The Big Wind

by Beatrice Coogan

  ‘I do not take orders about my private arrangements.’

  ‘Don’t you indeed? Your—er—trifling successes appear to be sending you beyond yourself. This invitation was accorded to you as a member of my company. As such, I expect you to accept.’ The manager threw a dramatic looking cloak about himself. ‘It is an order,’ he said, stalking off.

  ‘Noises off stage,’ said Thomas to his departing figure, ‘rude ones.’

  He dined with the Liverpool couple. They sent a carriage for him. On the way, the carriage halted to let some waggons pass. Thomas’s gaze rested idly on the splendid colonial type house they were passing and as they did, the door opened and a white clad girl came gliding down the steps. She carried a rose trew on her arm and a piccaninny followed in attendance; just the way the piccaninny ‘Young Thomas’ used to walk in attendance behind the gliding form of Lady O’Carroll. He craned from the carriage. The girl was beautiful—not as beautiful as Sterrin. No girl could be that beautiful! The house that he would build for Sterrin would be more beautiful than this one. She would float down steps that would be wider, more cascading—but perhaps she might not turn into the floating type. He had to remind himself that when he had last seen her she was still displaying limbs; slender, but un-floatingly vigorous and with a tendency to take two steps at a time.

  In the late of that afternoon he took the first step towards building his dream house. His host took him strolling through his grounds and his pastures and showed him great acreage of corn and cotton. ‘I was born on a good County Kildare farm and I earned big wages here when I landed, but I told myself that I hadn’t come to America to work on other men’s land; so bit by bit, I bought my own.’ He gave a big sigh. ‘I bought too much. I thought I would have children to work and inherit but the one that I made my own has no taste for the land. You saw for yourself just now he is stage-struck. In another while it will be something else.’ He pointed to uncultivated acres in the distance. ‘I’m going to sell that. Why should I go on troubling myself? I had a mind to build a house there for him. But he is not interested. Someone will get a bargain.’

  It was Thomas who got the bargain. A few days later he stood upon his own acres. Tossed on to his lap, he reflected, by the Big Wind that had tossed a poor little mite on to those Liverpool rocks. And to think that he had protested against that trite recitation about the Big Wind! Had the manager agreed, and had he been tempted to suppress the shoddy little entr’acte, the landowner and his wife would never have ventured backstage with their foster-son. Things don’t happen by accident. Thomas knew now for certain, and for all time, that his destiny was inextricably bound up with that night of storm that had brought Sterrin into his life.

  As he looked up to where his land sloped gently, his enchanted eyes raised up a white house tall enough to meet the enclasping trees. Once he stood enraptured at the sight of a white Colonial-style mansion from which a white-clad girl had floated down the steps, a rose basket on her arm, a piccaninny in attendance. Now in his dreams another white-clad girl floated down the steps—she must float! The roses, somehow, were already in the trew and the little piccaninny carried the secateurs. Other piccaninnies whisked at flies, or made pretence—like Mickey-the-turf used to—of weeding the rose beds. And then, wraithlike, other children glided on to the scene; fair-skinned children with gold-red hair, or maybe black. His children and Sterrin’s! He had made real his dream of becoming an actor. Why not this one, too?

  Next evening Thomas was astounded to receive a visit from John Holohan of Upper Kilsheelin. John and his sweetheart, Molly, the dryad with the wondrous hair, had been amongst a handful of survivors of five hundred passengers who had left Cove in a coffin ship that had justified its name. It had limped over the ocean for two months, all the time jettisoning daily the corpses of its plague-stricken passengers. Weak and horror-wrought, they had gone blindly to the destinations they had been directed to by the unscrupulous employment agents who met the boat. John and Molly were separated by the excited crowds at the pier. John found himself in Chicago, then a swampy village by the lakeside. His prosperity had grown with the village. His business acumen equalled his physical powers. He was a rich man; growing all the time richer and all the time he pursued an unremitting search for his lost sweetheart.

  His search led him to New Orleans. This was the last address he had from her one and only letter. John brought Thomas a letter from Nurse Hogan which he had been carrying about for months.

  The envelope was covered with crossed-out addresses where it had followed him about for months before being forwarded to John Holohan’s address in Chicago. But he could still decipher the thin, reedy writing that had written many a list that he had been dispatched with by Nurse Hogan. His fingers tingled at the paper’s touch. There would be news of her. There was bound to be some mention. Wasn’t that the real reason that had prompted him to write to Nurse Hogan? Though the dear knows he would have written soon to the woman who had been like a mother to him. ‘The night of the Big Wind when poor men became rich and rich men became poor—’ Nurse Hogan was surely one of those who had become poor that night—in a fearful way; husband, child, home! Thomas opened the envelope with great care.

