Once, on a wild, far-flung evening before rain, as they stood by the side of the mountain road, Con filling his huge chest with breaths of the living air, a tall figure approached them carrying a gun over his shoulder. Looking at him, they saw a handsome man, evidently a gamekeeper, walking easily, sure of himself upon the mountains.
“A grand evening,” he called, when still some yards away.
“It is that,” answered Con.
“It won’t last,” said the stranger. “Still, we must thank God for what we can get.” He laughed, and eyed Con with his head on one side.
“I’m not complaining,” said Con, shortly.
“Faith, no more am I. No more am I.” He looked away to the North, shading his eyes. “But, if ye have to be outdoors all the day, ye prefer the fine to the wet ; though, faith, ye’re used to both.”
“Now, that’s where I envy you. I’d give me eyes to be outdoors all day.”
“Aye.” He looked at Con, appreciatively. “Dublin, is it? Well. There’s many would be glad of a dry desk to sit at, in the bad weather. Sure, we all want the opposite of what we have. Isn’t that so?”
He grinned at Dermot, showing all his teeth.
Dermot frowned. He was unprepared for the question, and afraid of displeasing Con if he answered it wrongly.
“I suppose so,” he said at last.
“Oh, indeed we do. Well “—he turned to Con—“you can have my job: and I’ll have yours.”
“Faith,” said Con, “I wish the world was as easy arranged as that.”
“Ye’d have a right—if ye had nine childer waitin’ on ye when ye got home.”
“Nine, eh?”
“Nine. And I wouldn’t wish one of them off my hands. No, sir. Not one. Only it’s hard to stretch your pocket, sometimes.” He looked again to the North. “There now ; if ye look, ye’ll see something worth looking at.”
They turned where he pointed, and there, on the farthest horizon, under a long slit of saffron sky, appeared a line of tiny mountains, of pure innocent blue, so frail, so delicate, they might have been painted by some miniaturist upon china.
“Them,” said the gamekeeper, “is the Mountains of Mourne, one hundred and ten miles from where ye stand. And, by the same token, I’ll be goin’ on home, for when ye see them the rain is not far off.”
Con turned abruptly, and fished something out of a flap pocket on his machine.
“Here,” he said. “Wish us luck, before you go.”
He handed over a small flat bottle, a whisky sample. The stranger’s face lit up like a candle.
“Faith, and I will,” he said. Uncorking the bottle, he took a mouthful, and then climbed down a few feet to where a spring chuckled out from the hillside.
“Don’t spill it,” called Con.
“Oh, damn the fear.” The man’s manner had changed entirely. His air of foxy sententiousness had left him. ‘Why didn’t ye say that at first?’ his expression seemed to say.
“Well”; he reached the spring, carefully filled the bottle, and held it up to them. “May it be to your good health and your good luck.”
He drank, and wiped his mouth on his tweed coatsleeve. In a few seconds, he was beside them again. As he handed back the bottle, he looked at it, and his eyes gleamed.
“Now blast the bellas of the divil that blew out that bit o’ glass,” he said. “That he didn’t get a better breath, and blow it bigger. Wha’?”
He shook them both by the hand.
“Well, be good to yourselves.”
A kick, a roar, and they were off, turning perilously, on the rough road, to answer his wave of farewell.
“That was a queer chap,” shouted Con presently. “Did ye notice how we had to give him the drink to find out what sort he was? There’s too many of them like that. Handing you out stuff, and watching you out of the corner of their eye to see how are you taking it. I hate that.”
“Then—why did you give him the whisky?”
“Ah, what good is it, to stand talking rubbish to one another, instead of sense.”
The machine, swooping down a narrow glen, put up a flight of rooks with its noise.
“That chap, d’ye see,” resumed Con presently, over his shoulder, “has two faces. One for the priests and gentry, one for his friends. Didn’t you like him better at the end than the beginning?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then.”
Twenty minutes later, they ran into the rain.
Chapter XXV
Best of all days at Delgany was Saturday. First of all, Con got out early from town, and was always ready to do something delightful: a long ride into Wicklow, a row in the boat, a picnic ; and, after that, when one had had dinner, there was the band in the evening. The band played in Sorrento Park, across the road. One could either listen from the house, or cross over, walk about among the lamps and people, or climb up to a nook in the rocks at the top, and look out over the great moonlit bay, with the dark shapes of the mountains, and the twinkling lights of Bray upon the waterline, four miles across, on the other side.
Eileen met her gallants at the band. They treated Dermot goodnaturedly, and he, dumb with a queer kind of jealousy, kept at her side. He did not properly understand the situation, and it never occurred to him, as it would to many boys, to make an excuse and run away. All he knew was that he loved being with Eileen, that she had come over with him to the band—Anne preferred to listen from the house—and that now this man was here, spoiling his evening, and would not go away. He kept by Eileen not from obstinacy, but because he felt bewildered, and that was his place, anyway. Maybe she enjoyed the chance to tease Hughie or Cecil or Denis or Patrick or John. They, for their part, took the matter with great goodhumour.
