So there it was, all finished, all done, and for the last time Lovat looked at it, saw the green mountains, the tumbling river, the white span of the bridge. But the bridge and he were finished now. His work was done.
The little Latin-American official touched his elbow deferentially.
"Excellency, the train!"
"Yes, the train," Lovat repeated mechanically. His companion looked at him with grave sympathy. Only three months ago Lovat was a young and happy bridegroom. To-day the builder was a grave gray-haired man.
Yes, the bridge was done, Lovat knew. A little while ago it was just the product of his hand and genius and will, a thing of himself. But now it was a fulfilled entity, with its own duties, its own uses, its own destiny. Over it went trains joining country to country and sea to sea. Over it went the loping Latin people. Over it went the little patient burros, pannier-laden. In confidence all went over it.
"It will stand." Lovat knew. "It will always stand."
But there was no high note of proud achievement in his thought. It would not stand because of skill in building or strength in masonry. But because there guarded it one whose pleading sacrificial fingers would unclench the angry hand of God. Flood and thunder and immense winds would spare it because of that guardian like a white flame, to whose unselfishness selfish nature must do reverence.
The official ventured to recall him:
"Excellency!"
"Just one more moment!"
He had a vision of her for the moment, and his throat quivered and his eyes were uncertain. He saw her in her white, billowing gown, with her dark head and face like a flower. Two brown shy little children were standing fearful of the bridge, and she knelt to them. "Come, darlings," he could hear the deep remembered voice. She led them confidently across his bridge, and as she led them she smiled to him.
Well, he must go. There was other work to be done, other bridges to build, until the time the Master of the Masons told him to rest. He must be about his work.
"All our life is work," he said to himself as he boarded the train. "All our love is comradeship."
Well, there was work to be done, and there was comradeship. She would always be with him now, being dead....
All those things I dreamed about, and I thousands of miles away, are there still: the house, half farm-house and half castle, at one end an ancient military tower, at the other a thatched cottage; all the trees—the ash, the elms, the chestnut with the dark-green foliage and the prickly bulb containing the polished mahogany fruit, the rowan-trees with the gallant red berries, bitter as death, the copper beech with the foliage of lace and the fuzzy brown nuts, the apple- and pear-trees, and the trees of cherries that the birds do be ever after.
The lawns that were once shaven so closely are now rectangles of high sweet grass where the bees are seeking. And the tennis-courts, where once was the laughter of young girls—those, too, are knee-high in grass, swaying in the soft Irish wind. And here and there is a gallant yew-tree, blackly green. Roses still cling to the wall, and around all the walls are riots of flowers.
The low greenhouses are still there, under whose glass roofs grew great purple grapes, and where row on row of exotic flowers grew and delicate ferns whose names are unknown to me, so much closer are men and horses to me than flowers and ferns. Ivy is on the walls, soft-looking as velvet, and the winds and rains have been kind to the lodge and the stables. The walls are still white and a little moss is on the slates of them, and a soft and gentle grass is between the cobbled stones.
And the deep well is there. And everywhere are birds and bees. The bees are wild now, who once lived in skips of yellow straw, and their nests are in the long grass, and there, too, is the meadowlark, and under the eaves the swallows flit. And here the robin is safe with his impudent eye, and the blackbird of the yellow bill. And everywhere the throaty murmur of the wood-pigeons, the thrum of their wings.
Eh! There it is all still, at the foot of the soft and purple mountains—the Sugarloaves, the Big Sugarloaf and the Little, and the hill called Kitty Gallagher's, and the Scalp with its slender tower and the sweet shoulder of Three Rock Mountain. And below—one could pitch a stone nearly—is Dublin, the abiding city. There the Liffey, rippling gently to the sea. And one can almost see St. Patrick's, where great Swift was Dean, and Trinity, where poor Goldsmith and fearless Burke were students. The broad streets, the princely squares. And there Robert Emmet was hanged for treason against our Sovereign Lord the King, His Crown and Majesty, and Lord Edward, the rebel Geraldine, was stabbed. And there is Clontarf, where Brian the High King fought the red Danes, fought and died, but fought and conquered. And there Howth, where Iseult, the Dublin princess, sailed to marry Mark in rugged Cornwall, sailed with Tristram....
