Part 19 (1/2)
These things lie somewhere near the heart of the Irish problem.
THE DANE'S BREECHIN'
PART I
The story begins at the moment when my brother Robert and I had made our final arrangements for the expedition. These were considerable. Robert is a fisherman who takes himself seriously (which perhaps is fortunate, as he rarely seems to take anything else), and his paraphernalia does credit to his enthusiasm, if not to his judgment. For my part, being an amateur artist, I had strapped together a collection of painting materials that would enable me to record my inspiration in oil, watercolour, or pastel, as the spirit might move me. We had ordered a car from Coolahan's public-house in the village; an early lunch was imminent.
The latter depended upon Julia; in fact it would be difficult to mention anything at Wavecrest Cottage that did not depend on Julia. We, who were but strangers and sojourners (the cottage with the beautiful name having been lent to us, with Julia, by an Aunt), felt that our very existence hung upon her clemency. How much more then luncheon, at the revolutionary hour of a quarter to one? Even courageous people are afraid of other people's servants, and Robert and I were far from being courageous. Possibly this is why Julia treated us with compa.s.sion, even with kindness, especially Robert.
”Ah, poor Masther Robert!” I have heard her say to a friend in the kitchen, who was fortunately hard of hearing, ”ye wouldn't feel him in the house no more than a feather! An' indeed, as for the two o' thim, sich gallopers never ye seen! It's hardly they'd come in the house to throw the wet boots off thim! Thim'd gallop the woods all night like the deer!”
At half-past twelve, all, as I have said, being in train, I went to the window to observe the weather, and saw a covered car with a black horse plodding along the road that separated Wavecrest Cottage from the seash.o.r.e. At our modest entrance gates it drew up, and the coachman climbed from his perch with a dignity befitting his flowing grey beard and the silver band on his hat.
A covered car is a vehicle peculiar to the south of Ireland; it resembles a two-wheeled waggonette with a windowless black box on top of it. Its mouth is at the back, and it has the sinister quality of totally concealing its occupants until the irrevocable moment when it is turned and backed against your front door steps. For this moment my brother Robert and I did not wait. A short pa.s.sage and a flight of steps separated us from the kitchen; beyond the steps, and facing the kitchen door, a door opened into the garden. Robert slipped up heavily in the pa.s.sage as we fled, but gained the garden door undamaged. The hall door bell pealed at my ear; I caught a glimpse of Julia, pounding chops with the rolling pin.
”Say we're out,” I hissed to her--”gone out for the day! We are going into the garden!”
”Sure ye needn't give yerself that much trouble,” replied Julia affably, as she s.n.a.t.c.hed a grimy cap off a nail.
Nevertheless, in spite of the elasticity of Julia's conscience, the garden seemed safer.
In the garden, a plot of dense and various vegetation, decorated with Julia's lingerie, we awaited the sound of the departing wheels. But nothing departed. The breathless minutes pa.s.sed, and then, through the open drawing-room window, we were aware of strange voices. The drawing-room window overlooked the garden thoroughly and commandingly.
There was not a moment to lose. We plunged into the raspberry canes, and crouched beneath their embowered arches, and the fulness of the situation began to sink into our souls.
Through the window we caught a glimpse of a white beard and a portly black suit, of a black bonnet and a dolman that glittered with jet, of yet another black bonnet.
With Aunt Dora's house we had taken on, as it were, her practice, and the goodwill of her acquaintance. The Dean of Glengad and Mrs. Doherty were the very apex and flower of the latter, and in the party now installed in Aunt Dora's drawing-room I unhesitatingly recognised them, and Mrs. Doherty's sister, Miss McEvoy. Miss McEvoy was an elderly lady of the cla.s.s usually described as being ”not all there”. The expression, I imagine, implies a regret that there should not be more. As, however, what there was of Miss McEvoy was chiefly remarkable for a monstrous appet.i.te and a marked penchant for young men, it seems to me mainly to be regretted that there should be as much of her as there is.
A drive of nine miles in the heat of a June morning is not undertaken without a sustaining expectation of luncheon at the end of it. There were in the house three mutton chops to meet that expectation. I communicated all these facts to my brother. The consternation of his face, framed in raspberry boughs, was a picture not to be lightly forgotten. At such a moment, with everything depending on sheer nerve and resourcefulness, to consign Julia to perdition was mere self-indulgence on his part, but I suppose it was inevitable. Here the door into the garden opened and Julia came forth, with a spotless ap.r.o.n and a face of elaborate unconcern. She picked a handful of parsley, her black eyes questing for us among the bushes; they met mine, and a glance more alive with conspiracy it has not been my lot to receive. She moved desultorily towards us, gathering green gooseberries in her ap.r.o.n.
”I told them the two o' ye were out,” she murmured to the gooseberry bushes. ”They axed when would ye be back. I said ye went to town on the early thrain and wouldn't be back till night.”
Decidedly Julia's conscience could stand alone.
”With that then,” she continued, ”Miss McEvoy lands into the hall, an'
'O Let.i.tia,' says she, 'those must be the gentleman's fis.h.i.+ng rods!' and then 'Julia!' says she, 'could ye give us a bit o' lunch?' That one's the imp!”
”Look here!” said Robert hoa.r.s.ely, and with the swiftness of panic, ”I'm off! I'll get out over the back wall.”
At this moment Miss McEvoy put her head out of the drawing-room window and scanned the garden searchingly. Without another word we glided through the raspberry arches like departing fairies in a pantomine. The kindly lilac and laurestina bushes grew tall and thick at the end of the garden; the wall was high, but, as is usual with fruit-garden walls, it had a well-worn feasible corner that gave on to the lane leading to the village. We flung ourselves over it, and landed breathless and dishevelled, but safe, in the heart of the bed of nettles that plumed the common village ash-heap. Now that we were able, temporarily at all events, to call our souls our own, we (or rather I) took further stock of the situation. Its horrors continued to sink in. Driven from home without so much as a hat to lay our heads in, separated from those we loved most (the mutton chops, the painting materials, the fis.h.i.+ng tackle), a promising expedition of unusual charm cut off, so to speak, in the flower of its youth--these were the more immediately obvious of the calamities which we now confronted. I preached upon them, with Ca.s.sandra eloquence, while we stood, indeterminate, among the nettles.
”And what, I ask you,” I said perorating, ”what on the face of the earth are we to do now?”
”Oh, it'll be all right, my dear girl,” said Robert easily. Grat.i.tude for his escape from the addresses of Miss McEvoy had apparently blinded him to the difficulties of the future. ”There's Coolahan's pub. We'll get something to eat there--you'll see it'll be all right.”
”But,” I said, picking my way after him among the rusty tins and the broken crockery, ”the Coolahans will think we're mad! We've no hats, and we can't tell them about the Dohertys.”
”I don't care what they think,” said Robert.