‘He knew not what to say,
And so he swore!’
Wyndham, when he met Susan, had been in rather a disgusted mood. Shortly
after the Professor’s death he had gone to Norway for a month with the
friend whom he had arranged to go with on the morning following the
luckless night that had seen the last of the Professor’s experiment. He
had induced his friend to wait for him—the latter consenting with rather
a bad grace—until the Professor’s funeral was over and his affairs
looked into. He had had a last conversation with Denis about the
uninvited guest whom the latter had taken to the Cottage, and had told
him to find a suitable home for her at once, comfortable—luxurious even,
if necessary, as she was now undoubtedly the possessor of three hundred
a year—but, at all events, to get her out of the Cottage without further
delay. He spoke peremptorily, and Denis promised all things; yet only
yesterday, on his return, he had heard from Denis’s own lips that still
that girl was located in the Cottage.
‘Didn’t I tell you to get her a home somewhere else?’
‘Ye did, sir—ye did. Faix, I don’t wondher ye’re mad, but ‘twasn’t aisy
to do it.’
‘To do what?’—firmly.
‘To get her to go.’
‘What nonsense! A girl like that—as if she could resist! Why, one would
think there wasn’t a policeman anywhere. Do you mean to tell me she
refused to go?’
‘No, sir; that’s not me manin’. ’Tis that ould fool of a wife o’ mine.
It seems she got set upon her wan way or another, an’ do all I could I
couldn’t git her to turn the young lady out. “There’s room for us all
here,” says Bridget. “But that’s not his ordhers,” says I—manin’ you,
sir. “But whin is she to go?” says she. “That’s nothing to me,” says I.
“’Tis so,” says she. “A comfortable home he tould ye to git for her, and
where’ll she find wan but here?” An’ divil a fut I could move her from
that. Don’t you iver get married, Misther Paul; it will be the undoin’
o’ ye. Ye won’t have a mind o’ yer own in six months.’
‘I’ve a mind now, any way,’ says Wyndham, still swearing, ‘and that is
to get rid of you without another second’s notice.’
‘An’ I’m not surprised, sir,’ says Denis, drawing himself up and
saluting. He is an old soldier. ‘It was most flagrant disobadience. But
what can ye do wid a woman, sir? Fegs, nothing—nothing at all. They
carries all before thim—even a man’s conscience. When Bridget refused to
let her go, what could I do?’ He pauses satisfied, having put the blame
upon his particular Eve. ‘Is it yer wish that I tackle Bridget agin,
sir?’
‘No; I shall go down to Curraghcloyne myself to-morrow,’ says Wyndham,
getting rid of him with a gesture.
He had gone down, had met Susan, had read something in her face that
seemed to him (whose senses were very much alive to impressions on the
subject) to be studying him—wondering at him. It was with a still more
enraged feeling he left her, and went on to the Cottage, where, to his
supreme indignation, he found, for the first time on record, the
entrance-gate locked.
Good heavens! What could be the meaning of this? Were they determined to
compromise him in the eyes of the world? When he has rung the bell until
it is hopelessly smashed, someone comes to the gate, and without opening
it says, in a voice evidently meant to alarm any unwelcome intruder:
‘Who’s there?’
‘Only the master of this place,’ says Wyndham grimly, who has recognised
Mrs. Denis’s handsome brogue even under these new conditions. Indeed, it
would be hard to mistake it anywhere; as Fitzgerald, who knows her,
says, ‘you could sit on it at any moment without the slightest chance of
a breakdown.’
‘Glory be!’ comes in a muffled tone from Mrs. Denis, and, with
tremendous fuss and flurry, she draws the bolt, unlocks the gate, and
opens it wide to Wyndham.
‘Oh, yer honour, who’d a’ thought to see yerself this day! Faix, I
thought ’twas still in thim haythin countries ye were. Sure, if I’d
known I’d have had the gates open to yer honour; and I hope ye’ll
forgive me cap, sir—I’ve another wan just ironed, an’——’
‘Are you preparing for a siege?’ demands Wyndham grimly; ‘or what may be
the reason of this “barring out” on your part? Anything threatening on
the part of the Land Leaguers or the Home Rulers round here?’
‘Oh, law, sir! How could ye think o’ sich a thing? It was only that the
young lady, sir, was a trifle nervous.’
‘She will have to take her nerves somewhere else,’ says the barrister.
‘Now, Mrs. Denis, I hear from your husband that it is your fault that
this—this distinctly undesirable person is still a resident in my
house.’
Mrs. Denis, who has been bowing and scraping up to this, now grows
suddenly alert.
‘Arrah, what are ye sayin’ at all?’ says she. ‘D’ye mane to tell me that
Denis knew ye were come back, and niver give me tale or todin’s of it?’
‘That is altogether beside the question. The thing is——’
‘Faix, the raal thing is this,’ says Mrs. Denis, ‘that I’ll break ivery
bone in that thraitor’s skin the next time I see him! Why,’ says she,
squaring her arms and growing so wrathful that the questionable cap on
the top of her head begins to quiver, ‘sixpence would have brought any
boy down from Dublin wid the news of yer return, and’—with a truly noble
declaration of an innate dishonesty—‘I could thin have’—she stops
herself, happily, at the last moment—‘made mesilf clane to meet ye,’
says she.
Wyndham, who is sufficiently Irish himself to put in the broken
paragraph, smiles coldly.
‘I am not going to discuss Denis with you,’ says he. ‘What I want to
know is why these gates are locked.’
‘Well, sir, there was this: when the young lady came she was that upset
wid bad thratement of wan sort or another that she seemed to be
tremblin’ all over. But whin I questioned her as to what ailed her, not
a word could I git out of her. I put her to bed, an’ she just clung to
the wall like, turnin’ an’ twistin’ her purty head, an’ always keepin’
away from me, an’ refusin’ the tay even, till the night came down upon
us. Ye will remimber, sir, that it was in the airly mornin’ that
Denis——’ At this word she breaks off, and grows again intensely angry.
‘That varmint,’ says she, ‘what did he mane by not tellin’ me? Wait till
I get me hands on him!’
‘Yes, the early morning,’ says Wyndham, bringing her back somewhat
impatiently to the place where she had broken off.
‘Well, yes, sir. I beg yer pardon. She come in the airly mornin, an’ I
could see at once that she was very sad at her heart, an’ so I just tuk
her in as I tell ye, for Denis, though a divil all out in most
ways’—here again a most ominous frown settles on her forehead—‘is still
a man to be depended on where a woman is concerned. And so I tuk her in
to oblige ye, sir.’
‘To oblige me!’ says Wyndham.
‘Well, sir, I thought so thin. An’’—she pauses, and looks straight at
him—‘an’ ye’ll nivver regret it, sir. If ye saw her a bit afther she
came, an’ her delight at yer purty place! “Why, there’s flowers
growin’,” she’d say, as if she never see them before, except whin
sellin’! “And, Mrs. Denis,” says she, “I like these walls,” says she.
“They is so high,” says she. “An’ it would be very hard for anyone,”
says she, “to git through thim, or even to look over thim.” Faith, ’tis
little the crayture knows of the boys round here, I said to meself whin
she said that. But I declare to ye, sir, it went to me heart whin she
said it, for it made it plain to me like that there was someone in her
life that she was thinkin’ of, that she didn’t want to get through these
walls or over thim aither. If he did, I could gather from what she said
that it would be wid no good intintions towards herself.’
‘Has she said anything as to where she came from or who she is?’ asks
Wyndham, with most disgraceful want of sympathy for this moving story.
‘No, sir, sorra a word, barrin’ that she was very unhappy until yer
honour sint her here.’
‘Till I sent her here! What on earth do you mean?’ says Wyndham
indignantly. ‘You must know very well that it was that blundering idiot
of a husband of yours that brought her here.’
‘Fegs, ’tis plain that ye know Denis, any way,’ says Denis’s wife
complacently. ‘Idjit is the word for him, sure enough! But however it
is, sir, the poor young lady is very continted here entirely,
an’’—waxing enthusiastic—‘’twould do your heart good to hear her singin’
about the garden, for all the world like wan o’ thim nate little
thrushes.’
This expectation on Mrs. Denis’s part, that he will find delight in the
thought of the unwelcome stranger making herself at home in his garden
and singing there like a ‘nate little thrush,’ naturally adds fuel to
the fire that already is burning vigorously in Wyndham’s breast.
‘Look here,’ says he, so fiercely that Mrs. Denis starts backwards,
‘you’ve taken a wrong impression of me altogether, if you think I shall
for one moment sanction the presence of that girl here. Your husband has
got me into this mess with his confounded stupidity, but I can trust
myself to get out of it—and I expect you to understand at once that your
“thrush”’—scornfully—‘will be out of this within twenty-four hours.’
With this he brushes by her, his temper—never very sweet—now
considerably the worse for wear.
Nice situation, by Jove! If it comes to the old man’s ears there will be
the devil to pay; and it’s sure to. He had felt there was something
queer in his aunt’s and Josephine’s manner yesterday when he called at
their house in Fitzwilliam Square. Why, if it gets about, there isn’t
one in forty amongst his acquaintances who will believe in the real
facts of the case.... It is a most confounded affair altogether. If he
hadn’t gone abroad, trusting—like the fool that he was—in Denis’s
ability to get her out of the Cottage at once, he could have done it
himself, and so speedily that no one would ever have been the wiser
about it. But now it has gone a little too far; people, no doubt, are
beginning to talk. Well, it shall go no farther. He will put an end to
it at once—this moment.