He asked to make sure, for God knew what mischief would follow if he got the wrong girl! Cassidy was nobody’s fool!
She turned. It was her, all right. She had speckled eyes and her brother’s little face, only she’d so improved on it that it was chalk and cheese and you’d not have known if she hadn’t come out of the same house and answered to the same name.
“Yes? I’m Miss Harris. What do you want?”
“ ’Tis not what I want, me darlin’,” he said. “Though were me heart me own ye should have it directly. I speak for another.”
She looked at him in astonishment, then frowned angrily and tried to pass. But Cassidy, hopping backwards in front of her, kept pace and talked so eloquently on another’s behalf that even a maid shaking a duster out of an upstairs window of one of the smart new villas could see his white teeth gleaming and his eyes gawping, right through the back of his head.
“I speak for him who’s eatin’ out his heart for the love of ye,” panted Cassidy. “Oh, pity him, me darlin’, for he’s as fine a young man as ye’re likely to meet with this side o’ the grave!”
Miss Harris, still frowning so that Cassidy despaired of softening her heart, stepped this way and that, so that she and he seemed engaged in a sprightly springtime dance, she in dainty muslin and Cassidy in hopeless green.
Although she would like to have heard rather more about it, she wasn’t going to lower herself in front of all the neighbors by bandying words with a flat-nosed Irish loafer with his syrupy words and treacly smile.
And yet . . . and yet he’d said somebody loved her. It was a good thing to have heard on a Wednesday morning, no matter from whom.
“Take pity on him!” Cassidy pleaded again, and Miss Harris, in spite of herself, racked her brains to discover on whom it was that she should take pity.
Although she wouldn’t have admitted it for worlds, nobody sprang readily to mind.
She did not think of Bostock. She never thought of Bostock. And why should she? She was Miss Dorothy Harris, and she would have died of shame if she’d known that she’d been mistaken for her younger sister Mary.
At last she evaded Cassidy and stalked away, her mind an absolute ferment of young men who, just possibly, might have been madly in love with her.
Cassidy kissed his hand after her back and went off to find O’Rourke, feeling that he’d given love a helping hand.
“In Dublin’s fair city, where girls are so pretty,” he sang blithely.
“I first set me eyes on sweet Molly Malone!”
The maid at the upstairs window stopped shaking out her duster, and there was a look on her face that would have brought a good deal more than Dublin Castle tumbling down. It was Mary Flatley!
“So it’s yerself, Michael Cassidy!” she sobbed. “Down there in the street and smarmin’ up to another bit of skirt in front of me very eyes! I’ll give ye Molly Malone! Oh, Cassidy, Cassidy! Ye’re a philanderin’ villain with no heart but an onion, that ye peel and peel and find nothin’ but tears! I’ll give me heart and hand to the fishmonger’s son!” she wept wildly. “For he’s as true as ye are false! Though he’s an Englishman and as quiet as a mouse and will never talk of raven’s wings, nor sing, nor dance, he’ll not make me cry, neither. I’ll have him today if he asks. And ye’ve only yer wickedly wheedlin’ self to blame!”
She shook her fist after the cheerfully singing Cassidy and then after the back of Dorothy Harris. She dried her eyes on the curtain and slammed down the window so that the glass cracked from side to side.
Chapter Four
DOROTHY Harris walked on toward the heart of the town. She was to meet her friend, Maggie Hemp, in Collier’s Chocolate and Coffee Shop and talk about what they would wear for Saturday night on Devil’s Dyke. As they were both, for the time being, without lovers, they meant to go together and stroll, laughingly, arm in arm, and watch the goings-on with disinterested amusement, come what may.
She walked quite briskly to begin with, and then fell into a gentle saunter, in which her head drooped, in musing contemplation of the cobbles. Then she looked up and hastened; then she slowed down again.
These changes in her pace reflected changes in her thoughts. That Irishman. What had he meant? She didn’t really know what to make of it. Had he been making fun of her? Why should he do such a thing?
Common sense told her she ought to dismiss the whole thing from her mind. If she did have an unknown admirer, then surely she’d have known about it by now. And anyway, he wouldn’t have left it to an Irish loafer to pass the good news on.
