The girls were still in the water, splashing, and calling out. What a time they stayed in. There was one who looked as if she might be getting out in a minute. They were generally pretty cunning, even all that way off: put great towels like tents all over them.
A quick step sounded outside, and Eileen opened the door. Dermot swung round, confused, and stared at her.
“Hullo, Dermot.” She came in, and shut the door. “What are you doing—looking at the girls? ”
She asked the question lightly, and smiled at him. A hasty denial rose to his lips, but did not escape. Suffused, he gazed at her ; like a guilty dog.
“Yes,” he said.
She looked away, crossed the room, and sat down on a sofa.
“Well,” she said, “don’t let me disturb you.”
And, putting her feet up with a quick gesture, she picked up a magazine, and began turning the pages.
“Eileen.”
“Yes?”
“I want to ask you something.”
She looked up.
“Well. Out with it.”
“Do you think it’s very beastly of me, to—to——”
“Look at the girls through the telescope? ”
“Yes.”
“Oh, no. Not particularly. It’s your nature, I suppose. You can’t help it.”
“My nature? 1——”
“Oh, sure, I don’t mean yours in particular. You’re no worse than the others, I dare say.” She turned over several pages at once. “Sure, you men are all the same.”
Dermot sat for a moment in silence. He was bewildered at her attitude: torn between a strong desire to protest, and a wry feeling of consolation at being lumped in with the rest of his sex.
“It’s one of the things a woman has to take for granted about men, that’s all,” Eileen went on. “If all the handsomest men in the world were stripped under the window here, I wouldn’t want to go peeping at them: no more would any girl I know. And yet men, decent men, will climb a tree in the rain to look at a housemaid taking off her clothes. If you’re a girl, you’ve got to get used to it, that’s all. ”
“D—don’t you despise men frightfully, if that’s so? ”
“No. They’re made differently, I suppose. At least—they all tell me it’s harder for them than for us, and, judging by the things they let themselves do, it must be.”
“I think it must be harder for them. It is to begin with, anyway. At school.”
“Yes. So I believe.”
“Eileen.”
“Yes?”
“I wouldn’t like you to have a false impression of me. I——”
“Oh, bless you, son, don’t worry your head. You’re a decent sort: anybody can see that.”
“No, no, no. That’s not what I mean at all.”
“Well. What do you mean? ”
“I mean … Eileen … I … ” He struggled with himself. “I care very much what you think about me. More than anyone. That’s why I don’t want you to think I’m better than I am. I’m afraid you do.”
Eileen said nothing. She laid the magazine on her lap, and looked at him with a half smile, encouraging him to go on.
“I’ve done wrong things, over in England, at school. I didn’t know, soon enough, about what things really meant. Daddy didn’t tell me till too late. I don’t say I wouldn’t have done it, even if he had: but I didn’t have a proper chance, to begin with. But I’ve never done anything of that kind here in Ireland: never. It’s different here. In this house, especially. And I haven’t done anything of that sort for some time: more than two years, now.”
“That’s good, son.”
She was serious, but her voice was very kind.
“The chief reason I was able to stop was because of … here: and because of you.”
“Of me, Dermot? ”
“Yes. I love you. I always have, since I was quite tiny. I felt I had no business … if I was doing that sort of thing … no business to let you kiss me, thinking I was a better sort of … I mean, I did so want to be fit to be allowed to love you. You’ve been my ideal. You’ve helped me more than you could ever guess.”
There was a silence. He dared not look at Eileen. “Dermot, my dear boy, of course, I’m only too delighted, and proud, if I’ve ever been any help …. But I’m a poor sort of ideal, I’m afraid. You’d better hurry up and find a better one. …”
Dermot raised his eyes, and looked at her steadfastly. “I’d never believe any bad of you,” he said.
She swung her feet down, sat up, and patted the sofa by her side.
“Well, that’ll be something for me to live up to, too,” she said, with a smile, as he hurried to sit beside her.
