THE HOME-COMING
After Sir Felix had gone off, profuse in his apologies, and
anathematizing Mr. Fury's zeal, Lady O'Gara went to a desk in the
corner of the drawing-room, a Sheraton desk which she did not often
use. She found a tiny key and unlocked a little cupboard door between
the pigeon-holes. She felt about the back of one of the three little
drawers it contained and brought out a sliding well, one of the
innocent secret receptacles which are so easily discovered by any one
who has the clue. She drew out a little bundle of yellow papers from
it--newspaper cuttings. These she took to the lamp and proceeded to
read with great care.
Once or twice she knitted her fair brows over something as she read;
but, on the whole, she seemed satisfied as she put the papers back into
their secret place, locked the little door and put away the key.
Then she remembered that she had not given Patsy his orders.
She went to Sir Shawn's office-room and wrote them out. While she put
the second one in its envelope Patsy tapped at the door and came in,
closing it carefully behind him.
"No wan 'ud be expectin' the master home from the Wood o' the Hare
yet," he said. "'Tis a good step an' Sir John Fitzgerald would be very
sorry to part with him after he'd carried him in for his lunch. Maybe
'tis staying to dinner he'd be."
Lady O'Gara looked at her watch.
"It's quite early," she said; "not much after six."
"'Tis a dark night," said Patsy. "Maybe 'tis the way they'll be
persuadin' him to wait till the moon rises. Sorra a bit she'll show
her face till nine to-night."
Mary O'Gara's heart sank. She knew that Patsy was nervous.
"He may come at any moment," she said. "I don't think he'll wait for
the rising of the moon."
"It isn't like the troubled times," said Patsy, "an' you listenin'
here, an' me listenin' by the corner o' the stable-yard where the wind
brings the sounds from the bog-road whin 'tis in that quarter. Your
Ladyship had great courage. An' look at all you must ha' went through
whin we was at the War!"
He looked compassionately at her as he went towards the door.
"I'll be sendin' a boy wid this message," he said. "Or maybe Georgie
an' me would be steppin' down there. It's lonesome for the child to be
sittin' over his books all day whin I'm busy."
He opened the door, looked into the empty hall and came back.
"I wouldn't be troublin' the master wid them ould stories," he said.
"Didn't I tell my story fair!"
"You did, Patsy. There were some things in it were not in the evidence
you gave at the time."
"See that now! T'ould mimiry of me's goin'. Still, there wasn't much
differ?"
There was some anxiety in his voice as he asked the question.
"Nothing much. You said nothing long ago of running towards the upper
road after Sir Shawn."
"Sure where else would I be runnin' to? It isn't the lower road I'd be
takin'--now is it your Ladyship! It wouldn't be likely."
"I suppose it wouldn't," she said, slightly smiling.
"I remember it like as if it was yesterday, the sound of the horse's
hoofs climbin' and then the clatter that broke out on the lower road
whin Spitfire took the bit between his teeth an' bolted. I'll put the
stopper on that villain's lies. I'd like to think the master wouldn't
be troubled wid them."
"I'm afraid he'll have to hear them, Patsy. Sir Felix was obliged to
issue a summons. It might have been worse if Sir Felix had not been a
friend."
"The divil shweep that man, Fury," said Patsy with ferocity. "If he
hadn't been a busy-body an' stirrer-up of trouble, he'd have drowned
that villain in a bog-hole."
He went off, treading delicately on his toes, which was his way of
showing sympathetic respect, and Lady O'Gara returned to the
drawing-room.
She was very uneasy. She tried reading, but her thoughts came between
her and the page. Writing was no more helpful. She went to the piano.
Music at least, if it did not soothe her, would prevent her straining
her ears in listening for sounds outside.
The butler came and took away the tea-things, made up the fire and
departed in the noiseless way of the trained servant. Her hands on the
keys broke unconsciously into the solemn music of Chopin's Funeral
March. She took her hands off the piano with a shiver as she realized
her choice and began something else, a mad, merry reel to which the
feet could scarcely refrain from dancing. But her heart did not dance.
