THE LAKH OF RUPEES
Mrs. Comerford acted with characteristic thoroughness. Perhaps she
felt that she had much to atone for.
It was Christmas Day by the time Stella could be moved to Inch, where
amazement reigned. Mrs. Comerford had given her orders. Miss Stella's
room was to be prepared. She was coming back again, with her mother.
The Bride's Room, which was the finest bedroom at Inch, was to be
prepared for Mrs. Terence Comerford.
Mrs. Clinch, to whom the order was given, gasped.
"Mrs. Terence Comerford, ma'am?" she repeated.
"Yes: I hope you're not becoming deaf. My son was married, and Miss
Stella is his daughter. He chose to keep his marriage a secret. I
have only just learnt that his wife is living."
No more than that. Mrs. Comerford was not a person to ask questions
of. She went her way serenely, with a queer air of happiness about her
while Inch was swept and garnished. Of course Clinch and Mrs. Clinch
debated these amazing happenings with each other; of course the
servants buzzed and the news spread to the village and about the
countryside with amazing swiftness.
Christmas morning saw the transference from the Waterfall Cottage to
Inch accomplished. Stella was by this time able to sit up for the
journey, and since there could be no proper Christmas festivity at
Castle Talbot Terry O'Gara was to lunch at Inch. He was witness of the
strange ceremonial air with which Mrs. Comerford laid down her seals of
office, so to speak.
"Mrs. Terence Comerford will take the head of the table," she said.
Then she passed to the foot of the table while Mrs. Terence, flushed
and half tearful, took the vacated place.
Terry was in the seventh heaven. There was no longer anything between
him and Stella, who had accepted him as though their happiness had
never been threatened. Stella, with that air of illness yet about her
which made her many times more dear and precious to her lover, looked
with shining eyes from her mother to her grandmother.
In the drawing-room afterwards, while Stella rested in her own pretty
room, and her mother, rather overwhelmed by her new estate, sat by her,
Mrs. Comerford talked to Terry.
"It is a long Winter here," she said. "I remember frost and snow in
January when it was dangerous to walk across your own lawn because of
the drifts. If the snow does not come it will be wild and wet. Stella
was brought up in Italy. I should hurry up the marriage, young man,
and take her away. Now that your father is going on so well there is
no reason for delay. Besides, we want to get it out of her head that
she was pursued by some ruffian the night she wandered and fell by the
empty lodge at Athvara."
"Poor little angel," said Terry, "I am only too anxious, Mrs.
Comerford. I shall be the happiest man alive if she will consent."
"Of course she will consent. She is an obedient child," said Mrs.
Comerford, with an entire oblivion of Stella's marked disobedience in
the not very remote past.
"It is adorably unselfish of you to be willing to part with her," said
Terry, his face shining with happiness.
"For the matter of that I shall have my daughter-in-law," said Mrs.
Comerford superbly. "She has never travelled. We shall probably do
some travelling together. You had better resign your commission."
"Oh, must I? I might get a year's leave because of my ... Stella's
health. I am very fond of the Regiment. But of course I should not
put it before her."
"Of course not. I don't mind your sticking to the Regiment, as you
say, for a bit longer. Your father and Stella's father each took their
turn at soldiering. It is as well to be prepared--in case of need.
There might be a bolt out of the blue sky. So much more reason for
being happy while we may."
"You know that Susan Horridge--or Mrs. Baker, but she won't be called
that--identified the dead man I found by the Admiral's tomb as her
husband?"
"Yes, I heard so. A good riddance. I wonder if he was hunting for
Susan and the boy when he met with that accident. He was 'warm' as the
children say, close up against Waterfall Cottage. You are to make
Stella forget that dream of hers of being pursued by some terrible
creature that night."
"I will do my best," said Terry. "A pity some one does not take
Athvara! It is a fine old house all falling to rack and ruin."
"I have heard a rumour that some Order is buying it for a boys' school.
That would be best of all. A crowd of boys about would soon banish the
ghosts. They would delight in the Admiral's tomb. My own boy and
Shawn O'Gara, your father, made a cache there one cold Winter,
pretending they were whalers in the North Sea. It was the time of Dr.
Nansen. The tomb used to be open then. They had all sorts of queer
things stowed away under the shelf that held the Admiral's coffin.
Queer things, boys!"
She looked into the fire for a few minutes.
"Your father loved my boy," she said. "I believe he'd have died to
save him. There was a time when I was angry against him, because he
lived and was warm and my boy was cold, and because your mother had
married him. I always looked to see her my Terence's wife. I was
wrong. Terence had chosen his own wife."
The marriage was fixed for early in the New Year. Every one seemed
extremely happy. Terence had got his leave of absence for a year.
Stella was making excellent progress and had begun to take a shy
interest in the preparations for the wedding and the details of the
wedding journey. She had seen Sir Shawn, lying on the invalid couch
which had the very latest improvements to make his invalid's lot as
easy as possible. He had drawn down her face to his and kissed it,
saying something inexplicable to Stella.
"You are the dove with the olive branch to say that the floods have
retreated."
He was very happy about the marriage, and Lady O'Gara, watching him as
though he were a beloved and delicate child, smiled at his saying, a
bright brave smile which made Stella say afterwards to Terry that his
mother's smile was like Winter sunshine.
"It used to be so full of fun," said Terry, "her dimples used to come
and go, but she is troubled about my father, though she says she is the
happiest woman alive, because she can keep him perhaps for a long time
yet."
Patsy Kenny was painting and papering his house in the stable yard, in
the intervals of his professional labours, whistling over his work.
Mrs. Horridge, as she still called herself, was back at the South lodge
with Georgie, and old Lizzie Brennan as her lodger.
