feedin’ than the chuckens? Well, now, I should suppose that what’s
good enough for them’s plenty good enough for it, when the most
differ between them is that sorra the use _it’s_ ever apt to be,
starved or no, except makin’ throuble for itself and other people.”
“Well, if some babies had been fed like chickens, perhaps they
wouldn’t have grown up so fond of gabbling like old geese,” Eileen
might rejoin, inaudibly, so that the repartee should relieve her own
at no cost to Timothy’s feelings, as she escaped with her booty.
But her raids were not by any means invariably so successful.
Sometimes she found that Timothy had forestalled her, and had swept
everything into an inaccessible locker; and sometimes there was
really nothing left to sweep. So then she had no resource save to
ensconce herself in the remotest backward-looking room, that she
might not hear the interchange of entreaty and denial, nor witness
the lingering withdrawal of the rejected suppliants, wandering away
disappointed out of sight, but not out of mind so soon, behind the
glossy-walled belt of laurels.
For a like reason she shunned in those days what used to be a
favourite walk beyond the front gates along the quiet lane, with its
broad green banks softly on one side mounting up into amply spreading
grass-slopes, now haunted at its every turn by sorrowful spectres
that she had no charm to lay. Occasionally one of them would say to
her: “Ah, melady, the blessin’s of God on the sweet face of you,
and may you never know what it is to want the bit,” and this made
her feel herself all the more to be a sort of ravening locust. Her
own meals, indeed, those times, were partaken of grudgingly and of
necessity, after which, carrying everything she could lay hands on,
she hurried off to the end of the elm-grove, where a herd of small
children would be looking out for them with large eyes. But day by
day she thought her supplies seemed to dwindle, and the pinched
faces to multiply, and she was as powerless against that as if it
were the oncoming of night. One day in a week of black frost she
desperately sold her godmother’s cameo bracelet to a passing higgler
for a shilling, wherewith she bought out of a baker’s cart three
portly loaves; and the satisfaction which these caused to prevail
for a while, a short while, almost compelled her to think that she
would dispose in the same method of her silver key-brooch, her only
other ornament, the next time he came by. But always, having looked
at it for some minutes, she replaced it in its box without achieving
any resolve. The pencilled line, still legible on the lid, seemed to
protest against the transaction in the name of the dead summer that
lived with her brightest memories.
* * * * *
All this while the big boulder stone was lying out under the stars
and mists and shadow-shifting winds on the grassy ridge of Slieve
Ardgreine; and thither constantly travelled Eileen’s thoughts,
although her bodily pilgrimages to it had grown less frequent than
heretofore, since dripping tussocks and long, bedraggled skirts had
become a graver consideration. She had never lost her faith in it
and its contents. Nothing whatever had occurred to alter her opinion
about it, and the silence on the subject which various reasons
obliged her to maintain helped to ward off chances of disillusioning
enlightenment. Eileen’s sixteen years in lonely Glendoula had taught
her so very little either at first or second hand about other
Quality’s domestic arrangements, that for anything she could tell, it
might not be unusual to keep the family plate locked up in a large
stone chest out-of-doors. Therefore no antecedent improbability
cropped up to struggle with the existence of a long-cherished,
deep-rooted dream and desire.
The one change that had here been wrought by those slow-footed,
empty-handed years was in the use she designed for her riches. This
change grew more radical under stress of the famishing winter. She no
longer could care to admire the beauty of the bright gleaming silver
things, nor to sort out from among them fastidiously appropriate
gifts for each—that indeed had become only too simple a process,
since everybody’s need was the same. Her sole wish now was to sell
all that she had straightway—she would have waited to make no pious
bargains about treasure in heaven—that she might satisfy the poor
with bread. But the more intensely her wishes concentrated themselves
upon that object, the more keenly she felt how far it was out of
reach. Four years and some months, jealously reckoned, still were
lacking to her of the age that would legally entitle her to enter
upon the possession of her property; and although she now knew
from other sources than old Timothy that some inheritance did then
await her, what could such a distant prospect avail in the face of
to-day’s direful necessity? Chafing sorely against the law’s delay
that set bars between the owner and her rights, Eileen wondered
sometimes whether the Lord Chancellor, whom she understood to rule
her destinies, might not under the circumstances be persuaded to
trust her with her fortune, now that she was sixteen and a half, just
to keep poor Denis Madden’s half-dozen orphans, and old Widow Flynn
and her blind daughter, and all the rest of the people from starving
completely. Once she actually ventured upon a remote hint at some
such possibility to her Aunt Geraldine, but lacking courage did not
approach the subject closely enough to make herself intelligible; a
failure for which her conscience often pricked her in the following
days.