  John moved to the window and looked out to give him privacy. Thomas read quickly once, then again. He folded the letter and stared straight ahead. He had reached the portals of Sterrin’s world too late. He was a successful landowner, a young man of property. He had built the bridge, but Sterrin was no longer waiting.

  ‘Miss Sterrin has left us forever to take the veil...’ Nurse Hogan had written.

  *

  Sterrin was on her knees tending the sod in one of the four corners of the field of the Big Wind when the Bianconi driver waved a letter at her from the gates. It was an invitation to join a house party at the Delaneys for the Maryborough Horse Show; for the whole family. Lady O’Carroll, Sir Dominic and Sterrin. It was to be an informal, gay affair for young and old, a party like the ones that the De Laceys used to give before the famine. Sir Jocelyn Devine, the principal shareholder of the railway line, was bringing guests in a special train.

  Sterrin suddenly recalled what Cousin Maurice had said about the railway line. Where it had cut through private property, the owners had been given big compensation. Not to mention the access it afforded to better markets and prices for their products! She must meet this Sir Jocelyn Devine.

  Nurse Hogan joined forces with her to induce Lady O’Carroll to accept. The nurse pointed out that it was the only opportunity of dancing and gaiety that Miss Sterrin was likely to get. There were no more balls at Templetown House. The garrison ladies were off with their husbands at the Crimean war. A gombeen man lived in De Lacey’s. A peasant farmer who was also an ex-convict owned Major Darby’s estate. This was an opportunity to see the old friends and make new ones. But her Ladyship refused to break her mourning seclusion.

  Sterrin rose to her feet. ‘Very well, Mamma,’ she said with an air of great resolve. ‘I’m going back to the convent.’

  Her mother assessed the scowl that had knit her daughter’s brows into one black sweep across her forehead.

  ‘Aren’t you making rather a habit of it?’ she countered.

  ‘I mean it. This time I’ll stay. At least I’ll have companionship.’ Lady O’Carroll found the last statement indisputable.

  That afternoon they drove to Lubey’s to order green velvet for a gown for Sterrin and to inquire why the black silk bootees with the white satin tops had not been delivered to Lady O’Carroll weeks ago.

  They had not been delivered, Mr. Lubey explained as he accompanied the ladies to the door without offering to show the velvet, because Lady O’Carroll, in her melancholy preoccupation with her lamentable bereavement, may have overlooked the fact that her account was so long overdue. Perhaps when Lady O’Carroll’s mind had been tranquillised by the settling of the account it would be possible to hasten those dilatory London firms with the silk bootees, the velvet also.


  Mr. Lubey’s hint cut right down through the years and through the clouds of Lady O’Carroll’s remoteness. ‘Quelle audacité!’ she gasped as the carriage rolled down the street. ‘Do you realise, Sterrin, that the person was actually asking me to settle my account? Me!’

  ‘He must be an optimist.’

  ‘Sterrin, I consider your remark to be in very bad taste. Tell Big John to stop at Mr. Hoey’s office and I shall instruct him to close Lubey’s account.’

  ‘Close it with what, Mamma? A crowbar?’

  ‘Ster-een! Spare me your unladylike terms.’

  ‘Well, perhaps, Mamma, it would have been more genteel had I said hammer the auction hammer that knocks down the Encumbered Estates.’

  ‘Sterrin, I do not see that the term hammer is any more refined than—crowbar. And I am not familiar with either.’

  And I, thought Sterrin, am more familiar with the crowbar than I am with a croquet mallet.

  Big John forgot to urge the horses. They paced to the tempo of his thoughts that grieved over his ladies having to return without the finery they had been refused by a gombeen man. They drove so slowly past one turning that, involuntarily, both ladies turned to glance down a tree-lined road that led to ornamental gates and white railings and beyond, the low roof and white walls of a house that stood embowered in the enclasping woods. The sight of the De Laceys’ former home recalled the present owner, Lubey, the gombeen man who had dared to slight Lady O’Carroll with his tradesman’s talk. And all of a sudden the two wistful faces became as haughty and remote as though their owners could afford to cover the whole countryside with green velvet.

  Hannah had the seamstress installed, waiting to get down to the velvet the moment it arrived. A few months back Sterrin would have blurted out what had happened. Now she said formally. ‘Let her go, Hannah. I was unable to get the right shade.’

  Upstairs she dropped formality. She went straight to the face in the mirror and gritted her teeth. ‘I’ve got to meet Sir Jocelyn Devine. I must have a gown for that party.’

  She rushed up to the attics and rummaged madly through the trunkfuls of bygone grandeur. Velvets, satins, brocades dissolved at her touch like the stuff of dreams. The Big Wind had saturated every trunk and pulped their contents into a gaudy papier mâché.