"The old soul," she said to Lady O'Gara. "I'll always find room for
her. She do take on so when it comes over her that she might go to the
'Ouse. I've promised her she shan't. Wasn't it clever of her, m'lady,
to go off and find Miss Stella's Ma for her. I don't believe Miss
Stella would be with us this day if it weren't for that. I never saw a
young lady so set on her Ma. M'lady," she drew Lady O'Gara away from
the gate by which they were standing talking, a little way along the
avenue where no listener could hear--"I've told Miss Stella a lie, and
I'm not sorry for it, although I'm a truthful woman. It was a big lie
too. I told her that there terror she had of runnin' and runnin' from
somethink dreadful was but the fever. I told her she dreamed it. But
I'd never have got it out of her head if her Ma hadn't come."
She turned away and was silent for a minute. Then she spoke again in a
low voice.
"It was the drink," she said. "The Lord forgive all the wicked!"
One of these days Lady O'Gara was saying to herself that she must read
and answer all the letters that had come to her while Sir Shawn still
claimed her constant attention. There was a heaped basket of them on
the desk in her own room. It was a very chilly afternoon. Sir Shawn
was asleep upstairs. Presently Reilly and Patsy Kenny would carry him
down on his wonderful couch. Terry was over at Inch. He was to bring
back Stella, and later on they were to be joined at dinner by Mrs.
Comerford and Mrs. Terence.
"I'm afraid no one ever wrote to tell poor Eileen," Lady O'Gara said to
herself, with a whimsical glance at the letter basket and the flanking
waste-paper basket. The telling that was in her mind referred to the
approaching marriage of Terry and Stella. Eileen had been notified of
Sir Shawn's illness and had written expressing her concern. But Eileen
never could write a letter. The formal and ill-constructed phrases
conveyed nothing. Somewhat to Lady O'Gara's surprise Eileen had not
offered to return. But after that formal letter another letter had
come, quite a thick one, and it lay still unopened amid the accumulated
letters.
"Poor Eileen! I wonder if there was anything in Terry's story about
the lakh of rupees!"
The thought had but entered her mind when she heard, or thought she
heard, the sound of approaching carriage-wheels. She listened. It
might be Dr. Costello, who had a way of coming on friendly visits very
often. Or perhaps Terry and Stella were coming earlier than she had
expected them.
The door opened. In came a young woman wearing magnificent furs,
bringing with her a scent of violets. Eileen!
She flung her arms about Lady O'Gara with an unaccustomed
demonstrativeness. But she turned a cold satin cheek to the lady's
kiss. It had been characteristic of Eileen even in small childhood
that in moments of apparently greatest abandonment she had never kissed
but always turned her cheek to be kissed.
"Since you wouldn't write, dearest Cousin Mary," she cried in a voice
strangely affected to Lady O'Gara's ear, "I've come to see what is the
matter. And I've brought my husband."
A shortish man with a keen, clear, plain face came from behind the
shadow of Eileen and her furs. Lady O'Gara had a queer thought. She
recognized Eileen's furs for sables. She had never attained to sables.
The coat must have cost three hundred guineas. How quick Eileen had
been about her marriage! And how soon she had begun to spend the lakh!
Meanwhile her lips were saying--
"I am very glad to meet you, Dr. Gillespie. But what a surprise! I
did not think Eileen had had time even to get engaged."
"You see there was so little to be done," the lakh responded in a very
pleasant voice, which at once secured Lady O'Gara's liking. Besides,
his hand-clasp was very warm, so unlike Eileen's chilly cheek. She
hoped Eileen was going to be good to him. "I was Eileen's slave
always. She had refused me innumerable times. She only had to say she
had changed her mind and I procured a special licence."
"You will take off your furs, Eileen. Of course you and Dr. Gillespie
will stay. Sir Shawn is so much better. And you have to hear all our
news. You have sent away your car?"
Eileen was taking off the sables, and flinging them carelessly to one
side, as though three hundred guinea sables were things of common
experience with her. The rose-silk lining fairly dazzled Lady O'Gara's
amused eyes, so sumptuous was it.
"Only between two trains, dearest Cousin Mary. We are going to London
on our way to Italy. We've been married a week and have been boring
each other dreadfully at Recess. I am longing for Italy, but I felt I
must see you and introduce Bobbin. We have till seven o'clock to stay."
Lady O'Gara glanced at the bridegroom to whom his bride had given so
absurd a name. He was looking amusedly, if adoringly, at Eileen. He
had a good strong chin, a firm mouth, which was sweet when he smiled:
his grey eyes were quizzical. She thought the marriage would be all
right.
"I am going to get warm in the sun," said Eileen with a little shiver.
"You see Bobbin has to go back to work. He has taken a house in Harley
Street and we wish to settle in as early as possible. There has been
an article in the _Medical Journal_."
"In fact London can't wait till I put up my brass plate, Lady O'Gara,"
Dr. Gillespie said, with twinkling eyes.
Reilly came to ask if he should bring tea.
"Yes, please; Mr. Terry and Miss Stella will be here very shortly."
Lady O'Gara thought she had better prepare Eileen, who had always had
the air of Terry being her property.
"Our great news, after my husband being so well," she said, "is that
Terry and Stella are going to be married almost immediately. By the
way, they too are going to Italy. Perhaps you may meet there."
Eileen opened her eyes wide and lifted her hands, with a side look at
her husband.
"I am _so_ glad," she said. "Do you know, Cousin Mary, the one
drawback to my happiness--you see I _always_ cared for Bobbin, since we
were small children--was the dread that Terry might _mind_."
THE END