After that, Dermot frankly kissed her whenever he could, disregarding such observations as Con saw fit to make.
Chapter XXVI
Certain places, certain houses, seem lucky for us. Nothing unpleasant happens to us while we are in their shelter: we cannot be unhappy, we cannot even be unwell. We thrive in them, like plants in favourable soil. For Dermot and Eithne, Delgany was one of these lucky places. It provided them with romance, excitement, and surprise. Thus it was only fitting that at Delgany Dermot met the man he always considered the most remarkable figure he had ever known. He met him, perhaps, in all his life, three times ; but the figure, in appearance and manifestation more impressive even than the legend which surrounded him, remained perfect in his mind. Most marvellous of all, this strange, dazzling man was related to him: his cousin.
It was in that capacity that Dermot was introduced to him, one night when he and Con returned just in time for dinner from a ride in the mountains. Eileen came out into the hall, a sparkle of excitement in her eyes, and shut the drawing-room door behind her. She said something to Con which Dermot could not catch, and then, to Dermot,
“Come and meet your cousin.”
“My cousin?”
“Yes, my lad. Your cousin. And don’t you forget it.”
Dermot looked from one to the other in such bewilderment that both burst out laughing.
“Run up and wash yourself, quick. Then you’ll just have time to meet him before we go into dinner. It’s the O’Dowda,” she added, with a touch of excitement she could not suppress. “You’ve surely heard about him, haven’t you?”
“Oh yes. I’ve heard about him.”
“Go on, then. Quick.”
Dermot climbed the stairs soberly. He had indeed heard of this legendary figure, who, after a brilliant career in the diplomatic service, suddenly threw up his post, left, almost contemptuously, his beautiful wife (who was glad to be rid of him), and became a globe-trotter, a cosmopolitan ; more at home, like so many of his ancestors, in the salons of Paris and Vienna than in the wild lands of which they had been dispossessed. Dermot, never having seen him, had not bothered his head much with a person so far outside the known world. He remembered his mother’s story of how the O’Dowda had taken her to her first ball, but even that had not served to make him a real figure. Nor was Dermot alone there, for the list of his cousin’s attributes seemed to belong rather to a romantic opera than to life. Hereditary chieftain of Connaught, diplomat, amateur of the arts, he went his way, surrounded by a popularity and adoration he did not value, never putting himself out a fraction of an inch, yet entirely subjugating all he met. Dermot’s mother and Granny, though they often agreed he had treated poor Felicia “very badly, my dear,” were thrown into an instant flutter of delight if they heard he was in Ireland: and when he called (as he invariably did) they hardly knew what to do, for hours afterwards. Even Mr. Gray, who, when he first heard the legend, pronounced that the man could be “little better than a cad,” capitulated altogether after ten minutes’ conversation, and “had to admit” that there was “something remarkably charming about him.” The fact was, the O’Dowda possessed, to his own life-long comfort, the gift of instantly and carelessly flattering every person whom he met. It cost him no trouble to be charming. He enjoyed it, without being greatly concerned to secure the invariable effect. When he came to Kingstown, he visited without fail every relative and every friend, bringing palpitations to the dullest of old ladies, quickening the blood of the most lethargic of old gentlemen. He knew, without thinking, precisely what to say to each of them. He made every woman feel a queen, every man a fellow of high consequence. And he did not care a damn for anyone. Small wonder that all this, added to his magnificent appearance, won him slaves wherever he went. Indeed, the only undignified or commonplace thing about him was the diminutive to which his relatives possessively shortened his Christian name. They called him Corny.
Creeping downstairs, hands washed, hair brushed, Dermot hesitated at the drawing-room door, wondering what he would see ; what new thing would have happened to him, once he opened it. He heard a burst of delighted feminine laughter, blown like streamers round the deep laugh of a man. Biting his lower lip, he grasped the handle, and pushed open the door.
The light of the big room dazzled him for a moment, but he saw the tall figure that turned, in the midst of the laughter, to see who had come in. The figure did not come forward, or stop laughing: yet, somehow, Dermot was instantly included in the laugh, invited, though late, to join it. He stood, staring at the most handsome man he had ever seen.
