Matchless Cashelmara, incomparable Cashelmara—but no adjective could ever capture the peace and pleasure and satisfaction that overwhelmed me whenever I returned there after an absence in England. It would be insufficient to explain this extraordinary sense of well-being merely by saying that the house was beautiful. Of course it was beautiful, the most beautiful house I had ever seen. But it was more than that. It was my father’s life work, my parents’ happy marriage, my own idyllic boyhood spent far from dirty cities and the corruption of modern life. It was the past, the uncomplicated past seen far away at the end of the golden corridor of nostalgia, the rural simple world of yesterday untouched by the clamor of a thousand industrial machines, the roar of international revolution and the steady ruthless progress of science. I trust I am modern in my outlook. Indeed I have no patience with men who cannot move with the times, but after months spent in London immersed in the teeming confusion of modern life I always found it a comfort to retreat to the peace and seclusion of Cashelmara.
I found myself on the brink of that peace and seclusion on the evening of the third day after my departure from St. James’s Square. I had hired a carriage that morning in Galway to take me the last forty miles of my journey, and when the coachman, who was young and inexperienced, looked alarmed at the prospect of driving along the rim of Connemara into the wilderness of the Joyce country we had been obliged to waste time while I explained to him that I was not one of those landlords who were afraid to ride unarmed on their own estates. My tenants might waste their energies in barbaric faction fights, but no one wasted their time feuding with me because they knew if they wished to complain I would listen and if they wanted justice I would mete it out to them without fuss. I have never had any sympathy with the landlord who treats his tenants as animals and then moans in bewilderment when they regard him as the devil incarnate.
It was sunset when the carriage creaked through the pass between Bunnacunneen and Knocknafaughy and I was able to look down upon my inheritance. The lough, long and slender, lay limpidly below me, and far away at the other end of the valley I could see the road winding past the cabins of Clonareen toward Letterturk. The mountains ringed the valley. I knew all their names and had climbed each one of them in my youth. The carriage was easing its way painfully around a sharp bend, and as the wheels began to grind downhill at last I looked north across the valley, across the western tip of the lough, across the river and the bog and the walled potato patches to the studied stone elegance of my home.
Around the house lay several acres of woods framed by a high stone wall. The trees had been planted to protect the house from the winds which scudded up the valley, but from the front of the house, where a gravel sweep allowed a carriage to turn with ease, the drive zigzagged downhill so rapidly that the top branches of the trees by the gates swayed far below the basement windows. The chapel, my mother’s pride and joy, stood above the house on the eastern perimeter of the grounds. Its small stone tower was visible above the trees as one approached the house.
It was still light when the carriage reached the gates. The sun takes a long time to set at Cashelmara on summer nights, and never in all my travels have I seen a sight to equal the finest of the Irish sunsets. The lough was now a pool of dark gold in reflection of the afterglow, and the mountains, black in shadow, glowed a dull crimson beneath the slashed and dreamy sky.
Everyone at the house was stupefied by my arrival, although they had no reason to be. I made a habit of descending upon them without warning at least once a year in order to prevent slothful habits developing during my absence, and my stern response if all was not as it should have been was legendary throughout the household.
“Is it really yourself, my lord?” said Hayes, the butler whom I had brought to Cashelmara ten years ago from Dublin. It was hopeless to expect any of the local men to learn about buttling without becoming drunkards, and although Hayes had his shortcomings he had improved, like port, with age.
“Well, who do you think it is, Hayes?” I said irritably as I stepped into the hall. Despite my irritation I paused just as I always did to admire this magnificent entrance to my home. The hall was circular, surrounded by a gallery on the upper floor, and far above the massive Waterford chandelier, the design of the ceiling reflected the design of the marble floor. To the right was the door that led into the saloon and a chain of reception rooms, to the left was the library and on the other side of the hall beyond the stairs were the corridors that led to the servants’ quarters and the lesser rooms.
I sighed, savoring the familiar pleasure of my return, and then allowed myself to recall my irritation. “Arrange for a meal to be served in half an hour, please, Hayes,” I said abruptly, “and tell the maid to air my bed properly this time. One warming pan is not enough. Where’s my son?”
“I’m thinking he rode to Clonareen, my lord, with young Derry Stranahan.”
“I want to see him as soon as he returns. Bring some brandy and water to me in the library, if you please.”
The library was a square room that faced across the valley. The principal item of furniture was a huge desk that my father, in typical eccentric fashion, had designed himself, and, following my usual habit, I sat down behind it and glanced at Eleanor’s portrait, which hung over the white marble fireplace. Closer to me on the desk stood the miniature of my dead son Louis. He was smiling. It was a good likeness, and not for the first time I wondered how he would have looked if he had lived. He would have been twenty-five by this time. He would have taken his degree at Oxford and traveled abroad in the required manner; perhaps he would have married. Without doubt he would have gone into politics, won a seat in the Commons, joined the Carlton Club … Eleanor would have been so proud.
“Here’s your brandy and water, my lord,” said Hayes from a long way away. “And, my lord, your son and Derry Stranahan are this moment riding up the drive.”
