"And what'll you be plazed to have for supper, miss?" asked Biddy.
"What can you give us?" asked Mr. Dashwood.
"Anything you like, sorr."
"Well, get us a cold roast chicken and some ham. I'm sure you'd like chicken, wouldn't you?" turning to the girl.
"Yes," said she, "as long as they haven't to cook it. I'm famished."
Biddy retired. There was no cold chicken and there was no ham on the premises; but the spirit of hospitality demanded that ten minutes should be spent in pretending to look for them.
They had fried rashers of bacon—there were no eggs—and tea, and when Miss Grimshaw retired for the night to a stuffy bedroom ornamented with a stuffed cat, she could hear the deep tones of Moriarty's voice colloguing with Mrs. Sheelan, telling her most likely of the trick he had played on the bailiff man.
She wondered how far that benighted individual had wandered by this time on his road to Cloyne, and what he would say to Moriarty, and what Moriarty would say to him, when they met.
She could not but perceive that the commercialmorality of the house she was going to was of an old-fashioned type, dating from somewhere in the times of the buccaneers, and she felt keenly interested in the probable personality of Mr. French.
Moriarty she liked unreservedly; and in Mr. Dashwood, her fellow-stranger in this unknown land, she felt an interest which he was returning as he lay in bed, pipe in mouth, and his head on a pillow stuffed presumably with brickbats.
Andy Meehan was a jockey who had already won Mr. French three races. He was a product of the estate, and a prodigy, though by no means an infant.
Nobody knew his age exactly. Under five feet, composed mostly of bone with a little skin stretched tightly over it, with a face that his cap nearly obliterated, Andy presented a problem in physiology very difficult of solution. That is to say, in Mr. French's words, the more he ate the lighter he grew. In the old days, before Mr. French took him into his stable as helper, when food was scarce and Andy half-starved, he was comparatively fat. Housed and fed well, he waxed thin, and kicked. Kicked for a better job, and got it. He was a Heaven-born jockey. He possessed hands, knees, and head. He was made to go on a horse just as a limpet is made to go on a rock. Nothing on the ground, he was everything when mounted. He was insight, dexterity, coolness, courage, and judgment.
Several owners had tried to lure Andy away from his master. Prospects of good pay and advancement, however, had no charm for Andy. French was his master, and to all alien offers Andy had only one reply. "To h—l wid them." I doubt if Andy's vocabulary had more than two hundred words. Except to Mr. French or Moriarty he was very speechless. "Yes"and "No" for ordinary purposes, and when he was vexed, "To h—l wid you," served his almost everyday needs.
Last night he had single-handed taken Nip and Tuck to the station, and entrained them, returning on foot, and this morning he was mending an old saddle in the sunshine of the stableyard when Mr. French appeared at the gate. Mr. French had come out of the house without his hat. He had a cigar in his mouth, and his hands in his pockets. He gave some directions to Andy to be handed on to Moriarty when that personage arrived, and then with his own hand opened the upper door of a loose-box.
A lovely head was thrust out. It was Garryowen's. The eye so full of kindliness and fire, the mobile nostrils telling of delicate sensibilities and fine feeling, the nobility and intelligence that spoke in every line of that delicately-cut head—these had to be seen to be understood.
Garryowen was more than a horse to Mr. French. He was a friend, and more even than that. Garryowen was to pull the family fortunes out of the mire, to raise the family name, to crown his master with laurels.
Garryowen was French's last card on which he was about to speculate his last penny. In simpler language, he was to run in the City and Suburban in the ensuing year and to win it. I dare say you have already gathered the fact that Mr. French's financial affairs were rather involved. The Nip and Tuck incident, however, was only a straw showing thedirection of the wind, which threatened in a few months to strengthen into a gale. Only an incident—for the debt to Harrison was not considerable, and it would not require more than a week or so to collect the money to satisfy it.
The bother to Mr. French was that in the spring of next year he would have to find fifteen hundred pounds to satisfy the claims of a gentleman named Lewis, and how he was to do this and at the same time bear the expense of getting the horse to England and running him was a question quite beyond solution at present.
Not only had the horse to be run, but he had to be backed.
French had decided to win the City and Suburban. He wished sometimes now that he had made Punchestown the limit of his desires; but having come to a decision, this gentleman never went back on it. Besides, he would never have so good a chance again of winning a big English race and a fortune at the same time, for Garryowen was a dark horse, if ever a horse was dark, and a flyer, if ever a creature without wings deserved the title.
"Oh, bother the money! We'll get it somehow," French would say, closing his bank-book and tearing up the sheet of note-paper on which he had been making figures. He calculated that, gathering together all his resources, he would have enough to run the horse and back him for a thousand. To do this he would have to perform the most intricate evolutionsin the borrowing line. It could be done, however, if Lewis were left out of the calculation.
The fifteen hundred owing to Lewis was a debt which would have to be paid by the third of March, and the City and Suburban is run in April. If it were not paid then Lewis would seize Garryowen with the rest of Mr. French's goods, and that unfortunate gentleman would be stranded so high and dry that he would never swim again.
The one bright spot in his affairs was the fact that Effie had two hundred and fifty a year, settled on her so tightly by a prescient grandfather that no art or artifice could unsettle it or fling it into the melting-pot.
This was French's pet grievance, and by a man's pet grievance you may generally know him.
Garryowen blew into his master's waistcoat, allowed his ears to be stroked, nibbled a lump of sugar, and replied to some confidential remarks of his owner by a subdued, flickering whinny. Then Mr. French barred the door, and, leaving the stableyard, came out into the kitchen-garden, whence a good view could be had of the road.
The adventure of the governess on the preceding night had greatly tickled his fancy. The idea of a sedate, elderly lady assisting, even unwillingly, in the marooning of the bailiff, had amused him, but that was nothing to the fact that Moriarty had used her for bait.
This morning, however, the amusement had wornoff, and he was reckoning uncomfortably on an interview with an outraged elderly female, who would possibly carry her resentment to the point of renouncing her situation and returning home.
He looked at his watch. It pointed to half-past ten. He looked at the road winding away, a white streak utterly destitute of life or sign of Moriarty, the car, or the dreaded governess. The fine weather still held, and the distant hills stood out grand in the brave morning light.
The gossoon sent by Moriarty the previous day had announced that Moriarty was going to drive the bailiff to the "ould castle" and drop him there, at the same time giving full details of the plan. The arrival of the outraged bailiff had to be counted on later in the day, and would, no doubt, form a counterpart to the arrival of the outraged governess.
To a man of French's philosophical nature, however, these things were, to quote Sophocles, "in the future," non-existent at present and not worth bothering about till they materialised themselves.