Eh! There from Mount Kyteler one can see it all—the soft dreaming mountains, the sad weeping city. And here where was once the laughter of young women, the barking of dogs, the neighing of horses, the shouting of lads—here is silence, but for the husky note of the wood-pigeon, the little thunder of his wings, and the droning of the seeking bees. All, all are dead, but here is no desolation. There is the sweet gentleness of remembered twilights, and the copper beech rustles, and the rowan nods, and the apple-trees murmur with their antique boughs: "Is it yourself is in it, Ronnie? Is it yourself, long lad? And it is long you've stayed away from us in foreign lands and bitter seas. And it's Lady Margery you 're looking for? And Paddy the Pipes? You mind him, do you so? And Jacky Sullivan—ah, the great lad! Sure, they 've just left this minute, laughing fellow. Gone to see the old earl, they have. Sure, you'll be following them, and seeing them all soon. Over the mountains they went, a wee ways. You 'll see them all soon, very soon, a wheen of years...."
Not for long will be this sweet silence, this soft, dim loneliness. Soon will be business of courts, justices sitting in wig and gown. And Mount Kyteler will die, and its name be forgotten. Sad history will pass and affairs proceed in their inexorable ordinance. And where once great Norman fighters charged in mail, and Elizabethan nobles ruffled, and the old red-faced earl swore when the gout was on him, and of late Lady Margery moved over lawns and walks with her sweet, sad-faced dignity, will be three or four little farms, their smoke blue against the purple of Three Rock Mountain. And the lawns will turn to fields of blue corn, and fat cattle will graze where once was a maze of flowers.
And all the crops will prosper there. And the children that are born of the farmer folk will be happy as the birds in the trees. There will be no blight on the milk the cows give, and there will be great luck on the stock of the kindly land. Always will there be prodigal bees and the dancing of swallows.
There are houses and lands that are kindly, and places that are sinister, fields that are surly, meadows that are sweetly generous. Old things, if we watch them, have a very human quality, and that is because they have been intimately connected with people who have these qualities themselves. One influences one's surroundings so much. Whirling sparks of personality fall from us and charge what we have usually by us. On all the estate came such a current of sweetness that even the thieving wood-pigeons grew generous, leaving the young trees alone.
Will she ever come back here when Mount Kyteler is gone, and the little whitewashed farmhouses are an outpost against the heather of Three Rock Mountain? I think she will. She will have so much beauty to know, now she is dead, that she will not begrudge the loss of the flower gardens and the courts where tennis was played. Apple-trees and flowers will be hers wherever she is, and perhaps the same ones—who can say no? Yet I can see her come to visit the whitewashed houses in the hushed summer twilight, when the daisies have tucked in their modest heads and only the great foam of the hawthorn billows over the country-side. On some warm little breeze from Three Rock Mountain she will come. And horses in their stalls will know her, and the kine will turn their heads to her, lowing gently, and the dogs will bark joyously, and some little child on the floor will stand up suddenly and run forward, its arms outstretched, bubbles of laughter beating from the tiny lips....
Now when the last Lord Kyteler died, there was very little fuss made. Another poverty-stricken Irish peer gone. He had n't been rich enough to own an estate large enough for tenants to squabble on. A few farms here and there through the country, Mount Kyteler itself, not worth a tremendous amount. He was the last lord of one of these very, very old families who had been lost in the back-wash of Irish history. Once Kytelers had fought in the Holy Land under Richard the Lion-Hearted and had fought later under Irish viceroys against the O'Bernes and O'Tooles and O'Moores of the Wicklow hills; and antiquarians remembered that Dame Alice Kyteler was the most sinister witch of all Ireland, and was burned at the stake in Kilkenny many centuries before. But it was a matter of politics more than demonology, though undoubtedly Dame Alice was second only to Gilles de Rais, murderer and Marshal of France, in worship of evil idols and in sinister sacrifice....
It was one of these old names that should have died out, when the medieval chivalry of Europe died, Knights Templar and sporting Norman bishops and morbid medieval ladies. But it existed, as many things exist in Ireland and are forgotten in Europe and never known in America,—strange Christian customs, strange pagan beliefs,—and "It" the most horrible of all horrible ghosts.
They were a poor family, as poor is understood in Ireland. That is, they had money enough for all necessities and many luxuries. They had money enough for food, for clothes, for a few good horses for conveyance and hunting, and they could go to the viceregal court at Dublin Castle and be decent figures there. But they could not keep racehorses, which is really a great hardship if you are Irish, and they could not afford to live in London as an Irish nobleman should live, which should be as a very great nobleman indeed. They were as well off as a rich farmer, and they had a title, and they were not intolerably proud.
