AN IRISH SUNDAY.
“In Islington there was a man,
Of whom the world might say,
That still a godly race he ran,
Whene’er he went to pray.”
“Will you have your tay, plase, miss?”
The words at first mingled with the dreams which had all night disturbed
my sleep. On being repeated, the unfamiliar accent, accompanied by the
clink of a cup and saucer, made me open my eyes. A pleasant-looking,
red-haired girl was standing by my bed, tray in hand.
“You’re after having a great sleep, miss. I was twice here before, and
there wasn’t a stir out of you.”
“Is it very late?” I asked, with an alarming recollection of my uncle’s
punctuality.
“Oh, not at all, miss. The masther’s only just after having his
breakfast.”
“What!” I gasped. “You should have called me earlier.”
“Oh, there’s no hurry, miss! Sure he always ates his breakfast by
himself, and there’s no sayin’ how late it’ll be before Masther Willy’s
down.”
Calmed by this assurance, I did not hurry myself over my dressing, but
from time to time stopped to look at the view from my windows.
It was a quiet October day, with a grey yet luminous sky, that lit with
a grave radiance the group of yellow elms that divided the avenue from
a heathery expanse of turf-bog, with low hills beyond. From the other
window, which was almost over the hall door, I could see to the left a
dark belt of trees that went round to the back of the house; and in
front, at the foot of the lawn, the curve of a little bay. This was
separated from the larger waters of Durrusmore Harbour by a low
promontory, along whose ridge a meagre line of fir trees was etched
against the grey sky. Leaning out of the window, and looking westwards
towards the mouth of the harbour, I saw the Atlantic lying broad and
white under the light of the soft clear morning.
I went downstairs, and as I passed along the corridor, I felt, even on
this still day, the air circulating freely through broken panes in the
skylight and the staircase window, making it easy to account for the
ghostly eddyings of the wind the night before.
Willy had apparently made an effort on my behalf at early rising, and I
found him making tea when I came into the dining-room. He came forward
to meet me with a complacency in which I detected a consciousness of the
added smartness of his Sunday attire; and, having satisfactorily
ascertained the fact that I had slept well, he installed me behind the
urn to pour out the superfluously strong tea which he had just brewed.
I experienced undeniable relief in the absence of Uncle Dominick, whom
at this moment I saw pacing up and down a walk leading from the house to
the sea. Willy saw the direction of my eyes.
“I hope you’re not insulted by only me breakfasting with you,” he said,
with ungrammatical gallantry. “You can breakfast with the governor
whenever you like, but you will have to be down at eight o’clock to do
that!”
I intimated with fitting politeness that I was satisfied with the
present arrangement, and we began our _tête-à-tête_ meal in great amity.
Willy, indeed, was an excellent host. He plied me with everything on the
table, eating his own breakfast and talking all the time with unaffected
zest and vigour, and I began to feel as if the time I had known him
could be reckoned in months instead of hours.
The necessity of writing to announce my safe arrival to Aunt Jane was
one that had already forced itself upon my notice.
“I thought you’d be wanting to write a letter,” Willy said, conducting
me into the drawing-room after breakfast, “and I got the place ready for
you.”
I sat down at the old-fashioned writing-table, and found that he had
anticipated my wants with a lavish hand. Through the window I saw him, a
few minutes afterwards, sauntering down the drive towards the lodge,
smoking a cigarette, with two little white dogs flashing in circles
round him; and as I watched him, I came to the conclusion that at first
sight I had underestimated my cousin.
There was something to me half amusing and half touching in the anxiety
of his little housewifely attentions to me. He was really unusually
thoughtful for others; from various things he had said, it was evident
that his father had allowed the whole management of the place to devolve
on him, and I fell to idle speculation as to whether he ordered dinner,
and if he were particular about the housemaids wearing white muslin
caps; and I was only aroused from these, and other equally interesting
reflections by hearing the clock strike the hour at which I had been
warned I must get ready for church.
My uncle was standing on the steps, with his Prayer-book in his hand,
when I came downstairs. He wished me good morning, with a polite apology
for not having met me at breakfast, and stood looking about him, with
eyelids narrowed by the white glare from the sea, till a minute
afterwards the wagonnette in which we were going to church came to the
door. My uncle and I got in behind; while Willy, with Mick by his side,
sat on the box and drove. Once outside the gate, we took a road running
at right angles to that by which I had arrived. It went round the head
of Durrusmore Harbour, and, leaving the sea behind, turned inland
through large woods, which my uncle told me were part of the demesne of
Clashmore, The O’Neill’s place.