“Ah,” she said presently, “it’s a funny world, Dermot. You men have all the best of it. You go wherever you like, chase around after one little bit and the other, have a dozen affairs, go through the doctor’s hands, and then, when you’ve had enough of it, come to some girl who’s managed to keep herself straight, and ask her to marry you. Now, where’s the sense or fairness in that? ”
“There doesn’t seem much,” admitted Dermot.
“A girl has just as many chances of going wrong as a man, nowadays. But she mustn’t take them. No matter how much she may want to.”
“It must be easier for anyone in this house to keep straight, than for most people,” declared Dermot.
“Because of our religion, do you mean? ”
“Yes.”
“Oh, that makes it easier, certainly.” She spoke almost grimly. “We’d be lost without it.”
“Tell me,” said Dermot, “don’t you find some of it a little boring, sometimes? All the church-going, and the sermons, and that side of it? ”
“And supposing we do? Do you think Our Blessed Lord wasn’t often bored by the things He had to do, and the stupid people He had to put up with? Surely we can endure a little boredom sometimes, for His sake? ”
Dermot was going to ask why she was so sure it was for His sake, but, once more up against the blazing simplicity of the Delgany faith, he kept silent.
Shortly after this interview, he met the O’Dowda for the last time. That urbane cosmopolite seemed always the unlikeliest of guests for Delgany, but, actually, he fitted in very well. He did not attend prayers, nor accompany the family to church on Sunday. He used the place very much as an hotel, coming and going when he pleased: but everybody in the house was glad of his presence. His courtesy, as he grew older, became more and more effortless. He would make great play of consulting Aunt Patricia about his movements in the morning. Was she sure, now, this and that would be convenient to her? Because, if it put her out the smallest atom, she had only to say the word. … Eileen often wondered what would happen if anybody ever did say the word. One thing was certain, the O’Dowda would do what he wanted, all right. He would probably have a marvellous excuse afterwards. But then, the situation could not arise. He had everything so well in hand that acquiescence was certain. That knack of conveying, well before he would need to ask anything, that his hostess was a woman of exceptional understanding—she would go through untold inconvenience rather than jeopardise for an instant that estimate, conveyed less in words than in a tone of the voice, a deferential, flattering, intimate flash of the eyes. All is easy for the man who knows how to flatter a grown woman—though he needs certain physical attributes as well.
The O’Dowda knew how to flatter everyone ; even an awkward public school-boy. Dermot came into the drawing-room after breakfast, and found him alone there, writing letters. For a full minute nothing was said: and, when the O’Dowda spoke, he did not stop writing or look up.
“Where is it you are at school now? Brighton? ”
“Yes.”
The O’Dowda paused for a second, screwing up his eyes against the smoke of his own cigarette.
“H’m. Damned immoral town, isn’t it? ”
One man of the world asking information of another. Dermot glowed.
“Yes,” he
said. “It is pretty stiff.”
That was all: but many a man has been loved all his life for no more. The O’Dowda went on writing, and, having finished his letters, left the room without a word further, having added another devotee to a list scattered over half the world ; one to whom, for the rest of his days, he never gave another thought.
Chapter XXXIV
The O’Dowda was always the most dazzling of all the vivid characters who crowded Dermot’s memories of Ireland. Whether in fact or through his will to believe, it seemed to Dermot that all the most interesting people he had ever met lived there. Somehow, in Ireland, people gave fuller expression to their quality. The odd were odder, the funny funnier, the charming so very much more charming. Even the lunatics had more scope. In England, Dermot had never encountered anything better than a village idiot. But there were lots of “mad ones” loose about Glasthule, and the people treated them with the greatest kindness, holding them in special awe, and never minding their tricks. Higher up in the scale, Miss Tarbet, the friend of Granny’s in whose house they slept, kept an old mad lady under her care. Dermot passed her, on the stairs, several times. She was a tiny little old thing, with great sad eyes, which reminded him of Paddy-monkey: but Miss Tarbet said she was quite happy. The little old lady was very religious, and used to keep Sunday with intense zeal, till she reached the stage of thinking every day was Sunday. She would wake up all right, obediently determined that it was a week-day, and go through the morning with the air of an angel exiled from home. By three in the afternoon she had grown fretful and suspicious, believing that the people of the house were in ungodly conspiracy to withhold the Sabbath from her. By five, she was triumphantly seated at her old cracked piano, banging weakly at the yellow keys, and singing in a mad old hollow voice her favourite hymn. After a couple of verses, she repeated the chorus till she grew too tired to go on.
