“Ah, nonsense, Mr. Dysart; why would you have me make a Judy of myself that way?”
“Because it’s the loveliest hair I’ve ever seen,” answered Christopher, the words coming to his lips almost without his volition, and in their utterance causing his heart to give one or two unexpected throbs.
“Oh!” There was as much astonishment as pleasure in the exclamation, and she became as red as fire. She turned her head away, and looked back to see where Lambert was.
She had heard from Hawkins only this morning, asking her for a piece of the hair that Christopher had called lovely. She had cut off a little curl from the place he had specified, near her temple, and had posted it to him this very afternoon after Charlotte went out; but all the things that Hawkins had said of her hair did not seem to her so wonderful as that Mr. Dysart should pay her a compliment.
Lambert was quite silent after he joined them. In his heart he was cursing everything and everyone, the chestnut, Christopher, Francie, and most of all himself, for having said the things that he had said. All the good he had done was to leave no doubt in Christopher’s mind that Hawkins was out of the running, and as for telling him that Francie was a flirt, an ass like that didn’t so much as know the meaning of the word flirting. He knew now that he had made a fool of himself, and the remembrance of that disgusted expression on Christopher’s face made his better judgment return as burningly as the blood into veins numbed with cold. At the cross-roads next before Bruff, he broke in upon the exchange of experiences of the Dublin theatres that was going on very enjoyably beside him.
“I’m afraid we must part company here, Dysart,” he said in as civil a voice as he could muster; “I want to speak to a farmer who lives down this way.”
Christopher made his farewells, and rode slowly down the hill towards Bruff. It was a hill that had been cut down in the Famine, so that the fields on either side rose high above its level, and the red poppies and yellowing corn nodded into the sky over his head. The bay horse was collecting himself for a final trot to the avenue gates, when he found himself stopped, and, after a moment of hesitation on the part of his rider, was sent up the hill again a good deal faster than he had come down. Christopher pulled up again on the top of the hill. He was higher now than the corn, and, looking across its multitudinous, rustling surface, he saw the figure that some errant impulse had made him come back to see. Francie’s head was turned towards Lambert, and she was evidently talking to him. Christopher’s eyes followed the pair till they were out of sight, and then he again turned his horse, and went home to Bruff.
* * *
CHAPTER XXX.
One fine morning towards the end of August, Julia Duffy was sitting on a broken chair in her kitchen, with her hands in her lap, and her bloodshot eyes fixed on vacancy. She was so quiet that a party of ducks, which had hung uncertainly about the open door for some time, filed slowly in, and began to explore an empty pot or two with their long, dirty bills. The ducks knew well that Miss Duffy, though satisfied to accord the freedom of the kitchen to the hens and turkeys, had drawn the line at them and their cousins the geese, and they adventured themselves within the forbidden limits with the utmost caution, and with many side glances from their blinking, beady eyes at the motionless figure in the chair. They had made their way to a plate of potato skins and greasy cabbage on the floor by the table, and, forgetful of prudence, were clattering their bills on the delf as they gobbled, when an arm was stretched out above their heads, and they fled in cumbrous consternation.
The arm, however, was not stretched out in menace; Julia Duffy had merely extended it to take a paper from the table, and having done so, she looked at its contents in entire obliviousness of the ducks and their maraudings. Her misfortunes were converging. It was not a week since she had heard of the proclaimed insolvency of the man who had taken the grazing of Gurthnamuckla, and it was not half an hour since she had been struck by this last arrow of outrageous fortune, the letter threatening to process her for the long arrears of rent that she had felt lengthening hopelessly with every sunrise and sunset. She looked round the dreary kitchen that had about it all the added desolation of past respectability, at the rusty hooks from which she could remember the portly hams and flitches of bacon hanging; at the big fire-place where her grandfather’s Sunday sirloin used to be roasted. Now, cobwebs dangled from the hooks, and the old grate had fallen to pieces, so that the few sods of turf smouldered on the hearthstone. Everything spoke of bygone plenty and present wretchedness.
