The Big Wind

by Beatrice Coogan

  ‘So, it was your fair day butter and not the growth,’ he smiled.

  ‘Sure, your Honour, how could I let me customers down that waits for me in all weathers? An’ the growth is no lie either. Look!’ She gave him an uninhibited view of the excrescence. ‘I have it this ten year,’ she said calmly. ‘An’ listen to the children! Sure, I had to get them to the man with the ass. They’re barking like terriers with the chincough.’

  Conversation had to yield to the prostrating whoops of the cough but in lulls she discussed the fabulous wedding. He wasn’t keenly interested in the wealth displays of Sir Jocelyn Devine.

  ‘He must have money in every pocket,’ she was saying. ‘She looks a beauty, they say.’

  He had not realised that the words that had fallen into the clearing of coughs were addressed to him.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said politely.

  ‘The bride, sir. They say she is a beauty out and out.’

  He looked back at the scenery. A gentle wind sent the grass rippling to the distant horizon in waves of everlasting green. He felt no interest in the beauty of the nabob’s bride. He would prefer if this good woman would permit him to concentrate upon the bronze-haired beauty whose young white face appeared and vanished in each succeeding wave of grass. ‘My girl has ringlets rich and rare, by nature’s finger wove.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, madam?’

  ‘I was sayin’, your Honour, that it is a great match she’s makin’ entirely. They say he has money in every pocket but like that again it’s a case of “have a goose an’ you’ll get another”. Sure hasn’t she a castle herself beyond in Templetown?’

  ‘Did you say Templetown? What castle? What is this lady’s name?’ A fit of coughing drowned her reply. She held the child’s head out of the window.

  ‘Get it up now, Alannah!’ Over her shoulder she excused the indelicacy. ‘With respects to your Honour, but isn’t an empty house better than a bad tenant! She is a titled lady,’ she went on, wiping the child’s mouth and resuming her seat. ‘I disremember her name. Lady Something, but I’d remember the name of the castle if you were just to mention it to me.’

  ‘Would it be Tullow Castle in Templetouhy?’

  She shook her head. ‘That’s not the name, your Honour.’

  ‘The Castle of Ballagh?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Would it be Strague Castle? Or Bannandrum Castle?’

  She shook her head again. ‘It’s not Bannandrum. That’s the old O’Meara place, but ’tis a name like that the lady has. One of the old names.’

  He’d been dreading it but now he must cite the name he had withheld. It couldn’t be, of course. ‘It is scarcely Lady O’Carroll of Kilsheelin Castle?’

  She nearly jumped in her seat with the excitement of gratifying the kindly interest of the pleasant gentleman. ‘The very one, your Honour!’ She went on chatting but suddenly she realised that she had overstepped. The like of her had no right to impose with her talk because the gentleman had shown such friendly condescension. Look at him now, puttin’ her in her place with that haughty faraway look!

  But he handed out her basket and her children with courtly grace. He swept his high beaver low as though she were a duchess, and he marshalled his flock and his scenery with his wonted efficiency.

  A separate carriage bore him to the marble mansion of the man whose wealth was famed even in far-off America, and Australia. Every boatload of hunted tenants gave fresh testimony to its hourly increase.

  Sir Jocelyn came with courtly condescension to meet the celebrity but his greetings were accepted with such an air of calm equality that, instead of summoning a lackey to show the way to the private theatre, he found himself escorting the distinguished-looking personage there himself. ‘I have seen Mr. Macready in “Virginius”,’ he remarked, ‘but the critics hold that you surpass him in the title role.’

  The actor inclined his dark head. ‘The critics have been most kind.’

  ‘This evening’s choice of repertory,’ continued the host, ‘is that of my fiancée.’

  Again the actor inclined his head. ‘I trust that her Ladyship will not be disappointed.’

  Sir Jocelyn gave him a puzzled look, but as he moved away he paused. ‘There will be a ball after the performance,’ he said. ‘You will not be too fatigued to attend?’ The excuse rose and went unspoken. There would be no need to ride through the night to Kilsheelin. Lady O’Carroll too, would be there. Another gem for this marble setting. He tossed from him the picture of a girl in a niche in a wall that was deep grouted with the steadfast mountain grit—a girl waiting!

