"My dear," wrote Miss Grimshaw in another letter to that lady
friend, "here we are at last. We arrived the day before yesterday
evening, horses and all, including the servants. I once heard an
old lady in the States giving good advice to a young woman just
married. One sentence clung to me, and will, I think, by its truth,
cling to me for ever. 'Never move servants.'
"We took with us from Ireland Mrs. Driscoll, the cook, and Norah,
the parlour-maid, besides the menservants. I am not referring to
the men when I repeat that axiom, 'Never move servants,' but to the
womenfolk.
"We had not started from Holyhead when Mrs. Driscoll broke down.
She weighs fourteen stone, and does everything in a large way. She
broke down from homesickness. She had travelled well up to that.
The crossing had been smooth, and she had not made a single
complaint, fighting bravely, I suppose, all the time, against the
growing nostalgia. Then on the platform at Holyhead, before the
waiting Irish mail, it all came out at once. It sounds absurd, but
really the thing was tragic. Real grief is always tragic, even the
grief of a child over a broken toy, and this was real grief, and it
taught me more in five minutes about Ireland and why the Irish in
America hate England than I learned from all my months spent in
the country itself.
"It did not seem grief for a lost country so much as for a lost
father or mother, and, mind you, she was with people she knew, and
she was only being 'expatriated' for a few months. What must they
have suffered in the old days, those people driven from their homes
and holdings to a country three thousand miles away, never to come
back?"
Miss Grimshaw, in her letter, continued:
"Mr. French got Mrs. Driscoll brandy from the refreshment-room, and
we took her in the first-class carriage with us, but all her cry
was to go back, and what lent a grim humour to the situation was
the fact that none of us can go back to Ireland from this
expedition into England till a certain something has been
accomplished.
"There seems something mysterious and sinister in that statement,
but there is really nothing sinister in the situation. Only a
horse. However, to return to the servants. Mrs. D. has recovered
somewhat, but Norah, the parlour-maid, has now broken down. She is
a pretty girl with black hair, grey eyes, and beautiful teeth, and
she is sitting at the moment in the kitchen, with her apron over
her head, 'eating her heart out,' to use Mrs. Driscoll's
expression. The curious thing is that both these women have no
relations of any account to tie them to Ireland. It's just Ireland
itself they want--and it seems to me they won't be happy till they
get it.
"The woman from Crowsnest, whom Mr. Dashwood got to tidy the place
up and light the fires and have supper for us the evening we came,
has left. She did not get on with the others; and now this place is
all Irish with the exception of me--a bit of the west coast planted
above a most staid and respectable English village. I wonder what
the result will be as far as intercommunication goes?
"No one has called yet; but, of course, it is too soon. But I hope
they will stay away. I have several reasons.--Yours ever, VIOLET."
Miss Grimshaw had several very good reasons to make her desire seclusion
for herself and the family which she had taken under her wing. I say
"taken under her wing" advisedly, for since the day of her arrival at
Drumgool she had been steadily extending the protection of her practical
nature and common sense to her protégés.
In a hundred ways too small for mention in a romance of this description
she had interfered in domestic matters. Mrs. Driscoll, for instance, no
longer boiled clothes in the soup kettle, prodding them at intervals
with the pastry roller, and Norah no longer swept the carpets under the
sofas, lit the fires with letters left on the mantel-piece, or emptied
pails out of the windows; and these sanitary reforms had been compassed
with no loss of goodwill on the part of the reformed towards the
reformer.
She had emancipated Effie from her bondage to an imaginary disease, and
she had pointed out to French the way he should go, and the methods he
should use in carrying out his assault on what, to a lower order of
mind than Miss Grimshaw's, would have seemed the impossible.
Common sense of the highest order sometimes allies itself to what common
sense of a lower order would deem lunacy. When this alliance takes
place, sometimes great and world-shaking events occur.
French had conceived the splendid idea of winning a great English race
with an unknown horse in the face of debts, enemies and training
disabilities. Miss Grimshaw had, with misgivings enough, brought him the
aid of her practical nature. The first move in the game had been made;
the knight's gambit had been played; Garryowen had been hopped over
three squares and landed in Sussex; nothing threatened him for the
moment, and Miss Grimshaw's mind, turned from the big pieces, was now
occupied with pawns.
