Mrs. Appleyard drew Margaret under the brim of her hat and dabbed her cheek with the edge of her own. ‘Sweet Lady O’Carroll! How charming you look! So ingénue! And that exquisite gown! I don’t have to ask if it is French. Only a Parisian dressmaker could have dreamed of those fascinating bows marching all the way up the façade—’
‘Like a flight of silken steps.’ Margaret pretended not to hear the interruption. There was so much open admiration in the young lieutenant’s eyes that he might mean something subtle.
She turned to Mrs. Kennedy-Sherwin and was relieved at the sight of her small, frilly bonnet that could not sweep her inside its brim. But the vivacious little brunette was not at all the embracing type. She was contented to compliment Margaret on her shy waistline.
Margaret decided that this phrase had better be ignored also. She wasn’t sure what a ‘shy’ waistline was. One never could be quite sure with the garrison colony. They were so gay and modern. She just smiled and welcomed her but gave an involuntary look towards her waistline.
Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith followed her glance and as he bowed over her hand he said, ‘You must know, Lady O’Carroll, that a lady’s waist has the shy quality of the violet that shrinks but is never shrunken.’
Margaret was glad when the arrival of tea gave her a chance to barricade herself behind the big tea urn. Her sense of fun had survived her rigid upbringing but had yielded no tricks of repartee.
She sipped her unsweetened tea and nibbled at the lump of sugar on her saucer and listened to the gay gossip that held wisps of scandal. Captain Bellamy had called out Captain Hatton of the 31st and when he flicked his sword through his opponent’s scalp and displayed on its tip a lock of rich, but false, brown hair called out, ‘I am quite satisfied.’
‘He had never been really satisfied about its genuineness before,’ Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith explained in case the joke missed his hostess.
‘He must think me very stupid,’ she thought. Aloud she remarked, ‘Wasn’t it a leetle unkind? And also, why did he not wear a wig instead of a toupee?’
‘Because, my dear,’ said Mrs. Kennedy-Sherwin, ‘he had not yet accustomed himself to the premature loss of a very handsome head of hair.’
Margaret was glad now that Roderick was detained, even though the nasty threats from the Whiteboy organisation did worry her. Roderick had never expressed any disapproval of Mrs. Appleyard and her set but he showed no urge towards friendship there. He would certainly disapprove of such idle chatter.
It was a relief when Hegarty came in to say that Nurse Hogan wished to know if she would have Miss Sterrin brought down.
Miss Sterrin, in her nursemaid’s arms and marshalled by Nurse Hogan, gazed with complete composure out of deep blue eyes that subdued her audience into silence. They grouped around the stage of her beauty and paid tribute.
Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith put a finger under her chin and Sterrin effortlessly and noiselessly vomited a few bubbles of milk pudding over his finger on to the frills of Malines lace. ‘When she is the toast of the country I shall boast of this condescension,’ he said as he brought the silk handkerchief into action again.
Nurse Hogan was contrite. ‘Has she over-eaten again?’ Margaret asked.
She turned apologetically to her guests. ‘She eats enormously for a baby but she was so tiny when she was born that it is good to see her thriving so.’
‘What a quaint name,’ said Mrs. Kennedy-Sherwin, ‘is it some name of your family in Belgium?’
Margaret explained the storm significance of the name. ‘My dear,’ said Mrs. Appleyard, ‘you were the heroine of the hour. We were having a card party when a courier came for the surgeon. The roof of the guardhouse had blown in and the men were being blown around like leaves. Lord knows how many limbs were broken.’
‘It was such fun,’ said Mrs. Kennedy-Sherwin. ‘All the guests had to stay overnight. There were four of us in Cynthia’s bedroom and the men were sleeping on couches in the drawing-room.’
‘Yes, “the flying sentry” came home to find his bedroom gone and his wife standing on the part of the floor that had not crashed to the floor beneath. By Jove, it was deuced funny to see her standing there in her nightgown. One wall, all flowery wallpaper, stood behind her. The other three, and the roof, all gone.’ Nurse Hogan’s hand trembled.