“YES we’ll gather at the river,”
sang the old mad lady,
“The beautiful, the beautiful, the river,”
(She always made the same mistake :)
“Gather with the sai-haints at the river
That flows by the throne of God.”
You thought she had finished, for she had been singing it for a quarter of an hour on end: but with fresh emphasis she burst out again :
“YES we’ll gather at the river… ”
Most people thought it funny, but Dermot did not. He would smile to Eithne when they heard her start off, but the mad happiness of the voice filled him with a different feeling. At the end of the holidays, when they were packing, it was unbearable. A few years afterwards, he sang that hymn in a service at the base, in France: and the sudden rush of memories came so clear, so poignant that for hours afterwards he was a man in a dream.
Then there was Miss O’Killikelly, who, according to Grandpapa, “would be better in a house of detention.” Any word of Miss Tarbet’s mad lady invariably provoked him to an attack upon the devoted and loquacious parish worker. Miss O’Killikelly still came in of an evening, to gossip with Granny: and Grandpapa was still obliged to throw down his boots into the hall as a hint for her to go. Increasing age had made him blunter in speech, and on some occasions he was downright rude to the lady, in a manner no goodnatured flutterings could ignore… Miss O’Killikelly would then lament to Granny, with great emotion.
“Ah, Amelia, it’s trouble I’m always bringing on ye.”
“Nonsense, Letitia. What possesses ye, to say a thing like that? Sure, you mustn’t mind Alfred. His bark is worse than his bite. He doesn’t mean the half he says.”
“Ah now, he has a good right to be chasing me away out of the place, and I here, worrying ye, making a nuisance of meself to ye…”
“No such thing, Letitia, no such thing. It’s a great pleasure to see ye.”
“Ah, Amelia, it’s too kind y’are, sure everybody knows that. You’re too kind to me. Sure, I know well what everybody does be saying. It’s a nuisance I am, and a worry to people. I’d be better under the sod.”
“Letitia—such a thing to say! I wonder at ye. Ye ought to know better than to go——”
“And, faith, by the way things are going,” sobbed Miss O’Killikelly, rising on the wings of her woe, “they won’t have to wait long. Ye’ll all be rid of me soon.”
“Now that’s nonsense, Letitia, and you know it is.” Granny scolded her for a minute or so, then sat back in her chair. “It’s too bad, Alfred to be conducting himself this way, and putting you in such a state,” she said indignantly.
“Ah, there now, you see, what I do, what comes of me. I do be making trouble between husband and wife.”
And Miss O’Killikelly would weep anew. Comforted at last, she would go off, sniffing, her bright eyes brighter than ever, and return next day with a peace-offering: a lemon pudding, which she made with great skill. Granny liked a lemon pudding, and even Grandpapa would grudgingly pass up his plate for a second help. He would disparage the maker of the pudding a good deal, to assert his principle: nevertheless, when Mr. Gray jocosely suggested that he affront Miss O’Killikelly every time she came, in order to secure a plentiful supply of the delicacy, the jest was not well received.
Dermot’s public school summers passed very quickly. His last, the summer of 1914, found him preparing hard for a scholarship at Oxford. Before he came over, it had been arranged that he should go in twice a week to Trinity, to work with one of the classical tutors there. He was to have a week’s grace before starting ; and during this week broke out the War.