As he stood, casting a leisurely glance over the great sweep of country that lay before him, a black, moving speck far away on the road caught his eye. He watched it as it drew nearer and developed. It was the car. He shaded his eyes as it approached. Three people were on it—Moriarty and two others, a woman and a man.
The idea that the bailiff and the governess were arriving together, allied forces prepared to attack him, crossed his brain for one wild instant. Then hedismissed it. Moriarty was much too clever a diplomat to allow such a thing as that.
Then as the car came up the drive he saw that the woman was a young and pretty girl, and the man youthful and well dressed, and, concluding that the governess had vanished into thin air, and that these were visitors of some sort, he hurried back to the house and shouted for Norah, the parlour-maid.
"Open the drawing-room and pull up the blinds," cried Mr. French. "There's visitors coming. Let them in, and tell them I'll be down in a minute."
He ran upstairs to make himself tidy, being at the moment attired in a shocking old shooting-coat gone at the elbows, and as to his feet, in a pair of carpet slippers.
As he changed he heard the visitors being admitted, and then Norah came tumbling up the stairs and thumped at his door.
"They're in the draaing-room, sir!"
"All right," said Mr. French. "I'll be down in a minute."
Mr. Dashwood and his companion had breakfasted together at the inn. The double Freemasonry of youth and health had made the meal a happy affair, despite the teapot with a broken spout, the bad, sad, salt bacon, and the tea that tasted like a decoction of mahogany shavings.
It was Miss Grimshaw who proposed that, as Mr. Dashwood was going to see his friend, and as she was bound on the same errand, they might use the same car.
Moriarty, who was consulted, consented with alacrity.
"He's not turned up yet, miss," said Moriarty, as he held the horse while Miss Grimshaw got on the car.
"I wonder what's become of him?" said the girl, settling the rug on her knees.
"Faith, and I expect he's wonderin' that himself," said Moriarty, taking the reins; "unless he's tuck a short cut across the country and landed in a bog-hole." All of which was Greek to Mr. Dashwood.
In the drawing-room of Drumgool House they were now awaiting the arrival of Mr. French.
"I say," said Mr. Dashwood. "I hope he is the man I met in London."
"I hope so, too," said the girl, looking round the quaint old room, with its potpourri vases, its antimacassars, its furniture of a distant day. The place smelt like an old valentine with a tinge of musk clinging to it. Pretty women had once sat here, had played on that rosewood piano whose voice was like the voice of a harp in the bass, like a banjo in the treble; had woven antimacassars, had read the romances of Mr. Richardson, had waited for the gentlemen after dinner, the claret-flushed gentlemen whose cheery voices would be heard no more.
"I hope so, too," said Miss Grimshaw. "I'm all right, for I'm the governess, you know. If he isn't, it will look very strange us arriving together, so you must explain, please. Are you good at explaining things?"
"Rather! I say, is he a family man? I mean, are there a lot of children?"
"No. Mr. French has only one little daughter, an invalid. I'm not a real governess. I don't take a salary, and all that. I've just come over to—— Well, I want a home for a while, and I want to see Ireland."
"Strikes me you'll see a lot of it here," said Mr. Dashwood, looking out at the vast solitudes to the east, where the hills stood ranged like armed men guarding a country where the bird shadow and the cloud shadow were the only moving things.
"Yes," said Miss Grimshaw, and yawned. She liked Mr. Dashwood, but his light-hearted conversation just now rather palled upon her.
"And won't you catch it in the winter here?" said he, as he watched Croag Mahon, a giant monolith, sunlit a moment ago, and now wreathing itself with mist just as a lady wreathes herself with a filmy scarf. "What on earth will you do with yourself when it rains?"
"I don't know," replied Miss Grimshaw. "Don't be gloomy. Ah!"
The door opened, and Mr. French entered the room—a gentleman that Bobby Dashwood had never seen in his life before.
The master of Drumgool, genial and cosey, and the very personification of welcome, had scarcely taken in with a glance the two pleasant-looking young people who had invaded his drawing-room when the explainer of situations rushed into the breach.
"I'm awfully sorry," said he, "but I've made a mistake. I met this young lady at the inn at Cloyne, and as she was coming here I came on the same car, for I thought you were a Mr. Michael French I'd met in London. I've been fishing down here."
"You expected me last night," said Miss Grimshaw. "My name is Grimshaw."
"Faith," said Mr. French, "this is a pleasant surprise. Sit down, sit down."
"I ought to say my name is Dashwood," put in the explainer.
"Sit down, sit down. I'm delighted to see you both. Staying at the inn, are you? And how do you like Mrs. Sheelan? And you met at the inn? Of course you did. Miss Grimshaw, I don't know how, in the name of wonder, I'm going to apologise to you for driving you all over the country. Is that chair easy? No, it's not—take this one. Look at it before you sit in it. Dan O'Connell took his seat in that chair when he was here for the elections, in my grandfather's time, and I have the bed upstairs he slept in. WhichMichael French, I wonder, was it you met? Was it a man with a big, black beard?"
"Yes," replied Mr. Dashwood.
"And gold-rimmed spectacles?"
"Yes."
"Did he bawl like a bull?"
"He had rather a loud voice."
"That's him. He's my cousin, bad luck to him! No matter. I'll be even with him some day yet. He's the biggest black—I mean, we have never been friends; but that's always the way between relations. And that reminds me—I've never bid you welcome to Drumgool, Miss Grimshaw. Welcome you are to the house and all it holds, and make yourself at home! And here we are sitting in the old drawing-room that's only used for company once in a twelvemonth. Come down to the sitting-room, both of you. There's a fire there, and Effie will be in in a minute. She's out driving in the donkey-carriage. This isn't a bad bit of an old hall, is it?" continued he as they passed through the hall. "It's the oldest part of the house. Do you see that split in the panelling up there? That's where a bullet went in the duel between Counsellor Kinsella and Colonel White. 'Black White' was his nickname, and well he deserved it. They fought here, for it was snowing so thick outside you couldn't see a man at ten paces. Eighteen hundred and one, that was, and they in their graves all these years! No, no one was killed. Only a tenant that had come in to see the fun, and he got in the line of fire. He recovered, I believe, though they say he carried the bullet in hishead to the end of his days. This is the sitting-room. It's the warmest room in winter. The old house is as full of holes as a colander, but you'll never get a draught here. Norah!"—putting his head out of the door.
"Yes, sir."
"Bring the decanters. You don't mind smoking, Miss Grimshaw? That's a good job. Are you fond of horses, Mr. Dashwood?"
"Rather."