“See here—What’s his name?—Dermot—See here, Dermot, will you be a true man, and go away for a few minutes?”
The boy looked at him rebelliously, unhappily.
“Why should I?”
“Sure, I want to whisper sweet nothings to Eileen here.” Dermot pressed against Eileen’s arm. She gave no sign.
“I dare say you do,” he said heavily.
The suitor sighed goodhumouredly.
“Ah,” he said, “you’re no true man.”
On other occasions, when Con was present, visits to the band were different. Con became impatient of the music after forty minutes or so, and Dermot, though normally he hated to miss a note, was so readily infected by the other’s mood that he got up without a word, and joined in a hunt for that salt of life which Con vaguely and variously termed “divarsion.” Divarsion, at the band, consisted in hunting about among the rocks, and inconveniencing lovers: getting behind respectable citizens, and making remarks about the music in vulgar Dublin voices: throwing missiles from the shelter of the rocks at prominent and pompous individuals below on the promenade: and, richest joke of all, surreptitiously introducing foreign substances into the interstices of wind instruments, during the intervals between the music. To do this, under the full glare of the bandstand lights, without being detected by public or musicians, required great skill. Needless to say, it was always Con who essayed it. He was a fine actor. He would saunter round the very edge of the bandstand, feigning intense interest in all to do with it, or wearing an air of bland and slightly sorrowful abstraction, which served as cover if he roused suspicion. This air he even succeeded in maintaining when an indignant musician caught him in the act of inserting a nail into his bassoon. Nothing was said on either side, Con bestowing on his bristling victim a gaze of innocent and sad affection, as he wandered out of range.
Con’s finest coup at this particular sport was brought off, not at the band, but in the theatre. Sitting in the front row of the parterre, he saw presented to him the top of a double bass, leaning against the rail which enclosed the orchestra. Under cover of darkness, and with many a suppressed guffaw, he managed to turn the keys, and twist all the strings hopelessly out of tune. His convulsions during the remainder of the act were a s
ource of some annoyance to the people near him: but they were nothing to the happy bellow he let when the trick reached its dénouement. The orchestra filed in for the interval: the conductor raised his baton: and then as the first chord crashed down, there broke from the maltreated instrument a sort of unearthly belch, making the conductor jump as if there were a pin in his trousers, and glare furiously at the bewildered player. Con bawled so loud that Dermot’s own joy was swamped in self-consciousness. But Con was always uproarious in the theatre. He took Dermot to see “When Knights Were Bold,” and laughed so loud that even Jimmy Welch began to laugh too. The only comfort was (for Dermot) that Con’s was such a vast, generous laugh, it made everyone else want to join. Even if they thought the stimulus insufficient they had not the heart to spoil such enormous and innocent enjoyment. Dermot’s father, Con’s complete antithesis, to whom all these practices were “childish nonsense the great fellow should have grown out of long ago,” could seldom resist him, but must begin unwillingly to laugh too.
Another happy-hunting-ground for divarsion was the Pavilion, at Kingstown, where travelling pierrot troupes spent a week at a time. Dermot often visited this place on his own account, but not entirely for pleasure. Mr. Gray’s attack of appendicitis had made real to the boy a fear which had haunted him since childhood. Mr. Gray’s own father had died young, leaving a widow and a boy of twelve completely penniless. The boy of twelve had perforce entered as office boy the first firm that would accept him. He had risen swiftly, after a hard struggle which had taken from him some of his capacity for youth, which had in fact caused that punctiliousness and tendency to worry, so ridiculous to the folk at Delgany. Dermot did not know about this. What he did know—now—was that the same fate might be in store for him. At any moment, so he feared, he might be called upon to support his mother, and Eithne. Accordingly he set himself to develop and make ready his one commercial talent—mimicry. Then, if the disaster came, he could earn a living as a comedian. Every gag and joke, all he could remember of every song, went down in a fat black exercise book, and was learned by heart. Sometimes two visits to the same show would be necessary, in order to get hold of something peculiarly attractive. Dermot sat through the vocalists and the pianists and the violinists and the concerted numbers, for the sake of those minutes when the comedian held the stage. Every company carried a comedian: some carried a “light comedian” as well. Light comedians were seldom profitable. They were but foils to their middle or heavy-weight colleagues, and their solo numbers usually amounted only to a song and a step dance. So, year by year, Dermot with endless care and labour amassed a fund of middle class facetiæ and vulgarities which stood him in fine stead at school, but were fortunately never called upon for the purpose with which they had been compiled.
When Con came, however, he could allow himself a holiday. Con soon tired of the entertainment. He would laugh, suddenly and loudly, once or twice, at the comedian, comment unfavourably on the soubrette, dislike the soprano, and declare, of the baritone, that sure, he could do as well as that himself. At the interval, therefore, they would leave their seats, and walk on the Pavilion’s outer decks, drawing in the fresh sea air and looking with satisfaction over the lights of the harbour. Then the sound of a drunken brawl between two navvies, breaking out round a corner of that respectable and select enclosure, would bring a couple of scandalised officials at the run: but they would only find a boy and a grave, good-looking young gentleman leaning over the balcony and looking out to sea.