The music fretted her, keeping her from listening. After a while she
gave up the pretence of it and went back to the fireside, to the sofa
on which she and Shawn had sat side by side while she comforted him.
She could have thought she felt the weight of his head on her shoulder,
that she smelt the peaty smell of his home-spuns. He would be
disturbed, poor Shawn, by what she had to tell him. It would be an
intolerable ordeal if he should be dragged to the Petty Sessions Court
to refute the preposterous charge of being concerned in the death of
the man he had loved more than a brother.. Poor Shawn! She listened.
Was that the sound of a horse coming? He would be so disturbed!
It was only the wind that was getting up. She drew her work-table to
her and took out a pair of Shawn's stockings that needed darning.
Margaret McKeon's eyes had been failing of late, and Lady O'Gara had
taken on joyfully the mending of her husband's things. Her darning was
a thing of beauty. She had said it soothed her when Sir Shawn would
have taken the stocking from her because it tired her dear eyes.
Nothing could have seemed quieter than the figure of the lady sitting
mending stockings by rosy lamplight. She had put on her spectacles.
Terry had cried out in dismay when he had first seen her wear them, and
she had laughed and put them away; her beautiful eyes were really
rather short-sighted and she had never spared them.
But while she sat so quietly she was gripped by more terrors than one.
She was trying to keep down the thought, the question, that would
return no matter how she strove to push it away--had she been told all
the truth about Terence Comerford's death?
There had always been things that puzzled her, things Shawn had said
under the stress of emotion, and when he talked in sleep. There had
been a night when he had cried out:
"My God, he should not have laughed. If he had wanted to live he
should not have laughed. When he laughed I felt I must kill him."
She had wakened him up, telling him he had had a nightmare and had
thought no more about it. There were other things he had said in the
stress of mental sufferings. She began to piece them together, to make
a whole of them, in the light of this horrible accusation. And--Patsy
had been lying, had been ready to lie more if necessary. Patsy was a
truthful person. Conceivably he would not have lied unless there was a
reason for it, unless there was something to conceal.
She got up at last, weary with her thoughts, and went upstairs to
dress. Before doing anything else she opened her window and leant out.
It had come on to rain. She had known the beautiful strange sky was
ominous of wet weather, although for a little time in the afternoon it
had seemed inclined to freeze. The heavy raindrops were falling like
the pattering of feet. A wind got up and shook the trees. She said to
herself that she _would not_ fancy she heard the horse's hoofs in the
distance. When they were coming she would have no doubt.
She dressed herself finely, or she permitted Margaret McKeon to dress
her, in a golden brown dress which her husband had admired. Through
the transparent stuff that draped the corsage modestly her warm white
shoulders gleamed. Her arms were very beautiful. She remembered as
she sat in front of the glass, while the maid dressed her hair, that
her husband had said she was more beautiful than the girl he had
married.
She went back to the drawing-room where Shot lay, stretched on the
skin-rug before the fire, now and again lifting his head to look at
her. The Poms were in their baskets either side of the fireplace. It
was very quiet. Not a sound disturbed the silence of the room beyond
the ticking of the clock over the mantelpiece and the purring and
murmuring of the fire.
She had a book in her hand, but she did not read it. She was too
concerned about real actual happenings for the book to keep her
attention. She held it indeed so that she might seem to be reading if
a servant came into the room. She wondered if the story of the tramp's
charge against Sir Shawn had reached the kitchen. Very probably it
had. The police would know of it and from them it would spread to the
village and the countryside. The people were insatiable of gossip,
especially where their "betters" were involved. Probably the
tramp--Baker, was it?--poor Susan's husband and Georgie's father--had
made the statement at every place where he had satisfied his thirst.