If you were to meet a very red-faced man in tweeds and with a heavy stick, at the Curragh races, betting modest sovereigns, and were told that he was the Earl of Mount Kyteler, you would feel that there was something wrong. He had not that terrible courtesy of the earls and better sort of dukes which makes you feel like a clodhopper, no matter from which particular Irish king you claim direct descent. He was too human, too decent an old skate; you chuckled when you thought of a coronet cocked rakishly over that red, weather-beaten face.
Oh, but Lady Margery! that was different!
Her appearance I could describe to you: the close-bound black hair, the face like some rain-washed flower, the dark luminous eyes and laughing lips, the balanced neck, the body that was half boy's and half young woman's. All that means nothing, but if I say that when she appeared there was a chime like an old silver bell, such antique sweetness came upon the air ... the feet that never seemed to touch the ground, her long, white, quiet hands. How that old-world title fitted her, described her! Not demure miss, not buxom mistress, but the Lady Margery Kyteler.
How important it is for me to bring her back, to have her real for an instant in the clear air! But not as a necromancer under the glittering stars, with circle and acolyte, fire, sword, and crown, saying terrible words—Here be the symbols of secret things, the flags and banners of God the Conqueror, the weapons to compel the aerial potencies—and have that sweet face come white and fearful in the gray dawn. I would have her seen with her merry smile, her feet that moved lightly, as to hidden music, her long quiet hands. For all her boyish strong body, there was such harmony and light, one knew that beyond the body was something that would not die with the years—no more than the sun dies when it drops into the sea, or the sweet, friendly moon. To see her was more than miracles; she convinced better than the fathers of the church.
Very unconsciously she did all this. And very embarrassed she would have been and a little mad she would have thought one, had she been told she was an argument for eternity. Know her to be eternal, but see her playing with a terrier, pulling its tail, its ears, and clipping it deftly under the jaw as it snapped playfully. Or stroking the sleek neck of a horse, and talking to it as horses love to be talked to, or kneeling to comfort some crying child of the people, and wooing it back to happiness by being very happy herself....
Now by the ordinance of time and nature the old earl was quietly gathered to his forbears—to Gilles de Kyteler, who came over to Ireland with Strongbow; to Piers Kyteler, who could run against a horse for five miles; to Dame Alice Kyteler, whose name is still used to frighten little children; to Fulke, or the bastard Kyteler, who joined with Silken Thomas in rebellion; Hugh, who lost the family money in the South Sea Bubble; to another Pierce, who backed Boxer Donelly, the Irishman, against the English champion, Cooper, for a thousand pounds—and won!—to Hugh, who grew rare tulips, and to Patrick, of whom it was said he was the stupidest man in Ireland. Some one has written a book about the family; possibly it's worth reading, probably not.
And now of the family of the Earls of Mount Kyteler there was only one left, the Lady Margery Kyteler, and she was alone in the world.
Except for the ordinary natural grief for the old earl, whom she loved and liked, she did n't mind being alone. Mount Kyteler had now only seven servants, an ancient cook and two equally ancient maids, a gardener so ancient as to need an assistant, who was himself so verging on the ancient that it was a puzzle as to what assistance he could give. There were a couple of lads in the stable, lads of fifty, a groom, and a coachman, the coachman assuming the livery of butler on great occasions, such as in Horse Show Week. Ancient grumbling people they all were, who were united only in this, that they loved her. Among themselves there were always ancient grudges, present fights. And instead of her ruling them, they ruled her with a terrible tyranny.
The old cook below-stairs was forever complaining of the great work to be done, and refusing to have any help given her.
"Is it bringing in another you 'd be and me here child and woman for fifty years? Twelve years old I was when they brought me into the pantry and set me to cleaning knives, and now it's on top of me you 'd be bringing some streel you 'd be getting out of a register's office, a woman does be following the tinkers to the Country Wicklow, mad with love. Och, to think of the insult put on me this day!Wirra, is thrue!"
"Sure, it 's only to help you, Peggy."
"And what help would I be needing, me that's the fine, supple woman, in the prime o' my years! Ne'er a day over sixty I am, and thirty hard years' work in me still."
"But you were complaining, Peggy."
"Sure, 't was only to keep my mind active I was."
The old gardener could be terrible, with his face like an apple and his bent back. He watched her as he might watch a thieving boy.