“Wasn’t it here we haird them?”
“Faith, I’d have swore to it.”
Pause ; suspicious glances directed at the two unconcerned backs: and a slow withdrawal of official feet.
More dangerous was the discharge of small bombs which, in those early days, were sold for motor cyclists to throw at the dogs that rushed out to molest them. Each exploded with a loud report on hitting the ground, and was further equipped with a nucleus of small pebbles, to act as shrapnel. When thrown underneath or near an oncoming dog, they routed him, without inflicting any harm. Dropped from a height, into the crowds of the dispersing audience, they produced “divarsion” of the liveliest kind. Too lively, indeed. One night Con flung down a handful of them from the topmost deck of all, and caused a small panic. Eileen, who was still inside the building, heard the bang. The two offenders bolted down stairs as hard as they could go, almost running into an attendant who was charging up.
“What was that bang?” cried Con instantly, as if he were blaming the man for it. The attendant stopped and looked at him.
“Some bloody young blagyards up above,” he muttered, and ran on.
“Begob,” said Con presently, when they were safely mingled with the crowd, “we were only just in time. We’d better go easy a bit.”
And, though neither referred to the fact, bombs were not used again.
One night, when Dermot was staying at Delgany, Eileen refused to join them, and the two went to the Pavilion by themselves. When they came back, Con led Dermot into Eileen’s bedroom, flashing an electric torch on her as she lay in bed.
“Here,” he cried, “here’s Dermot come in to kiss you good-night.”
“I haven’t,” protested Dermot, horrified.
“Ah, get away, the two of you,” cried the girl irritably, screwing up her eyes against the light.
“Snubbed, me lad,” observed Con, shutting the door after them: and Dermot hurried off to his room, hurried into bed, and hid his face in the pillow. To say it all openly, laughing, out loud like that—oh, oh, oh! Probably, had he asked himself the question, he would have said that he loved Eileen. He might even have said that, when he grew up, he would marry her ; but he would have meant it as a child means such declarations. For years he had adored and worshipped Eileen. When they first met, on his first rapturous visit of the summer to Delgany, she would kiss him. The same happened when they said goodbye. And so, because he would so terribly have liked to kiss her more often, and because he did not discover the fact till Con so ruthlessly showed he knew it already, Dermot was much troubled. He brooded, waited his chance, grew self-conscious, and shy of Eileen: symptoms noted with affectionate amusement by the girl herself.
On the last night of that same visit, he did not say goodnight as usual to her on the landing, but made some pretext to follow her into her room. She lit the candle, and stood at her dressing table with her back to him. When she turned round, he saw in the dim light that she was smiling.
“Well, son,” she said, in tones of friendly mockery. “What are you doing here? You want a kiss—is that it?”
He looked at her sorrowfully, almost indignantly, for he had followed her with no set thought in his mind, but by instinct, because it was his last night ; to be with her, near her, a minute longer.
“No,” he said, “I didn’t come for that.”
She crossed over to him, and laid a hand on each shoulder.
“Ah, never mind, Dermot,” she said. “You’re a decent sort. Good night,” and with affectionate firmness she pushed him out of the door.
He wandered into Con’s room, and stood fidgeting about for a while, uncertain what to make of this, but sure she was not really angry. Why, then——? He crossed to the mantelpiece, and frowned thoughtfully at the range of exhibits upon it. Con kept a great and fascinating variety of objects on his mantelpiece: innumerable picture postcards, most of them representing little girls with enormous eyes: dance programmes, invitations, Boileau and Gibson girls: grotesque china bulldogs: a series of photographs, taken at school, showing the various stages of a fight: calendars, and two or three booby prizes, with personal and appropriate labels. Dermot knew them all by heart, but inspected each with elaborate care, as if he were seeing it for the first time.
“What ails ye?” asked Con, flinging back his braces, his shadow enormous on the ceiling.
“Nothing. I don’t know. That is——”
“Are ye feeling mousey?”
Mousey was Con’s portmant
eau word of condemnation. Compounded of lousy and mildewed, it was employed by him to describe both physical and spiritual conditions, with equal freedom.
“No,” replied Dermot, “I’m not feeling mousey.”
“Well then, don’t go gawkin’ about with a mousey mug on ye.”
Dermot smiled. He could sometimes look as old as Con.
“I’ll go to bed, I think,” he said.
Next morning, he met Eileen on the steps outside the front door, where they all gathered to exclaim over the morning. She slid her arm through his, and kissed him affectionately on the lips.
“Morning, son,” she said.
So it was all right. Hooray. She wasn’t angry with him. Darling Eileen. Tears came into his eyes, he loved her so.
The Garden Page 21
