by Sara Seale
He was silent for a moment, drawing patterns on his blotting paper with a colored pencil, and she became: aware that he was not at ease and was uncertain how to begin.
“It’s nothing serious, is it?” she said quickly. “I mean we’re not bankrupt or anything, are we?”
“Not yet,” he replied a little grimly. “Though there’s mighty little left. Sarah, I’ve had an offer for Dun Rury.”
There was a dead silence, then she got to her feet.
“You know that’s out of the question,” she said, and sounded like a disappointed child. “If that’s all you brought me here for, Uncle B., you’ve wasted your time.”
He held up a hand.
“Now, Sarah, sit down and don’t go up in the air. I want you to listen very carefully to what I have to say before you turn the thing down. This is an extremely good offer—an extremely good offer indeed. So good in fact that I would be failing in my duty as your lawyer and adviser if I didn’t try to point out all the advantages.”
“How much?” she asked. “Not, mind you, that I’m interested, but I’d like to know what your idea of a good offer is.”
“Fourteen thousand,” he said quietly, and her eyes widened.
“Golly! Who’s the mug who would pay all that money?”
I don’t know. The offer came through a Dublin firm two days ago. I am assured by the agents that it is a firm offer and their client’s references are impeccable.”
She was silent, twisting her fingers nervously together while she watched the second hand move slowly on the big clock on the wall. It moved in jerks ... one ... two ... three ... How slow seconds could be when you watched them, she thought.
“No!” she said, dragging her eyes away. “The whole thing’s fantastic.”
“There’s nothing fantastic about fourteen thousand pounds,” said Brian rather dryly.
“No,” she said again. “Dun Rury is all I have left. I’ll not sell.”
He smiled.
“That’s rather an extravagant remark. You mustn’t let a tiff between sisters upset your sense of proportion, my dear. Let me at least put the relevant points of the matter before you.”
She gave him a long direct stare.
“Did Kathy tell you what we quarrelled about?” she said.
“Not much. I gathered there was a little trouble over this English boarder of yours.” He shook a finger at her. “You young girls! Squabbling over a bit of jealousy!”
“I see. All right, Uncle B. Spread out your relevant points. I’ll listen.”
“That’s a sensible girl. Now, first and foremost you—and by you I mean the Riordan family—badly need the money. That’s too obvious to require comment. Second, you can’t possibly keep the place up as it should be kept; third, what is going to happen in the event of (a) Kathy marrying and leaving home, (b) Danny going to school and leaving home?”
“Then,” said Sarah, “there’d just be Aunt Em and Nonie and me.”
“Your aunt, from what I’ve gathered, would like to go and keep house for Kathy when she marries. She doesn’t care for the place, and, as you know, she’s devoted to your sister.”
“Yes, I know.” Sarah sounded a little bleak. “Well, in that case there’d be Nonie and me—and of course the lodgers.”
“Nonie’s getting old, Sarah. She won’t be fit for hard work much longer, and I don’t think it would be possible for you to run Dun Rury as a guest house by yourself.”
She was silent again, then she said in a tired little voice: “And what will “become of me if I sell Dun Rury?”
“You’ll live somewhere smaller, you, Danny and Nonie, and have a little money to spend on what you fancy, but” —he smiled suddenly—“I think you’ll marry, Sarah.”
She thought of Adrian and her heart lifted suddenly, then she thought of Nonie saying: “The sort of felly you’d pick for a husband, me doty, will have a mind of his own and will want a roof of his own, too...”
She got up.
“I must have time,” she said flatly. “I’ll think about it, Uncle B., but must have time. Something else may turn up.”
He pushed back his chair.
“Not too much time, my child,” he said. “An offer of that sort won’t remain open indefinitely. And, Sarah”—he placed a kindly hand on her shoulder—“don’t bank too much on something else turning up. You’ll never get a bigger stroke of luck than this.”
“I’ll remember. Goodbye, Uncle B., and thanks for being so patient with me.”
“Goodbye. Run in and have a word with Joe before you go.”