Norah was a pawn. She had a grand-aunt living in Cloyne, and should she
forsake The Martens and return, driven by home-sickness, to the roof of
her grand-aunt, the game might very easily be lost. Mr. Giveen, who had
inklings of French's debt, would discover, by hook or by crook, the
Sussex address, and when Lewis' man arrived to find Drumgool empty, the
information he would receive from Giveen would be fatal as a loaded
gun in the hands of an unerring marksman. Mrs. Driscoll was another
pawn in a dangerous position; but the small pieces most engaging
the attention of our chess-player at the moment were literally small
pieces--half-crowns and shillings.
She had carefully worked out the money problem with Mr. French, and,
allowing for everything, and fifty pounds over, to take them back to
Ireland, in case of disaster, there was barely three pounds a week left
to bring them up to the second week of April.
"Oh, bother the money!" French would say. "It's not the money I'm
thinking of."
"Yes, but it's what I'm thinking of. We must be economical. We should
have travelled here third-class, not first. You sent that order to Mr.
Dashwood's wine merchant for all that champagne and stuff."
"I did, I know, but that won't have to be paid for a year."
"Well, it will have to be paid some time. However, I don't mind that so
much. What is frightening me is the small amount of actual money in
hand. We have four months before us, and only a little over sixty pounds
for that four months. Now, I want to propose something."
"Yes?"
"It's this. Why not give me that sixty pounds to keep and pay the
expenses out of? If you keep it, it will be gone in a month."
Mr. French scratched his head. Then he laughed.
"Faith, perhaps you're right," said he.
"I know I am right. It is only by saving and scraping that we will tide
over these four months. Now you have that money in the bank. We
calculated that it will just cover your racing expenses; the money you
will require for bringing the horse to Colonel What's-his-name's stable
at Epsom before the race, the money you will require for backing the
horse--in fact, for the whole business--leaving fifty pounds over in
case of disaster."
"Yes."
"Well, I want you to lock your cheque-book up in a drawer and give me
the key, and promise not to touch that money on any account."
"I won't touch it," said French, with the air of a schoolboy making a
resolution about apples.
"I know that's what you say and feel now; but there are temptations, and
it is vital that you should be out of the way of temptation. You
remember Jason, and how he stopped his ears with wax not to hear the
songs of the sirens?"
"Faith," said French in a tender tone, "if the sirens' voices were as
sweet as----"
He checked himself.
"That may be," said Miss Grimshaw hurriedly, "but, sweet or not sweet,
there are always voices calling for money; even coming through London a
five-pound note went on nothing. So you must, please, put that
cheque-book in a drawer and lock it, and give me the key. Will you do
this?"
"I will, I will. The thing's all right, but if you want it done, I'll do
it."
"Well, let's do it now, then."
"I will in a minute, when I've seen Moriarty----"
"No; now. There's nothing like doing things at the moment."
"Well, all right," said French. "Let's do it now."
He produced his cheque-book from his desk, and Miss Grimshaw locked it
up in the drawer of an escritoire.
"And now," said she, "how about that sixty pounds?"
The badgered one produced a pocket-book and took three twenty-pound
notes from it.
"That leaves me only three pounds ten," said he, taking the coins from
his waistcoat pocket and exhibiting them as he handed over the notes.
Miss Grimshaw cast a hungry eye on the gold.
"When that's gone," said she, "I will have to allow you pocket money out
of my household expenses. We are in exactly the position of shipwrecked
people on a raft, with only a certain amount of food and water, and when
people are in that condition the first thing they have to do is to put
themselves on a strict allowance. I want you," said Miss Grimshaw, "to
feel that you are on a raft--and it might be much worse. You have a
house for which we have to pay no rent. You have wine and all that which
need not be paid for yet. How about cigars and tobacco?"
"Oh, there's lots of smokes," said French rather drearily. "And Bewlays
know me, and I can get anything I want on credit--only I'm thinking----"
"Yes?"
"There may be other expenses. In a place like this people are sure to
call, and how about if they want to play bridge, or----"
"Don't let's think of it," said the girl. "Bother! Why couldn't it have
been summer?"
"They play bridge in summer as well as winter."
"Yes, I suppose they do. But the fools spend their energy on tennis as
well, and that makes the disease less acute. Well, if you have to play
bridge, I'll try to find the money for it somehow, even if I have to
keep the household on oatmeal. What other expenses are likely to turn
up?"