"Well, there's the hoof of the Shaughraun. He carried everything before him in Ireland. He was my grandfather's, and he was entered for the Derby, and some blackguards poisoned him. It would be before your time, and his death made more stir than the death of anything that ever went on four legs, except, maybe, old Nebuchadnezzar. They made songs about it, and I have a ballad upstairs in my desk a yard long my father bought from an old woman in Abbey-street. Here's the whisky. Sure, Norah, what have you been dreaming about, and why didn't you bring the wine for the young lady? Not drink wine! Well, now, just say the word, and I'll get you some tea. Or would you like coffee? Well, well. Say 'when,' Mr. Dashwood."
"I like this room," said Miss Grimshaw, looking round at the books and the oak panelling. "It's so cosey, and yet so ghosty. Have you a ghost?"
"A which? I beg your pardon," said Mr. French, pausing in his operations with a soda-water siphon.
"A ghost."
"I believe there's an old woman without a head walks in the top corridor by the servants' bedrooms. At least, that's the story; but it's all nonsense, though it does to frighten the girls with, and get them to bed early. Who's that?"
"If you plaze, sir," said Norah, speaking through the half-open door, "Miss Effie's back from her drive and upstairs, and she's wild to see the young lady."
"That's me, I suppose," said Miss Grimshaw. "I'll go up, if I may."
"Sure, with pleasure," said Mr. French, holding the door open for her with all the grace of a Brummell, while the girl passed out.
Then he closed the door, waited till she was well out of earshot, and then, sitting down in an armchair, he "rocked and roared" with laughter.
"Don't speak to me," said he, though Mr. Dashwood had not said a word. "Did you ever see me trying to keep my face? Sure, man, she's the governess, and I thought it was an old lady in spectacles that would be coming. Faith, and I'll have to get a chaperon. You might have blown me away with a fan when she said who she was. But I didn't let on, did I? I didn't show the start she's given me? Are you sure?"
Assured on this point, Mr. French poured himself out another glass of whisky. He explained that he'd got Miss Grimshaw "out of an advertisement." Then, much to the edification of Mr. Dashwood, he went into the bailiff business, the beauty of Nip and Tuck, theprice Colonel Sherbourne had paid, explaining that it was not the money he cared about so much as the injury it would have done him in Sherbourne's estimation if the horses had not been delivered.
It was an adventure after the heart of Bobby Dashwood, who, in his short life, had dealt freely and been dealt with by money-lenders. Mr. Dashwood was what women call a "nice-looking boy," but he was not particularly intellectual when you got him off the subjects he had made particularly his own. He had failed for Sandhurst. If a proficiency in cricket and fives had been allowed to count, he would have got high marks; but they wanted mathematics, and Mr. Dashwood could not supply this requirement; in French, too, he was singularly deficient. The deficiencies of Mr. Dashwood would have furnished out half a dozen young men well equipped for failure in business, and that is why, I suppose, he managed to make such a success of life.
The joy Mr. Dashwood managed to extract from that usually unjoyful thing called life hinted at alchemy rather than chemistry. Joy, too, without any by-products in the way of headaches or heartaches. Utterly irresponsible, but without a serious vice, always bright, clean, and healthy, and alert for any sort of sport as a terrier, he was as good to meet and have around one as a spring morning—that is to say, when one was in tune for him.
He had five hundred a year of his own, with prospects of great wealth on the death of an uncle, and even out of this poverty he managed to extractpleasure of a sort in the excitement of settling with creditors and trying to make both ends meet—which they never did.
"What a joke!" said Mr. Dashwood. "And she never split. She said she'd been leaving a gentleman at an old castle—and she never grumbled, though she was nearly dropping off the car. I say, isn't she a ripper?"
"Here's to her," said French. "And now, come out and have a look at the stables and grounds. Lunch is at one, and we have an hour."
The youth and prettiness of Miss Grimshaw after the first pleasing shock did not trouble him in the least. A straight-minded man and a soul of honour in everything not appertaining to bill discounters, the propriety or impropriety of the situation did not cause him a moment's thought. The only thing that worried him for a second or two was the remembrance of Mr. Giveen. How would that gentleman act under the intoxication sure to be produced by the newcomer's youth and prettiness?
"She'd have been down herself to see you, miss," said Norah as she led the way upstairs, "only she's gone in the legs. This way, miss, along the passidge; this is the door."
A scuffling noise made itself evident as Norah turned the door-handle, and Miss Grimshaw, entering a brightly and pleasantly furnished room, found herself face to face with Miss French, who was sitting up on a sofa, flushed and bright-eyed and with the appearance of having suddenly returned to her invalidhoodand position on the couch after an excursion about the apartment.
"Hullo!" said the child.
"Hullo!" said Miss Grimshaw.
"Oh, will you look at her?" cried Norah. "And the rug I put round her legs all over the place! You've been off the couch, Miss Effie!"
"I only put my feet on the ground," protested the child. "You needn't be going on at me. Bother my old legs! I wish they was cut off!"
"And so you are Effie?" said Miss Grimshaw, taking her seat on the edge of the couch. "Do you know who I am?"
"Rather," replied Miss French. "You're Miss Grimshaw."
There was a subdued chuckle in the tone of her voice, as though Miss Grimshaw was a joke that had just come off, rather than a governess who had just arrived—a chuckle hinting at the fact that Miss Grimshaw had been the subject of humorous discussion and speculation in the French household for some time past.
"You'll ring, miss, when you want me to show you your room?" said Norah. Then she withdrew, and Miss Grimshaw found herself alone with her charge.
The room was half nursery, half sitting-room, papered with a sprightly green-sprigged and rose-patterned paper. Pictures from Christmas numbers of theGraphicand pictures of cats by Louis Wain adorned the walls; there were a number of yellow-backed books on the book-shelf, and in one corner a pile of old comicpapers—Punches,Judys, andFuns—all of an ancient date.
All the light literature in Drumgool House found its way here—and remained. The yellow-backed books were the works of Arthur Sketchley, a most pleasing humourist whose name has faded almost from our memories. "Mrs. Brown's 'Oliday Outings," "Mrs. Brown in Paris," "Mrs. Brown at the Seaside"—all were here. They had been bought by some member of the French family with a taste for humour, as had also the comic papers.
To Miss French in her captivity the dead-and-gone artists, the dead-and-gone jokes, the fashions and manners of the eighties, which are as Thebes to us, were fresh and vigorous. Up-to-date papers and books came little in her way, for French was not a reading man.
"Where's your spectacles?" asked Effie, after they had conversed for a while, tucking the rug round herself and speaking with the jocularity and familiarity which generally is associated with long acquaintanceship.
"I beg your pardon," said Miss Grimshaw.
"Father said you'd be in spectacles."
"Oh, my spectacles—they are coming by the next train. Also my snuffbox and a birch-rod."
"Get out with you!" said Miss French, moving under the rug, as if someone had tickled her. "Your snuffbox and your birch-rod! Get out with you!"
It was the first time that Miss Grimshaw had come across a child brought up almost entirely by servants—and Irish servants at that—but there was an entire good humour about the product that made it not displeasing.
