Produced by Al Haines.
THE YOUNG
O'BRIENS
BEING AN ACCOUNT OF
THEIR SOJOURN IN LONDON
By the author of
"ELIZABETH'S CHILDREN"
[Transcriber's note: Margaret Westrup]
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY, MDCCCCVI
_Copyright_, 1906
BY JOHN LANE COMPANY
_The Plimpton Press Norwood Mass. U.S.A._
_By the same Author_
ELIZABETH'S CHILDREN
Fifth Edition
HELEN ALLISTON
*THE YOUNG O'BRIENS*
*CHAPTER I*
Inside the hired omnibus there was a dead silence. Outside the rain
lashed drearily against the window panes. From the corner where Molly
sat there came a dismal, despairing sniffle, drowned, before its finish,
by Denis's superlatively cheerful voice.
"Sure, 'tis a rough night entirely!" he observed airily.
Nell gave a sudden quick little laugh with a queer end to it.
"So it is!" she said, and her effort after cheerfulness gave the remark
a surprised tone, as if she had not noticed before that the night was
rough.
Sheila Pat sat silent in her corner, her slim little body stiff and
erect, a bag and a box clutched tight in her small arms. Afterwards,
later that night, she found that her arms ached. There was desperation
in that tight clutch of the bag and the box.
Suddenly Mr. O'Brien spoke; he recognised the futility of ignoring what
was in everyone's mind.
"Well," he said, "a year soon passes, after all, and I hope we shall be
back in about ten or eleven months."
"But--but not--" came a watery stammer from Molly's corner, but Nell
broke in hurriedly.
"I--I wonder will you look different, dad?"
"Oh, yes," her mother laughed the pretty laugh that was just like
Nell's, "I shall be a horrid, stout old woman! Even Sheila Pat won't
acknowledge me then!"
Sheila Pat said nothing.
Mrs. O'Brien squeezed Nell's fingers tightly. There was another
silence. There was nothing to say. Everything had been said over and
over again. The wind sent the rain beating angrily against the closed
windows. The omnibus jolted and jarred over the road.
A hoarse shout smote on their ears, and the driver's whip flicked one of
the panes.
Denis jumped up and let down the small window in front. Then shouting
began; the wind howled derisively, drowning their voices. The driver's
hoarse yells, and Denis's impatient shouts, asked and answered questions
over and over again. At last Denis drew in his head:
"If that's a specimen of the London driver, I don't think much of 'em!
The wind didn't get at you, did it, mother?"
"No, dear, your broad shoulders kept it off."
"Does he seem to understand the way now?" Mr. O'Brien queried.
"I wouldn't like to answer for him. I've explained till I'm hoarse, but
the damp seems to have got to his brain--it won't work--rusty, you
know."
"Isn't his voice funny?" observed Nell, doing her duty manfully.
"Drivers often have those hoarse voices," responded her father, and for
just as long as they could make it last, they used that driver as a
topic of conversation. Certainly he did not seem of much use for any
other purpose.
It was not long before there came another flick against the window, and
on Denis putting forth his head, there ensued more shouts and yells. In
a lull of the wind the driver waxed sentimentally despairing. "Never
been to these 'ere East Lunnon docks afore--eh, sir? Wot? Which
turning? Can't see no turning. It ain't a night as I'd turn a pore
blessed cat out--much less a respectable fambly man with little children
dependant on 'im! Eh, sir? Can't 'ear, sir! Wot? Poplar? Ain't
nowhere's near Poplar!"
Denis drew in his head.
"Of all the old fools! I'd better go up on to the box and direct him.
I know my way better than he does, anyway, though I've only been to the
docks once."
"It's raining so, Denis," his mother put in.
"But we don't want the death from exposure of the respectable fambly man
on our consciences, do we, mother? Not to mention the touching little
children--"
It ended in his exit to the box. Nell watched him go with wide,
strained eyes; she crushed down a strong impulse to clutch at his coat.
Without her twin she felt feeble and deserted.
When the omnibus stopped at last outside the dock gates, no one made a
movement towards getting out. Long and dreary as that drive had been,
each one, looking out at those gates looming so big and grim in the dim
light cast by a solitary lamp, wished it could begin all over again. The
parting grew, at that jolting stop, suddenly, acutely nearer. In spite
of the dread of it, perhaps no one had quite realised it. To get out of
the omnibus was to give it a hideous reality. A cautious voice demanded
their business. Denis appeared at the door. One by one they left the
omnibus. The policeman, to whom the cautious voice belonged, let them
through a wicket; then began a dreary march in the dark; the wind sent
the rain beating against them in angry little gusts. Laden with bundles
and packages, they stumbled along in the dense darkness, treading into
puddles, splashing, slipping. There were no friendly lamps to cast a
warning glimmer on the deep puddles left by the rain in the holes of the
uneven ground. They could barely distinguish the form of the diminutive
guide with whom the policeman had provided them. But they could hear
him. He was a small, sharp-looking boy, who heeded neither rain nor
wind nor dark, but trudged along, in and out the puddles, up and down
the hillocks, emitting a kind of dismal whistling below his breath.
Nell laughed suddenly with an overdone hilarity.
"The water's trickling down my neck!"
Denis seconded her with, "It's running a regular cascade off my hat
rim!"
Then the Atom spoke; it was the first remark she had made since they had
started from Miss Kezia's house in Henley Road.
"Isn't is _London_?" she said.
Her father was amused.
"You know, we do see rain occasionally at home," he observed.