* * * * *
More than ever on the morning when this incident befell: It was
mocking March weather, bright and calm and pitilessly cold, and
Eileen thought she would warm herself by running up to her big stone,
which she had not visited since the autumn. But before she reached
the first bend in the avenue young Larry M‘Farlane hastily met her,
and turned her aside into a shrubbery with a moving story about a
crippled blackbird which was fluttering there among the bushes.
“Unless some ould miscreant of a cat might be slinkin’ away under
the low branches this minyit, Miss Eileen, wid the crathur grabbed
in her mouth.” Larry had invented this little fiction on the spur of
the moment, the fact being that just round the turn, a few yards from
where he stopped Eileen, a heap of rags seemed to have fallen, as if
flung or blown down across the road. Its halt there had indeed been
so unpremeditated that only a remnant of the crust someone had begged
hard for up at the House a minute before was still gripped in a gaunt
hand. Coming upon this obstruction, young Larry, whose fare nowadays
did not conduce to athletic feats, found its removal quite beyond his
powers, and therefore ran on to seek help, when his meeting with Miss
Eileen converted his most urgent duty into the task of hindering her
from “gettin’ a quare fright along of the misfort’nit poor body.”
He accomplished it only in part. For he could not contrive but that
she should notice the gathering of a crowd in the avenue, and the
shrilling of shocked ejaculations, and then the bearing away with
slow solemnity, which apprised her of how near the cloaked shadow had
passed.
Eileen gave up her expedition to the stone chest; its baffling
impenetrability seemed just then a cruel gibe of Fate, wiselier
ignored. Larry, for his part, temporarily lost sight of the errand
which had been bringing him up to the Big House: a commission he had
undertaken to execute for the postman. Thus it was not until the
evening, when the cold March twilight had faded, too tardily for
many people impatient to huddle away into oblivious sleep, that a
letter reached the thriftily-lit drawing-room, where Eileen and her
aunt were also getting through the interval before bed-time as best
they could, which was but dully. A letter was something of an event
in itself, and this one, unlike most of its predecessors, did not
collapse inanely into a listless “Oh, it’s only”—for it contained a
real piece of news.
Glendoula was to have another visit from Pierce Wilmot. Pierce,
who had grown up a civil engineer, was now in charge of certain
road-making relief-works, which were about to come creeping
down Letterglas valley and up through the Nick of Time into the
neighbouring glen. The superintendence of these would bring
him to stay for a while near the place, and he hoped to renew
his acquaintance with his kinsfolk at the Big House. All the
establishment was more or less thrilled by the intelligence. It
seemed, of course, only natural that he should take up his quarters
there, and the prospect pleased on the whole. Lady Fitzmaurice,
even, and her sister-in-law were slightly cheered and roused; even
old Timothy, despite his prejudice, set about his polishing with a
revived zest, in anticipation of a visitor who might be expected to
appreciate “the differ between spoons that had a proper shine kep’ on
them, and ones that was as dingy as if you’d loaned them for stirrin’
the Ould Fellow’s tay.” All the others, who remembered Master Pierce
as a fine friendly-spoken young gentleman, thought that it would be
a pleasant variety to set eyes on him again, and the rest were quite
ready to welcome him on that recommendation. Eileen alone looked
forward to his return somewhat doubtfully. She knew right well that
things could not be the same as they were in those very olden days;
and the differences might not be improvements. Suppose that she did
not like the grown-up Pierce, nor he her? Then her reminiscences,
she thought, would be superseded and spoiled. Still, she believed
herself, after all, to be glad that he was coming.