I went to the window, the glass in my hand, and looked out at the son who had survived. Then before he and his friend could disappear around the house to the stables I set down my glass, left the library and opened the front door.
They were laughing together. They both looked drunk, but Roderick Stranahan, the boy I had fed and clothed and educated since his family had died in the famine, looked less drunk than Patrick. At seventeen one is more capable of holding one’s liquor than when one is fourteen.
I waited. They saw me. The laughter stopped.
It was Derry Stranahan who recovered first from the shock. He slipped from his horse and ran across the drive to greet me.
“Welcome home, Lord de Salis!” he exclaimed, very bright-eyed and bobbish, and held out his hand for me to shake.
Young rogue, I thought, but it was hard to be angry with him for long. Meanwhile Patrick had dismounted. I was astonished to see how much he had grown, and I noticed too that his new height had accentuated his marked physical resemblance to me. I could see nothing of Eleanor in him at all.
“Papa!” he cried and rushed so unsteadily toward me that he tripped and fell flat on his face.
“I’m sorry to see,” I said as Derry helped him to his feet, “that you’re in no fit state to receive me in a proper manner. Go to your room at once, if you please, before all the servants see you in such a disgraceful condition.”
“Yes, Papa,” he said humbly and still, despite what I had said, delayed his departure by attempting to embrace me.
“That will do,” I said, for I thought it unmanly for a boy of his age to indulge in such lavish demonstrations of affection, and besides I wanted him to know that I was angry with him. “Go to your room at once.” And after he had gone I said sharply to Derry Stranahan, “Long before I left for America I strictly forbade Patrick to drink more than one glass of wine a day, and I strictly forbade either you or Patrick to drink poteen. Since you’re the elder I hold you entirely responsible for this incident.”
“Why, yes, my lord,” said Derry, long-faced and mournful-eyed, “to be sure you do
. But we were visiting my kin among the Joyces, and in Joyce country it’s considered a mortal insult if you refuse your host’s little token of good will.”
“I’m well aware of the customs of the country,” I said dryly. “This is not to happen again, do you understand? If it does, I shall be very angry. Take the horses to the stables and go to your room. I don’t wish to see you again today.”
“Very well, my lord. I apologize from the bottom of my heart, upon my honor I do. Might I have a little bite to eat before I go upstairs?”
“You may not,” I said, privately cursing him for his charm, which made it so hard to treat him as severely as he deserved. “Good night, Roderick.”
“Good night, Lord de Salis,” he said sadly and ran with great grace across the drive to the straying horses.
Returning to the library, I finished my brandy and moved to the dining room, where I ate the bacon and potatoes which had been hastily prepared for me. It was only after I had dined that I could summon the energy to extract my cane from the cloakroom cupboard and toil wearily upstairs to do my parental duty.
Patrick had lighted both lamps in his room. As I entered I found him dusting the table by the window, but although I suspected he had been carving I saw no trace of the telltale sawdust, and only the watercolors, pinned to the canopy of the bed, remained to betray how he had amused himself since running away from his tutor. Among this collection I noted a fine painting of his favorite Irish wolfhound, two bad pictures of birds, an interesting sketch of Hayes’s small daughter and a gaudy portrait of a long-haired gentleman whom I could only presume to be Jesus Christ.
I said nothing. He knew I did not approve of his pastimes, but he knew too that I tolerated the painting since it was preferable to any of his other pursuits. I had once caught him digging a ditch at Woodhammer Hall. He had solemnly explained to me that he was redesigning the grounds in eighteenth-century style and that the ditch was a ha-ha. Another time—again at Woodhammer—I had found him helping a thatcher repair the roof of a tenant’s cottage. At least he could paint in private without causing undue comment, but his artisan inclinations, displayed so carelessly for all my tenants to see, had proved an embarrassment to me and I had been angry that he should have been so ready to make a laughingstock of himself. Recognizing that his interest in horticulture might be directed into acceptable channels, I had tried to teach him various agricultural theories, but Patrick had refused to be interested. He did not care a fig for cultivating a field of turnips, he had told me; it was much more fun to weed a flower bed and plant a row of marigolds.
“But, my dear Patrick,” I had said in despair, “you cannot go through life weeding flower beds like a common gardener.”
“Why not?” Patrick had asked, assuming that puzzled expression which always infuriated me, and I had been obliged to give him one of those tedious lectures about his station in life, the obligations which would one day be imposed upon him and the necessity that he should interest himself in estate administration and, out of duty, politics.
“Grandpapa didn’t bother about that sort of thing,” Patrick had objected. “He merely lived quietly at Cashelmara and did as he pleased.”
“What possible relevance does that have to the conversation? Your grandfather lived in another age when people of our class did not consider themselves responsible for the social and moral welfare of the masses. The world has progressed since your grandfather’s day, and even if it had not I fail to see why you should feel bound to follow in your grandfather’s footsteps. You’re my son, not his.”
But in fact I often glimpsed my father in Patrick and thought it an ironic jest of heredity that I, who bore no resemblance to my father, had somehow managed to transmit that missing resemblance to my son.