Cornelius Conlon O’Dowda, in the late summer of 1910, was past his prime, but still magnificent. Standing six feet two, yet so proportioned that he did not seem unusually tall, he gazed upon lesser beings like an eagle. His thick hair was turning iron grey. His black eyes flashed, like an eagle’s, under wide dark brows. His lean, shaven face was brown with the tan of travel and endurance. His teeth were strong and white. His whole head, with its bold beak of a nose, its lofty carriage, and the way it moved quickly on the muscular lean neck, was like an eagle’s. The mouth was hard, the expression, in repose, cold and disinterested. It was one of the paradoxes of the face that, scrutinised item by item, it was not handsome: yet, in life and motion, the O’Dowda was one of the handsomest men imaginable. Now, as Dermot was introduced to him, his face eased into a wonderful smile. Lazily, he moved one step forward, taking Dermot’s in his own long, sinewy hand.
“So this is Cousin Dermot,” he said, admitting Dermot instantly, as if by right of birth, to full intimacy. That was the secret of his charm. He appeared to treat all those whom he met as if they belonged to the same world as himself: and, since that world seemed to them remote and wonderful, far above their own, they were flattered beyond expression. Con and Uncle Ben were both fine looking men, but beside him they seemed ordinary, and unfinished. He caught more than his share of the room’s light. He was more arresting, more vivid: yet there was no tension in his manner, and he moved languidly, with muscles at ease.
At dinner he held them with the force and colour of his talk. He told them of adventures in strange cities, of dawns on cold, wild frontiers, the buzz and riot of bazaars, the slow intoxicated whisper of tropic seas, the steep narrow streets of Italian towns, the glaring, windy roads of Spain. He spoke of Jew dealers outwitted in Morocco, of murderers pursued by motor-boat across the Lake of Zürich: of the earthquake in Oakland and San Francisco ; of bull-fights in Mexico, and contests of guitar players in Vienna: of Parnell, Foli, Lina Cavalieri, Wilde—here Uncle Ben began to look anxiously down at the table—and of Buck-Shot Foster. There was a lull, after the mention of the last worthy, and Dermot, who in each lull had been longing to attract that wonderful attention, suddenly seized hold of his courage.
“I know a story about Buck-Shot Foster,” he heard himself say.
For a terrible instant it seemed as if his remark was to pass unheard. Then he saw that the black eyes were looking down into his own.
“You do, do you. Come on, then. Let’s hear it.”
Everyone looked at Dermot. The blood rushed up to his cheeks, and the faces swam like pink balloons around him. Keeping his eyes fixed desperately on those dark, amused eyes, he opened his mouth, fumbled, and found speech.
“My other uncle was passing a public house, when a great big huge man l-lurched out and caught him by the shoulder. He said to my uncle, ‘Where’s Buck-Shot Foster?’ ”
The veracity of the four words, their thick wheezing utterance, startled the company. But the black eyes looking into Dermot’s showed no gleam of surprise. That was the way a man would tell the story he had set out to tell: the right way.
“The big man looked very threatening, so my uncle said ‘Why, I saw him go into Mooney’s below, only a minute back.’ ‘Thank ye,’ said the big man, and let my uncle go. When he’d gone a step or two towards Mooney’s, my uncle called after him, ‘What do you want him for?’ The big man turned round and said
‘Ta puck the bowels out of ’m.’ ”
There was a laugh, but Dermot cared for nothing except the eyes into which he was gazing. They twinkled just so much quiet approval as one man might give another without patronage.
“Bravo,” said the O’Dowda ; and the talk broke out again. Dermot sat, feeling the rush of blood ebb away and leave him very, very cold, but very happy. He had ventured, and succeeded. His instinct was far too sound to let him try again.