On the other hand, there were people who were so agonizingly shy that they ate their hearts out in private and went to their graves without ever opening their hearts to the girls they loved. You read about them—in books.
Yet if a person was so agonizingly shy, would he have confided his most sacred feelings to a perfect stranger? It wasn’t very likely.
On the other hand (Miss Harris’s mind was very full of hands that morning, and they all had a finger in the pie), someone had told the Irishman, for how else did he know her name and where to find her? That was a fact, and there was no getting around it, no matter how hard you tried.
So she walked, and so she mused, while the sun struck through her straw bonnet and dappled her face with flying gold—as if to add to her confusion.
“Could it be . . . him?” she wondered, giving way to the Dorothy part of her nature, and fixing on a distant youth who lived in one of the new villas and had once smiled at her absentmindedly. “Could it really be him?”
“No!” answered the Harris portion, which was rather more scientific and not given to flights of fancy. “It couldn’t possibly be! He hardly knows you’re alive!”
She walked on.
“But what if it’s . . . him?” thought Dorothy, loitering again.
“Oh, I hope not!” declared the Harris half, shaking the jointly owned head. “I couldn’t bear it! What would you say to him? Oh, no! Not him!”
She clutched her bonnet strings and hurried on in mock alarm, as if this last, undesirable one were already at her heels.
She slowed down.
“I don’t suppose there’s any chance that—that it could be . . . him?”
The Harris part didn’t think so and, what was more, had some sharp words to say on the subject of foolish ambition and making herself a laughingstock. So she hastened on . . . until she found someone else in her Fortunatus’s purse of dreams.
A young man driving a gig turned to look at her, either because she was behaving oddly or because there’s always something heartwarming about the sight of a girl of fifteen and three-quarters smiling to herself and wearing the spring sunshine as if it had just been made for her.
Not that Dorothy Harris was what you would have called pretty. She wasn’t likely to strike anyone all of a heap—unless she walked into him. She was small, like all the Harrises, but she certainly had an odd fascination, especially when she wasn’t thinking about it.
She stared after the young man and instantly enrolled him as a suspect.
“Don’t be ridiculous!” snapped the Harris in her. “You don’t know him from Adam!”
“Oh, don’t be such a wet blanket!” said Dorothy. “What ever would have happened to Eve if she’d listened to you!”
Collier’s Chocolate and Coffee Shop was in Bartholomews, which was the oldest, noisiest, stoniest, fishiest part of the town. Most of the houses looked as if they’d been shrugged down North Street in a heap and were only just picking themselves up.
On Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, Mr. Collier served coffee or chocolate in delicate gold-edged cups for threepence, with a marzipan fancy for no extra charge.
Everybody went, and there was always a scramble for the best seats, which were in the new bow window that Mr. Collier, who liked to move with the times, had installed.
Maggie Hemp was there already. She beckoned imperiously to Dorothy, indicating through the window that she’d been
guarding an empty chair with her life.
Eagerly Dorothy squeezed into Collier’s; the doorway was still the old one and as narrow as sin. She joined her friend.
“Maggie!” she panted, sitting down with a flurry of muslin, and full to bursting with her news.
“You’re late,” said Miss Hemp coldly. She signaled to Mr. Collier, who was perambulating with his tray.
“Oh, Maggie!”
“I’ll have one of those, Mr. Collier,” said Miss Hemp, pointing thoughtfully to a marzipan crocus.
Dorothy bit her lip and picked a daffodil. She’d have picked Mr. Collier’s thumb if it had been nearest, she was so impatient to talk.
“Maggie! You’ll never guess what—”
“Mr. Collier!” called Miss Hemp, ignoring her.
“Yes, miss?”
“Could we have the sugar, please?”
“It’s on the table, miss.”
“Oh! Oh, I see.”
“Maggie! You’ll never guess what—”
“Dolly! Are you sitting on my glove?”
“No, I’m not! Please, Maggie, let me tell you what happened just now!”
