mrs. comerford and stella arrived unexpectedly. they found lady o'gara at inch. she had gone over, taking susan with her, to give the finishing touch to the preparations. there was a new staff of servants under clinch and mrs. clinch. there were things the new servants might have forgotten: and mrs. clinch was old and rheumatic now—not equal to much climbing of stairs. lady o'gara remembered many things which most people would have forgotten, little things about the arrangement of rooms and furniture, the choice of flowers, the way mrs. comerford had liked the blinds drawn, all the trifling things which mean so much to certain orderly minds.
she was in the bedroom which had been mrs. comerford's, was to be hers again. the room which had been mary creagh's was prepared for stella. the pink curtains which she remembered as faded had been laid away and new pink curtains hung up. the old ones were riddled with holes. she hoped aunt grace—she went back to the familiar name—would not miss them, would be satisfied with the room, which looked so fresh with its clean white paper and the pink carpet and cushions and curtains. she was filling bowls and vases with red and white roses, setting them where the tired eyes of the travellers might rest upon them when they came. probably they would arrive about ten o'clock.
the room looked over the lawns and paddocks at the back of the house. she had not heard any sounds of arrival,—but—the bedroom door opened suddenly and mrs. comerford came in.
"clinch told me i should find you here, mary," she said: and the two who had loved each other and parted, with cold resentment on one side, tears on the other, were looking into each other's eyes.
lady o'gara had often wondered,—she had been wondering, wondering, during the last few days—how they should greet each other, what should be the first words to pass between them. the half-dreaded, half-looked-for moment had come, and the greeting was of the tritest.
"we have arrived, you see," said mrs. comerford. "we caught the irish
mail last night instead of staying the night in london."
"oh,—did no one meet you?"
"we left the luggage and came up on farrell's car. it was farrell's car, just as muddy and disreputable as i remember it. it was driven by old johnny's son. i am sorry johnny is dead. perhaps the car is not the same—but there is nothing to choose between that and the old one."
the meeting had taken place. the great moment had come and gone: and there was aunt grace talking about farrell's car as though all that lay between them had been but a dream.
lady o'gara's eyes suddenly filled with tears.
"ah, you are tired," she said with soft tenderness, "you are tired!"
the change the years had wrought in the tall handsome woman who had been queenly to her young mind overwhelmed her. she forgot the dread she had had of the meeting, which had destroyed any happy anticipation. "come and sit down," she said. "let me help you off with your cloak. you will have breakfast? what a long journey for you!"
mrs. comerford allowed herself to be put into the softest of the easy chairs. a look of gratification, of pleasure, came to her face. she allowed lady o'gara to take off her hat and long travelling cloak, to unlace her shoes.
"you were always a kind creature," she said, "and it is nice to be home again. how beautiful the cloudy skies are! many and many a time during those years i have wanted grey skies. i've been sick even for a whole wet day. do you think, mary, that if we westerners get to heaven we will want a wet day now and again?"
so the old resentment had gone. how strange it was after all the grief and estrangement to have aunt grace talking like this. it encouraged lady o'gara, sitting on the floor at mrs. comerford's feet, to pat the foot from which she had drawn off the shoe, with a tender furtive caress.
"you'd better get up, mary. i hear clinch coming. you have hardly changed from the girl of twenty-five years ago. of course you are plumper, more matronly. you have a boy of twenty-one."
clinch came in with the bag, followed by mrs. clinch with a tea-tray, smiling broadly.
"the young lady said she'd have a bath before her breakfast, ma'am," she said, and there was a radiance about her old face which had not been there for many a day.
"breakfast—we had breakfast in the train. miss stella cannot want breakfast." mrs. comerford smiled as she said it. "she made a very good breakfast in the train."
"she's young and the young want food. 'tis a good day that's in it, ma'am, to see you home again—with such a beautiful young lady too. she'll make the house lively. the first thing she did was to fling her arms about shot's neck,—lady o'gara's dog, ma'am. for all he's a proud, stand-off dog, he licked her face."
"now, don't spoil miss stella. every one spoils her, so i suppose there's no use expecting you to be the exception."
"she brings her love with her," said mrs. clinch. "she's so delighted with all she sees, and making friends with every one. they'll be won over by her: even old tom kane will give her the key of his garden, as he calls it, before she's an hour in the place. she'll be into his strawberry beds that he's so jealous about, you'll see."
mrs. clinch went off. lady o'gara poured out a cup of tea, remembering, over all the years, that mrs. comerford liked only a little sugar. she found her slippers and put them on and brought a footstool for feet to rest upon. she was thinking that this stella, the young adopted daughter, explained the change in the woman before her. mrs. comerford had grown much softer. she was still a remarkable-looking woman, the wreck of stately beauty. in her black garments, which fell about her in flowing lines, she had the air of a priestess. her age showed in her thinness, which was almost emaciation, and her face was wrinkled and heavily lined. yet her smile was more ready than lady o'gara remembered and her eyes quieter. they had been very blue eyes once upon a time—her son had had such blue eyes—now, they had faded almost to lavender, and they were almost gentle. yet there was something in the face, some suggestion of burnt-out fires, which forbade the idea of a gentle nature, and the lips were too thin for softness.
"am i a wreck, mary?" she asked. "yes, i know i am. some one took me for a duchess the other day, addressing me as 'your grace.' italy has dried up my skin. it will hardly revive at my time of life. but i am happy: you cannot imagine how stella makes for happiness. stella and age between them have broken me down. a child could play with me."
she laughed as she said it. grace comerford had not laughed much in the old days. mary had adored her, with an adoration tinged with awe. she had always felt in those days that it would be an awful thing to offend aunt grace. she had offended her and it had been awful.