* * * * *
It was late on a wild bleak evening that Pierce arrived, after a
long open-air day of surveying and supervising. An additional
pair of candles illuminated the drawing-room in his honour, and
were burning clearly enough to show what manner of man he was at
four-and-twenty. He had not changed at all irrecognisably, being
still black and straight-browed, alert and rather resolute-looking,
as beseemed a person whose business consisted largely in the clearing
away of obstacles, by summarily forcible methods if need were. He
had done this figuratively upon occasion as well as literally since
his last visit to Glendoula. But the little girl who then used to
patter up and down that primitive path beside him was now much harder
to identify, having shot up so slender and tall. Also in Pierce’s
honour, Eileen had put on her best gown that evening, a fine white
muslin, sprinkled with a pattern of little lilac rose-bunches,
outlined in a cloud of black dots. It was not more than half a decade
lag of the latest Dublin fashions, but the six months’ growth since
its last wearing had certainly made its skirt a rather skimpy length,
as she noted with chagrin when putting it on. Some consolation was
found in fastening her deep embroidered collar with the silver
key. She had plaited her brown hair, darker now, yet keeping its
richness of latent gold, in an unusually elaborate Grecian-plait
to coil in a careful spiral knot at the back of her head. But
first it framed her face in satin-sleek bands, smoothed down low
on the delicate curve of the cheek, and then gathered up, leaving
on either side a loop discovering a shell-like ear. As pink as a
geranium-blossom one of them was that evening, the nipping cold and
her thin dress had tempted her to sit so near the fire; and her eyes
were as softly bright as ever, with such light as a sunbeam, questing
beneath leaf-lattices, may waken in a moss-brimmed nook of clearest
well-water.
Pierce noticed all these things, and none of them, while he was
greeting his Aunt Geraldine; and he fell in love so simultaneously
that it would have been impossible to say whether his observations
came before or after. His habit was to be prompt and decided, and
with promptitude and decision did he grasp this new experience—of
which, nevertheless, an access of very unwonted diffidence and
irresolution seemed part and parcel. These set in immediately, as if
he had passed a vote of want of confidence against himself upon the
spot, and its effect was retrospective, throwing a slur alike upon
his present and his past. He wondered whether his cousin had not
thought him a peculiarly odious schoolboy. His old pet name for her
suddenly occurred to him as persistently appropriate, but the mere
remembrance of it made him feel so over-presumptuous that he almost
wished her to have forgotten it. In like manner he recollected, and
could not dare to remind her of, their climb up Slieve Ardgreine, or
their adventure with the strayed goats, and other episodes. He had
retained only just enough common-sense to understand that Eileen’s
silence all the evening upon this, and indeed every other topic, was
not intended for a rebuff; and the flow of his conversation with his
Aunt Geraldine was not a little impeded by a perpetual apprehension,
altogether superfluous, of her niece as a critic.
Of course, he was not very long in recovering his presence of mind.
In a day or two he began to dispense with such hampering precautions,
but the sentiment that had suggested them continued in full force,
and did not cease to influence his behaviour. Less, perhaps, in
his dealings with Eileen than with the world at large, it made him
transpose himself, so to speak, into a softer key. He unlearned in a
single week some tricks of peremptoriness and self-assertion, which
the vicissitudes of one early set in authority had been teaching him
through several past years. For it was with him as if he had suddenly
discovered the existence of something precious and perishable, that
a touch might shatter or a breath destroy, and thereupon he grew
wonderfully sensitive to the wide-spreading intricacies of cause
and effect. How could he tell but that a rough word spoken anywhere
might set a-stirring peril-fraught vibrations to reach and threaten
the head that he loved? For her sake, he would have liked everything
to be on velvet, and he was always instinctively aiming at that end.