"Now, if it's a thing you 'd be wanting chrysanthemums, my lady, would n't it be the right and proper thing for you to be coming to me, that's the head gardener of this garden, and if it's a thing there 's chrysanthemums in it, you 'll get them, and if it's a thing there 's no chrysanthemums in it, you won't."
"I thought I 'd save you trouble, Darby."
"And what trouble would you be saving me, my Lady, by destroying the symmetry of the design? All the work that 's on me, and ne'er a hand's turn do I get from the young fellow that's the assistant. Devil the hand's turn he 's done in all the forty-three years he 's been here, barring playing the bagpipes in the greenhouse and talking about the good ould times. I mind the time your grandfather was in it, my Lady—a real gentleman him. He would n't put a hand on an apple, or a gooseberry itself, without asking the head gardener's permission."
Also were the two ancient maids problems in their way. They were forever sniffing at each other, and complaining of each other to Margery.
"If your Ladyship would be so kind as to give Rose Ann a tip about her conduct, 't would be a mercy so. For the queer way she does be acting with the postman is no credit to this house at all. New ribbons in her cap, indeed, looking for love, when she ought to be making her peace with God and man."
But Rose Ann had the same story.
"If your Ladyship pleases, a wee word to Ellen would not be out of the way. 'T is the postman, your Ladyship, has been complaining bitterly. 'Ma'am,' says he to me, 'would you be telling a secret?' 'If so be as I know it,' says I, 'I will.' 'Is that one,' says he, 'right in her head?' 'Is it Ellen you mean?' says I. ''T is that same,' says he. ''T is that has been puzzling myself, but why do you ask?' say I. ''T is the dirty look she has in her eye,' says he, 'and the queer conversation is at her. "'T is the world's wonder you never married," she does be telling me, "and you the fine lad you are."' Your Ladyship should speak to her. You should so."
"I will, Rose Ann."
But worst of all were the quarrels between the coachman and the groom. The coachman was a fine, florid man, and the groom was a wizened little troll who had once been a jockey. The coachman was always in decent black, the groom in corduroys. They were forever arguing on everything, from politics to horses. Once Lady Margery had come into the yard to see the groom stepping around like a bantam boxer, his hands up, his feet tapping the ground like a dancer's.
"Put up your hands!" he was shouting. "Put up your hands!"
"Go 'way t' the divil out o' that!"
"Come on if you 're fit! Come on if you 're man enough! I 'll give you a beating you 've been spoiling for for the last thirty years."
"Go 'way t' the divil out o' that!"
"I will not go 'way out o' that. It's fight I want. I 'm boiling mad for one clout at your ugly gob."
"Will you whisht!" The coachman had seen Lady Margery.
"I will not whisht. Put up your hands! I 'll not stop till I 'm dug out of ye!"
"Kelleher, Brady, what's this?"
The groom dropped his fighting attitude and pulled off his cap.
"'T is just a foolish wee argument we were having, m'lady. I was telling this bloody old cod—begging your pardon, m'lady, for giving him his right name—that Lynchehaun the murderer was by rights a cousin to my mother's people, and he said that it was n't in either side of my family to produce a fine murdering man like the same Lynchehaun. So I up and gives him a tip about himself and his drunken old mother...."
"Kelleher!"
"Not that I know anything about her, m'lady, but I just thought that if he had any pride, it would cut him to the quick!"
Nobody in the world but herself, she thought often, could have kept them. But if she sent them away, where would they go? The old gardener—could he last away from the soil he had tended with the care of parents?
And the maids would be lost in a modern world. And for all that the two men in the stable fought, they loved each other in a strange way. She couldn't pension them off; and, also, they got their work done in a surprisingly efficient manner.
And, besides, she could not see new servants in the old house. The maids were as much part of the place as the portraits of dead Kytelers on the walls. They had blended into a mellow composition. They all loved her in their queer selfish way, depended on her for vitality. She could hardly go on visits any more, so much did they grumble. "Sure, it is n't to England you 'd be going, my lady, and the grand house you have of your own!" And not only the servants but the old drowsing dog, Sheila, the little Scottie bitch, who was drawing on fourteen years old and nearly blind, and the foxhound puppies, who waited for her when she was n't there, and ancient Fenian, the old steeplechaser, who was near ending his days. All these laid imploring hands on her.
