the morning after these happenings lady o'gara, turning over the pile of letters on the breakfast table, changed colour at the sight of one which bore an italian postmark. it was addressed in a large firm handwriting in which only very keen observation could have discovered any sign of weakening. after that momentary glance she laid away the letter with the superscription turned downwards while she read the rest of her correspondence.
when she had finished breakfast she followed her husband into his office, as that special room was called. the windows had not been opened—they were french windows and they served as a door out on to the gravel sweep which ran around the house—and she thought she detected a faint disagreeable smell, as of drugs. she unbolted a window and flung it wide and the warm june air came flowing in, banishing the unpleasant sharp odour.
"you haven't been taking anything, shawn?" she asked, looking at him a little anxiously. "i thought i smelt something peculiar. you are not looking well."
"i am very well, mary," he answered. "perhaps it was the person i had here yesterday evening. i believe i closed the window after he went out. he had been drinking. there was a horrible smell."
"i came to the door while you were talking to him and i heard you say,
'what do you mean by coming here?' who was he, shawn?"
again sir shawn was suddenly pale. she was looking down at the letter she had extracted from the pile, and he turned his back to the window, so that when she looked at him again with her frank ingenuous gaze, his face was in shadow.
"he was a man who saved my life, or thinks he did, at a shooting-party at ashbridge. there was a fellow there who had never handled a gun before. he would have put a whole charge of shot into me if this chap, baker, hadn't knocked up his gun in time. i don't think it would have killed me, although it might have been rather unpleasant. baker likes to think, for his own purposes,"—he spoke with a weary air,—"that he saved my life. he may have saved my beauty. he considers himself my pensioner."
"ah!" lady o'gara was satisfied with the explanation. "what a pity he should drink! can we do nothing for him?"
"i'm afraid not. he would like to be my game-keeper, but that is out of the question. he had not much character when he left ashbridge. he has had more than one job in england since then, and has lost them all. he has come down very much in the world even since i saw him last."
"a pity," said lady o'gara, "since he rendered you a service."
"i gave him some money and got rid of him: it was the only thing to do."
once again lady o'gara's frank eyes turned upon her husband.
"i don't think you ever told me about that thing before," she said. "i should have remembered if you had told me."
"no," he said with an averted face. "it happened—the winter you were in florence. i came home and was met by the news that you were away. the sun dropped out of my skies."
she blushed suddenly and brightly. her husband had turned from his gloomy contemplation of the lawn outside, on which a tiny kerry cow was feeding. he said to himself that she was more beautiful in her mature womanhood than the day he married her. she had been soft and flowing even in her girlhood, with a promise of matronly beauty. now, with a greater amplitude, she was not less but more gracious. her bronze hair which had the faintest dust upon it went back from her temples and ears in lovely waves which no art could have produced. it was live hair, full of lights and shadows. her husband had said that it was like a brown venetian glass with powdered gold inside its brownness. there were a few brown freckles on the milk-white neck. her eyes were kind and faithful and set widely apart: her nose straight and short: and she had a delightful smile.
she came now and put her arms about his neck. they were in curious contrast, she so soft, fair and motherly: he slender and dark, with weary eyes and a look as though he had suffered.
"shawn!" she said, "shawn!" and there was a passionate tenderness in her voice, as she pressed his head against her heart.
then she let her arms fall and turned away, looking as though some sadness had clouded her joy.
"poor terence!" she said.
there was the same thought between them, but they left it unspoken. she had chosen shawn o'gara in her own heart even while she was expected to marry terence comerford.
"why do you talk of terence now?" he asked.
"i have had a letter from aunt grace after all these years." she held the letter towards him.
"she has forgiven you?" he asked, making no movement to take the letter.
"she is coming back to inch. she writes that stella, her adopted daughter, is growing up. she has forgiven us. she is pleased that we named our son after poor terence. you remember you were rather opposed to it, shawn."
"i did not wish to be reminded of the loss of my friend at every moment," he said. "the tragedy was too new."
still he showed no indication of taking the letter from her hand.
"read it to me," he said, in his weary voice. "i wonder how stella will like inch after italy. there is so much rain and cloud. one has to be born to it to like it."
"when i was in italy i simply longed for a day of irish rain," mary o'gara said: "it is good for us. we need it. we grow parched in the dry climates."
"it has held the secret of perpetual youth and beauty for you, mary," her husband said, looking at her with loving admiration.
she laughed and blushed. she was not beyond blushing at a compliment even from her husband.
"we must make things as gay for the child as possible," she said. then she added:
"i wonder if aunt grace realizes that terry is now a young man. he seems épris with eileen, so i suppose he will not fall in love with stella?"
sir shawn looked startled.
"i hope not," he said. "eileen seems to have him very securely in her chains."
lady o'gara frowned ever so slightly. "i wish our children did not grow away from us so soon," she said. "terry might have continued a little longer being in love only with his mother."
sir shawn lifted his eyebrows in a manner which accentuated his foreign look.
"jealous, mary?" he asked.
"not of eileen. she allures him, but, i come first."
"you would always have your place. you are of the women who are adored by their sons. you would not care for eileen for a daughter-in-law, though she has been almost your adopted daughter these ten years back?"
"she would not suit terry."
"she is very fond of you."
"yes, i think she is fond of me." her voice was cold.
"i hardly know you, mary, in this mood towards eileen. you are usually so sweetly reasonable."
"it is the privilege of a woman to be unreasonable sometimes."
the sunshine came back to her face, laughed in the depths of her eyes and brought a dimple to either cheek.
"i suppose i am a little jealous of terry," she said. "you see he is very like you, shawn. and i am fond of eileen, really. only, i suppose all mothers are critical of the girls their sons fall in love with, especially if it is an only son. it is odd how it has come suddenly to terry that eileen is a pretty girl. of course he has only seen her in her vacations. sit down now, shawn, and i will read you aunt grace's letter."
he sat down obediently in the revolving chair in front of his desk and she came and stood by him. her voice was a little disturbed as she read the letter.
"my dear mary,—you will be surprised to hear that i am coming back again to inch. the years bring their dust, as some poet says: they certainly soften griefs and asperities. when i left inch i was broken-hearted for my one boy. it was a poisoning of the grief at that time to know that you and shawn o'gara were going to be married. i felt that you had forgotten my beautiful boy, that his friend had forgotten him: but that i acknowledge now to have been a morbid and unreasonable way of looking at things. my boy never thought of any girl but you, yet i could not expect you to go unmarried for his sake: indeed i would not have wished it. you and shawn must forgive that old unreasonable bitterness of mine, the bitterness of a mother distraught by grief.
"i have left you alone all these years, but i have not been without knowledge of you. i know that your son is called terence after my son. i appreciate that fact, which indicates to me that you keep him in loving remembrance.
"after all these years i am suddenly weary for home, so weary that i wonder now how i could have kept away so long. whether i shall end my days at inch depends on stella. my wild experiment of adopting this child, as some of my friends thought it at the time, has turned out very well. stella is a dear child. i send you a photograph which hardly does her justice. as she is entirely mine she goes by my name, although her father was french. i should like to say to you that though i shall provide for stella it will not be to your detriment. i have a sense of justice towards my kin.
"i trust to you to receive stella and me in a manner which will prove that you have blotted out any memories of the past that are otherwise than happy.
"your affectionate cousin-aunt,
"grace comerford.
"ps.—stella has something of your colouring."
"here is the photograph," said lady o'gara, handing it to her husband.
"stella is very pretty, is she not?"
he twisted his chair so that the light from the window might fall on the photograph. the face was in profile. it was tilted delicately upwards. there was a little straight nose, a round chin, a mouth softly opened, one of those mouths which do not quite close. the large eyes looked upward; the hair was short and curled in little rings.
he looked at it and said nothing, but his eyes were tragic in the shadow.
"the profile is quite french," said lady o'gara. "i remember the young man who i think must have been stella's father. he was a lieutenant of chasseurs. he was killed in algiers—afterwards. i saw it in a newspaper about four years after our marriage. he was going to be married when he came to inch. his mother, who was as poor as a church mouse, had written a bitter complaint to aunt grace that gaston was about to marry a poor irish girl, a governess, whose part he had taken when he thought her unfairly treated. i think stella must be gaston de st. maur's child."
"odd, not leaving the child her own name," sir shawn said, handing back the photograph.
"aunt grace would want her so entirely for her own. she always had a fierce way of loving. if she had loved me more reasonably and less jealously she would not have quarrelled with me as she did. she was always rather terrible in anger."
she gathered together a bundle of letters which she had laid down on the table.
"i must go and write to aunt grace," she said. "she must not wait for a letter telling her how glad i shall be to see her back at inch, how glad we shall all be. she was very good to me, shawn." she sent a wistful look towards her husband who sat with his back to her. "if she had been the aunt she called herself, instead of a somewhat remote cousin, she could not have been kinder. she treated us very generously, despite her anger at our marriage."
"you brought me too much," said shawn o'gara, not turning his head, "and it has prospered. you should have brought me nothing but yourself. you were a rich gift enough for any man."
lady o'gara looked well-pleased as she came and kissed the top of her husband's head, dusted over its darkness with an effect of powder as contrasted with the dark moustache and dark eyes.
"i am glad for terry's sake i did not," she said; and went out of the room.
"mr. kenny wishes to see your ladyship," said a servant, meeting her in the hall. patsy, perhaps by reason of his friendly aloofness, had come to be treated with unusual respect by the other servants. "he is at the hall-door. he would not come inside."
she found patsy, playing with shot's son and daughter—they were the fourth generation from "ould shot" on the gravel sweep.
"come in, patsy," she said, and led the way into an octagonal room, lit by a skylight overhead and walled around with ancient books which were very seldom taken from their shelves.
"sit down," she said, "and tell me what is troubling you."
patsy sat down on the extreme edge of one of the chairs, which were upholstered in scarlet damask. he looked up at her with blinking eyes of worship, like the eyes of the dogs. the room, painted white above the bookshelves, was full of light. he turned his cap about in his hands. obviously there was something more here than the business on which he usually consulted lady o'gara.
"'tis," he began, "a little bit of a woman, an' a child, no bigger nor a robin an' as wake as a wran…."
with this opening he began the story of the woman and child, who had come with the disreputable person the afternoon before. it appeared that mr. baker had deserted his wife and son, flinging them the pots and pans with a scornful generosity. he had apparently arrived at the possession of money some way or other, and overtaking them on the road at some considerable distance away he had bidden them, with threats, to take themselves out of his sight, since he had no further use for them.
"he was full of drink," patsy said, looking down. "your ladyship, his tratement of them was something onnatural. she said she'd run away from him often, but he'd always found her when she was doin' well an' earnin' for herself an' the child. the people she lived with were often kind and ready to stand by her, but sure, as she says, the kindest will get tired out. he'd broken the spirit in her, maybe, for she showed me his marks on the poor child. she said nothin' about herself, but i could guess, the poor girl! the man that could lay his heavy hand on a woman or a child is a black villain. i wouldn't be comparin' him to the dumb bastes, for they've nature in them. the poor little woman, she's dacent. it would break your heart to see how thin she is an' how fretted-lookin' an' the little lad wid the scare in his eyes."
"has the woman come back?"
"wasn't that what i was tellin' your ladyship? lasteways, she didn't come back exactly. i found her on the road an' she not knowin' where to turn to, in a strange country. there they were, when i found them, hugging aich other an' cryin'. and the cans beside them in the ditch."
"what cans?"
"wasn't i tellin' your ladyship—the pots and pans and the few little bright cans among them, and not a penny betune the two poor souls, nor they knowing where to turn to!"
"where are they now?" lady o'gara asked quietly.
"they're in my house, your ladyship. i brought them back there last night an' i gev it up to them. i slep' in the loft over the stables myself."
"oh, but, patsy, they can't stay in your house! the people would talk."
"sure i know they'd talk—if it was an angel in heaven. that's why i kem to your ladyship."
"i'll come and see the woman, patsy, and we'll decide what is best to be done."
patsy's face cleared amazingly.
"i knew you'd come," he said. "it'll be all right when your ladyship sees them, god help them."