"So that's how you welcome me, telling me to get out almost as soon as I have come! Very well, I am going."
"Off with you, then!" replied the other, falling into the vein of badinage as easily as a billiard ball into a pocket. "Patwallop, along with you. I don't care. Hi! come back."
"What is it?" inquired Miss Grimshaw, now at the door, with her hand on the door handle.
"I want to tell you somethin'."
"Well?"
"I want to whisper it."
Miss Grimshaw came to the couch.
"Bend down closer."
She bent. Two small arms flung themselves tentaclewise round her neck, and she was nearly deafened by a "Boo!" in her ear, followed and apologised for by a moist and warm-hearted kiss.
* * * * *
Extract from a letter addressed by Miss V. Grimshaw to a friend:
"Since I last wrote to you, young Mr. Dashwood has left. He stayed three days. Mr. French insisted on his staying, sent for his luggage to the inn at Cloyne, put him up in the best bedroom, where I believe Dan O'Connell once slept, and kept him up till all hours of the morning, drinking far more whisky than was good for his constitution, I am sure."We had an awfully good time while he was here, and the house seems a little dull now that he is gone. He asked me before he left if he might write to me and tell me how he was getting on. But he hasn't written yet. He was a nice boy, but irresponsible. And, talking of irresponsibility, the word does not even vaguely describe the affairs of this household."I told you of the bailiff man. Well, he arrived in a closed carriage from Cloyne next day, and has been in bed ever since with influenza, caught by exposure on the moors. He is convalescent now, and I met him inthe garden this morning, 'taking the air on a stick,' to use Mr. French's expression. I believe the debt is paid to Mr. Harrison, but the bailiff is staying on as a guest. Mr. French gets me at night sometimes to help him in his accounts. He tells me all his affairs and money worries. His affairs are simply appalling, and he has a mad scheme for running a horse next spring in a big English race, the Suburban something or other, by which he hopes to make a fortune. When I point out the impossibility of the thing, he closes up his account-books and says there is no use in meeting troubles half-way."Effie is a bright little thing, but there is something about her I can't quite understand. She has a secret, which she tells me she is going to tell me some day, but what it is I can't make out. Now I must stop. Oh, but I forgot. How shall I say it? How shall I tell it? I have an admirer. He is a little mad, a cousin of Mr. French's. You remember those pictures of Sunny Jim we used to admire on the posters? Well, he is not like that; much stouter and more serious looking, and yet there is a family resemblance. He has taken to haunting me."Mr. French has warned me not to mind him. He says he is sure to propose to me, but that I'm not to be offended, as it's a disease 'the poor creature is afflicted with, just as if he had epileptic fits,' and that he would make eyes at a broomstick with a skirt on it if he could get nothing else; all of which is interesting, but scarcely complimentary. Things are so dull just at present that I really think I must leadhim on. I am sure when he does do it it will be awfully funny. His name is Giveen. Everything is queer about him."It rained yesterday and the day before, but to-day is simply glorious. And now I must stop in earnest.—Ever yours lovingly,Violet."
"Since I last wrote to you, young Mr. Dashwood has left. He stayed three days. Mr. French insisted on his staying, sent for his luggage to the inn at Cloyne, put him up in the best bedroom, where I believe Dan O'Connell once slept, and kept him up till all hours of the morning, drinking far more whisky than was good for his constitution, I am sure.
"We had an awfully good time while he was here, and the house seems a little dull now that he is gone. He asked me before he left if he might write to me and tell me how he was getting on. But he hasn't written yet. He was a nice boy, but irresponsible. And, talking of irresponsibility, the word does not even vaguely describe the affairs of this household.
"I told you of the bailiff man. Well, he arrived in a closed carriage from Cloyne next day, and has been in bed ever since with influenza, caught by exposure on the moors. He is convalescent now, and I met him inthe garden this morning, 'taking the air on a stick,' to use Mr. French's expression. I believe the debt is paid to Mr. Harrison, but the bailiff is staying on as a guest. Mr. French gets me at night sometimes to help him in his accounts. He tells me all his affairs and money worries. His affairs are simply appalling, and he has a mad scheme for running a horse next spring in a big English race, the Suburban something or other, by which he hopes to make a fortune. When I point out the impossibility of the thing, he closes up his account-books and says there is no use in meeting troubles half-way.
"Effie is a bright little thing, but there is something about her I can't quite understand. She has a secret, which she tells me she is going to tell me some day, but what it is I can't make out. Now I must stop. Oh, but I forgot. How shall I say it? How shall I tell it? I have an admirer. He is a little mad, a cousin of Mr. French's. You remember those pictures of Sunny Jim we used to admire on the posters? Well, he is not like that; much stouter and more serious looking, and yet there is a family resemblance. He has taken to haunting me.
"Mr. French has warned me not to mind him. He says he is sure to propose to me, but that I'm not to be offended, as it's a disease 'the poor creature is afflicted with, just as if he had epileptic fits,' and that he would make eyes at a broomstick with a skirt on it if he could get nothing else; all of which is interesting, but scarcely complimentary. Things are so dull just at present that I really think I must leadhim on. I am sure when he does do it it will be awfully funny. His name is Giveen. Everything is queer about him.
"It rained yesterday and the day before, but to-day is simply glorious. And now I must stop in earnest.—Ever yours lovingly,
Violet."
Miss Grimshaw had been writing her letter at the writing-table in the sitting-room window. The sitting-room was on the ground floor, and as she looked up from addressing the envelope, Mr. Giveen, at the window and backed by the glorious September afternoon, met her gaze.
He was looking in at her. How long he had been standing at the window gazing upon her it would be impossible to say. Irritated at having been spied upon, Miss Grimshaw frowned at Mr. Giveen, who smiled in return, at the same time motioning her to open the window.
"Well?" said Miss Grimshaw, putting up the sash.
"Come out with me," said Mr. Giveen. "Michael is off at Drumboyne, and there's no one to know. Put on your hat and come out with me."
"Go out with you? Where?"
"I'll get the boat and take you to see the seals on the Seven Sisters Rocks. The sea is as smooth as a—smooth as a—smooth as a what's-its-name. I'll be thinking of it in a minit. Stick on your hat and come out with me."
"Some other day, when Mr. French is at home. I don't understand your meaning at all when you talkabout nobody knowing. I never do things that I want to hide."
"Sure, that was only my joke," grinned Mr. Giveen; "and if you don't come to-day you'll never come at all, for it's the end of the season, and it's a hundred to one you won't find another day fit to go till next summer; and I'll show you the big sea cave," finished he, "for the tide will be out by the time we've had a look at the seals. It's not foolin' you I am. The boat's on the beach, and it won't take ten minutes to get there."
"I'll come down and look at the sea," said Miss Grimshaw, who could not resist the appeal of the lovely afternoon, "if you'll wait five seconds till I get my hat."
"Sure, I'd wait five hundred years," replied the cousin of Mr. French, propping himself against the house wall, where he stood whistling softly and breaking off every now and then to chuckle to himself, after the fashion of a person who has thought of a good joke or has got the better of another in a deal.
Five minutes later, hearing the girl leaving the house by the front door, he came round and met her.
"This way," said Mr. Giveen, taking a path that led through the kitchen-garden and so round a clump of stunted fir trees to the break in the cliffs that gave passage to the strand. "Now, down by these rocks. It's a powerfully rough road, and I've told Michael time out of mind he ought to have it levelled, but much use there is in talking to him, and him with his head full of horses. Will you take a hold of my arm?"
"No, thanks. I can get on quite well alone."
"Well, step careful. Musha, but I was nearly down then myself. Do you know the name they give this crack in the cliffs?"
"No."
"It's the Devil's Keyhole."
"Why do they call it that?"
"Why, faith, you'll know that when you hear the wind blowing through it in winter. It screeches so you can hear it at Drumboyne. Do you know that I live at Drumboyne?"
"That's the village between here and Cloyne is it not?"
"That's it. But do you know where I live in Drumboyne?"
"No."
"Well, now, by any chance, did you see a bungalow on the right after you left Drumboyne, as you were driving here that day on the car with the young chap—Mr. What's-his-name?"
"Dashwood. Yes, I did see a bungalow."
"That's mine," said Mr. Giveen with a sigh. "As nice a house as there is in the country, if it wasn't that I was all alone in it."
"Don't you keep a servant?"
"A servant! Sure, of course I keep a servant—two. But it wasn't a servant I was meaning. Shall I tell you what I was meaning?"
"I'm not much interested in other people's affairs," said Miss Grimshaw hurriedly. "Ah! there's the sea at last."
A turn of the cleft had suddenly disclosed the great Atlantic Ocean.
Blue and smooth as satin, it came glassing in, breaking gently over and around the rocks—huge, black rocks, shaggy with seaweed, holding among them pools where at low tides you would find rock bass, lobsters, and crabs.
In winter, during the storms, this place was tremendous and white with flying foam, the waves bursting to the very cliff's base, the echoes shouting back the roar of the breakers, the breakers thundering and storming at the echoes, and over all the wind making a bugle of the Devil's Keyhole; but to-day nothing could be more peaceful, and the whisper of the low tide waves seething in amidst the rocks was a lullaby to rock a babe to sleep.
Just here, protected by the rocks, lay a tiny cove where French kept his boat, which he used for fishing and seal shooting. And here to-day, on a rock beside the boat, which was half water-borne, they found Doolan, the man who looked after the garden and hens and did odd jobs, among which was the duty of keeping the boat in order and looking after the fishing tackle.
"What a jolly little boat!" said the girl, resting her hand on the thwart of the sturdy little white-painted dinghy. "Do you go fishing in this?"
"Michael does," replied Mr. Giveen, "but I'm no fisherman. Doolan, isn't the sea smooth enough to take the young lady for a row?"
He shouted the words into the ear of the old weatherbeaten man, who was as deaf as a post.
"Say smooth enough to take the young lady for a row?" replied Doolan in a creaky voice that seemed to come from a distance. "And what smoother would you want it, Mr. Dick? Say smooth enough to take the young lady for a row? Sure, it's more like ile than say water, it is to-day. Is this the young lady you tould me you were going to take to say the sales?"
"I don't want to see any seals," cut in Miss Grimshaw. "I only came down to look at the sea."
"There you are!" burst out Mr. Giveen, like a child in a temper. "After I get the boat ready for you, thinking to give you a bit of pleasure, and take Doolan away from his work and all, and now you won't go!"
"But I said I wouldn't go!" said Miss Grimshaw.
"You didn't."
"I did"—searching her memory—"at least, I didn't say I would go."
"Well, say you will go now, and into the boat with you."
"I won't!"
"Well, then, all the fun's spoiled," said Mr. Giveen, "and it's a fool you've been making of me. Sure, it's hundreds of girls I've taken out to see the caves, and never one of them afraid but you."
"I'm not afraid," said Miss Grimshaw, beginning to waver, "and I don't want to spoil your fun. How long would it take us to see the caves?"
"Not more than an hour or two—less maybe."
"Well," said the girl, suddenly making up her mind, "I'll come."
It was a momentous decision, with far-reaching effects destined to touch all sorts of people and things, from Mr. French to Garryowen, a decision which, in the ensuing April, might have changed the course of racing events profoundly.
So slender and magical are the threads of cause that the fortunes of thousands of clerks with an instinct for racing, thousands of sportsmen, and innumerable "bookies," all were swept suddenly that afternoon into the control of an event so simple as a boating excursion on the west coast of Ireland.
She stepped into the boat, and took her seat in the stern. Mr. Giveen and Doolan pushed the little craft off, and just as she was water borne Mr. Giveen tumbled in over the bow, seized a scull, and pulled her into deep water.
The rocks made a tiny natural harbour, where the dinghy floated with scarcely a movement while the oarsman got out both sculls.
"Isn't he coming with us?" asked Miss Grimshaw.
"Who?"
"The old man—Doolan—what's his name?"
"Sure, what would we be bothered taking him for?" replied the other, turning the boat's nose and sculling her with a few powerful strokes to the creek's mouth, where the incoming swell lifted her with a buoyant and balloon-like motion that brought a sickening sense of insecurity to the heart of the girl.
"Well, I thought he was coming with us, or I would not have got in."
"Well, you're in now," said Mr. Giveen, "and there's no use crying over spilt milk."
He had taken his hat off, and his bald head shone in the sun. Snow-white gulls were flying in the blue overhead, the profound and glassy swell, which was scarcely noticeable from the shore, out here made vales and hills of water, long green slopes in which the seaweed floated like mermaids' hair.
Far out now the loveliness of the scene around her made the girl forget for a moment her sense of insecurity. The whole beauty and warmth of summer seemed gathered into that September afternoon, and the coast showed itself league upon league, vast cliff and silent strand, snowed with seagulls, terns, guillemots, and fading away twenty miles to the north and twenty miles to the south in the haze and the blueness of the summer sky.
The great silence, the vast distances, the happy blue of sea and sky, the voicelessness of that tremendous coast—all these cast the mind of the gazer into a trance in which the soul responded for a moment to that mystery of mysteries, the call of distance.
"There's the Seven Sisters," said Mr. Giveen, resting his oars and pointing away to the north, where the peaked rocks stood from the sea, cutting the sky with their sharp angles and making froth of the swell with their spurs.