Her mother she had not known, the countess dying when Margery was not yet two; and the earl had never married again. But the house had been a mother to her. The deep drawing-room, the heavy formal dining-room, the little sitting-room so bright. There was no place in the world so comfortable as the drawing-room of Mount Kyteler in the winter evenings, with the portraits blinking in the light of candles in their silver sticks and the glimmer of the sea-coal in the grate. And her own room at night, on moonlight nights, whence she could see Dublin Bay shine silver and the dark trees bending in the breeze from Three Rock Mountain.
Every tree she knew; every tree had for her a personality. The copper beech was friendly and kindly, the rowan-trees aloof but kindly, the oaks majestic but clumsily kindly; the apple-trees were smiling. All the flowers she knew, all the shrubs. They had seen her stumble as a child of two, they had seen her rollick as a child of seven, they had seen her dream at ten, and grow ugly at twelve, and grow pretty in her late teens, and at twenty beautiful, and now beautiful and assured.
In no other country than Ireland, in no other city than Dublin could such beauty and grace exist alone in an old house. They would have fêted her, made merry with her, married her. A young beauty in an ancient house with grizzled servants. But in Ireland a great beauty has so many competitors for the songs of the poets, the passion of the young men. There is the biting excitement of treason, politics charged with lightning. There are the far places of the world calling to Irish adventurers. There are careers calling for vitality and ambition. And what young woman dare presume to bother poets when there are great purple mountains to enthrall them, and wooded glens and the crashing sea? And winds like wine. The crooning of great romantic ghosts. And an Irish poet is not a pale man to be comforted by women, but a lithe, muscular man with a sword.
Also, in Ireland is little marriage or giving in marriage, if we except the peasantry and the very poor. The young men spread their wings to go abroad, and when they return it is usually with a foreign bride, so that there are convents innumerable in that country, also many mad women at large, as in politics. Unless a girl is very rich she has little chance of a happy marriage. A title may help her, curates and captains in the army having a belief that the daughters of earls will help them to preferment; also, it sounds well, they think—the Reverend Septimus and Lady Jones, Captain and Lady Plantagenet Murphy. There are sadder things in Ireland than the weeping skies.
But though the right of marriage may be often denied them, young Irish girls have always their inalienable right of dreams. Soft winds and nodding flowers and sun going down on the western hills, and with the twilight comes always a love. Out of the blue twilight and soft wind they weave a magical life of love that will be always young, of a world that will be ever kind, of little dark children and loyal friends, of the pageantry of foreign cities, of triumphs for their own beauty and the lover's ability. The skies are always blue in their dreams, and tragedies there are none, nor any sordidness. And they grow old so peacefully in their dreams, so gracefully, and death comes so gently, so kindly—the lover always by, always young, always loving.... Out of the blue twilight and soft wind they dream their dreams, and they never notice that the blue of the twilight has become a threatening black, and the soft wind has withdrawn in itself with the set sun, as a flower does, and all of a sudden it has grown cold, damp, and lonely and cold.
The dream of Margery was around Mount Kyteler. It seemed to her that the house, and the garden and the trees, and the old servants, and the drowsing dogs, and the ancient steeplechaser out to grass were all part of the French nursery, "La Belle au Bois Dormant," "The Beauty in the Sleeping Wood." And one day the princely lover would come, breaking through the hedge of Irish stillness, and Mount Kyteler would bloom again. The backs of the gardeners would straighten and the maids become young again. And by some strange magical process the steeplechaser would again win races, and the old dog win ribbons, and children would stumble under the tall trees, as she had stumbled twenty years before. All this would happen with the coming of the prince, all this she could see, but his features she could not plainly see. Only she knew this, that his face would be shining with love and smiles.
So that when she met him she did not recognize him at first, nor for many days afterward. On his face were puzzlement and a frown. A clean-cut, red-headed man, he was standing in the road on a frosty November morning, when she was out walking a brace of foxhound puppies. The puppies seemed delighted at the sight of him, all but tearing the leash from her hand.
"Could you tell me," he asked, "where Tallaght is?" He pulled the ears of the foxhound puppies.
"You 're in Tallaght," she said.
He looked incredulously at the scattered houses.
"Is this—"
"Yes. Is there any place in particular you 're looking for?"
"No," he said, "just Tallaght."
"Well, you have Tallaght." She laughed a little at his rueful expression. "You seem surprised."
"I am," he laughed. "For many years, when I was a child, I have been hearing about Tallaght, until it had assumed tremendous proportions for me, and now—"
"Abroad?"