The most unskilled and incapable of the labourers whose efforts
he superintended found their miscellaneous inefficiency treated
with singular forbearance, even if it attained an egregiousness
characterised by their comrades as “a quare botch intirely,” and
driving their foreman to demand of various powers, celestial and
otherwise: What to glory the great gaby was at? During leisure
moments their lank and hollow-eyed gang were prone to pass the remark
that “the captain” was “a rael gintleman”; while up at the Big House
all the inmates accorded him all sorts of golden opinions.
Eileen herself meanwhile was not in the least aware of what had
befallen him, but she had left off dreading any detriment to her
cherished memories, and his visit had undoubtedly brought an influx
of pleasure and interest to cheer her present day. She was so
unaccustomed to being made much of by relations that this kinsman’s
good nature impressed her as quite extraordinary, and so little used
to making much of herself that she never thought of attributing it to
anything except a special quality in Pierce, rather more likely, no
doubt, to be exercised in another person’s behalf than in her own. It
repeatedly surprised her to see that he remembered and acted upon her
opinions and wishes, as if they were really important—a new view of
them which she would have been slow to adopt. One morning he rode off
all the long way to Denismore and back to get her Alfred Tennyson’s
latest volume, and her delight in it was alloyed only by the
intrusive consideration of how much coarse meal the price of it would
have purchased. For her mind was still engrossingly pre-occupied with
the neighbours’ trouble.
* * * * *
The cloud of it had lifted a little since Pierce’s coming. Possible
wages loosened the famine-grip on such households as could send forth
a man to ply pick and shovel, instead of hopelessly lying abed “agin
the hunger”; and then a spell of more genial weather interposing
released everybody from the clutches of that other icy-fingered foe,
whose co-operation is so deadly. “For sure,” as old Christy Shanahan
had been known to remark in this connection, “to be starvin’ inside
and outside at the one time is more than any raisonable man can
stand at all, unless be good luck he was a graven image.” This dim
lightening of the prospect, however, rousing a stir of hope where
numb despair had begun to prevail, made the need of plans for a
timely rescue seem all the more urgent. One evening at dinner, Eileen
heard Pierce say that if the people could get food enough to ward off
the fever just until the potatoes—supposing there should be any—were
dug, they might do well enough; otherwise, it was a bad lookout.
And he added that it was hard to see how it could be managed, as
the road-making grant had nearly run short, and where else should
the money come from? At that Eileen had almost spoken her haunting
thought aloud, and it was: “the great chest full of silver.” And
though the unpropitious moment enjoined silence, therefrom dated the
designing of an enterprise so venturesome that the possibility of
carrying it out was a point upon which she hopefully and fearfully
changed her mind a dozen times daily for as many days.
At last there came a brilliant, capriciously-lighted morning, with
its shine and shadow under the control of a shifting snow-drift,
which sailed at the wind’s will. It was a holiday, and Pierce
succeeded in setting out almost as soon as he wished on the early
walk he had planned with his cousin. What slight delay did intervene
was caused by the arrival, just as they were starting, of the Widow
Barry with a couple of eggs to sell on commission for her next door
neighbour—the Widow Shanahan, who “could get that far be no manner of
manes herself, the crathur.”
“And they’re the last ones you’ll be takin’ off her, Miss Eileen,
she bid me tell you,” said Widow Barry. “For she’s after killin’ her
ould hin this mornin’, because it’s torminted she was to be seein’ it
mopin’ around starvin’ the same as a raisonable body, sorra a bit had
she to be throwin’ it this great while back whativer. ’Deed now, you
might as well be walkin’ along the shore of the say these times as
along be the dures down the street, for e’er a scrap of pitaty-parin’
or anythin’ else you’d find lyin’ about. The crathur had to be
contintin’ itself wid whativer it could pick out of the ground, and
bedad I won’er it had the heart to think of layin’ e’er an odd egg
at all. So she took and wrung its neck this mornin’, and she said
the sup of broth ’ud keep the life in herself and poor Katty for a
day or so anyway. But och, Miss Eileen dear, it’ll be the weeny sup
entirely. For ’twas meself caught the crathur for her, and I declare
to goodness it wasn’t the weight in me hand of a little wisp of
hay. Sez I to her, the feathers on it ’ud be heavier be thimselves.