The road was level, and soft with the fallen red beech leaves, and the
brown horses took us along it at a pace that showed they were none the
worse for their journey the night before. The rough stone walls on
either side of the road were covered with moss and small ferns. Here and
there the wood was pierced by narrow rides--vistas in which the clumps
of withering bracken repeated the brown and gold of the trees above.
“We’re going to draw this place on Friday,” said Willy, pausing in the
steady flow of his conversation with Mick to give me the information.
“Blackthorn will carry Miss Theo right enough, wouldn’t he, Mick? and
I’ll ride the new mare.”
The village of Rathbarry, which we had now entered, consisted of a
single street of low, dirty-looking cottages, their squalid uniformity
varied at frequent intervals by the more prosperous shuttered face of a
public-house. At the end of the street, a gateway led into a graveyard,
surrounded by ill-thriven elm trees, in the middle of which stood the
church. It was an ugly, oblong building, with a square tower at the west
end, from which proceeded a clanging as of a cracked basin battered with
a spoon.
“We’re in good time,” said Willy, drawing up with a flourish before the
porch. “That’s the hurry-bell only begun now, so we’ve five minutes to
spare. Look, Theo! there’s the Clashmore carriage. Did you ever see such
brutes as those chestnuts?”
Before, however, I had time to reply, Uncle Dominick hurried me into the
church, and we took our places in opposite corners of a singularly
uncomfortable square pew. As we sat confronting each other in the
half-empty church, we heard in the porch Willy’s voice raised in
agreeable converse. Apparently his remarks were of a complimentary sort,
for a girl’s voice rejoined, “Oh, nonsense, Willy!” with a laugh.
“Disgraceful!” muttered my uncle, under his breath; and the next moment
three ladies swept up the aisle, followed by Willy, on whose face still
beamed a slightly fatuous smile.
He immediately sat down beside me, and in a rapid whisper instructed me
as to the more prominent members of the congregation.
“Those are the O’Neills”--indicating the ladies he had come in with.
“Connie’s the little fair one. And look! those are the Jackson Crolys!
You’d better sit up and behave, as they’ll be watching you all the
time. I know they all want to see what you’re like!”
“Hush! don’t talk!” I whispered back. “Here’s the clergyman.”
The service was very long. The music, which consisted of the clergyman’s
daughter accompanying herself on a harmonium, with casual vocal
assistance from a couple of school-children, was of an unexhilarating
kind. Willy fidgeted, admired his boots, trimmed his nails, and tried to
utilize every possible opening for conversation. Uncle Dominick, on the
contrary, devoted his whole attention to the service, and answered all
the responses with austere punctiliousness, even going so far as to try
and track the clergyman’s daughter in her devious course through the
hymns.
From the corner which had been allotted to me in my uncle’s pew I could
not see the clergyman, and, though his voice resounded through the
church, his very pronounced Cork accent made it difficult for me to
understand more than a word here and there in his discourse.
The high sides of the pew debarred me from even the solace of inspecting
the congregation, and, in the absence of other occupation, I could not
altogether conceal the interest that I felt in the remark which Willy
was laboriously spelling on his fingers for my edification. Becoming
conscious, however, that Uncle Dominick’s eye, while fixed upon the
preacher, had included us in its observations, I transferred my
attention to the mural tablets, which on either side of the church set
forth the perfections of dead-and-gone O’Neills and Sarsfields.
Having studied these for a few minutes with the mild sceptical interest
usually excited by the tabulated virtues of the unknown departed, I
leaned back in my corner, and, in doing so, noticed a brass upon the
wall slightly behind my uncle’s seat. My eye was immediately caught by
my father’s name.
IN MEMORIAM.
THEODORE WILLIAM SARSFIELD,
WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE
JANUARY 10, 185-.
AND OF
OWEN SARSFIELD,
SON OF THE ABOVE,
WHO DIED SUDDENLY IN CORK,
ON HIS RETURN FROM AMERICA,
JANUARY 9, 185-.
* * * * *
THIS MONUMENT IS ERECTED BY THEIR SORROWING SON
AND BROTHER, DOMINICK SARSFIELD, OF DURRUS.
I glanced by a natural transition to my uncle, whose head all but
intervened between me and the brass. His expression of sombre
melancholy harmonized well with the words “his sorrowing brother.”
I could guess what must have been his grief at the death of an only
brother, from whom he had been perforce alienated. Till then I had
scarcely realized how closely linked their lives must once have been,
and I resolved that his chilly manner should not deter me from some day
inducing him to speak to me of my father.
As I made up my mind to this, the clergyman’s voice ceased, and the
congregation rose at the end of the sermon. We walked out of church
close behind the O’Neills, and outside the porch Madam O’Neill stopped
to shake hands with my uncle. Then, turning to me--
“I need not ask to be introduced to you, my dear. I knew your poor
father very well indeed in days gone by.” This was said in a dry
attenuated voice, but through the elaborate pattern of her Maltese lace
veil, her eyes looked kindly at me. She was small and refined looking,
with little artificial airs and graces which told that she had been a
beauty in her day; and what remained of a delicate complexion was
carefully sheltered from the harmless light of the grey sky by a thick
parasol.
Uncle Dominick’s impatience to get away only gave me time to say a word
or two in answer to her salutation.
“Come, Theodora,” he said, with the smile that lifted his moustache and
showed all his teeth. “We must not keep the horses waiting;” and bidding
the madam and her two daughters, who had been standing behind her,
good-bye, he led the way down to the gate.
Willy was already on the box of the wagonnette, and was talking to a
dark, quiet-looking young man who was standing with one foot on the
wheel.
“Then you’ll see about having those earths stopped,” Willy said, leaning
over, and emphasizing what he was saying with the handle of the whip on
his hearer’s shoulder. “Oh, here they are! Theo, let me introduce Mr.
O’Neill. I was just telling him he must be sure and have a fox for you
at Clashmore this week.”
“I shall do my best,” said Mr. O’Neill, as he took off his hat; but he
did not look particularly enthusiastic as he spoke.
We had no sooner driven off, than Willy twisted round on the box to
speak to me.
“Well, what do you think of Nugent?” he said rather eagerly.
“He is nice looking,” I replied critically; “but I do not like his
expression. I cannot say he is what I should call either cheerful or
agreeable looking.”
“Oh, he’s not half a bad chap,” said Willy, with a leniency which was
possibly the result of the pleasure with which young men listen to the
depreciation of their fellows. “He’s jolly enough sometimes; but he can
put on a bit of side when he likes, and I dare say he thinks he is
thrown away down here. Henrietta’s like him in that sort of way, but
Connie has no nonsense about her.”
I decided that Connie’s was the laugh that I had heard in the porch
before service, and thought that of the two I should be more likely to
prefer Henrietta.
Ever since we had left church the sky had been darkening, and when we
reached Durrusmore Harbour, the distant headlands were almost hidden in
a white mist. The south-west wind blew it towards us from the sea, and
by the time we got home a thick fine rain was coming steadily down.
Lunch, with Uncle Dominick at the head of the table, was a more serious
business than breakfast had been, and old Roche’s shuffling
ministrations added to the general solemnity. I was, however, amused by
the affectionate solicitude with which he nudged me in the elbow with
the dish of potatoes, indicating with his thumb a specially floury one,
and concluded that this was the singular method he took of showing that
his regard for my father had extended itself to me.
When lunch was over Willy announced his intention of walking to
Clashmore, to see about borrowing a side-saddle for me, he said--an act
of self-sacrifice which I was not slow to attribute to the fascinations
of Miss Connie O’Neill. Uncle Dominick retired to a private den at the
end of a dark passage leading from the hall to the back of the house;
and a few minutes later, Willy, in a voluminous mackintosh, set forth
on his errand, followed by the fox terriers in a state of amiable
frenzy, the result of the abhorred Sunday morning incarceration. I
became aware that I was thrown upon my own resources, and, with the
prospect of a wet afternoon before me, I felt my spirits sinking
perceptibly.
To finish my letter to Aunt Jane was at least better than doing nothing.
I took up a strong position in front of the library fire, and
disconsolately applied myself to filling the big sheet of foreign paper
on which I had embarked in the morning.
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