  Waiting, he said to his reflection as he sloshed the coconut butter on his face; waiting for a vagrant; the First Mate of a stolen coffin ship, a strolling player! He pressed in place the short-cropped wig of tight grey curls and clamped about them a bandeau of gold. The chair went backwards to the ground as he pushed it from him to don the Roman toga. A little sugar statue fell on its face as he banged out of the door. He turned and set it up, then touched it slowly in a sort of ceremonial gesture.

  Somewhere in the front a woman listened and froze. Out of the past and across the footlights came words that Roderick had quoted—almost with that self-same voice—as she lay on the great carved seat that had been designed by the boy who had ceased his tinkling mid the tea-service to listen also ‘...she wished,’ she said.

  That it had been a man. I answered her.

  It was the mother of a race of men.

  And paid her for thee with a kiss.

  The voice from the stage held tones and inflections that beat about her ears with an intimacy that was frightening. She clenched her nails to fight against the credulous fancy. How could this be Roderick’s voice!

  The actor’s voice surged with passion because he was declaiming about a lovely love he had thought could never die; a love that had inspired his whole remembered life and refreshed him in its gentle backwash until it had conditioned his emotions to focus upon the fruit of that love.

  ‘The very flower,’ he cried towards Appius on his tribunal, ‘our bed connubial grew...’

  First of the enraptured audience to rise in acclaim was the undemonstrative host, Sir Jocelyn. But the cold, averted profile of the lady who remained seated in the shadows of the box was not that of Lady O’Carroll. The white-robed actor turning again and again before the curtain could pick out no face that recalled her presence.

  Suddenly his heart resumed its lilt. Of course! of course! Lady O’Carroll was not the bride at all. She wasn’t here. What had he been thinking of to give such credence to the gossip of a woman journeying her children to be cured by a promenade beneath an ass’s belly!

  In vain the grand audience sought to clap him forth once more, and finally it desisted. To disappear without a curtain speech, was probably, they told each other, some whim of his exclusiveness, the prerogative of fame.

  Back in his dressing-room he hurled the flowing robes from him and pulled a fresh white shirt over his head without removing his make-up. ‘Oh, sir,’ expostulated his dresser, Alphabet, ‘you’ve smeared your nice fresh shirt!’

  When the black curls had shaken out through the opening of frilled lawn a streak of yellow ochre showed on every frill. He pulled the shirt from him and threw it on to the floor. ‘Get me another,’ he ordered. ‘And get me into these.’ He nodded towards the riding boots.

  ‘A pity to miss the dance, sir,’ gasped the dresser as he tugged the boot loops over the limb held horizontally in mid-air.

  ‘No, Alphabet,’ said the actor gaily to Anselm Beracium Con-ceptionez Duignan, ‘there is a smell of feet in that ballroom.’

  ‘Oh, Gawney, sir, surely not! Not them ladies and gents!’

  Down came the booted leg and up went its shapely companion in embroidered hose. ‘No, not them. Little ladies and gents, only they weren’t really ladies and gents. That was the trouble. And they weren’t sweaty feet. Alphabet. They were sizzling, burning feet performing th
e dance of death. Remind me to tell you about them someday. A bientôt. Alphabet, and go to bed soon. This place is horribly haunted.’ A whisk of white satin lining and the tall, cloaked figure was gone.

  ‘Whoever she is,’ said Anselm Beracium Conceptionez Duignan to the closed door, ‘by the mortal frost, she must be a stunner!’

  A few strides brought the actor down a passage and across the marble hall. Silently he slid the great bolt without benefit of butler or footman, and as he pulled the door open a prolonged susurrus of silk and an upward rippling of laughter made him turn. The artist in him lingered on the sudden tableau.

  Up the stairs in a swaying procession of colour, hooped white satin, blue brocade, rose moire, climbed a row of lovely girls. Each one held aloft a silver candlestick and its flame, glinting in their hair ornaments, gave the impression of moving stars. The buckles in their shoes, twinkling out of upheld flounces, looked like starry reflections in the black marble steps that rose, wave-like, beneath each foaming petticoat. As they wended upward for one final titivation before the ball they chattered and laughed and tossed back words over their shoulders.