"Yes."
"Australia?"
"No. America."
"What are you looking for? The old homestead?"
"No," he said; "I don't think there ever was an old homestead. There might have been a little cabin somewhere, but it was n't here." He laughed. "I 'll tell you. My father was an old Fenian, and he was at Tallaght when they gathered to descend on Dublin, but for some reason or other the battle was not fought, nor the enemy driven into the sea, nor anything. And my father, with a lot of others, fled to America. But I had an impression of a mountain pass and camp fires and great guns."
"It rained all night, did n't it? Did your father say?"
"No, he never mentioned the rain."
She liked this man, she told herself directly. The big, clean look of him, his gray eyes and red hair, his splendid teeth. Also there was something about him so easy. He was Irish; no mistaking that. But pleasant, fine Irish. It was not always you met them pleasant and sincere. And this man was sincere. This man was not inimical. They would make a nice pair, she thought simply, he big and clear-eyed and red, herself slim and dark.
"Could I bother you again?" he asked. "How do I get to the railway station?"
"I 'm going that way, if you care to come."
There was a nice chivalry about him; she felt that as they walked together. Was that American? she wondered.
"May I ask you something? Are most Americans like you?"
"Yes," he said, "of course."
She was puzzled. She had an impression that all Americans were called "Silas" and twanged, "I guess." Also, they chewed gum. There was something wrong.
"You are n't called Silas, are you?"
"No; Richard. Did you think all Americans were called Silas?"
"Something like that," she admitted. And they looked at each other and laughed. She had a joyous feeling that the maids at home would disapprove of this strongly. And that the old gardeners would tremble with rage. But the dogs approved.
"What sort of time are you having in Ireland?"
"Not so good," he admitted. "I 've been here a week, and the only friends I 've made are cab-drivers. Also, I have a bowing acquaintance with a head waiter."
"Cab-drivers are good fun," she ruminated.
They were at the station now.
"Look here," she said suddenly as she was leaving: "if you are having a rotten time like that in Dublin, and know nobody, it must be lonely! I wonder—" She looked at him fearlessly. "Look here: if you 'd care to, come out and see me at Mount Kyteler—my name 's Kyteler. There are dogs and horses and an old house you might like to see."
"May I? Thanks. My name's O'Conor. I 'll come, then, Miss Kyteler."
"Lady Margery Kyteler."
"Do I call you all that? Lady Margery Kyteler?"
"No. Just Lady Margery."
"Lady Margery! That's nice."
When he came, he came with a great armful of flowers, which Margery received with a smile and courtesy, and turned over to Rose Ann. He seemed scrubbed, so glistening was he. How like an old friend he was, with his firm handshake and laughing eyes.
"Now," he said, "I 'd like the worst over."
"What is the worst?"
"Oh, meeting people. Your relatives. The Lady This and the Lady That, and the countess, and the duke. Above all, the duke."
"There are none," she said. "I live here by myself."
"All by yourself, in this big house?"
"Yes."
"Might I ask, are you married?"
"No-o-o," she pondered. "Um, no."
He looked at her incredulously. He had never in his life seen any one so beautiful, he thought. The small face, the soft and sweet and smiling dark eyes, the hair like a perfumed dark cap on a head whose sweet shape he could imagine. And the supple figure in the frock that was close in the bosom and belled like a dancer's from the waist down.
"Well, that beats—" he murmured.
"Beats hell, doesn't it?" She finished for him.
"These old pictures, some of them are good." She smiled. "That's Gilles de Kyteler—not the one who came with Strongbow but a later one. And that's Fulke Kyteler, who rebelled with Silken Thomas, and tried to burn the Archbishop of Cashel in his own cathedral. They were very disappointed when they found the archbishop had slipped out. And that—" she pointed to a polished oval of black stone, framed in antique silver—"is Dame Alice Kyteler's magical mirror. She was the greatest of the Irish witches."
She gave him tea and listened to him talk of America and of his work there. He was some sort of engineer, building bridges. She got an impression of him standing on an artifice of some kind, with plans in his hand, directing a whole crowd of workmen. He had been in Brazil and in China.
"You must be a good engineer," she said in her direct way.
"I 'm supposed to be a very good engineer," he laughed.
"Do you make a great deal of money?"
"A good deal. Not a great deal."
"I 'm glad," she said. He looked at her in surprise. She was dusting her fingers daintily, but her eyes smiled. She was really glad. And he said to himself, "My soul! we 're friends."