Julia put the letter into its envelope again and groaned a long miserable groan. She got up and stood for a minute, staring out of the open door with her hands on her hips, and then went slowly and heavily up the stairs, groaning again to herself from the exertion and from the blinding headache that made her feel as though her brain were on fire. She went into her room and changed her filthy gown for the stained and faded black rep that hung on the door. From a band-box of tanned antiquity she took a black bonnet that had first seen the light at her mother’s funeral, and tied its clammy satin strings with shaking hands. Flashes of light came and went before her eyes, and her pallid face was flushed painfully as she went downstairs again, and finding, after long search, the remains of the bottle of blacking, laboriously cleaned her only pair of boots. She was going out of the house when her eye fell upon the plate from which the ducks had been eating; she came back for it, and, taking it out with her, scattered its contents to the turkeys, mechanically holding her dress up out of the dirt as she did so. She left the plate on the kitchen window-sill, and set slowly forth down the avenue.
Under the tree by the gate, Billy Grainy was sitting, engaged, as was his custom in moments of leisure, in counting the coppers in the bag that hung round his neck. He looked in amazement at the unexpected appearance of his patroness, and as she approached him he pushed the bag under his shirt.
“Where are ye goin’?” he asked.
Julia did not answer; she fumbled blindly with the bit of stick that fastened the gate, and, having opened it, went on without attempting to shut it.
“Where are ye goin’ at all?” said Billy again, his bleared eyes following the unfamiliar outline of bonnet and gown.
Without turning, she said, “Lismoyle,” and as she walked on along the sunny road, she put up her hand and tried to wipe away the tears that were running down her face. Perhaps it was the excitement with which every nerve was trembling that made the three miles to Rosemount seem as nothing to this woman, who, for the last six months, had been too ill to go beyond her own gate; and probably it was the same unnatural strength that prevented her from breaking down, when, with her mind full of ready-framed sentences that were to touch Mr. Lambert’s heart and appeal to his sense of justice, she heard from Mary Holleran at the gate that he was away for a couple of days in Limerick. Without replying to Mary Holleran’s exclamations of pious horror at the distance she had walked, and declining all offers of rest or food, she turned and walked on towards Lismoyle.
She had suddenly determined to herself that she would walk to Bruff and see her landlord, and this new idea took such possession of her that she did not realise at first the magnitude of the attempt. But by the time she had reached the gate of Tally Ho the physical power that her impulse gave her began to be conscious of its own limits. The flashes were darting like lightning before her eyes, and the nausea that was her constant companion robbed her of her energy. After a moment of hesitation she decided that she would go in and see her kinswoman, Norry the Boat, and get a glass of water from her before going further. It wounded her pride somewhat to go round to the kitchen—she, whose grandfather had been on nearly the same social level as Miss Mullen’s; but Charlotte was the last person she wished to meet just then. Norry opened the kitchen door, beginning, as she did so, her usual snarling maledictions on the supposed beggar, which, however, were lost in a loud invocation of her patron saint as she recognised her first cousin, Miss Duffy.
“And is it to leg it in fro
m Gurthnamuckla ye done?” said Norry, when the first greetings had been exchanged, and Julia was seated in the kitchen, “and you looking as white as the dhrivelling snow this minnit.”
“I did,” said Julia feebly, “and I’d be thankful to you for a drink of water. The day’s very close.”
“Faith ye’ll get no wather in this house,” returned Norry in grim hospitality; “I’ll give ye a sup of milk, or would it be too much delay on ye to wait till I bile the kittle for a cup o’ tay? Bad cess to Bid Sal! There isn’t as much hot wather in the house this minute as’d write yer name!”
“I’m obliged to ye, Norry,” said Julia stiffy, her sick pride evolving a supposition that she could be in want of food; “but I’m only after my breakfast myself. Indeed,” she added, assuming from old habit her usual attitude of medical adviser, “you’d be the better yourself for taking less tea.”
“Is it me?” replied Norry indignantly. “I take me cup o’ tay morning and evening, and if ‘twas throwing after me I wouldn’t take more.”