  ‘Ye gods, wasn’t he divine?’

  ‘Like a Greek god!’

  ‘Not Greek, ’twas a Roman play. He looks like a cast of some Roman emperor.’

  ‘Did you see his eyes?’

  ‘It was his voice that held me. Wasn’t it superb, Sterrin?’

  The words were tossed over a white shoulder. Then the speaker disappeared in the upper darkness and the girl in the turquoise was alone on the stairway, slowly mounting. Her head was slightly bowed and the diamonds in the suffusion of her hair looked like stars in the bronze clouds of a stormcast sunset. That voice, she thought. Why had it stirred her like this? Why had all these submerged scenes risen upright? Frachans† on the hill slopes! Mushrooms in the dewy dawn! Hawthorn blossoms on Lissnastreenagh! A voice, was it across the footlights or across Cuilnafunchion that had cried, ‘Come on. Rajah! Don’t let Thuckeen shame you.’ And, linked with all, lifelong, unuttered, unformed, some vague hope that only now, this grey moment, had finally, despairingly ceased!

  A gust of wind guttered her candle. A noise made her turn. How strange to see the door stand open like that at night; and rain and wind coming through the empty hallway!

  Then she saw the man who stood at the foot of the stairs gazing up at her. This was a haunted house! Trembling caused grease to drip on the turquoise brocade. This was no ghost! She could see the white of his knuckles from the tensity of his grip on the banister. No convict, either! Not this elegant stranger! In all the world there was only one pair of eyes like these that gazed at her with blue intensity, bluer than ever from the liner that still outlined the unforgettable lashes.

  A sudden squall came through the door and up the stairs and moved the pictures on its way and swirled her silken draperies. The candlestick was growing heavy, her arm drooped. With a bound he was beside her and taken the weight from her hand just as he had always done! He held the light to shine on every vestige of the face that was lovelier than he had dreamed. ‘Sterrin!’

  ‘Young Thomas!’ Their names mingled and then they were silent again. No words would come to either but her throat moved with the congestion of words and questions. Someone was closing the door. The hall came alive. Without speaking, he turned to light her up the remaining stairs; just as he had always done. Without thinking, she moved upward in the path of light he shed for her.

  On the landing he put down the candle and the gesture released her voice. ‘When did you escape?’ But as she spoke she knew the question was out of character. There were years of worldly freedom behind the ease and polish of this elegant man. His smile was as gentle as years ago, but it was the quirk of his eyebrow at the question that released just one of all the emotions that strove within her. From the thrill and the wonder and the dazed joy came resentment, fierce and unreasoning. ‘Yes, weren’t you in prison? You—you ought to have been in prison!’ He ought to have been because of all the anguish she had endured for him. Lord, the cloud that had shadowed all those years! The slobbering sentimentalising over his broken life. She, running away to share his living entombment. And look at him! The height and breadth of him! The very air about him throbbed with his vitality. She felt cheated. His grandeur mocked her years of mourning pity. She could not know how coldly proud was the mask that covered her humiliation, and seemed to disdain the decked-out finery of the former knife boy. He glanced at his clothes and their grandeur mocked him. He gave a slight bow, ‘You are right, I ought to have been in prison. I realise that it was presumptuous of me to be elsewhere. Goodbye, Miss Sterrin.’

  ‘Young Thomas!’ He had almost reached the top of the stairs when the name burst from her as it had that morning years ago when she watched him moving down the castle boreen out of her life. He turned. Instead of the black ribbon, there were diamonds holding her hair, instead of the cloak of mourning black there was a gown of blue brocade, but the face above was fine drawn with the same pleading of the girl who had waved from the wall; whose heart was as steadfast as the wall of mountain grit. In one stride he took her in his arms.

  ‘Giola, mo giola!’ Brightness of brightness! The old endearment sprang to his lips before they met hers in a long kiss that was her awakening and his fulfilment. When it ended he drew her closer still and buried his face in her hair. ‘And if I had taken one more sulky step I might have gone beyond recall for ever and have missed this glorious moment.’ He pushed back her hair from her forehead and placed his other hand beneath her chin and gazed deep into the face that had been with him in all his wanderings. How lovely it had become! ‘And I see that you still have your wart.’ He fingered the speck of brown velvet above her eye.