"i am longing to see stella," she said.
"she is very joyous. i was becoming morose when i found her—like a rogue elephant. i was wrong, mary, to make such a grievance of your marriage. you were a good child to me, and you would have pleased me if you could. i know better now than to be angry with you for caring more for shawn o'gara than for my son. you should have told me at the time. you shouldn't have let me believe that you cared for terence. was i an ogre? perhaps i was. i must have been."
"i wanted to please you dreadfully in those days. you had been everything to me."
"you and terence were everything to me. still—i should not have been so unreasonable as to expect you to marry terence to please me when you liked shawn o'gara better. i ought to have known that love does not grow up like that. you and terence were almost brother and sister."
"yes," said lady o'gara. "we were so used to each other. i was eighteen when i first saw shawn and we fell in love at first sight." she blushed, with a startling effect of youth. "terence and i were like brother and sister. it would not have worked. we were very fond of each other, but no more than that. you were wrong when you thought terence would have cared."
she had expected some disclaimer, remembering mrs. comerford's bitter anger because her son had been supplanted by his friend, even while he was yet in the world; but no disclaimer came.
"yes, i was wrong. i see it now. i ought to have come back long ago and said i was wrong. i could not bring myself to do it, and—there were other reasons. it is very good to come back and to see you so bonny, mary, and to feel that we may live in love and peace as long as i am here."
she drank her tea and looked round the room, with a sigh as though her heart rested on what she saw.
"you have made the old room very sweet, mary," she went on, "and you have remembered my tastes. dear me, see those old things on the chimney-piece! those crockery dogs,—how fond terence was of them when he was a child! and that piece of agate, and the rockingham lambs! i had almost forgotten them."
"you, had better come over to castle talbot to lunch," lady o'gara said. "i want you to see my boy. he has just passed out of sandhurst."
"a soldier? how strange that i should have had to ask! i left your letters unanswered, but i always read them. that was how i knew that you had called your boy after my son."
"yes, terence has chosen to be a soldier, for some years, at least. there is not very much doing now. after a few years his father thinks he might take to politics."
"i want to see him. and i want you to see my girl."
she glanced towards the door as though she expected it to open.
"eileen creagh is with us. you remember her father, anthony creagh. he came here once or twice in old days. she has lived with us for a long time. terry was always at school. it would have been lonely for me without eileen."
"yes, i remember i did not like anthony creagh because i thought he came for your sake. he married a fair girl, very unlike you. i've forgotten her name."
"eileen is very pretty, like her mother. beautiful soft silver-gold hair and greyish blue eyes: she is very gentle."
"characterless?"
lady o'gara smiled ever so slightly. "oh, she has character, i think."
"no one will look at her when stella is by. you will see. she has no animation; i know her kind. by the way, you have patsy kenny still with you? you told me about patsy in the letters i did not answer."
"still with us. he is an institution—like the shots. i have a shot still—the great-grandson of old shot. i don't know what we should do without patsy. he has such a wonderful way with the horses,—with all animals, indeed."
"he'll adore stella. she's so fearless with animals. many a fright she gave me when she was a child. but the animals, even when they were savage with others, never hurt her. there was an awful day when we found her with the boarhound puppies at prince valetti's villa in her arms, and the mother looking on well-pleased. she was a savage brute to other people. the prince was ready to shoot her if she had turned nasty with stella: but there was no occasion. stella scrambled through the barrier when we called her name."
"is she like a french girl?"
"no: why should she be?"
"i suppose i was wrong. i thought she was the child of gaston de st.
maur, who used to visit us here."
"her mother was irish," mrs. comerford said.
"and she is like her mother?"
before mrs. comerford could answer there came a knocking as of knuckles on the door.
"come in, my darling," mrs. comerford said, her face lighting up.
a charming girlish face looked in at the open door.
"may i? is it lady o'gara whom my dearest mamma so greatly loves?"
there was the slightest foreign intonation in the voice,—something of deliberate utterance, as though english was not the language of the speaker.
the girl came into the room and towards them. she was charming. her hair curled in rings of reddish brown on her little head. her eyes were grey with something of brown in the iris: her eyebrows strongly marked. she had a straight beautiful little nose, lips softly opening, a chin like that of the irish poet's "mary donnelly," "round as a china cup." there was something softly graceful about her as she came into the room. she looked down, then up again. her eyes,—were they grey? they were brown surely, almost gold. her little head was held as though she courted a caress.
"i am so glad you have come back, stella," lady o'gara said, fascinated straight off by this charming vision.
"i wonder how mamma stayed away so long," stella returned. "the sweet house, the beautiful grey country." she took lady o'gara's hand and kissed it lightly; yet with an air of reverence,—"the beloved people."
"the country will not prove too grey for you, i hope, stella," lady o'gara said, feeling touched and pleased by the girl's air of homage. "my husband's mother, who was an italian, said that the grey skies made her weep when first she came to ireland. they were so unlike italian skies."
"i must be irish then," said the girl, "for i adore them. even when it rains i shall not weep."
"she has something of your colouring, mary; don't you think so?" mrs.
comerford asked.
"yes, perhaps—more golden."
she was feeling surprised at herself. this girl made more appeal to her than eileen creagh whom she had had with her from childhood. this girl touched some motherly chord in her which eileen had never awakened. she wanted to stroke her dear curls, to be good to her. yet she had been telling herself all those years, that she had no need for a daughter, having terry.