“All right, Dolly,” said Maggie Hemp, feeling that she’d punished her friend sufficiently for having been late. “Now you can tell me, dear.”
So Dorothy, her spirits a little dashed, but reviving quickly, told Maggie about her meeting with the strange Irishman. She told it very amusingly and admitted that it was all probably nonsense and didn’t mean anything at all. But wasn’t it a strange thing to have happened?
She said it was nonsense not because she believed that it was but because she didn’t want to make Maggie, who was rather touchy, jealous. She was rather hoping that they could both laugh and joke about who could possibly be in love with her. It seemed a pleasant subject.
However, as she rambled on, Maggie Hemp couldn’t help noticing that Dolly kept staring around the room and even looking over her, Maggie’s, shoulder to see who was passing by outside. Not even the burly fishermen who stumped into Saunders’ Marine Stores and Fishing Tackle next door and came out in enormous new yellow boots were safe from her promiscuously roving eye.
Miss Hemp began to feel a little neglected. She felt that Dolly wasn’t really with her. Also, she couldn’t help feeling that, if the Irishman’s words turned out to be only half true, then Dolly Harris would drop her like a hot potato, and that would be the end of Saturday night.
“He must have been off his head, Dolly!” said Miss Hemp briskly. “Or drunk, most likely. You know what those Irishmen are!”
“I did say it was probably all nonsense,” said Dorothy. She was embarrassed to find that her wandering gaze had attracted a small boy, who, tired of gazing at unattainable shrimping nets and bouquets of mackerel knives next door, had come to make goldfish faces at her through the glass.
She blushed and concentrated again on her friend.
“But just for the sake of supposing, Maggie, who do you think it could be?”
“I really can’t imagine, Dolly.”
“But what if it’s—”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, don’t be so silly!” said Miss Hemp, losing patience. “I thought we were going to talk about Saturday night! We’re still going, I suppose? You haven’t changed your mind, Dolly?”
“Oh, no, Maggie! I wouldn’t do a thing like that!”
“I can always find somebody else,” said Miss Hemp warningly.
She was a year older than Dolly and a good deal prettier. She was particularly irritated as she’d felt she was doing Dolly Harris a favor by going with her. She had no intention of playing second fiddle to little Dolly’s daydreams.
In fact, the more she thought about it the angrier she became. She believed Dolly had made the whole thing up. There never had been an Irishman . . . still less an unknown admirer. She began to bang her finger rhythmically against the edge of the table.
“I don’t know why you’re so cross, Maggie.”
“I’m not in the least cross, Dolly. Why should I be cross with you, of all people?”
Dolly bit her lip. She wished she’d never told Maggie about her adventure. Somehow Maggie made it all seem so stupid. She shouldn’t have told anybody. She should have kept it to herself. Nobody really understood the way she felt about things, except, possibly, that Mysterious Person, who also kept things to himself. Who could he be?
She picked up her cake and stared somewhat gloomily out the window, observing a young woman, in a green shawl and with a basket over her arm, going in to Saunders’.
“You haven’t answered me, Dolly.”
“I don’t see what there is to talk about, Maggie.”
“I asked you why you thought I should be cross with you.”
“I don’t know, Maggie. I really don’t know . . . unless it’s because you’re jealous of what that Irishman told me.”
“Jealous?” cried Miss Hemp, setting down her cup with a loud clatter. “Jealous? Me, jealous of you, Dolly Harris? Really, it’s quite the funniest thing I’ve ever heard!”
She paused to express her merriment by a very ill-natured laugh indeed, and then went on to demolish her friend’s pretensions by reminding her that she was hardly of a stature or appearance to drive men wild, and that, if it hadn’t been for her—Miss Hemp’s—generosity in the way of cast-off admirers, she wouldn’t have got closer to a young man than to that stupid Pigott’s comet!
Dorothy listened incredulously. She stood up. Her eyes were filled with tears.
“I hate you, Maggie Hemp! I really hate you!”
She left the table, and Miss Hemp, as a Parthian shot, offered, “And, what’s more, Dolly Harris, I think you made the whole thing up. Unknown admirers, indeed! Pigs might fly, Dolly Harris, before I’ll believe that!”