  She drew back. ‘Wart, indeed! Let me tell you that my beauty spot is all the rage. All the bridesmaids are wearing...’ her gaiety ebbed.

  He drew her back into his arms. ‘Are all the bridesmaids wearing warts?’ And suddenly he realised with a pang that the warty woman on the train had not been wrong. Lady O’Carroll must be the bride, since Sterrin was here. Here in his arms! The pang gave way to a surging of joy. ‘Sterrin, my love,’ he murmured, ‘if I had thrown away this moment. I think that I must have lived for it since that night when I saw the field taken up to the sky and I thought that the world had ended and was being taken up to Heaven—all the people except the three of us there. Then we reached the castle and I fell asleep, and when I awakened you were there. I had a sleepy impression that it was you who had brought calm. Since then you have been my world.’ He looked over her head into the shadows. ‘You were there when the storm used to crash the waves and clouds together and send the boat into a kind of outer darkness.’

  She smiled happily against his shoulder. ‘Always the stormy petrel!’

  ‘No, mavourneen.’

  She thought that his beautiful voice crooned music into the world.

  ‘You were the white dove of the tempest.’

  She gave a sigh of rapture. This was the moment that her life, also, had awaited. She twined her arms about him and looked up into his face, ‘And I thought that you were in prison—a convict.’

  ‘And I thought that you were in a convent—a nun. Mo cuid de’n naim!’ My share of heaven.

  She drew back on a sudden. ‘But where have you been? And what brought you here? You seemed to appear out of the night on the breath of the wind—’

  ‘On the breath of the wind,’ he repeated. ‘The way you first came. Then you did not recognise me on the stage?’

  Realisation smote her. ‘So it was you!’ she breathed. That was why she had felt so strangely disturbed during his performance. Why Mamma had tensed and agitated her fan so that Sterrin had dreaded the onset of another attack after so long. Young Thomas had always imitated Papa’s voice in a restrained kind of way. But back there in that theatre it had clarioned forth with all Papa’s assurance and authority. ‘You are the famous Thomas Young!’ She was awestruck for a mo
ment, then she gave out a low jet of laughter, ‘Oh, Young Thomas, how terribly funny and how terribly like you. You reversed your own name.’

  ‘Not quite. I decided to pick up the name that Mr. Young discarded that time in the Crow Street Theatre in Dublin. Do you remember?’

  ‘I remember. You nearly got Papa arrested, and you had police watching the castle for months. They thought that you were someone dangerous and important—but—’ she laid her head against him and she could hear the beating of his heart, ‘you were always important to me—your heart is beginning to go thumpity, thump.’ She looked up at him. ‘It is not really so startling that you should have become an actor. Do you remember the plays we used to get up with Bunzy De Lacey? And do you remember, when you acted the Lord Lieutenant at Court Presentations, you would not give me the ceremonial kiss?’

  ‘I shall spend the rest of my life atoning for that omission.’ His lips met hers and stopped her reminiscences but they failed to stop the little chill of dread at his words. The world around her had returned. They had been play-acting, the two of them, here in this unrehearsed moment of reunion. Now she must face reality.

  ‘Sterrin,’ he raised her face from his shoulder, ‘what was this about your entering a convent? The news was like a death blow. What happened?’

  ‘Well, you see. Young Thomas—oh, I must remember to drop the “Young”. It was always a silly thing. Why you are years older than—’ She gazed bleakly into the face that was now so youngly handsome; older only in their own bright sphere. Not in that remote phase of sardonic age that was reaching out from forty years away to grasp her. The same panic that she had experienced in the jewelled aviary began to mount. Then voices came along the corridor and she started back from him. Opened doors threw beams of light and the swish of silken gowns. From the stairs came Sir Jocelyn’s voice. She almost dragged Thomas into the room behind her. ‘What is wrong?’ he asked, ‘I have never known you to show this kind of fear. Don’t tell me that you are frightened of your future stepfather?’