Broad ledges of rock occurred here and there at their base, and on these ledges the seals on an afternoonlike this would be sunning themselves, watching with liquid human eyes the surging froth, and ready to dive fathoms deep at the approach of man.
Miss Grimshaw, coming back from her reverie, heard borne on the breeze, which was blowing from the north, the faint crying of the gulls round the rocks. It was the voices of the Seven Sisters for ever lamenting, blue weather or grey, calm or storm.
"Where are you going to?" asked she.
"Wherever you please," said he. "If we were to go on as we're going now, do you know where we'd land?"
"No."
"America. How'd you like to go to America with me? Say the word now," went on Mr. Giveen, with a jocularity that was quite lost on his companion. "Say the word, and on we'll go."
"Turn the boat round," said Miss Grimshaw, suddenly and with decision. "We are too far out. Row back. I want to go home."
"And how about the seals?"
"I don't want to see them. Go back!"
"Well now, listen to me. Do you see over there, behind us, that black hole in the cliffs, about a quarter of a mile, or maybe less, from the Devil's Keyhole?"
"Which? Where? Oh, that! Yes."
"Well, that's the big sea cave that everyone goes to see. Sure, you haven't seen Ireland at all till you've been in the Devil's Kitchen—that's the name of it. Shall I row you there?"
"Yes, anywhere, so long as we get close to the shore. It frightens me out here."
"Sure, what call have you to be afraid when I'm with you?" asked Mr. Giveen in a tender tone of voice, turning the boat's head and making for the desired shore.
"I don't know. Let us talk of something else. Why do they call it the Devil's Kitchen?"
"Faith, you wouldn't ask that if you heard the hullabaloo that comes out of it in the big storms. You'd think, by the frying and the boiling, it was elephants and whales they were cooking. But in summer it's as calm as a—calm as a—what's-its-name. Musha, I'll be remembering it in a minit."
Mr. Giveen grumbled to himself in thought as he lay to his oars. Sometimes the brogue of the common people with whom he had collogued from boyhood, and which underlay his cultivated speech as a stratum of rock underlies arable land, would crop up thick and strong, especially when he was communing with himself, as now, hunting for a metaphor to express the sea's calmness.
Miss Grimshaw, passionately anxious to be on land again, was not the less so as she watched him muttering and mouthing and talking to himself. She had now been contemplating him at close quarters in the open light of day for a considerable time, and her study of him did not improve her opinion of him, in fact, she was beginning to perceive that in Mr. Giveen there was something more than a harmless gentleman rather soft and with a passion for flirtation.
She saw, or thought she could see, behind the Sunny Jim expression, behind the jocularity and buffoonery and soft stupidity which made him sometimes mildly amusing and sometimes acutely irritating, a malignant something, a spirit vicious and little, a spirit that would do a nasty turn for a man rather than a nice one, and perhaps even a cruel act on occasion. Whatever this spirit might be, it was little—a thing more to dislike than fear.
They were now in close to the cliffs, and the entrance to the Devil's Kitchen loomed large—a semicircular arch beneath which the green water flooded, washing the basalt pillars with a whispering sound which came distinctly to the boat. The cliff above stretched up, immense, and the crying of the cormorants filled the air and filled the echoes.
Wheeling about the rocks away up, where in the breeding season they had their nests, they seemed to resent the approach of the boat. On a ledge of rock near the cove mouth something dark moved swiftly and then splashed into the sea and was free.
It was a seal.
"I'll take you into the cave to have a look at it," cried Mr. Giveen, raising his voice to outshout the cormorants. "You needn't be a bit afraid. The devil's not here to-day—it's too fine weather for him."
"Don't go far in," cried Miss Grimshaw, and as she spoke the words the boat, urged by the rower, passed into the gloom beneath the archway.
She saw the bottle-green water of the rising and falling swell washing the pillars and the walls fromwhich the seaweed hung in fathom-long ribbons; then they were in almost darkness, and as Mr. Giveen rested on his oars, she could hear the water slobbering against the walls, and from far away in the gloom, every now and then, a bursting sound as the swell filled some hole or shaft and was spat out again.
After a moment or two, her eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness, the vast size of the place became apparent. Far greater than the inside of a cathedral, given over to darkness and the sea, the Devil's Kitchen was certainly a place to make one pause.
In the storms of winter, when, like the great mouth of some giant fighting the waves, it roared and stormed and spat out volumes of water, filled now almost to its roof, now blowing the sea out in showers of spray, the horror of it would be for a bold imagination to conceive.
Even to-day, in its best mood, it was not a place to linger in.
"Now I've brought you in," said Mr. Giveen, his voice finding echoes in the darkness, "and what will you give me to bring you out?"
"Nothing. Turn the boat. I don't like the place. Turn the boat, I say!"
She stamped on the bottom boards, and her voice came back to her ears with a horrible cavernous sound, as did the laughter of Mr. Giveen.
He turned the boat so that she was fronting the arch of light at the entrance, but he did not row towards it. Instead, he began rocking the boat fromside to side in a boyish and larky way that literally brought the heart of Miss Grimshaw into her mouth.
"Stop it!" she cried. "We'll be upset. Oh, I'll tell Mr. French. Stop it! Do, please—please stop it."
"Well, what will you give me if I stop it? Come, now, don't be shy. You know what I mean. What will you give me?"
"Anything you like."
"Then we'll make it a kiss?"
"Yes, anything! Only take me out of this."
"Two kisses?" asked Mr. Giveen, pulling in his oars and making to come aft.
"Twenty. Only not here. You'll upset the boat. Don't stand up. You'll upset us."
"Well, when we get back, then?" said the amorous one.
"Yes."
"And you won't tell Michael?"
"No, no, no!"
"On your word of honour?"
"Yes."
"Swear by all's blue."
"Yes."
"But that's not swearing."
"I don't know what all's blue is. Ouch!"
The boat, drifting, had drifted up against the wall of the cave, and the swell, which had a rise and fall of eighteen inches or more, was grinding the starboard thwart lovingly against the seaweed and rock.
"I swear by all's blue," shrieked the girl. "Anything! Quick! Push her off, or we'll be over."
"Faith, and that was a near shave," said Mr. Giveen, shoving the boat off with an oar.
He got the sculls in the rowlocks, and a few strokes brought them out under the arch into daylight again.
"Mind, you've sworn," said Mr. Giveen, who evidently had a very present and wholesome dread of his cousin, Michael French.
"Don't speak to me," replied his charge, whose lips were dry, but whose terror had now, on finding herself in comparative safety, turned into burning wrath. "Don't speak to me, you coward! You—you beast—or I'll hit you with this."
A boat-hook of ash and phosphor-bronze lay at her feet, and she seized it.
Mr. Giveen eyed the boat-hook. It did not promise kisses on landing, but it was a very efficient persuader, in its way, to a swift return.