Blindly Dorothy left the shop and stumbled down the two steps outside. Her heart was in such a turmoil that she scarcely knew whether her adventure had taken place or not. She could only feel, as her one-time friend had pointed out, that she was plain, undersized, and unloved.
“Watch where ye’re goin’, miss!” cried the girl in the green shawl, coming out of Saunders’ and knocking into her. “Oh! So it’s yerself,” she said, looking into Dorothy’s face with angry recognition. “Well, ye can have him for all the good it’ll do ye! Marry him today for all I care! And may he break his heart for the love of ye, which would serve him right!”
Dorothy tottered. She gaped. Her thoughts whirled around and around. It had happened again! She’d been told that somebody loved her! It hadn’t been a dream, after all!
She looked back to Collier’s. Maggie Hemp was standing in the doorway. She must have heard! Dorothy tossed her head. So she’d made it all up, had she? Well! Somebody loved her. Somebody loved her. Somebody loved her, she thought, shifting the emphasis, like a figure in a quadrille, all the way down the line.
She marched away with her head in the air, every bit as high as Pigott’s comet, while Mary Flatley stared after her, with eyes as green as unripe apples.
Then a fisherman’s lad, in red-knitted cap and huge yellow boots, came out of Saunders’ and led her away.
They had gone before Maggie Hemp had recovered herself sufficiently to demand the name of Dolly Harris’s secret admirer.
Chapter Five
MISS HEMP remained standing in the doorway of Collier’s, her breast heaving, her eyes flashing, her nostrils dilating, and her delicate, white-gloved fingers clenching and unclenching, like stricken blossoms. In addition to these little manifestations of her feelings, her left foot had begun to tap the ground with increasing force. There was no telling what it would all have come to if someone had not asked her to step aside as she was obstructing the entrance to the shop.
She scowled and walked away. She had heard enough—quite enough!—to realize that her friend had cruelly deceived her. Her friend—and Miss Hemp’s lips curled scornfully over the word—had lied to her, had been deceitful and sly.
“Un
known admirer, indeed!” she muttered. “Oh, very unknown, when even a twopenny ha’penny servant girl knows all about him! That’s a real mystery, that is! That’s a real surprise! Ha—ha! ‘I wonder who it can be, Maggie?’ ” she went on, imitating her friend’s voice with bitter exaggeration. “ ‘I really can’t imagine! Who can have fallen in love with little me? Isn’t it strange, Maggie? Isn’t it wonderful, Maggie? Isn’t it mysterious, Maggie? Do you think it could all be on account of the comet, Maggie?’ ”
So Miss Hemp continued, jerking out her feelings, like teeth. Her anger fed on itself and drove tears into her eyes, so that she continually had to brush them aside.
She felt lonely and ill-used. Even though she was neat and pretty enough for young men to turn and look after her, nobody really liked her very much. She was just too honest. She never told lies herself, and if she thought anybody was being sly, she just came right out with it and said so. That was her nature and you could take it or leave it. Most people left it.
“You’re a mean, sly beast, Dolly Harris!” she declared as she stalked along East Street.
“But who could he be?” she wondered, and she slowed down.
She shook her head and walked on quickly. Then she stopped; then she went on; then she stopped again, much as Dorothy had done, as a wide variety of young men presented themselves to her tortured mind.
“Could it be . . . him? Very likely! He’s as sly as Dolly! Or . . . him? She’s welcome to that one! But what if it was . . . him? Oh, the vile deceitful wretch! How could he? Oh, I hate and despise you all!”
She didn’t know whether to be more hurt or angry that Dolly should have kept such a secret from her. Then she realized all of a sudden that Dolly had done it on purpose to trap her into speaking her mind!
Of course, that was it! Dolly must have known all along that Maggie would never have swallowed that cock-and-bull story about the Irishman! That’s why she’d made it up! She’d done it on purpose to force poor, unsuspecting Maggie Hemp into a quarrel so she could get rid of her and go off to Devil’s Dyke with her sly lover on her own!
The Complete Bostock and Harris Page 18