After dinner, when they went into the drawing-room, the full moon had risen in the south-east, and made a wonderful wide path across the waters. When they had admired it, all turned to the O’Dowda, and begged him to sing. He, in turn, begged Con to sing. In the end, both sang. Con’s choice was Lambert’s setting of “She is far from the land.” He sang it with great feeling, and his voice was naturally richer, warmer in tone than the O’Dowda’s: but it sounded gusty and ill-regulated beside the perfect schooling of the other. The O’Dowda, accompanying himself on his guitar, sang first Moore’s “When he who adores thee.” No more pointed contrast to Con’s performance could be imagined. Con sang of the bereaved girl with a contemporary, almost impersonal sorrow, as would any young fellow whose heart was in the right place. The O’Dowda’s song, though the singer bewailed his own sad fate, was every note addressed personally and intimately to the woman. To point the difference still further, he sang a passionate Spanish love-song. Settling down, seated beside the open window, with the moon at his elbow, he sang a score of songs, of every kind, of every nationality. Just when they had decided that he could sing nothing better than a Bohemian lullaby, his guitar crashed out the stirring chords of an old Swiss peasant song of revolt ; his voice went black and taut ; it sank to a whisper, the voice of desperate, controlled determination. “Wir zogen in das Veld ... Wir zogen in das Veld.” Next, he was a Hungarian ne’er-do-weel who had lost his possessions and his sweetheart. Lines of bitterness and indolence seamed the handsome face ; the voice drawled, spat, flashed out for one terrifying second into rage, and sank back on a sneer. The next minute, with a leap too wide to be accidental, he was broad country Irish, singing “Kitty me love, will ye marry me?” to the painted wooden pig.
Dermot saw him once more that year, at Walmer Villa: a less satisfactory experience, because it puzzled him, and put him in the wrong with himself. He came in from Paddy and the Sea Wall and went straight down the garden, to the swing. For some reason, he took the right hand side, brushing by the tall leaning asparagus, and passing directly in front of the summer house window. As he went by, he heard with amazement the deep, caressing laugh of the O’Dowda. There was an answering laugh, and then his mother’s voice.
“Ah, Conlon,” it said lightly, “we’re past all that nonsense.”
There was a rumble of amused protest, and then Dermot’s mother appeared in the door. She did not start when she saw Dermot. She brushed back a tendril of hair with the back of her hand, and went on smiling serenely. He thought he had never seen her look so beautiful. The tall form appeared behind her, sardonic for a second in the shadow, then smiling in full sunlight. He too showed no surprise. The black eyes twinkled indulgently into Dermot’s, inviting his tolerant, man-of-the-world complicity in—what?
“Well, little son,” said his mother, smiling at him.
“Well, cousin,” said the O’Dowda.
Dermot still stared. Then he found a smile, and ran away to the end of the garden. They looked after him, and he heard their voices, talking of him with affectionate amusement. But what …?
For weeks afterwards, he dreamed of passing the summer-house, hearing the voices, with all their original shock of something unprecedented. Neither he nor his mother ever spoke of the meeting again.
Dermot’s attitude towards his parents grew more and more mechanical, less clearly defined. He learned this whenever he saw them at Delgany. Even Eithne, who was now nine, felt the same, and disliked the one day of their visit when the parents came up to dinner or to spend the afternoon. Free for a week at least from the world in which they were brought up, under a roof where another set of values held, they did not want the two confused. They wanted it all the less, since the atmosphere of Delgany brought out in both the parents all that was most discordant from it. Mr. Gray’s punctiliousness it exacerbated into priggishness, his love of order into fuss: while the Delgany crowd were impelled to exaggerate their own opposite characteristics, and so call forth the excess of both. This drove Margaret to her husband’s side, against Delgany. She lost her easy, light airs, and was further embarrassed by realising that they noted this, and remarked among themselves how her marriage—“though, mind ye, he’s a very decent fella, is Cousin Ernest”—had tarred her with his brush. Dermot saw that this was the one bad turn his father had done his mother. She had acquired her self-possession as a defence against the circumstances of her home, for both her parents were given to worry. Her husband, weakening this, had broken down her strongest defence. Now, when she was tired, on journeys, or when driven by him to act against her judgment, she became anxious and irritable, she lost poise. At Walmer Villa, Margaret was quintessentially herself, for there it was she had painfully forged her silvery armour. Seeing her unperturbed, her parents were soothed and calmed. Ernest was her weakness. Attack her there, and she was like a woman who has lost her coolness on a hot day.