* * * * * * *
Now, Mr. French, that day after luncheon, had ridden into Drumboyne about some pigs he was anxious to sell. He had failed to come to terms with the pig merchant, and had returned out of temper.
In the stableyard he met Moriarty.
"If you plaze, sorr," said Moriarty, "I've just heard from Doolan that Mr. Giveen has taken the young lady out in the boat."
The contempt which Moriarty had for Mr. Giveen and the dislike were fully expressed in the tone of his words.
"D'you mean to say that idiotic fool has taken Miss Grimshaw out in the dinghy?" cried Michael French, letting himself down from the saddle.
"Yes, sorr."
"To blazes with Doolan! What the—what the—what the—did he mean not telling me!"
"I don't know, sorr. Here he is himself. Micky, come here! The master wants to speak wid you."
Mr. Doolan, who was passing across the yard with a tin basin of fowls' food—it had a wooden handle, and he was holding it by the handle—approached, deaf to what Moriarty said, but answering his gesture.
"What did you mean by letting Mr. Giveen take the young lady out in the dinghy without telling me, you old fool?" asked his master.
"Sure, he tould me not to tell you, sorr," creaked Micky.
"To the devil with you!" cried Mr. French, giving the tin basin a kick that sent the contents flying into Micky's face, spattering it with meal and soaked bread and finely chopped bits of meat till it looked like a new form of pudding. "Off with you, and clean your face, and not another word out of you, or I'll send you flying after the basin. Come on with me, Moriarty, down to the cove, till we see if we can get sight of them."
"Think of the fool letting the girl go out with that egg-headed ass of a Dick!" grumbled French, half to himself and half to Moriarty, as he made down the Devil's Keyhole, followed by the other. "He's been hanging after her for the last week, popping in at allhours of the day, and as sure as he gets a girl into the boat close with him, he's sure to be making a fool of himself, and maybe upsetting her, and the both of them drowned. Not that he'd matter; not that he'd drown, either, for that bladder of a head of his would keep him afloat. Do you see any sight of them, Moriarty?"
They had reached the shore, and Moriarty, standing on a rock and shading his eyes, was looking over the sea.
"No, sorr."
"Come on to the cove. He's sure to come back there, if he ever comes back. If you can't see them from there, they must have gone down the coast to the caves. I tell you what it is, Moriarty, relations or no relations, I'm not going to have that chap hanging round the premises any longer. He comes to Drumgool, and he sits and reads a newspaper, and he pretends to be a fool, and all the time he's taking everything in, and he goes off and talks about everything he sees, and I believe it's him and his talk that's knocked my bargain with old Shoveler over those pigs. He heard me say I'd take two pounds less than I was asking Shoveler, and to-day the old chap was 'stiff as a rock.'"
"I don't think he's any good about the place, sorr," said Moriarty. "Yesterday, when Andy was giving Garryowen his exercise on the four-mile track, there he was, pottin' about with his eye on the horse. You know, sorr, Andy has no likin' for him, and as Andy was passin' the big scrub, there was MistherGiveen, and he up and calls to Andy, 'That's a likely colt,' says he, 'and is me cousin thinkin' of runnin' him next year?' he says."
"Good heavens!" said Garryowen's owner, taking his seat on a rock. "I hope Andy didn't split?"
"Split, sorr! 'To h—— wid you,' says Andy and on he goes, and Buck Slane, who was up on the Cat, and be the same token, sorr, Garryowen can give the Cat two furlongs in a mile and lather him. Buck says the black blood come in his face, and he shuck the stick he was holdin' in his hand after Andy and the colt as if he'd like to lay it on thim."
"Well, I'll lay a stick on him," said French, "if he comes round asking his questions. Moriarty, only you and me and the young lady—she's safe—and Buck Slane—and he's safe—know what we're going to do with Garryowen, and where we're going to run him. If we want to keep him dark, we mustn't have fellows poking their noses about the place."
"That young gintleman from over the wather, sorr, is he safe?"
"Mr. Dashwood? Yes, he's a gentleman. Even so, I did not tell him anything about it. He saw the colt, and, by gad! didn't he admire him. But I said nothing of what I was going to do with him."
"Here they are, sorr," cried Moriarty, who was standing up, and so had a better view of the sea.
Mr. French rose to his feet.
The dinghy was rounding the rocks. Mr. Giveen, at the sculls, was evidently remonstrating with the girl, who, seeing help at hand, and vengeance in theforms of the two men on the beach, was standing up in the stern of the boat—at least, half standing up—now almost erect, now crouched and clutching the thwart, she seemed ready to jump on the rocks they were passing—to jump anywhere so long as she got free of the boat and her companion.
One might have thought that fear was impelling her. It was not fear, however, but anger and irritation.
French and Moriarty rushed into the water up to their knees, seized the dinghy on either side of the bow, and ran her up on the sand, while Mr. Giveen, with his coat in his hand and his hat on the back of his head, tumbled over the side and made as if to make off.
"Stop him!" cried the girl. "He's insulted me! He has nearly drowned me! He frightened me into swearing I wouldn't tell!"
"I didn't," cried Mr. Giveen, now in the powerful grasp of his cousin. "It wasn't my fault. Let loose of me. Let up, or I'll have the law of you!"
"Didn't you?" replied French, who had caught his kinsman by the scruff of his neck and was holding him from behind, shaking him as a terrier shakes a rat, "we'll soon see that. Moriarty, run for a policeman. Take a horse and go for a constable at Drumboyne. Well, then, what do you mean, eh?—what do you mean, eh?—you blackguard, with your philandering? You bubble-headed, chuckle-headed son of a black sweep, you! Call yourself an Irish gentleman! Insulting a lady! Miss Grimshaw, say the word, and I'll stickthe ugly head of him in the water and drown him!"
"No, no!" cried the girl, taking the words literally. "Perhaps he didn't mean it. I don't think he is quite right. He only wanted to kiss me. He rocked the boat. Perhaps it was only in fun."
"Now listen to me," cried French, accentuating every second word with a shake, "if I ever catch you within five miles of Drumgool again I'll give you a lambasting you won't get over in a month. That's my last word to you. Off you go!"
The last words were followed by a most explicit kick that sent Mr. Giveen racing and running across the bit of sand till he reached the rocks, over which he scrambled, making record time to the mouth of the Devil's Keyhole. Near that spot he turned and shook his fist at his kinsman.
"I'll be even with you yet, Mick French!" cried Mr. Giveen.
"Away with you!" replied the threatened one, making as if to run after him, at which the figure of Mr. Giveen vanished into the Devil's Keyhole as a rat vanishes up a drain.
French burst into a laugh, in which Miss Grimshaw joined.