"There's rain and _rain_!" the Atom declared sapiently, and relapsed
again into her dour silence.
Molly, with a sudden sob, put the fear that was in everyone's mind into
words.
"It's--awfully bad--for mother!"
"Oh, I shall be all right, dear," Mrs. O'Brien insisted with tired
cheerfulness.
"I've a good mind to drop my bag and carry you!" her husband declared.
"Oh, Owen, what a first appearance for the wife of the ship's surgeon!
Let me at least be dignified."
Beyond the small figure of their guide the _Albany_ loomed, slowly
taking shape in the dark, big, very mysterious.
"I bet we came to the wrong entrance," Denis observed.
Mr. O'Brien handed the guide a tip. "I'm afraid we did," he said.
The guide disappeared with a "thankysir"; a steward's head bobbed up
from the hatchway and shouted out directions. Mr. O'Brien and Denis
helped the others along a wet, slippery board, and over the ship's side.
The saloon looked more cheerful; deserted as it was, it wore quite a
festive air after the wet and darkness outside.
In the cabin they hung up a few things, to give it a more homelike air,
and because it was easier to do something than not. They procured
coffee from the steward, but no one wanted it. Everyone pretended they
did, except Sheila Pat, who never pretended. Mrs. O'Brien made her
drink it.
"You are cold and wet, dear; it--I--will--"
She stopped abruptly. Nell saw and understood. She went close.
"I--I will take care of her--" she whispered.
She had promised it so often, but Mrs. O'Brien turned to her gratefully.
"Yes, dear," she said; her eyes went from Nell back again hungrily to
the bit of brow and head that Sheila Pat's big coffee cup left exposed.
"I know you will, Nell," she said gently, and kissed her.
Several other passengers had arrived and sat or stood about the saloon
and cabins with an air of unsettledness, of uncertainty. The last
minute came suddenly at the end. There was a sort of breathless rush;
injunctions, good-byes, forcedly hopeful prognostications.
"A year soon passes!" Mr. O'Brien said again.
A little later they were in the omnibus once more. There were gaps now;
there was so much room to move about. Those gaps gave a poignant reality
to the loneliness.
In Nell's mind there grew up a dull wonder whether anyone could
conceivably think that a year soon passes. To her the coming year
stretched long and interminable; at the moment she was incapable of
looking beyond it. Father and mother were gone, and home was gone too.
The wonder passed, and with aching iteration there dinned in her
ears--"So long as the shamrock's growing in Ireland, will there be
O'Briens in Kilbrannan." It was a prediction of an old gipsy's. She
had given it when telling Denis his fortune. That was last year, barely
a year ago, and now--Nell's lips curled with a sudden bitterness that
made her young, soft face look, for the moment, older--now there were
strangers in their home, and no O'Briens in Kilbrannan. She wondered
tragically how it was possible to live through months such as they had
lived through. Looking back, the failure of the bank in which most of
her father's money had been placed, and which had been the first
misfortune to fall upon them, seemed a small calamity. She remembered
the shock of it, the sorrow, with surprise now. What though they had
been obliged to retrench, to pinch and try to learn the lesson of
economy, they had still their home and were not separated. The grief of
parting with old servants, with some of the horses, had been sharp. But
they had still dear old Patsy; they had O'Leary and Gretta; and they
had--Nell's breath caught suddenly--they had Acushla, the Colleen Bawn.
Her thoughts chased each other over those unhappy months. The day when
her mother had so suddenly been taken ill stood out, sharp and grim. She
remembered the anxious worry she had experienced when she saw that in
spite of the doctor's hopeful words, in spite of the daily improvement
in the invalid, her father's face refused to lighten. She remembered
the slow growth of suspicion in her mind, so that when at last he asked
her and Denis to come into the study one day, she knew they were to hear
some bad news. Denis knew it too, but in their worst prognostications
they had never given one thought to the possibility of having to give up
their home for awhile. Even when their father had told them, they could
not comprehend quite. Nell remembered how she had stood staring
stupidly at the binding of one of Ruskin's works in the book-case, where
a ray of sunlight shone on it. She had found herself saying, "Sesame
and Lilies." Then her eyes had followed the ray of sunshine to the
windows--beyond the windows. She gave a little shudder at the memory of
that moment of sudden, sharp realisation. The study faced east; its
windows looked out on to great boulders of grey rock that led in a long
uneven slope to the seaweed-covered rocks and the sea. The heather had
been out then; the boulders were covered with it; there was a little
mist in the air, so that the grey and purple mingled in a lovely haze of
colour. The sea-gulls and the gannets were quarrelling over something;
their voices came in at the open windows. The scent of the seaweed had
come to her, too; and quite suddenly she had understood that they were
to leave it all. Her father had gone on speaking; she had felt vaguely
sorry for him, as she listened to his halting speech and saw the
strained look on his face. But in those first minutes nothing was of
moment, nothing was real, save the crushing blow that they were to leave
their home; that they were to go away; that strangers were to live in
it. But presently she realised that he was trying to prepare them for
some further bad news. She had smiled at his thinking it necessary to
prepare them; nothing mattered now. Denis had had the same feeling. He
had broken into his father's speech abruptly, roughly:--
"Tell us what it is. What does it matter, anyway?"
But Mr. O'Brien had gone on skirting the subject, preparing them.
"I have been anxious for months about those mine shares. They have gone
down and down, and now they have ceased to pay any dividends at all."
He had said it before, had explained that it was because of these shares
that they must let their home.