"There's sure to be subscriptions and things. And, see here. If we're
invited out, we'll have to return any hospitality we receive."
Visions of Mrs. Driscoll's fantastic cookery, crossed by visions of big
bills from Benoist, rose before Miss Grimshaw's mind, but she was not a
person to be easily cast down.
"If they do, we'll manage somehow. We have wine, and that's the biggest
item. Besides"--a brilliant inspiration seized her--"I'm only the
governess. People won't call on me. You are really in the position of a
bachelor, so you'll only have to invite men."
Mr. French looked troubled for a moment, then he said, "I was going to
have told you something."
He stopped and lit a cigarette.
"Well?"
"Dashwood----"
"Well?"
"Well, he said--in fact, he said that these old English folk round here
are such a lot of stuck-up old fools that, as a matter of fact, you'd
have a bad time here as a governess. So he said that he said to a man
that lives here I was bringing my niece with me. D'you see?"
Miss Grimshaw laughed. She knew at once what French meant. Over in
clean Ireland no one thought anything of a pretty young governess living
in the house of a widower and looking after his daughter; but here it
was different. The morals of the rabbit-hutch, which are the morals of
English society, had to be conformed to. She had never thought of the
matter before, and lo and behold! Bobby Dashwood had thought of the
matter for her.
"But I'm not your niece," said Miss Grimshaw.
"No," said French, "but, sure, you might be. And how are they to know?
Lot of old fools, they think the position of a governess beneath
them--not that you are a governess. Sure," finished he, apologetic and
laughing, "we're all at sixes and sevens, and the easiest way out is to
cut the knot and claim kinship. I don't know but one of the Frenches
mayn't have married some of your people in the past."
"That would scarcely make me your niece. Anyhow, I don't care, only the
servants----"
"Faith, and it's little the servants will say. They're dead-set against
the English folk, and won't have a word with them. Only this morning I
heard Mrs. Driscoll with a chap that had come round selling vegetables.
'Away with you,' says she, 'or I'll set the dog on you, coming round to
my back door with your turnips and your rubbish!' The sight of an
English face sets her off going like an alarm clock. But little I care
about that, so long as she doesn't go off herself."
"Well, then, I'll go now and see what Effie's doing and how the
servants are getting on. Mr. Dashwood is coming down for the week-end,
is he not?"
"Yes; he'll be down on Friday."
"The great comfort about him," said she, "is that he takes us just as we
are, and there's no trouble or expense with him."
She left the room. It was the second morning of their stay at The
Martens, and before going to look after Effie and the servants she
passed out on the verandah and stood there for a moment, looking at the
winter landscape and then down at the houses of the Crowsnesters.
She felt dimly antagonistic to the people who lived in those
comfortable-looking, red-tiled houses set about with gardens. She
fancied women sitting by those fires whose smoke curled up in thin
wreaths through the winter air, women who would cast their noses up at
the idea of a governess, and their heads and eyes after their noses at
the idea of a supposititious "niece." She imagined gentlemen addicted to
bridge who would drain, perhaps, her narrow resources.
One thing pleased her. The neighbourhood looked prosperous, and the
charitable appeals, she thought, could not be very exacting. On this she
reckoned without the knowledge that a large amount of English charity
begins and ends abroad.
Then she turned, and, still delaying before going to see after the
servants and Effie, she passed round to the stableyard.
Andy, who was passing across the yard with a bucket in his hand, touched
his cap, put down the bucket, and with a grin on his face, but without
a word, opened the upper door of the loose-box that held the treasure
and pride of the Frenches.
Scarcely had he done so than the sharp sound of horse-hoofs on flags was
heard, and a lovely picture framed itself in the doorway--the head of
Garryowen.
Leaving aside the beauty of women, surely above all things beautiful and
sentient the head of a beautiful horse is supreme. Where else in the
animal kingdom will you find such grace, such sensitiveness, such
delicacy, combined with strength? Where else, even in the faces of men,
such soul?
Even in the faces of men! The girl thought of the faces of the men she
had come across in life, and she contrasted those heads, stamped with
dulness, with greed, with business, or with pleasure--she contrasted
these images of God with the finely chiselled, benign, and beautiful
head of Garryowen.
Could it be possible that Mr. Giveen would have the impudence to call
Garryowen a lower animal?
Even Andy's "mug" looked like the mask of a gargoyle by contrast, as she
turned from the loose-box and made her way back to the house.