadn't a penny to bless himself with--it was understood
that all he could squeeze out of his pay went home to his people in
Ireland--snapped his fingers at them. They bid him choose between
leaving the Service and giving up the Rajah's gifts. Gillespie quite
unhesitatingly--I believe they really thought there could be a question
of choice--gave up the Service. I hear he's come home and means to set
up as a specialist in Cavendish Square. They said there was a girl in
the case, some girl who wouldn't have him, and that took the savour
even out of the lakh of rupees. I don't suppose it's true. Do you
happen to know him, Miss Creagh? He is from your part of the world,
Donegal way."
"My people know him quite well," said Eileen, her breath coming and
going fast. "Just fancy, I never heard of it. You'd have thought some
one would have written to me."
She frowned, looking down at her plate.
At bed-time when Lady O'Gara, putting her own preoccupations aside,
went to say good-night to Eileen she found her in tears.
"My dear, what is it?" she asked in dismay.
"Oh, Cousin Mary--you know that story Major Evelyn told us about Robin
Gillespie. Well--isn't it awful?" she broke into sobbing. "I wouldn't
listen to him when he asked me to be engaged to him. He said he knew
he was a poor ... poor ... beggar, but ... with that to spur him on ...
he could do anything. I was ... horrid. I told him to ask ... Brigid.
He said it wasn't Brigid he wanted ... it was me. He got ... angry at
last ... and now... I know I loved him ... all the time."
Lady O'Gara troubled as she was, could not refrain from smiling, but as
Eileen's tears apparently had overtaken her during the process of
brushing her hair, and the long mantle of greenish grey, silver-gold
hair hung about her face, Lady O'Gara's smile passed unnoticed.
"Do you think ... it would seem ... very forward of me to write to
him?" asked Eileen; and then looked from the curtain of her hair with
wet eyes but a new hopefulness.
"I should ask Brigid. He may have acted on your advice."
"Oh, but he hadn't time," said Eileen, whose strong point was not
humour. "He went away at once, broken-hearted. Besides, I should have
known if he had made any advance to Brigid. Cousin Mary, _would_ you
mind very much if I went home for a little visit? I know that I have
only just come back--but still..."
"Certainly not, Eileen." Lady O'Gara had a feeling that just at
present Eileen might be a jarring element. "Make your own
arrangements, my dear. I am very glad if it will make you happier."
"Oh, _thank_ you," said Eileen, with effusion. "You are always so
sympathetic and understanding, darling Cousin Mary. You see, if Robin
has come back as Major Evelyn says, he might be with his people just at
this moment."