Margaret took the baby. She looked down tensely at the red gold curls. Through them she saw a bedroom floor and a woman lying in shadow, blood smearing the hot candle wax.
Nurse Hogan moved to her. ‘Shall I take her now, your Ladyship?’
Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith noticed Margaret’s pallor. As Nurse Hogan took the baby from her mother, the lieutenant stepped towards her and made a sweeping bow. ‘Allow me to pay a small tribute to one whom I shall not dare to approach when this dawning beauty has reached its full noontide.’ He suddenly produced a silver flower, tulip shaped, with a mother-of-pearl handle set round with tiny bells that tinkled sweetly.
Margaret looked up at him and her eyes were wide with gratitude; for his sensitive timing. She had thought she was going to faint. How could he have known that it was the baby’s birthday? And how could she admit to any of them that she, its mother, had forgotten what day it was! What had that terrible storm done to her?
She looked deep into Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith’s eyes with affection. The officer did not dare to interpret her look for what it seemed to express. But he was conscious of some deep emotion behind those lovely eyes. He felt colour heating his cheeks and his pulse quickened.
The baby broke the tension with a musical cascade from the costly ‘rattle’ he had given her. The nurse adjusted a white fur hood over the red gold curls against the chill air of the passages and stairs. As the little procession left the drawing-room a silvery sound of bells wafted back. Margaret gave a happy little laugh. ‘I love tinkling sounds! Every time that I shall hear these bells I shall feel compelled to think of you.’
‘Compelled!’ His eyebrows registered mock dismay. ‘Only under compulsion shall I be remembered?’
‘Mais non!’ she cried. ‘You mock my English. It is when I desire to say something—très gentil—that I sometimes put into it my foot and I say instead something gauche.’
‘You could not say anything gauche however hard you tried.’
There was homage in his voice and eyes. Abruptly he turned the topic to door knockers. He had been hauled before the colonel for his part in a door knocker raid the night before. ‘We really expected to be confined to barracks this week. We bagged fifteen knockers. Every house in the Mall except Dr. Mitchell’s and only ten-shillings fine! It was deucedly cheap! I was afraid I should have had to miss the Moonlight Ball. Are you going, Lady O’Carroll?’
Before she could reply Sir Roderick entered the room. Despite the courtesy of his greeting the tempo of the little gathering abated. Margaret noted with an inward sigh the stern look that had become so habitual since that horrid storm.
The small-talk faltered like a song gone out of tune. Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith decided to come to the rescue with something solid and man-to-man. ‘I believe, sir,’ he said, ‘that you are having difficulty with that fellow who grabbed your land?’ To judge from his host’s expression the young man felt that it might have been wiser to stick to the Moonlight Ball theme.
Mrs. Kennedy-Sherwin saved Roderick the necessity of replying by announcing that she had eaten all the French bonbons. He turned at once to ring and have the bonbonnière replenished, but she had started to draw on her pelisse. He turned back to assist her. Margaret looked bleak as Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith collected the big sable muff that was en suite with Mrs. Appleyard’s collar. Her little festivity was ending!
To prolong the moment of departure rather than of necessity, she led the ladies to the little ante-room where her father-in-law’s friends used to put the last touches to their toilets before entering the drawing-room.
They chattered with restored vivacity as they titiva
ted before the mirror on the wig-powder stand. Margaret watched closely as Mrs. Appleyard took the little ewer of rosewater from the lower tier and poured some into the basin on the top tier. What would happen if she wet her complexion? Rumour had it that the blonde beauty used not only ‘visage powder’, but rouge!
But the lady just wet her fingertips, peered into the mirror and said she looked a hag. Her hostess courteously repudiated such a suggestion, and her friend neither agreeing nor disagreeing told her to cheer up, the violets would soon be in season.
‘Violets!’ said Margaret, intrigued at the hint of a new beauty tip. ‘Do they help?’
‘Of course,’ shrilled Mrs. Kennedy-Sherwin. ‘Fancy your not knowing! It is the most marvellous lotion. Violets boiled in milk with—Oh, my gracious! What is that?’
