Notwithstanding my father's anxiety to leave Rome we travelled slowly
and it was a week before we reached Ellan. By that time my depression
had disappeared, and I was quivering with mingled curiosity and fear at
the thought of meeting the man who was to be my husband.
My father, for reasons of his own, was equally excited, and as we sailed
into the bay at Blackwater he pointed out the developments which had
been made under his direction--the hotels, theatres, dancing palaces and
boarding houses that lined the sea-front, and the electric railways that
ran up to the tops of the mountains.
"See that?" he cried. "I told them I could make this old island hum."
On a great stone pier that stood deep into the bay, a crowd of people
were waiting for the arrival of the steamer.
"That's nothing," said my father. "Nothing to what you see at the height
of the season."
As soon as we had drawn up alongside the pier, and before the passengers
had landed, four gentlemen came aboard, and my heart thumped with the
thought that my intended husband would be one of them; but he was not,
and the first words spoken to my father were--
"His lordship's apologies, sir. He has an engagement to-day, but hopes
to see you at your own house to-morrow morning."
I recognised the speaker as the guardian (grown greyer and even less
prepossessing) who had crossed with the young Lord Raa when he was going
up to Oxford; and his companions were a smooth-faced man with searching
eyes who was introduced as his lordship's solicitor from London, a Mr.
Curphy, whom I knew to be my father's advocate, and my dear old Father
Dan.
I was surprised to find Father Dan a smaller man than I had thought him,
very plain and provincial, a little country parish priest, but he had
the tender smile I always remembered, and the sweet Irish roll of the
vowels that I could never forget.
"God bless you," he said. "How well you're looking! And how like your
mother, Lord rest her soul! I knew the Blessed Virgin would take care of
you, and she has, she has."
Three conveyances were waiting for us--a grand brougham for the Bishop,
a big motor-car for the guardian and the London lawyer, and a still
bigger one for ourselves.
"Well, s'long until to-morrow then," cried my father, getting up into
the front row of his own ear, with the advocate beside him and Father
Dan and myself behind.
On the way home Father Dan talked of the business that had brought me
back, saying I was not to think too much of anything he might have said
of Lord Raa in his letters, seeing that he had spoken from hearsay, and
the world was so censorious--and then there was no measuring the
miraculous influence that might be exercised by a good woman.
He said this with a certain constraint, and was more at ease when he
spoke of the joy that ought to come into a girl's life at her
marriage--her first love, her first love-letter, her wedding-day and her
first baby, all the sweet and wonderful things of a new existence which
a man could never know.
"Even an old priest may see that," he said, with a laugh and a pat of my
hand.
We dropped Mr. Curphy at his house in Holmtown, and then my father sat
with us at the back, and talked with tremendous energy of what he had
done, of what he was going to do, and of all the splendours that were
before me.
"You'll be the big woman of the island, gel, and there won't be a
mother's son that dare say boo to you."
I noticed that, in his excitement, his tongue, dropping the suggestion
of his adopted country, reverted to the racy speech of his native soil;
and I had a sense of being with him before I was born, when he returned
home from America with millions of dollars at his back, and the people
who had made game of his father went down before his face like a flood.
Such of them as had not done so then (being of the "aristocracy" of the
island and remembering the humble stock he came from) were to do so now,
for in the second generation, and by means of his daughter's marriage,
he was going to triumph over them all.
"We'll beat 'em, gel! My gough, yes, we'll beat 'em!" he cried, with a
flash of his black eyes and a masterful lift of his eyebrows.
As we ran by the mansions of the great people of Ellan, he pointed them
out to me with a fling of the arm and spoke of the families in a tone of
contempt.
"See that? That's Christian of Balla-Christian. The man snubbed me six
months ago. He'll know better six months to come. . . . That's Eyreton.