But sure she could do no betther; and if it boiled into the name of
broth even, it’d give them the notion they was aitin’ somethin’.”
In prospect of this repast, the sixpence that Pierce sent seemed
to him hardly more than an emphasising of a “strong distemper and a
weak relief”; but the Widow Barry, who went her way filled with a
gratitude to God and man, may have understood the situation better.
And then the two young people set out on their rambles. They took
their old favourite route up Slieve Ardgreine, for the first time
since Pierce’s visit, on Eileen’s part, as the milder weather had
been “soft” too, turning the mossy nap of the turf into a treacherous
sponge, that squelched coldly over-shoes at the lightest footfall.
To-day, however, it might be traversed dry-shod, given a discreet
avoidance of extra vivid patches in the golden green; and a busy
thirsty breeze had left scarcely a dewdrop in the glazed cups of the
celandines and the pink-rimmed saucers of half-blown daisy-buds. Up
this daintily carpeted path Eileen picked her steps rather silently.
Her companion thought that she had been saddened by the incident of
the ill-faring fowl, but that was not the reason. What pre-occupied
her was the great venture which she appeared to be approaching more
or less in spite of herself. The very direction which their walk
was taking, at no choice of her own, was like a hand beckoning
imperiously. On the way up she hovered towards the verge of it, and
recoiled from it, and came stealing back to it again, oftener than
the flitting clouds furled and unfurled their shadow-mats at her
feet; and the big boulder, the stone plate-chest, hove in sight while
she was still wavering. Failure would be so very terrible to her. She
knew that if Pierce were shocked or indignant, or even amused, she
would be miserable indeed; and she could not by any means convince
herself that he would not be all these things. Yet, when they were
standing beside the tall, blackish shape together, just as in old
times—only it used to be the taller then—she felt desperately that,
chance what might, she must not go away without speaking the sentence
she had been mentally rehearsing all the week. It rang in her ears
like a clamorous bell, and made her deaf to any other speech, so
evidently that Pierce stopped in the middle of what he was beginning
to remark, as if she had interrupted him. Just at that moment the
sun swam out clear of a high-tossed drift, and sent a golden wave
sweeping widely up and down the hill-slopes. It broke against the
big stone, shining into Eileen’s face with all the dazzlement of
an April forenoon, and she accepted the omen as if it had been the
cordial clasp of some encouraging hand. Before the radiant rim had
slidden on many paces farther, she took heart of grace, and the
irrevocable word was spoken.
* * * * *
“There was one thing I wanted to ask you about, Pierce,” she said.
She had moved round to the opposite side of the chest, and was
looking at him across the lid, with eyes very bright and wistful
beneath her broad-brimmed straw hat, which had brown ribbons tied
in a bow under her chin. “I shouldn’t wonder if you thought it very
dreadful of me,” she continued; “but I really don’t think it is
myself. After all, I only want to use my own things, and that can be
no great harm; and if these don’t belong to me now, they don’t belong
to anybody, which is absurd. At any rate, it couldn’t possibly make
any difference worth speaking of to those people up at the office in
Dublin, and it would make all the difference in the world to the poor
people here; so ‘the right of it over-leps the wrong of it,’ as old
Murtagh Reilly used to say.” She was gradually arguing herself into
courage; still a mere shadow falling anywhere would have routed it.
“I hope it is something truly appalling, or else I’ll be horribly
disappointed now,” Pierce replied, a little puzzled by this prologue,
but rather pleasantly so, because he liked her to consult him.
“You’ve raised my expectations cruelly.... But if you wish, I’ll
undertake not to think it very dreadful, nor dreadful in the least
degree,” he added, as after a short pause she seemed still to be
hesitating. He would have said that he had never made a safer promise.