She found Joe in his room, idly thumbing through a law book.
“Hello,” he said. “I heard you were in the office. Has Dad been bullying you about this crazy offer we’ve had for Dun Rury?”
“It is crazy, isn’t it? Your father didn’t bully, he just tried to be persuasive.”
“Without much result, I infer from that.”
“Well, I’ve said I’d think it over. How is Kathy, Joe?”
“Very well and apparently very pleased with town life.”
“I’m glad. Is she—is she going to marry you?”
He smiled.
“I think so. I believe she found poetry and the chilly English temperament a bit overrated. Anyway, I’m buying the ring tomorrow and hoping for the best.”
She leaned across the desk and kissed him.
“Dear Joe, I’m so glad for you,” she said. “I know you’ll make her very happy.”
“Thank you, both for the kiss and the compliment. Will I take her your love?”
She was silent a moment as she turned towards the door.
“Yes, take her my love,” she said, and went out.
Adrian found her very quiet during lunch, but when he enquired if the lawyers had had good news for her, she only replied “Not very,” and he asked no more questions. Danny was so jubilant over a bicycle Adrian had bought him for his birthday that little else was talked of but the wonders of this god-like conveyance.
After lunch they went back to the shop to collect the bicycle and the boy had to be forcibly restrained from riding it all the way home. At Paddy’s shanty they unpacked the machine and watched Danny start home along the south road and Sarah said:
“Let’s go up to St. Patrick’s Well now we’re so near.”
At the well, Sarah turned her face into the wind and stretched her young body.
“That’s better,” she said.
He stood leaning against the rock-face, watching her. She was troubled, but not, he thought, by less recent events.
“It was so kind of you, Adrian,” she said, “to buy Danny that bicycle. He’s never had anything but old fashioned second-hand things. He won’t even mind going to school, now.”
“It’s nice to give pleasure,” he said. “You needn’t thank me.”
She sat down on the broad stone rim of the well and trailed her fingers in the water.
“Uncle B.’s had an offer for Dun Rury,” she said quietly. ‘That’s what he wanted to see me about.”
“Oh.” His voice was non-committal, but his eyes were suddenly intent on her averted face.
“It’s a very good offer,” she said, dragging out the words. “Fourteen thousand pounds, no less, and Uncle B. says the place isn’t worth more than five thousand in its present state.”
His eyebrows went up.
“Then it would seem to be a very good offer indeed,” he said.
She turned her head swiftly to look at him and the strain was back in her face.
“Adrian, what am I to do?” she said. “I feel beaten—I don’t know what’s best any more.”
He was silent for a moment, watching the soft, straight fringe lifting in the wind.
“I don’t know what to say to you, Sarah,” he replied. “It’s a difficult decision for you to make, but I think it’s one you must make yourself.”
“I can’t make it alone. Please help me.”
“I can’t help you
. This is a thing you must work out for yourself.”
“Yes. Do you remember that day on the terrace when you told me I must come to terms with myself? I asked you how one did it and you said when the time comes one knows.”
“Yes, Sarah.”
“But I don’t know,” she cried distractedly. “I don’t know at all.”
“You will,” he told her gravely. “When you’re ready to relinquish old gods, you will.”
“The Golden Calf?”
“That, perhaps.”‘
She pressed her fingers against the fine hollows of her temples.
“But if I sell Dun Rury what will become of me?” she said.
He reached out a hand and pulled her up towards him. “Well, you could marry me,” he replied with tender humor. “I hoped you were going to, anyway.”
She leaned against him, aware again of that sweet new security physical contact with him gave her, and, more than that, the fierce quickening of flesh and spirit which made her turn swiftly in his arms and reach for comfort.
“You love me yet you won’t help me,” she cried.
“Wouldn’t marrying me help you?” he asked.
She lifted her face and her eyes were suddenly the eyes of a child who has at last grasped the point in a difficult lesson.
“You mean if I marry you there would be no need to sell Dun Rury?” she said slowly. “We could go on living here because—because you’re not exactly poor, Adrian?”