Glancing again at the pictures hanging from the canopy, I made a great effort to be patient and fair.
“I should like an explanation,” I began levelly, “of why you ran away from your tutor despite the fact that before I went to America I warned you what would happen if you ran away from a tutor again.”
He made a small hopeless gesture with his hands and hung his head in shame.
“My dear Patrick, surely you must have something to say for yourself!”
“No, Papa.”
“But why did you do it?”
“I don’t know.”
I was so exasperated that it cost me a great effort not to strike him, but I was determined to give him a fair hearing.
“Was your tutor unkind to you?”
“No, Papa.”
“Did you dislike him?”
“No, Papa.”
“Were you unhappy in London?”
“No, Papa. But I was a little lonely, so when I realized Derry would be home from school—”
“You knew quite well that I would never have approved of you staying at Cashelmara with Roderick without adequate supervision. Roderick’s a fine young fellow, but he’s at a mischievous age. Look at the trouble he led you into this evening! I blame him entirely for your drunkenness, but I blame you for putting yourself under his influence in this fashion.”
“Yes, Papa.”
“Do you have anything else to say to explain your disobedience?”
“No, Papa,” he said.
I looked at him helplessly. I did not want to beat him, but I had committed myself earlier to punishing him if he continued to run away from his tutors, and I did not see how I could avoid a beating without causing him to lose respect for me. Yet although like any other responsible parent I believed in the maxim “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” I had begun to think Patrick had developed an immunity that made sparing the rod a matter of indifference to him. I realized, of course, that this must be an illusion, but, illusion or not, I now had my doubts about how far a beating would deter him from further wrongdoing.
“Then if you have nothing further to say,” I said to him, “you leave me no choice but to punish you as you deserve.”
“Yes, Papa,” he said and took his beating without another word.
Such passive acceptance disturbed me, but I was very tired by that time, much too tired to consider an alternative form of punishment for the future, and after I had left Patrick I retired with relief to my private apartments.
The next morning I still did not feel inclined to grapple with Patrick’s problems, so after breakfast I sent a note to my agent asking him to call on me and settled down to write at last to Marguerite. This raised my spirits considerably. I had just finished describing the voyage and was in the middle of a long sentence saying how much I wished she were with me when there was a tap on the library door and Hayes announced the arrival of my eldest surviving daughter, Annabel.
III
Eleanor and I had had many children, but the majority of them had died in infancy. In an age when more parents could expect to see all their offspring reach maturity we had been unlucky. No doctor could provide an explanation of our misfortune. Eleanor and I had both been healthy, and Woodhammer Hall, where our children had been brought up, had provided a robust rural environment. But five of our daughters had not survived the first year of infancy, and neither of our two eldest sons had reached his fifth birthday. For eight years our daughter Nell, the first born, had been our only child to escape death, and in retrospect I feel this was one of the reasons why she became our favorite daughter; her survival had made her doubly precious to us. However, after a period in which we lost two daughters and two sons Annabel entered the world and was followed at regular intervals by Louis, Madeleine, Katherine, three more little girls who had died in infancy and finally Patrick. Madeleine, to my fury, had inherited my mother’s religious fanaticism and become a nun, Katherine had married a diplomat and was now residing in St. Petersburg, and Annabel, after a checkered and scandalous matrimonial career, was at present living at Clonagh Court, the dower house which I had built for my mother at the other end of the valley.
“Good morning, Papa,” she said briskly, sweepin
g into the library with her customary élan before I could tell Hayes that I would receive her in the morning room. “My servants informed me this morning that you had been seen arriving in the valley last night, so I thought I would call upon you at once, as there is something I must discuss with you. Dear me, how tired you look! I really think that at your time of life you should be content to lead a less peripatetic existence. You’re not so young as you used to be, you know.”
It would be impossible, in any description of Annabel, to exaggerate her tactlessness. It was beyond belief. She had inherited Eleanor’s spirited approach to life, but for some reason the inheritance manifested itself in an unfeminine aggressiveness I thought profoundly unattractive. However, Annabel was handsome, and there is a type of man, I am always amazed to discover, who likes such Amazonian women with a will of their own and a tongue to match.
When Annabel, at eighteen, had been married to a political acquaintance of mine some twenty years her senior, Eleanor and I had heaved a sigh of relief. Much better for her, we reasoned, to be married to an older man who would provide a steadying influence. But never were we more mistaken. Eleanor died before the marriage was three months old, but I saw my son-in-law so worn out by his wife’s escapades that after six exhausting years of marriage he sank to an early grave. There were two daughters in whom Annabel professed little interest, and presently she left them with their paternal grandparents in Northumberland and returned to London. In dread of what Annabel might achieve now that she had a widow’s freedom and all London in which to display it, I quickly cast around among my friends and found yet another misguided man who found such women irresistible. I was about to coax him to propose when Annabel dumfounded me—and all the delighted society gossips—by running off with the chief jockey of the racing stables her husband had owned at Epsom.
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