THE KNOCKING AT THE DOOR
We had dinner in the little black-panelled room off the hall, Neil
waiting on us with a great assiduity. Now that the worst had happened
and my grandfather's pride and courage had risen to meet it, it seemed
to me that he looked better than he had looked for many months. To be
sure he was very pale, but he had a look of resolution which became him,
instead of the cowed and burdened look he had worn of late.
I remember that there were pheasants on the table and my grandfather
asked where they had come from. There had been a constant shower of
delicacies rained on us from Damerstown, and we should have grown
sybarites if we had cared about such things. Neil, as though he
understood, answered him that they had been shot in our own woods, and
added that the fine peaches and grapes which were in a dish on the table
were from our own houses. I was not sure it was true. We didn't grow
peaches even in a hothouse in December; but I let it pass, and my elders
were too engrossed in their thoughts to notice.
Once or twice I saw that the old couple held each other's hands below
the table-cloth, and I felt that as long as they were together they
could bear anything.
My grandfather ate a little of a pheasant's breast, and my grandmother
followed his example; but though we made a show of eating it did not
amount to very much. As for me, a curious sense of expectancy seemed to
have taken possession of my mind, to the exclusion of other things. I
could hardly say at what moment it had begun; but it grew till I was, in
a manner of speaking, heady with it. We sat there very quiet, but all
the time I was listening, not only with the ears of my body but with the
ears of my heart.
After dinner Neil cleared away the dinner-things and removed the cloth.
My grandmother bade him replenish the fire, and he went away and
returned with a great armful of logs.
I guessed that my grandmother felt that in here we were out of sight of
the preparations for the wedding which were going on everywhere else in
the house.
Neil left the wine and the fruit on the table, stirred up the fire, and
went away.
My grandparents sat in their chairs either side of the fireplace, I in
the middle at first; but presently I changed places with my grandmother,
and she sat holding Lord St. Leger's hand in hers while the firelight
leaped up showing their old, careworn, troubled faces, which yet had a
look of love and new peace in them.
Presently my grandfather fell asleep, and we talked in whispers, my
grandmother and I. She still held his hand, and her eyes kept watching
with a tender anxiety his pale face, almost as pale as a dead face,
against the green velvet of the chair.
"He sleeps quietly, Bawn," she said. "He has not slept well of late."
"None of us has slept well," I said.
"It has almost broken our hearts, child, to be so cruel to you. I don't
believe we have had a happy hour since it was settled. We have lain
awake till cock-crow, night after night."
I had it in my mind to ask her if she had heard the ghosts, but she had
never liked the talk about the ghosts, and, remembering that, I was
silent.
"We ought to have faced it out," she went on. "As I said to Lord St.
Leger, if the disgrace was there, there was no doing away with it, even
though only Garret Dawson knew it. Mary always said she would not
believe dishonour and deliberate misdoing on Luke's part. I ought to
have had her faith."
"It is not too late," I said. "Let Garret Dawson publish his news! We
shall see what he has to tell."
"But there is no disproving it, for Luke is dead and gone."
"On your own reasoning, dearest Gran," I said. "If we will not believe
in Uncle Luke's disgrace then there is no disgrace for us. We shall only
take it that Garret Dawson bears false witness. Who would believe Garret
Dawson against Luke L'Estrange?"
"Ah, but you have lost your lover, my poor Bawn," she said tenderly.
"You have lost Theobald, and this old house will pass away from you and
him. It is all mortgaged and there is Luke's debt."
"Let it go," I said, wincing. "But as for Theobald, never fret about
that, Gran. We were only brother and sister, too close to become
closer."
"I think the wedding has turned Maureen's head," my grandmother went on
fretfully. "I found her setting Luke's room in order. She would have it
that he was coming home from school by the hooker from Galway. She has
made his bed and put his room in order and she asked me at what hour she
should light his fire."
"She is always madder at the full moon," I said.
"To-morrow morning we will send for Mary. She will help us to bear it.
When I think of her faith I wonder that I should have had so little."
"I believe you are happier," I said wonderingly.
"I feel as though I had passed out of the hands of men into the hands of
God," she replied, caressing my hair with her disengaged hand, for I had
left my chair to sit down on the hearthrug by her.
Again I had that strange, acute sense of listening; but there was a
storm outside, and the wind cried in the chimney and rattled the
windows, and a branch of a tree tapped against the shutters--that was
all.
"While your grandfather lives you will not be homeless," she said: "and
who knows but that Theobald may be able to clear off the mortgages?"
My grandfather slept peacefully, as though he needed sleep; and now we
talked and now we were silent, and the night wore on.
We could not move for fear of disturbing him. Dido came and lay on the
rug beside me, and slept with her chin resting on my foot. I think my
grandmother dozed a little and the fire went low for I was afraid to
stir to replenish it. The old dog moaned and whimpered in her sleep, and
my grandmother came out of her doze to say that she had been dreaming of
Luke; and nodded off again.
I heard Neil Doherty bolt and bar the hall door on his way to bed and I
knew then that it must be eleven. There were many things to think of.
To-morrow the preparations for the wedding must all be put a stop to.
The presents must be returned. There was so much to be done, so many
things to be cancelled. I wondered when and how Garret Dawson's blow
would fall. He was one to seek an opportunity of doing it publicly. That
it would fall I had no doubt. There was no relenting behind that face of
granite.
Well, for to-night the old souls might sleep. To-morrow there would be
Mary Champion to stand by them. I did not yet dare to think of the joy
that was coming to me from over the world. It would be another blow to
them that I loved Anthony Cardew.
Also through my thoughts there came the face of Richard Dawson, and I
wondered if he was somewhere out in the night. I did not feel that the
house to which he was to have brought me a bride could contain him that
night. What was he doing? Where had he gone for consolation? My pity for
him and my remorse were great.
A coal fell out of the fire with a sudden noise, and the displaced coals
fell in, sending up a big shower of sparks. The storm was at its height.
It seemed to shake the solid house. And suddenly my grandmother awoke.
"Bawn, Bawn," she said, "I dreamt that your grandfather was dead and it
was terrible."
At the moment my grandfather opened his eyes.
"I am very tired," he said--"very, very tired and old. If Luke is coming
he ought to be here soon. Why is he not here to protect us?"
There came a sound above the crying of the wind. My grandmother had
been leaning tenderly over her husband who seemed to have sunk back into
his sleep; now she looked at me with a piteous terror. The wind soughed
and died away, and in the pause we heard them plainly, wheels on the
gravel outside that stopped at the door.
"It is the death-coach," my grandmother said. I rather saw than heard
her say it, for her pale lips seemed incapable of speech.
"No, no," I cried. "It is nothing of the sort. It is the messenger I am
expecting. I have been listening for him all the evening. Be quiet! He
is coming for good: to help us."
But she did not seem to hear me. She had thrown both her arms about my
grandfather, as though to ward off what was coming. The action awoke
him, and he stood up tall and commanding as I remembered him of old, as
I had not seen him for many a day.
"What is the matter, Maeve?" he asked. "You are with me. There is
nothing to fear."
I noticed that the wound had opened, and his white hair was stained with
blood.
"It is the death-coach," cried my grandmother.
"What matter, if it comes for both of us?" he said.
"It is not the death-coach," I cried. "It is a friend, some one come to
our help. Look at Dido! She would be frightened if it were the
death-coach. See how she listens!"
Above the crying of the storm there came a tremendous rat-tat on the
knocker of the hall door.