His lips twitched.
“I wondered how soon you’d get around to that,” he said. “It’s the simplest way out of all, isn’t it?”
“Would you do it?”
“No.”
She slipped out of his arms and sat down again on the rim of the well.
“I didn’t think you would,” she said.
“You’ll not enslave me to your idol, Sarah,” he said with a faint smile. “And I would prefer that when you come to me, you come with a whole heart.”
Her face looked pinched and white.
“You mean you won’t marry me unless I sell Dun Rury?”
“Oh, no, I didn’t say that. I’m quite prepared to marry you and take you away if you’ll come. I can’t force you to sell what is yours.”
“You’re forcing me to choose between you and Dun Rury.”
“I don’t think so, Sarah. You can keep your heritage if you want to. You could always let it, I suppose.”
“Let Dun Rury!”
“Well, what’s the alternative?”
“To live there ourselves.”
His eyes were steady on her face.
“Would you respect me if I agreed?”
She cried, passionately: “I’d love you for it. What does respect matter?”
“Oh, it matters a lot,” he replied equably. “Without respect a marriage is built on very shifting soil, I think.”
“You’re hard, Adrian.”
“I’m not hard, darling. Only older and wiser than you are.”
“There’s a third alternative,” she said slowly. “Not to marry you at all.”
His eyebrows rose.
“Wouldn’t that be rather like cutting off your nose to spite your face? You do want to marry me, don’t you?”
“You know I do, only—”
He smiled.
“Only like most children you want to have your cake and eat it. Well, I can’t help you any more, I’m afraid. You have your three alternatives. The decision must be yours.”
No, she thought, he was not like Joe. He would never try to plead with her.
She automatically crossed the water with her finger and made her routine wish, then, without looking at him again, she began to run down the mountain path.
For the rest of the day she avoided him and he did not try to force any confidence. He knew she called a family conference that evening which also included Nonie, but she did not invite him to be present and he remained upstairs in the nursery.
But if Sarah expected help from her family she got little enough to guide her to a decision. Aunt Em said apologetically that the place did not suit her rheumatism and that she would really prefer to live in a town where she could get to the shops; Danny’s opinion was that he would like to go to a decent school when he was old enough; and Kathy, had she been present, would not have cared either way now that her own future was settled.
“Nonie”—Sarah turned rather wearily to the old servant—“you’ve seen us all born here—you love the place as I do. Can’t you help me?”
Nonie looked at her with understanding.
“An’ would you take advice, Miss Sarah, an’ it handed to you on a golden platter?” she said. “Sure, you just want wan of us to tell you keep the place an’ your mind would be made up.”
“I’ve always said I’d never sell,” she said slowly. “All this time I’ve hung on, and now, when the money is a little easier, it seems madness.”
“I think,” Aunt Em said with unexpected firmness, “we have all discussed the subject enough. Whatever you do decide, Sarah dear, we’ll stand by you. After all, I’m your aunt, too, and Kathy and Joe can do without me until you marry yourself.”
“Me, too,” said Danny, not quite clear as to what all the argument was about.
“Till I marry...” said Sarah bleakly, and Nonie shook her head.
“Och, that’s the sore spot,” she said. “Didn’t I tell you, Miss Sarah, the sort of felly you’d pick would have a mind of his own? Now get along with you to bed for chatter, never solved annything.”
No, thought Sarah, climbing wearily into bed, it was no use talking, it only made your head ache. She lay in the darkness and thought about Adrian, remembering the touch of his hands, the hard pressure of his lips, and she remembered the things he had said to her the first time she ever took him to St. Patrick’s Well. As long ago as that he had told her that her love for Dun Rury, when it was confused with the love for her father, was dangerous. Had she transferred both these loves to him, she wondered, and in seeking to keep the house was she denying him that whole heart he asked for? To give him up was unthinkable, but to compromise and keep both him and Dun Rury and all it stood for seemed, at least to her, insulting to him...