Dermot knew this ; but life, to rub the lesson in, gave him fresh evidence. In an unfortunate moment, before the holiday began, he repeated to his father an old “howler,” saying that it had occurred in class at his little Plymouth school. He said this not to deceive, but to make the joke more interesting. Mr. Gray had been delighted: the joke was anti-clerical, and years of choir-singing had given him a satiric turn of mind. He therefore recited it far and wide. What was his mortification to be told, by perhaps the thirteenth recipient, that the story was a chestnut.
“Heard it when I was at school, man,” said the business friend.
Mr. Gray stiffened.
“Indeed,” he said. “I beg your pardon, I am sure. I repeated it in all good faith. It was—er—it was told me by my son, who assured me that it actually took place in his hearing.”
“Pulled your leg, he did,” diagnosed the friend, with a grin.
Mr. Gray did not smile. He sat very erect, with heightened colour, looking straight in front of him.
“Pulled it proper,” added the friend.
This was a few days before he joined his family in Ireland. When he arrived, Dermot and Eithne were at Delgany. Mr. Gray had a serious talk with Margaret, and, when they came up to dine, Dermot saw at once by their faces that something was wrong. The greetings took place in public, so there was no chance for more than a display of stern rectitude by his father—it was quite marvellous how much he managed to convey in the customary kiss—and a sad, reserved embrace from his mother. Uncle Ben took his father off for a talk, so that was all right. As soon as he could, Dermot made for his mother alone. Sick at heart, in the chill of unexplained foreboding, he ran up to her, bursting with demonstrative enthusiasm.
It was no good: he knew it wouldn’t be. She took him away to one side. For a long time he could make nothing of her string of low-toned reproaches.
“Deceiving your Father … wicked, wanton lies … humiliating him before all his friends … deeply pained … so hurt. To think a son of mine could wilfully lie. …”
“But, Mummy,” he cried, bewildered. “What is it all about? What have I done?”
She stopped on the narrow lawn, and looked at him.
“Do you mean to say you don’t know? Do you mean to say you don’t remember telling your Father that wicked story? Saying it happened at the Hoe? In class, with Mr. Melsom?”
Recollection woke, sudden, dim, with vague nausea.
“Oh—that!”
“Yes. That.” She was very angry: nervous, resentful anger, burning up inside her. “I see you think nothing of it. I see you hardly remember it at all. Am I to suppose you so frequently
deceive us that you can barely remember one falsehood from another?”
Poor Margaret! Remembering the conversation a few years later, he saw she was a gramophone, reeling off the righteous records of Ernest. At the moment, he was too stunned, confused by the sense of sudden injustice. To do wrong, suffer the tortures of conscience, and then be blamed: that he could understand. But to find that a thing to which one had barely given a second thought was, in these people’s eyes, just as bad—why, that meant that at any moment enemies could leap at him out of the past. That meant you could hardly be sure when you were doing right, or——
“What possessed you to do it? What could you gain by deceiving your Father?”
Exactly, cried Dermot’s heart bitterly: what could I gain? I gained nothing: therefore I did no wrong.
The others came up at this point, so that the reproaches could go no further. Watching keenly, and noting in particular Ernest’s air of pained reserve, the Delgany contingent saw that the two were displeased with Dermot over something, and sided instantly with Dermot. They sang his praises heartily, but to no visible effect.
The dinner was not a success. All sounded forced. In Dermot, misery, choking him so that he could scarcely eat, began to sharpen into anger. Coming up here, when he was so wonderfully happy, the two of them, pulling their long, grieved faces at him. …
When Uncle Ben at last bluntly broached the matter, Dermot was ready.
“Sure,” said the mariner, wrinkling his bald brow in lines of quizzical enquiry, “what is it ails ye both? And you, Dermot? There’s not a word to be got out of ye. What’s the boy done, Margaret?”
Mr. Gray’s eyebrows rose. Visibly, in stiff, pained surprise, they deplored Ben’s lack of taste. He was about to reply, when Dermot forestalled him.
“I’ll tell you what it is, Uncle Ben.” The boy had suddenly put on five years. He shook with passion. “Some time ago, I told Daddy a story, and said it happened at school, just for fun. He’s been telling it to people, and at last he’s found out it’s an old one. That made him feel foolish. So he says I told him a deliberate lie.”
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