“Give me the cold wather, anyway,” said Julia wearily; “I must go on out of this. It’s to Bruff I’m going.”
“In the name o’ God what’s taking ye into Bruff, you that should be in yer bed, in place of sthreelin’ through the counthry this way?”
“I got a letter from Lambert to-day,” said Julia, putting her hand to her aching head, as if to collect herself, “and I want to speak to Sir Benjamin about it.”
“Ah, God help yer foolish head!” said Norry impatiently; “sure ye might as well be talking to the bird above there,” pointing to the cockatoo, who was looking down at them with ghostly solemnity. “The owld fellow’s light in his head this long while.”
“Then I’ll see some of the family,” said Julia; “they remember my fawther well, and the promise I had about the farm, and they’ll not see me wronged.”
“Throth, then, that’s thrue,” said Norry, with an unwonted burst of admiration; “they was always and ever a fine family, and thim that they takes in their hands has the luck o’ God! But what did Lambert say t’ye?” with a keen glance at her visitor from under her heavy eyebrows.
Julia hesitated for a moment.
“Norry Kelly,” she said, her voice shaking a little; “if it wasn’t that you’re me own mother’s sister’s child, I would not reveal to you the disgrace that man is trying to put upon me. I got a letter from him this morning saying he’d process me if I didn’t pay him at once the half of what’s due. And Joyce that has the grazing is bankrupt, and owes me what I’ll never get from him.”
“Blast his sowl!” interjected Norry, who was peeling onions with furious speed.
“I know there’s many would be thankful to take the grazing,” continued Julia, passing a dingy pocket handkerchief over her forehead; “but who knows when I’d be paid for it, and Lambert will have me out on the road before that if I don’t give him the rent.”
Norry looked to see whether both the kitchen doors were shut, and then, putting both her hands on the table, leaned across towards her cousin.
“Herself wants it,” she said in a whisper.
“Wants what? What are you saying?”
“Wants the farm, I tell ye, and it’s her that’s driving Lambert.”
“Is it Charlotte Mullen?” asked Julia, in a scarcely audible voice.
“Now ye have it,” said Norry, returning to her onions, and shutting her mouth tightly.
The cockatoo gave a sudden piercing screech, like a note of admiration. Julia half got up, and then sank back into her chair.
“Are ye sure of that?”
“As sure as I have two feet,” replied Norry, “and I’ll tell ye what she’s afther it for. It’s to go live in it, and to let on she’s as grand as the other ladies in the counthry.”
Julia clenched the bony, discoloured hand that lay on the table.
“Before I saw her in it I’d burn it over my head!”
“Not a word out o’ ye about what I tell ye,” went on Norry in the same ominous whisper. “Shure she have it all mapped this minnit, the same as a pairson’d be makin’ a watch. She’s sthriving to make a match with young Misther Dysart and Miss Francie, and b’leeve you me, ‘twill be a quare thing if she’ll let him go from her. Sure he’s the gentlest crayture ever came into a house, and he’s that innocent he wouldn’t think how cute she was. If ye’d see her, ere yestherday, follying him down to the gate, and she smilin’ up at him as sweet as honey! The way it’ll be, she’ll sell Tally Ho house for a fortune for Miss Francie, though, indeed, it’s little fortune himself’ll ax!”
The words drove heavily through the pain of Julia’s head, and their meaning followed at an interval.
“Why would she give a fortune to the likes of her?” she asked; “isn’t it what the people say, it’s only for a charity she has her here?”
Norry gave her own peculiar laugh of derision, a laugh with a snort in it.
“Sharity! It’s little sharity ye’ll get from that one! Didn’t I hear the old misthress tellin’ her, and she sthretched for death—and Miss Charlotte knows well I heard her say it—’Charlotte,’ says she, and her knees dhrawn up in the bed, ‘Francie must have her share.’ And that was the lasht word she spoke.” Norry’s large wild eyes roved skywards out of the window as the scene rose before her. “God rest her soul, ‘tis she got the death aisy!”