“St. Patrick send me a sign...” she murmured sleepily as she turned her face into the pillow and her tired eyelids closed.
The next day was wet and she came to the nursery and asked to hear some of the new records. Adrian sat by the fire reading in desultory fashion while she made her own selections and put the records on herself., Now it was Bach, now Delius, and now it was his own recording of the Litolff Concerto Symphonique. She seemed to like it for she played it twice and the gay, lively scherzo sent him back to the Albert Hall concert. He had played that and the Grieg, he remembered, and afterwards had come that collision in the fog and the weary months of nursing homes and treatment when the scherzo had run through and through his head with the maddening persistence of a metronome.
“You don’t like it?” she said as she put the record back in its folder.
“It’s a charming piece, but it has unpleasant associations for me,” he replied. ‘It haunted me in nursing homes until I could have screamed.”
“Did you play it at that last concert?”
“Yes. That’s probably why I dislike it.”
She shut the gramophone and came and sat down by the fire.
“It’s queer, isn’t it, how things can get mixed up? I suppose for you that piece of music became a sort of symbol.”
“I suppose it did. What conclusion are you trying to draw from that, Sarah?”
“I don’t quite know. Only, perhaps, that everyone has a kind of touchstone, whether it’s good or bad.”
He smiled.
“No doubt we hark back to our superstitious ancestors. Be warned, my child, don’t let fallacy get a hold of you.”
“Fallacy ... that means misconception, doesn’t it?”
“Misconception, error, delusion, superstition—any o
f these things.”
“Delusion...” she said, savoring the word.” Delusion is empty, isn’t it? It doesn’t mean anything?”
“No,” he said gravely, “it doesn’t mean anything.”
There was a sudden clatter of hooves from the stable yard, then Nolan’s voice shouted under the window: “Miss Sarah! Will you come down, plaze? The ass has broke loose again.”
“Och, that Cosgrave!” she exclaimed, jumping to her feet. “If he’s in he’s out, and if he’s out he’s in!” She ran out of the room, and from the window Adrian watched her snatch a halter from Nolan’s hand and run across the lawn in the rain, leaping the ha-ha as a short cut to the road. The donkey had not gone far this time, and she found him grazing at the edge of the lough. She cursed him softly while she slipped the halter over his head, then jumped on his back and cantered home along the road. The rain was falling in slanting spears—clean spring rain which stung her face to life. As she approached the gates she slowed the donkey to a walk and beheld her home for the first time with a stranger’s eyes. There lay Dun Rury, that symbol of her delusion, grey, neglected, a hoary god awaiting sacrifice, and as she gazed her spirit was released.
“Not any more,” she said aloud. “I will always love you because you are my home, but for that other I’ve paid my last toll.” She lifted her face to the rain and began to sing:
“ ‘As I walked down through Dublin City ...’ ”
Adrian heard her from the nursery and looked up quickly. There she came riding up the drive, twirling the end of the halter rope, and kicking her heels against the donkey’s flanks in time to the song.
“I’m going to St. Patrick’s Well,” she called up, when he appeared at the window.
“My dear child, do you never eat? It’s long past lunchtime,” he said.
“Is it? I’m not hungry. I’m going to the well. Will you come and meet me, later?”
“Very well, you lunatic. Here—wait a minute!” He tossed down a couple of apples to her and she caught them neatly and ran away.
He took the car later in the afternoon and drove along the south road to Paddy-the-Sheep’s shanty. Did she think, he wondered with tender amusement, that she would get round him more easily at the place where wishes were said to come true? As he started up the steep path the sun came out and he saw how the raindrops caught on the mountain-side trembled and shone like myriads of crystals. He began to call Sarah’s name and presently there was an answering shout and she came running round the shoulder of the hill, her black hair flying. For a moment she paused, looking down at him, her hands outstretched, and she had for him in that moment a fleeting impression of pure beauty; then she came running down the mountain path and straight into his arms. She was released and happy, and as he felt her eager arms go round his neck, he said:
