Robert Morony on Church Restoration.
It was not until the second week in August that Paddy was able to start
on her summer holiday, and then she journeyed to Omeath to pay her
long-counted-on visit to the Parsonage.
Eileen and her mother and the two aunties were all at the little
station awaiting her, when the train drew up soon after seven in the
morning, and, like some small terrier beside itself with excitement,
Paddy almost fell headlong, upon the top of them all. From the very
instant she caught sight of her old friend the giant on Carlingford
Mountain she threw off all cares, all recollections of London, all
responsibilities, and stepped into the Omeath train almost the
identical, headstrong, happy-go-lucky Paddy of eighteen months ago.
Such a hand-shaking there had been at Greenore, for she knew all the
railway porters and the station officials and everyone connected with
the hotel, and, judging from the greetings, they were as pleased to see
her as she them. At Omeath the others began to wonder what time they
would manage to get her as far as the Parsonage, for every man, woman,
and child had to be talked to and shaken hands with.
There was a great spread for breakfast—everything that they knew she
liked best and poor Paddy had to taste something of each dish to please
them, until she was obliged to impress them politely that she had
reached the utmost limit of her capacity. After breakfast she and
Eileen went off on an exploring expedition through the village. At the
church gate they met the sexton, old Robert Morony, a sort of monument
of longevity to the village.
“I’ve been to see the restorations, Robert,” cried Paddy joyously.
“Doesn’t the church look lovely!”
“It do, indaid, Miss Paddy,” answered the old man, shaking hands with
unmistakable pleasure. “Faith! did ye iver see sich a luvely place o’
warship afore? An’ everythin’ so compact lik’! What I mean, nothin’
stunted.”
“I should think not, Robert. Trust Aunt Jane and Aunt Mary to do a
thing thoroughly if they undertake it. When I heard the church was to
be restored by them, I said, ‘Begorra! that’ll be an edifice to be
proud of now!’”
Robert chuckled with delight.
“But shure, an’ you don’t see the half,” he explained eagerly. “It’s
all them nice things you don’t see as so pleases me. Now would you
belaive—there’s actually twelve new dusters! positively bran’ new, all
folded as neat an’ trim-lik’ an’ put away where no one can see ’em. Now
that’s what I call restoring a church properly—indaid, I just luve the
sight of ’em.”
“I quite agree with you, Robert,” and Paddy’s eyes twinkled rarely.
“It’s the things I can’t see, that I love to look at.”
“Egzactly,” with growing excitement. “_I_ ought to ’a’ showed you
roun’, Miss Paddy, ’cos I knows where everythin’ bides. Why, there’s
six new lamp glasses, all a-lying there case o’ accidents, wrapped up
in beautiful tissue paper. I’d a-lik’ you to see they lamp glasses. Oh!
an’ the new iron safe,” getting almost beside himself. “Did ye see ’im
a-sittin there in the vestry, on all they hymn books, all neatly
stacked underneath, looking as important like as if ’e knew ’e was
livin’ in one o’ the foinest churches in ould Oireland?”
“When an iron safe sits on hymn books, what do you suppose hatches
out?” murmured Paddy wickedly to Eileen.
“Did ye see the new bell rope?” ran on Robert, waving his stick about
in a somewhat dangerous fashion to eyes and noses. “A brave wee bit o’
rope that—strong ’nough to hang a man, as I says to Andrew Murphy. The
blue ceiling with the yellow stars is all very well, and the new altar,
and the winder with the angels playin’ on real Oirish harps—but ’tis
all a bit popish to my thinkin’—and I lik’ that brave wee rope, and
they lamp glasses in tissue paper, and they twelve bran’ new dusters
the best. Faith! ’tis meeself should have shown ye roun’. I’m shure ye
didn’t see the half. Did ye notice the new tumbler o’ wather for ’is
rivirence to drink from when ’is sermons is too long-winded for ’im?
Faith! we did make a job of it. Ivery ’ole and corner turned out and
clained. Shure, it’s meeself did the back seat by the font, and to my
sartin knowledge it ’adn’t been cleaned out this ten or twelve year.
Niver more’n about once since I’ve had the cue o’ the edifice this
forty year.”
This finished Paddy, and with a hasty farewell she sped off to the
beach for her first sail; later on in the day writing Jack a long
epistle upon Robert Morony and the church restoration, which Jack read
lying at full-length on his back on the grass a month later; and his
shouts of laughter brought his colleagues round to beg a share of the
fun.
Two days later Eileen and her mother left for Dublin, and Paddy became
the spoiled darling of the Parsonage.
She went everywhere just as of old, and though for a little while she
avoided Mourne Lodge, not wishing to meet Lawrence, she soon found her
strategic position untenable, and was obliged to yield to the insistent
persuasions of Kathleen and Doreen, who began to look genuinely puzzled
and distressed over her extraordinary reluctance to visit them.
Then she decided to take the bull by the horns, and instead of putting
their first encounter off any longer, seek it purposely, and _get_ it
over. With this end in view she bicycled to Mourne Lodge, in a more or
less ferocious frame of mind, once more to confound the enemy. As it
happened, however, the enemy had seen fit to change its tactics, and
instead of the new graciously polite Lawrence, there was only the old
casual, indifferent looker-on. Paddy, with all her artillery in
readiness, was for once non-plussed. “How do, Paddy!” he said coolly,
when he joined them at tea, and sat down as far from her as possible,
and commenced playing with his dogs, taking no further notice. Of
course it is one thing to have all your guns in readiness and get a few
good round shots in, and quite another to be calmly and loftily
ignored, and Paddy’s instant impulse was to hurl every portable article
within reach at his head. To make matters worse, she was furiously
aware that she had blushed crimson when he first appeared, and that he
had probably seen it, and drawn his own conclusions. To show him she
did not care, she fired one or two shots at him at random, but the
result, as she ought to have foreseen, was only a further assumption of
the very indifference that irritated her. He looked at her as if she
were not there, and maintained, for the most part, his habitual
silence.
Neither did it prove to be for that day only, but each time she came.
There was just a casual greeting, and then silence, and he declined all
part in their daily excursions.
Paddy told herself she was relieved he had at last realised it was
useless to try and make friends; but at the same time it was rather
dull without Jack, or Eileen, as she could not always be off to
friends, and she almost wished they could have just one battle-royal to
liven things up a little. It was all very well to have no parleying
with the enemy, but that did not mean one would be content to sit down
quietly in sight of the enemy’s lines, and never so much as fire a
shot; certainly not for an Irish Fusilier’s daughter. She was vaguely
wishing for this encounter the day she paddled about alone in Jack’s
little skiff, because it had been too wet to bicycle to Newry, and she
looked a little doleful, until another skiff, impelled by long, smooth
strokes came out of the sunlight and drew near.
She watched it coming, admiring the long, even strokes, and wondering a
little fitfully, who was its occupant. As it came nearer, she
recognised Lawrence’s thin profile, and lean, muscular figure, she felt
a sudden quickening of her pulse, and a half hope that there was a
chance of a skirmish. Or would he row straight past and merely throw
her a casual greeting?
On and on came the skiff, and still the long even strokes—evidently he
was going straight by. Two strokes away, however, he suddenly stopped
pulling and leaned on his oars. The boat drifted up beside hen. Paddy
got her guns ready.
“Hullo!” he said casually. “I thought you were playing in the tennis
tournament this afternoon.”
“I was knocked out first round,” trying to speak as casually as he, but
with a sudden inflection of regret she could not wholly stifle.
“Were you?” in some surprise; “that’s a new experience for you!”
“I am out of practice.”
“Don’t you play in London?”
“No.”
“Why not?” rolling himself a cigarette.
“I have no opportunity.”
“You must miss it a good deal.”
She was silent.
“I suppose you’ll be going back soon?” going on with his cigarette with
a resolutely cold, impassive air.
“Yes! I haven’t much more than a week left.” She fidgeted restlessly.
This impassivity was too maddening.
“You won’t like that?”
It was because the mere thought nearly made her cry, that she replied
jauntily:
“Oh! I don’t mind much. I’m getting used to London now.”
Still he would not look up.
“Shepherd’s Bush is hardly London,” a little cruelly.
“Anything is London that is not Omeath,” she retorted.
He smiled a little to himself. “I thought you had just implied that you
rather liked London.”
“I said I didn’t mind going back. I don’t; Mother and Eileen will be
there.” She flashed one of her old glances at him, but he was still too
much occupied to look up. It made her vaguely angry. There was no
necessity to treat her as if she were a wooden post. She cast about in
her mind for a bone of contention, and at just that moment Lawrence
finished rolling his cigarette, struck a match, and lit it.
“Well, I must be off,” in the same careless tone. “See you at the
picnic, I suppose,”—and almost before she could reply he had pulled
away, and gone without once looking at her.
Paddy rowed to the shore, feeling that she wanted to hit some one.
“He’s growing as dull as ditch-water!” she exclaimed snappishly, as she
tied up her boat.