What a horrid thing to have happened! How would Shawn take the
accusation? Of course it was absurd--nevertheless it was intolerable.
Reilly came in presently and asked if her Ladyship would have dinner at
the usual hour. It still wanted a quarter of the hour--eight o'clock.
She answered in the affirmative. Shawn was always vexed if she waited
for him when he was late, wishing she would remember that he might be
detained by twenty things. It would be something to do and would
suspend for a while the listening which made her head ache. She hated
these hours of listening. Of late years she had forgotten to be
nervous when Sir Shawn was not in good time. He had said that he would
not give her the habit of his punctual return lest a chance
unpunctuality should terrify her. To-night she had only gone back to
the listening because Shawn was riding Mustapha. Besides, the news she
had to give him had upset her nerves out of their usual tranquil course.
The rain beat hard against the windows. She hoped Shawn was not
crossing the bog in that rainstorm. Some horses hated the wind and the
rain and would not face them. It would be so terribly easy for
Mustapha if he swung round or reared to topple over where the bog-pools
lay dark and silent below the road, on either side.
A thought came to her with some sense of companionship that Patsy Kenny
was doubtless listening round the corner of the stables for the sound
of Mustapha's hoofs, coming closer and closer. She had thought she
heard them so often without hearing them. Before she came down the
stairs to dinner, she had turned into the private chapel to say her
night-prayers, praying for her beloved ones, and for all the world; and
as she knelt there in the dimness she had been almost certain she heard
Mustapha come. Now, sitting by the drawing-room fire, the river of
prayer went flowing through her heart, half articulate, broken into by
the effort of listening that might become something tense and aching.
The dinner gong began, rising to a roar and falling away again. She
smiled as she stood up, saying to herself that Reilly sounded the gong
with a sense of the climax.
As she stood up the Poms bristled and Shot suddenly barked and
listened. He sat up on his haunches and threw back his head and
howled. The dogs knew the master was out and that something vexed the
mistress, and were uneasy.
As she passed across the hall, her golden-brown dress catching the
light of the lamps, suddenly the hall door opened. There came in the
wind and the rain. The lamps flared. Patsy Kenny stood in the
doorway. He was very wet. As he took off his hat mechanically the
rain dripped from it. His hair was plastered down on his face and the
rain was in his eyes. He was panting as though he had run very hard.
"The master's comin'," he said with a sound like a sob. "He's not
kilt, though he's hurted. I'm telling you the truth, jewel. It was
well there was a pig-fair in Meelick to-morrow or he might have lain
out all night. An' wasn't it the Mercy o' God the cart didn't drive
over him?"
"Where is he?" she asked, going to the door and peering out into the
darkness. "Where is he?"
"He's comin'. They're carryin' him on the tail-board o' the cart.
He's not kilt. Did ye ever know your poor Patsy to decave you yet? I
ran ahead lest ye'd die wid the fright. Here, hould a light, you."
He spoke to Reilly, who had never been spoken to so unceremoniously in
the whole course of his professional career. The hall was full of the
servants by this time, peering and pushing from the inner hall with
curious or disturbed faces.
Reilly brought a lamp, more quickly than might have been expected of
him. There was the measured tramp of men's feet and something came in
sight as the lamplight streamed out on the wet ground.
"Stand back!" Lady O'Gara said, pushing away the crowding servants with
a gesture. "Can they see, Patsy?"
"They can see," said Patsy. "God help you! But mind ye he's not kilt.
I'm goin' for the doctor. I won't be many minutes."
Into the hall came Tim Murphy, the road-contractor and small farmer,
who lived up a boreen from the bog. He was under the tailboard of the
cart. Behind was his son Larry. There was a crowd of wet faces and
tousled heads crowding in the dark looking into the hall.
The men were carrying the silent figure of Sir Shawn O'Gara, hatless,
his scarlet coat sodden and mud-stained, his eyes closed and his head
fallen to one side.