She took him into the garden, and he laughed.
"And I brought you flowers." There was a little shade of disappointment in his laugh.
"Indeed and indeed—" she looked him in the eyes and lied sweetly—"'Twas I needed them, for it's the devil and all for me to get any flowers out of my own garden. My two old gardeners are that mean! Darby 'd begrudge me a daisy for fear it 'd leave an unsightly gap in the grass. There he is, watching me for fear I 'll pull a leaf. Darby, this is Mr. O'Conor, and I 'm showing him the garden."
"If he 'd come fifteen years ago, your Ladyship, or even ten years ago, he 'd have seen the like would have made his heart glad. But in the latter years, with the bad weather that's in it, now too much rain and now not enough rain at all, and the wind that nothing is a shelter against, and the soil that's growing poor, for all the time that's spent on it, till it's hard to rear anything, even a head o' cabbage itself—m'lady, will you for God's sake leave off pulling at that hedge?"
She took him to see old Fenian in the paddock, and she liked the way he pulled the jumper's ears, ran his firm hand down the fetlocks.
"Was he a great horse?"
"Nearly the greatest of his day," she answered. "He never won a Grand National, but was third twice and second once. He had a great heart. No horse tried harder. The people loved him.... Kelleher, this is Mr. O'Conor, from America."
"From America, is it, your Ladyship? Oh, sure, they 've fine horses over there. But they 've got to come to us for the hunters. Begging your Ladyship's pardon, but was your Honor ever in Kansas City?"
"I was."
"D' your Honor ever meet a man named Hannigan out there? Red Hannigan, they called him, a holy terror for bloody murder, the same man was."
"I don't think so."
"He was n't as red as your Honor—begging your pardon—but sandy like. And he carried his head on one side on account of a belt in the gob he got in a wee argument out at the Lamb Doyle's."
"He must have gone when I got there."
"He must have, your Honor, or you 'd have met him. A genius for horses, the same Red. 'T was he cured Colonel Nolan's charger of biting. 'Roast a leg of lamb,' he told them, 'and take it out of the oven mad hot, and when he offers to bite,' says he, let him bite into that. By God! he 'll never bite again.' And he never did."
Came at last the time for leaving.
"I wonder," he ventured, "I wonder if I could get you to come in and have dinner and go to the theater. I don't know what kind of a theater it is, but would you?"
How like a flower she herself was, he thought—the white stalk of her dress, the sweet face, the dark head! She frowned. His heart sank.
"I don't see how I could," she said. "I 've got to get back here. I usually take the dinners and theaters in a quarterly debauch of one week. No, I don't see how ..."
His heart sank a little farther. Was this definitely good-by?
"No, but I 'll tell you what you could do, if you 'd care to. Come out on Saturday and take me to the Leopardstown races. I 'm sick of going alone."
His heart rose.
"And come back and have dinner with me instead."
His heart sang.
Came now a day of wonder. Day of Leopardstown, frosty morning and road glistening like pewter, and the grass crackling underfoot, stiff with hoar. The little race-course at the foot of the mountains. Crowds stamping in the friendly cold. The horses jibbing, curving under their jockeys at the starting-wire. Flash of jockeys' colors, gold and green, red and white, all sorts of blue—sky, sea, St. Patrick's. The drop of the flag. The flying wedge of stretching mounts and huddled riders. Thunder of hoofs coming to jumps, hurdling, lightning spring and over, larruping canter toward the next, smack of crop, over, by Heaven! The hedge now and the five-barred gate, and the stretch toward the judges' stand. A mad cheering and the clanging of a great bell. The favorite 's won!
A little hush, a rush to the ring to see the horses for the next race. She wore a great frieze coat, like a man's, and a riding-hat, like a man's too. At a little distance she seemed like a boy in clothes too big for him, and as one came nearer, one noticed, between the collar and the brim of the hat, the sweet narrow neck and the hair gathered up like some very little girl's. There was something heart-pulling in it, like a child's curled fingers. And then she turned, and her face showed, pointed like a cub fox's. The cheeks flushed with the cold, the lips with a merry smile, her eyes with a deeper smile—there were so many there who knew her, and to whom O'Conor was presented, including an Irish duchess, with a voice like a saw, who rasped; "H' a' yo?" and then wailed, "My God! D' yo' ever see such a God-forsaken bunch o' mokes in all your life?" And a tall, thin baronet who asked him was he one of the O'Conors of Baltimore, to which he replied, no, that he was one of the O'Conors of Forty-seventh Street and Seventh Avenue. "Ah, yes! Ah, yes!" There was a French cavalry officer buying horses in Ireland, a dark, thin man with a heavy mustache, who looked more like a New York plain-clothes policeman than a hero of Algiers. Also, there was Mr. Kelly.