His missus was too big to call on your mother--she'll call on you,
though, you go bail. See yonder big tower in the trees? That's
Folksdale, where the Farragans live. The daughters have been walking
over the world like peacocks, but they'll crawl on it like cockroaches
. . . Hulloh, here's ould Balgean of Eagle Hill, in his grand carriage
with his English coachman. . . . See that, though? See him doff his hat
to you, the ould hypocrite? He knows something. He's got an inkling.
Things travel. We'll beat 'em, gel, we'll beat 'em! They'll be round us
like bees about a honeypot."
It was impossible not to catch the contagion of my father's triumphant
spirits, and in my different way I found myself tingling with delight as
I recognised the scenes associated with my childhood--the village, the
bridge, the lane to Sunny Lodge and Murphy's Mouth, and the trees that
bordered our drive.
Nearly everything looked smaller or narrower or lower than I had
thought, but I had forgotten how lovely they all were, lying so snugly
under the hill and with the sea in front of them.
Our house alone when we drove up to it seemed larger than I had
expected, but my father explained this by saying:
"Improvements, gel! I'll show you over them to-morrow morning."
Aunt Bridget (white-headed now and wearing spectacles and a white cap),
Betsy Beauty (grown tall and round, with a kind of country comeliness)
and Nessy MacLeod (looking like a premature old maid who was doing her
best to be a girl) were waiting at the open porch when our car drew up,
and they received me with surprising cordiality.
"Here she is at last!" said Aunt Bridget.
"And such luck as she has come home to!" said Betsy Beauty.
There were compliments on the improvement in my appearance (Aunt Bridget
declaring she could not have believed it, she really could not), and
then Nessy undertook to take me to my room.
"It's the same room still, Mary," said my Aunt, calling to me as I went
upstairs. "When they were changing everything else I remembered your
poor dear mother and wouldn't hear of their changing that. It isn't a
bit altered."
It was not. Everything was exactly as I remembered it. But just as I was
beginning for the first time in my life to feel grateful to Aunt
Bridget, Nessy said:
"No thanks to her, though. If she'd had her way, she would have wiped
out every trace of your mother, and arranged this marriage for her own
daughter instead."
More of the same kind she said which left me with the impression that my
father was now the god of her idolatry, and that my return was not too
welcome to my aunt and cousin; but as soon as she was gone, and I was
left alone, home began to speak to me in soft and entrancing whispers.
How my pulses beat, how my nerves tingled! Home! Home! Home!
From that dear spot everything seemed to be the same, and everything had
something to say to me. What sweet and tender and touching memories!
Here was the big black four-post bed, with the rosary hanging at its
head; and here was the praying-stool with the figure of Our Lady on the
wall above it.
I threw up the window, and there was the salt breath of the sea in the
crisp island air; there was the sea itself glistening in the afternoon
sunshine; there was St Mary's Rock draped in its garment of sea-weed,
and there were the clouds of white sea-gulls whirling about it.
Taking off my hat and coat I stepped downstairs and out of the
house--going first into the farm-yard where the spring-less carts were
still clattering over the cobble-stones; then into the cow-house, where
the milkmaids were still sitting on low stools with their heads against
the sides of the slow-eyed Brownies, and the milk rattling in their
noisy pails; then into the farm-kitchen, where the air was full of the
odour of burning turf and the still sweeter smell of cakes baking on a
griddle; and finally into the potting-shed in the garden, where Tommy
the Mate (more than ever like a weather-beaten old salt) was still
working as before.
The old man looked round with his "starboard eye," and recognised me
instantly.
"God bless my sowl," he cried, "if it isn't the lil' missy! Well, well!
Well, well! And she's a woman grown! A real lady too! My gracious; yes,"
he said, after a second and longer look, "and there hasn't been the
match of her on this island since they laid her mother under the sod!"
I wanted to ask him a hundred questions, but Aunt Bridget, who had been
watching from a window, called from the house to say she was "mashing" a
cup of tea for me, so I returned to the drawing-room where (my father
being busy with his letters in the library) Betsy Beauty talked for half
an hour about Lord Raa, his good looks, distinguished manners and
general accomplishments.
"But aren't you just dying to see him?" she said.