"Now he'll be your enemy," said the girl as Moriarty flung the sculls over his shoulder and they prepared to return to the house.
"Much I care!" replied the owner of Garryowen.
The first and most pressing necessity of a woman's life is—what? Love? No, a home. A home implies love and everything in life worth having.
A girl without a home and without relations is the loneliest thing on earth, simply because she is a woman, and nothing has such a capacity for loneliness as a woman.
Give her anything in the way of a tie, and she will crystallise on to it and take it to heart, just as the sugar in a solution of barley-sugar takes the string.
So it came about that Violet Grimshaw found herself, in less than three weeks after her arrival at Drumgool, not only acclimatised to her new surroundings, but literally one of the family. She had caught on to them, and they had caught on to her. French, with that charming easiness which one finds rarely nowadays, except in that fast vanishing individual, the real old Irish gentleman, had from the first treated her as though he had known her for years. Guessing, with the sure intuition of the irresponsible, the level-headedness and worth behind her prettiness, he now talked to her about his most intimate affairs, both financial and family.
In him and in the other denizens of Drumgool was brought home to her the power of the Celtic nature to imagine things and take them for granted.
"Now, where's me colander?" Mrs. Driscoll wouldsay (as, for instance, in a dialogue which reached the girl one afternoon with a whiff of kitchen-scented air through a swing-door left open). "Where's me colander? It's that black baste of a Doolan. I b'lave he's taken it to feed the chickens. I'll tie a dish-cloth to his tail if he comes into me kitchen takin' me colanders! Doolan! Foolan! Come here wid ye, and bring me me colander. I'll tell the masther on you for takin' me things. You haven't got it? May Heaven forgive you, but I saw you with the two eyes in me head, and it in your hand! It's forenint me nose? Which nose? Oh, glory be to Heaven! so it is. Now, out of me kitchen wid you, and don't be littherin' me floor with your dirty boots!"
The connection of Doolan with the missing colander was based on a pure assumption.
Just so French had adorned the portrait of Miss Grimshaw, which he had painted in his own mind, with spectacles. And he would have sworn to those spectacles in a court of law.
Just so, by extension, he saw Garryowen passing the winning-post despite all the obstacles in his path. But it was the case of Effie that brought home to Miss Grimshaw this trait with full force.
"Mr. French," said she one morning, entering the sitting-room where he was writing letters, "do you know Effie can walk?"
"I beg your pardon—what did you say?" asked Mr. French, dropping his pen and turning in his chair.
"The child's not a cripple at all. She can walk as well as I can."
"Walk! Why, she's been a cripple for years! Walk! Why, Mrs. Driscoll never lets her on her feet by any chance!"
"Yes, but when she's alone she runs about the room, and she's as sound on her legs as I am."
"But Dr. O'Malley said with his own mouth she was a cripple for life!"
"How long ago was that?"
"Four years."
"Has he seen her lately?"
"Seen her lately? Why, he's been in his coffin three years come next October!"
"Have you had no other doctor to see her?"
"Sure, there's no one else but Rafferty at Cloyne, and he's a fool—and she won't see doctors; she says they are no use to her."
"Well, all I can say is that I've seen her walking. She can run, and she tells me she has been able to for years, only no one will believe her. Whenever they see her on her feet she says they pop her back on the couch. The poor child seems to have become so hopeless of making any one believe her that she has submitted to her fate. I believe she half believes herself that she oughtn't to walk, that it's a sort of sin; she does it more out of perversity than anything else. She's been coddled into invalidhood, and I'm going to coddle her out of it," said Miss Grimshaw. "And if you will come upstairs with me now, I'll show you that she's as firm on her legs as you are yourself."
They went upstairs. As Miss Grimshaw turned the handle of the door of Effie's room a scuffling noise washeard, and when they entered, the child was sitting up on the couch, flushed and bright-eyed.
"Why, what's all this, Effie?" cried her father. "What's all this I've been hearing about your running about the room? Stick your legs out, and let me see you do it."
Effie grinned.
"I will," said she, "if you promise not to tell Mrs. Driscoll."
For three years the unfortunate child had been suffering from no other disease but Mrs. Driscoll's vivid imagination and the firm belief held by her that the child's back would "snap in two" if she stood on her legs. Vivid and vital, this belief, like some people's faith, refused to listen to suggestion or criticism.
"I won't tell," said Effie's father. "Up with you and let's see you on your pins."
"Now," said Miss Grimshaw, when the evolutions were over, and Miss French had demonstrated her soundness in wind and limb to the full satisfaction of her sire, "what do you think of that?"
"But how did you find it out?" asked the astonished man.
"She told me it as a secret."
"But why didn't she tell anyone else, with a whole houseful of people to tell, this three years and more?"
"She did, but no one would believe her—would they, Effie?"
"No," replied Effie.
"You told Mrs. Driscoll over and over again you could walk, and what did she say to you?"
"She told me to 'hold my whisht and not to be talking nonsense.' She said she'd give me to the black man that lives in the oven if I put a foot to the ground, and I told papa I was all right, and could walk, if they'd let me, and he only laughed and told me not to be getting ideas in my head."
"Faith, and that's the truth," said her papa. "I thought it was only her fancies."
"Well," said Miss Grimshaw, "I examined her back this morning, and there is nothing wrong with it. Her legs are all right. She's in good health. Well, where's your invalid?"
"Faith, I don't know," said French. "This beats Bannagher."
He went to the bell and pulled it.
"Send up Mrs. Driscoll," said the master of Drumgool. "Send up Mrs. Driscoll. And what are you standing there with your mouth hanging open for?"
"Sure, Miss Effie, and what are you doin' off the couch?" cried Norah, shaken out of her respect for her master by the sight of Effie on her legs.
"Doing off the couch? Away with you down, and send up Mrs. Driscoll. You and your couch! You've been murdering the child between you for the last three years with your couches and your coddling. Off with you!"
"Don't be harsh to them," said Effie's saviour, as Norah departed in search of the housekeeper. "They did it for the best."
Half-an-hour later, Mrs. Driscoll, with her pet illusion still perfectly unshattered, returned to her kitchento conduct the preparations for dinner, while Effie, freed for ever from her bonds, sat on a stool before the nursery fire, reading Mrs. Brown's adventures in Paris.
Miss Grimshaw, coming down a little later, found three letters that had just come by post awaiting her. One was from Mr. Dashwood.
It was a short and rather gloomy letter. He had asked permission to write to her, and she had been looking forward to a letter from him, for she liked him, and his recollection formed a picture in her mind pleasant to contemplate; but this short and rather gloomy screed was so unlike him that she at once guessed something wrong in his affairs.
Womanlike, she was not over pleased that he should permit his private worries to take the edge off his pen when he was writing to her, and she determined to leave the letter unanswered.