“That Charlotte Mullen may get it hard!” said Julia savagely. She got up, feeling new strength in her tired limbs, though her head was reeling strangely, and she had to grasp at the kitchen table to keep herself steady. “I’ll go on now. If I die for it I’ll go to Bruff this day.”
Norry dropped the onion she was peeling, and placed herself between Julia and the door.
“The divil a toe will ye put out of this kitchen,” she said, flourishing her knife; “is it you walk to Bruff?”
“I must go to Bruff,” said Julia again, almost mechanically; “but if you could give me a taste of sperrits, I think I’d be better able for the road.”
Norry pulled open a drawer, and took from the back of it a bottle containing a colourless liquid.
“Drink this to your health!” she said in Irish, giving some in a mug to Julia; “it’s potheen I got from friends of me own, back in Curraghduff.” She put her hand into the drawer again, and after a little search produced from the centre of a bundle of amorphous rags a cardboard box covered with shells. Julia heard, without heeding it, the clink of money, and then three shillings were slapped down on the table beside her. “Ye’ll go to Conolly’s now, and get a car to dhrive ye,” said Norry defiantly; “or howld on till I send Bid Sal to get it for ye. Not a word out o’ ye now! Sure, don’t I know well a pairson wouldn’t think to put his money in his pocket whin he’d be hasting that way lavin’ his house.”
She did not wait for an answer, but shuffled to the scullery door, and began to scream for Bid Sal in her usual tones of acrid ill-temper. As she returned to the kitchen, Julia met her at the door. Her yellow face, that Norry had likened by courtesy to the driven snow, was now very red, and her eyes had a hot stare in them.
“I’m obliged to you, Norry Kelly,” she said, “but when I’m in need of charity I’ll ask for it. Let me out, if you please.”
The blast of fury with which Norry was preparing to reply was checked by a rattle of wheels in the yard, and Bid Sal appeared with the intelligence that Jimmy Daly was come over with the Bruff cart, and Norry was to go out to speak to him. When she came back she had a basket of grapes in one hand and a brace of grouse in the other, and as she put them down on the table, she informed her cousin, with distant politeness, that Jimmy Daly would drive her to Bruff.
* * *
CHAPTER XXXI.
The drive in the spring-cart was the first moment of comparative ease from suffering that Julia had known that day. Her tormented brain was cooled by the soft steady rush of air in her face, and the mouthful of “potheen” that she had drunk had at first the effect of d
ulling all her perceptions. The cart drove up the back avenue, and at the yard gate Julia asked the man to put her down. She clambered out of the cart with great difficulty, and going round to the hall door, went toilfully up the steps and rang the bell. Sir Benjamin was out, Lady Dysart was out, Mr. Dysart was out; so Gorman told her, with a doubtful look at the black Sunday gown that seemed to him indicative of the bearer of a begging petition, and he did not know when they would be in. He shut the door, and Julia went slowly down the steps again.
She had begun to walk mechanically away from the house, when she saw Sir Benjamin in his chair coming up a side walk. His face, with its white hair, gold spectacles, and tall hat, looked so sane and dignified, that, in spite of what Norry had said, she determined to carry out her first intention of speaking to him. She shivered, though the sun blazed hotly down upon her, as she walked towards the chair, not from nervousness, but from the creeping sense of illness, and the ground rose up in front of her as if she were going up-hill. She made a low bow to her landlord, and James Canavan, who knew her by sight, stopped the onward course of the chair.
“I wish to speak to you on an important matter, Sir Benjamin,” began Julia in her best voice; “I was unable to see your agent, so I determined to come to yourself.”
The gold spectacles were turned upon her fixedly, and the expression of the eyes behind them was more intelligent than usual.
“Begad that’s one of the tenants, James,” said Sir Benjamin, looking up at his attendant.
“Certainly, Sir Benjamin, certainly; this lady is Miss Duffy, from Gurthnamuckla,” replied the courtly James Canavan. “An old tenant, I might almost say an old friend of your honour’s.”
“And what the devil brings her here?” inquired Sir Benjamin, glowering at her under the wide brim of his hat.
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