Margery had noticed a great rangy gelding in the ring. He looked to have the power of a steam-engine.
"See?"
O'Conor nodded.
"Flying Fish."
A large red-faced man with a stout ash plant was passing.
"Oh, Mr. Kelly!"
"Ah, sure, Lady Margery!"
"Do you know anything of Flying Fish?" She lowered her voice. "Is he a good horse?"
"He is. And he is n't."
"Might he win this race?"
"He might. And he might n't."
"You 're not telling me much."
"I am," he looked wise, "and I am n't," he looked wiser.
"Good enough," she said. "Come," she told O'Conor.
Bookies crying raucously in the little ring. Signaling of touts. Milling of people.
"I 'll lay two to one the field," a booky was shouting. His eyes were all but out of his cheeks. His shoulders hunched with effort. His voice exploded as though thrown against a wall, and he atomized a fine spray before him. "I 'll lay three to one bar one; I'll lay four to one bar two. I'll lay even money Munster Pride. Even money Irish Dragoon. Four to one Little Dorrit. Seven to two Carnation. Here, four to one Carnation. Eight to one Murderer's Pet. Twelve to one Irish Gentility. I 'll lay twenty to one—twenty to one Thunderbolt. Twenty-five to one Flying Fish—"
"How much, Joe Jack?"
"Is it you, Lady Margery? God love you. I'll lay you thirty to one Flying Fish. How much will you take?"
"Ten pounds' worth."
"Three hundred and ten pounds Flying Fish, Lady Margery Kyteler. I hope you win, m'lady. I do so there I 'll lay two to one the field. I 'll lay three to one bar one. I 'll lay four to one bar two—"
Dropping of flag and clatter of bell. There they were in the distance, flying down the regulation. They rise to the ditch, three abreast. Canter again—the water jump. The lump becomes a line. And who's ahead? Can you see? Carnation! Ah, my jewel Carnation! And now the bank. There's a horse down. Thunderbolt! Ah, be damned to the same Thunderbolt! Is that the gray ahead? It is so! Is it Flying Fish is in it? Flying Fish it is, and he running like a hare! 'T is win in a canter he will. They 're coming to the hedge. Ah! what is it, Mister? Flying Fish it is, and he stopping dead. A dead stop he 's made, and the jockey pasting the ribs out of him. Ah, he 's on now, but in the heel of the hunt he is! Carnation wins. Carnation—ah, my sweet wee lady!
They passed the post, Flying Fish bringing up the rear with a supercilious arrogance.
"Fish!" Margery wrinkled her nose in disgust. "Fish was good."
And "There goes my new hat!" she wailed. And who should pass by but Mr. Kelly. Out of his red face peered an inquisitive gray eye.
"You didn't?" he said.
"I did."
"How much?"
"Ten pounds."
"Ah, well," he decided cruelly; "It'll teach you." And he passed on.
"Well, the devil scald you!" she called after him, "and your thick ignorance!"
Last race and the end of the day. He swung her lightly to the side-car. Firm elbows, rounded arms, and how light she was, elastic! A woman in a shawl and a battered sailor-hat stood with folded arms and began a street ballad:
"Bold Robert Emmet, the darling of Ireland!Bold Robert Emmet, he died with a smile!Farewell, my company-ions both loyal and loving!A hero I 'll die for the Emerald Isle."
Margery was grinning above the press of the people, O'Conor turned and dug his hand in his pocket. Threw the woman a large silver coin.
"Well, may God keep and preserve you, my fine noble red-headed man! And the sweet lady beside you—may God bless her! And may you live comfortable and die happy, the both of you, and leave behind you a dozen of the finest children."
"Drive on! Drive on!" O'Conor implored.
"Is it over the heads of the decent people you 'd have me drive, then?" asked the jarvey, in abrupt horror.
"And of the twelve may six of them be like yourself, fine and red-headed, and six like herself, sweet and dark. Ah, 't is the fine man you have, my sweet mistress!"
O'Conor saw the scarlet of her face against the black hair. Eh, Lord, how beautiful she was!