The War at first made little serious impression in Ireland. It appeared in the light of a great sporting event, and the vast majority found themselves instinctively on England’s side. In a Dublin theatre, a day or so after the declaration, three parts of the audience rose to their feet at “God Save the King.” There are those who argue that prompt and confident handling of the situation by England then could have saved much bloodshed and much bitterness: but the Government behaved as if it expected to be struck, a dangerous attitude towards animals, men, and countries. Be these things as they may, the War did not disturb the holiday season. No one had at first believed it possible. At the baths, where Dermot spent his mornings, men talked of it idly: yet no one but an Englishman foresaw the certainty. When it did break out, there was no rush to volunteer. The adventurous spirits were all busy on their own, those who loved England preparing to resist her in the North, those who disliked Ulster running guns in the South. Like a boy who sees his acquaintance squabbling in a corner of the playground, they did not think the fight was serious, and looked to England to polish off her adversary inside a few weeks. News of a great naval victory, heavily placarded in the streets, confirmed this mood. Mr. Gray was jubilant.
“If it’s true,” he proclaimed impressively at lunch, “it means the Germans will never dare show their faces on the sea, for dread of the British Navy. ”
Unfortunately, the news was not true: but everyone took the line that it well might have been, and, anyway, that it would probably be true next week: and went on as before. It was this attitude, a sort of laziness, which kept hundreds of Irishmen from running to the colours. They did not dream that it was necessary. Neither side, indeed, those for England or those against, realised for some months the meaning of what had happened.
So all went peacefully as usual, and Dermot in due course visited Trinity, and was shown to the rooms of Mr. Stacpoole O’Hara. Mr. Stacpoole O’Hara did not at all fit in with Dermot’s idea of a famous classical scholar. He looked as if he had come to mend the gas. His face, sad and dispirited, was ornamented by a drooping and draggled moustache. He wore a bowler hat a size too big for him, which was only saved from descending over his face by his ears, stuck out at right angles with the effort of supporting it. Over his chest and stomach he wore a dirty white waistcoat, with a gold watch chain. His suit was stained and shabby, the ends of the trousers frayed, one elbow shiny, and the other through. He wore canvas shoes. Dermot could not at firs
t believe that he had found his man: but the pencil which scored his Greek prose was authoritative enough, and it did not take a dozen sentences to show him that he was going to learn a great deal. Mr. O’Hara affected a contempt for Oxford scholarship.
“I’ll endeavour ta instil a little elementary accuracy inta ya,” he said, “though maybe that’ll be doing ya harm in the eyes of Oxford? ”
And he proceeded to instil a great deal. Mr. O’Hara had no high falutin’ notions about the classics. He approached them strictly on business. The cynical ease with which he extemporized the suavest and most admirable Latin verses confounded Dermot. Mr. O’Hara would sit back, picking his teeth, and dictate a version which more than held its own with any Dermot had met. Verses were Dermot’s especial line, and he left Mr. O’Hara a sadder and wiser scholarship candidate. He was allowed to choose his own English, so there was no trickery about it. Mr. O’Hara, who seemed to have about as much poetry in him as a louse, could hash up a convincing version of anything.
“Ah,” he said, when Dermot shyly asked the secret, “Sure, verses is a trick ”: and that was all that could be got out of him.
Dermot worked hard that summer. He got up early, and sat at a queer uncomfortable little table in Granny’s drawing-room. He liked his new tutor from the first, and came to feel an affection towards him. O’Hara, too, evidently liked him, for often after the hour’s work he would put on his monstrous bowler and walk with him to the tram.
One afternoon, as they were going out, they met a figure which instantly reminded Dermot of a clerical Dr. Johnson. Mr. O’Hara stood aside, showing every symptom of the greatest respect.
“Good afternoon, Doctor,” he said.
The figure received the greeting very graciously. He peered quickly at Mr. O’Hara, and quickly at Dermot.
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