A dull explosive sound followed by a crash sounded from across the hall in the direction of the drawing-room. Margaret leaned back against the wig block, her face ashen. ‘Quick! She’s going to faint.’ Mrs. Appleyard pulled smelling-salts from her muff and Mrs. Sherwin opened the door to peep out.
Footsteps pounded across the hall. ‘La!’ she cried. ‘Where are the gentlemen off to? They are simply racing out.’
The two men were barely in time to see the white-clad figures of men running into the shrubbery. They could hear them calling to others to go back, that there were military after them.
Sir Roderick laid a restraining hand upon the younger man’s shoulder. ‘Put away your pistol. I don’t want bloodshed if I can avoid it. They will only shed more blood in retaliation! Perhaps my wife’s or my child’s.’
‘Surely not, sir! Pardon my saying it, but I thought that they did not attack their own, er—I mean you are a Catholic like themselves, I thought that they respected their own co-religionists.’
‘They don’t care whom they attack. They have lost sight of the original grievance that started the Whiteboy movement. It is no longer a matter of tithes or evictions or any other agrarian discontent. It is sheer brutality for its own sake.’ He climbed a little knoll in the shrubbery, and peered. ‘I’ll hold a crown that tall fellow is a son of Keating’s. The white shirt doesn’t cover that new suit.’ He had noticed it at Mass today. He found himself noticing the most ordinary details about this family whose existence he had scarcely noticed previously. His face was bitter as he stepped off the knoll.
Sir Roderick suddenly became aware of his guest’s scrutiny. ‘Forgive my preoccupation with my own affairs. It is a churlish way to treat a guest. I have reason to be glad of your presence here today. The minute they saw the colour of your uniform coming round the terrace they took to their heels. They probably thought I had a company of military installed for protection.’
‘I’m deuced glad I was here, sir. Would it not be a wise precaution to arrange to have a company of military posted here?’
‘No, I’ll deal with them myself. We have lived in harmony with our tenants throughout the generations. It is inconceivable now that I should protect myself from them with military display. No O’Carroll of Kilsheelin has ever been known to evict a tenant or raise a rent and Heaven knows we have held our lands with stress and strait.’
‘But, sir, I hope you won’t think it devilishly impertinent of me to point out the risk that you mentioned yourself a moment ago. You spoke of the danger to your wife and child. Surely any suspicion of danger to them would outweigh any feudal conception of protectiveness towards your tenantry?’
Sir Roderick realised that the young man spoke truly. His own obstinacy and possessiveness was exposing his sweet Margaret and her little storm flower to danger. In a friendlier tone he said, ‘I do not anticipate a recurrence of such raids. Tonight has a special significance. It is an anniversary and—a warning—We had better return to the ladies. Let us hope they heard nothing.’
He did not catch what his companion was saying about a cockfight the next morning. He was thinking if it had only been any of the fields stretching away behind the castle! But it had to be from those too few fertile acres to the front.
They found the drawing-room all aflutter. Mrs. Appleyard, with gold-topped smelling-salts still in play, stood over Margaret. Mrs. Kennedy-Sherwin sat beside her on the couch holding her hand and giving it little pats, and Mrs. Hogan hovered anxiously in the background.
In the centre of the room the butler supervised the sweeping up of broken glass. Overhead, a mutilated branch had lost twelve blossoms that had held twelve lights.
‘Are you all right, my darling?’ Sir Roderick bent over Margaret and Mrs. Appleyard looked in solemn wonder at that tone and gaze of deepest love that she, the golden toast, had never evoked in any man.
Margaret looked up wild-eyed. ‘Oh, Roderick. It is the same all over again. It is not Sterrin’s birthday. It is the anniversary of the storm. The crash, that smell, the scorching, and all that candle-grease on the carpet. It is just like when Mrs. Mansfield—’
He wished the visitors in Timbuctoo that he might take her in his arms. But little Mrs. Kennedy-Sherwin gave things a practical turn by announcing that she felt faint. Above the sixteen-inch waistline her heart was feeling the protesting pressure of the potato cakes she had devoured at tea. In that moment of drama she was able to swoon into a most ladylike faint.
Margaret was immediately on her feet, all attendance and concern. Mrs. Appleyard transferred the smelling salts to the petite nostrils that had a tendency to quiver despite their owner’s efforts to maintain a wan stillness. Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith chafed the tiny wrists that lay so pathetically in his palm. Nurse Hogan hurried in with burnt feathers. Margaret unfastened as many buttons as modesty would allow. Roderick, relieved that the poor little lady had averted a complete breakdown, brought more cushions in an excess of gratitude while Mrs. Kennedy-Sherwin felt that this was the most successful faint she had ever had in her life.
The visitors made their farewells with practised grace. Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith bent low over his hostess’s flaccid hand. Little Mrs. Kennedy-Sherwin murmured something about the morrow’s cockfight breakfast and an opera performance at Sir Jocelyn Devine’s in Kilkenny. Roderick tried to frame a refusal that would not sound too unfriendly. Nurse Hogan helped Margaret upstairs.
Roderick hurried his guests to their carriage, and waved them on their way. Returning, he noticed a man standing by the gate. George Lucas was his name and he was seeking employment.
He told Roderick that he was one of the twenty farmers who had been evicted by Major Darby because a sheep had been stolen. The evictions had disgusted Roderick; the farmers involved were decent, honest men. Darby was the type of landlord who regarded his tenants as being a lower species than his livestock.
Roderick was not impressed by Lucas; a small man with small eyes that had the blue-black sheen of the beetle. His wife, he said, had given birth to a child the night of the Big Wind; when he returned after seeking help for her he found that she and the child that had been born in his absence had both been drowned by the sudden flood that had washed them from the bed.
It was obvious that the man was pressing an affinity with Sir Roderick’s own experiences. The poor devil had been tragically dealt with by that freak storm; but, between workers and hangers-on Roderick already had more workers than work. The man persisted. He had been, he said, a skilled bricklayer before he had acquired the farm. He looked pointedly at the section of boundary wall that still gaped on the ‘Sir’s Road’ since the Big Wind. He wouldn’t dream of a tradesman’s wages, just a farm worker’s, or less.
The man seemed to speak by insinuations. Roderick knew that he was referring to the fact that the skilled men who had been engaged to rebuild the wall had left it one third finished and rushed off to where bricklayers had been rumoured to get as much as seven-and-six a day for repairing storm damage. Lucas was effusive when Roderick agreed to employ him. ‘Your Honour’s Sir will never regret this turn,’ he said.
Roderick looked into the small eyes. ‘I trust,’ he replied col
dly, ‘that you will never give me cause for regret.’
That night when he wrote in his black book, it was to enter: ‘George Lucas is to work for me until after the harvest at five shillings per week and his victuals. I am to keep back sixpence a week to be sure of his not going. If he goes he forfeits sixpence per week.’ Roderick looked long at the last entry. It was the first time that he had ever made use of this condition in the terms of a man’s employment.
8
Sterrin came scrambling up the back stairs in answer to her name.
‘So you’ve been in the kitchen again! What were you doing there?’
‘Helping Young Thomas to clean the knives.’
‘What!’ Nurse Hogan was aghast. ‘The idea of you demeaning yourself at such a task! And don’t you know that you are not supposed to go to the kitchen?’
Sterrin sighed, ‘All the fun is in the kitchen.’ She strained up to the mirror on the nurse’s dressing-table and sighed again. ‘I wish I hadn’t red hair. The fairies are always trying to steal red-haired babies. They have their eye on me.’ The nurse knew where this bit of pishoguerie was coming from. She resolved to speak to Mrs. Stacey.
‘Sit down, Miss Sterrin. I have something to say to you. No, don’t lean forward with your elbows on your knees like an old man smoking a pipe. Sit upright and fold your hands the way you were taught to.’
The nurse marvelled anew at the startling contrast between the child’s vivid red hair and jet black brows. Sometimes it was hard to realise that Miss Sterrin was only a child. She was so much a—a person. And that clear voice of hers never fumbled a word and never prattled baby talk.
The Big Wind Page 8