  She rose to her feet and sent the mess flying with a furious kick. It dislodged, of all things, a heap of green velvet. She ran to her mother’s boudoir with a pair of breeches. Her mother looked at them sadly. ‘Your dear papa’s father bowed in them before Marie Antoinette.’ Sterrin couldn’t resist saying that he must have bowed too low. There was an obvious split down the seat that was not storm damage.

  ‘It will make a breeches for Dominic,’ her mother said, ignoring Sterrin’s crudity.

  There was enough left over from Dominic’s breeches to make a short bodice for Sterrin. One of Lady O’Carroll’s presentation gowns was transformed into a skirt trimmed round the hem with a row of green velvet leaves. Lady O’Carroll was forced to admire the result of the ingenuity.

  She was also, under the sustained threat of Sterrin’s return to the convent, forced to permit Sterrin to depart for Delaneys under the chaperonage of Hannah. Two train journeys to Maurice O’Carroll in County Waterford had made Sterrin a veteran of rail travel. But Hannah stood on the platform shivering at the thought of committing herself to the terror of the unknown. When the great iron monster came, clanking and roaring, Dominic slipped his hand into his sister’s. Sterrin felt as though he had placed his whole life and world into her protection. The next moment the train had roared past. Hannah was jolted out of her fears, ‘There’s manners for you,’ she gasped, ‘think of drivin’ past like that and people waitin’ to travel!’ The porter assured her that it was only the nonstop mail for Dublin. Hannah didn’t think this was sufficient justification for bad manners. ‘How did they know but ’twas to Dublin we wanted to go? The mail coach wouldn’t do the like of that; nor the Bianconi.’

  The next train stopped, obligingly enough, and brought them at an ambling pace to their destination. Mrs. Delaney, waiting at the station in the maroon carriage had the notion, as they approached, that if she was hoping to marry off some of her surplus daughters she was defeating her own ends in inviting such competition as Sterrin O’Carroll. Not much suggestion here of the white-faced, reddish haired girl who had moved in the shadow of her mother’s beauty; not much suggestion of a nun, either. Next day, Mrs. Delaney introduced Sterrin to Sir Jocelyn Devine at the horse show.

  ‘This is Rody O’Carroll’s girl,’ Mrs. Delaney told Sir Jocelyn.

  ‘Not Sir Roderick O’Carroll’s daughter?’

  ‘The same. A calamity!’

  Sir Jocelyn reminded himself that Mrs. Delaney had never been given to felicity of speech. He was delighted by this remarkably beautiful young girl. It was immensely flattering the way this sweet young creature was deferring to him and giving him her undivided attention although she was the centre of attraction. Young gentlemen in immaculately cut riding clothes came in recurring procession, making excuses to speak to Mrs. Delaney on the victory of her entry, while their eyes wandered to the stunning Miss O’Carroll. But it was on the arm of the middle-aged Sir Jocelyn that she returned to her carriage.

  At dinner, Sterrin began to fear that she would never get an opportunity to talk to him alone. She had not had a moment even to make a plan since she arrived at Moormount. She shared a bedroom with three other girls. The carriage had been crowded; the Grand Stand had been jammed; at every meal the younger guests sat two on a chair.

  She kept her face towards Sir Jocelyn and beamed at every bon mot till her face felt stiff. Young girls could not give a conversational lead in the presence of the elderly, but when Sir Jocelyn mentioned that the Dublin gas company was about to give a demonstration of a contraption that would cook food by gas heat, her gasp of amazement caught his flattered attention.

  ‘Isn’t science wonderful?’ she breathed. ‘It makes gas from coal and it makes coal drive railway trains—’

  ‘My dear,’ smiled Sir Jocelyn, ‘it is refreshing to meet appreciation for the inventions of science in one so young and beautiful.’ But Sterrin was disgusted to find that the scientific track she had started him on was not a railroad one. He went on to talk about some impossible invention called a Talking Machine. All the young girls squealed and giggled and someone said that he was a fantastic wag. ‘A talking machine, Sir Jocelyn!’ cried Mrs. Delaney. ‘You must be fooling us now.’

  ‘I vow I am not fooling you, Mrs. Delaney. I saw it at the Vice-Regal Lodge. It can speak and sing and repeat tunes made by musical instruments. This scientifically-minded young lady,’ he bowed towards Sterrin, ‘would find it more fascinating than the railroad invention.’

  Before Sterrin could assure him that nothing in the world just now could fascinate her like a railroad, Mrs. Delaney ordered the young people upstairs to rest before putting on their ball gowns.

  As she climbed the stairs she heard someone calling for Sir Jocelyn’s carriage. Her heart sank. After all her scheming! She shook her head impatiently at Fiona Delaney’s offer of rags to tie up her ringlets before lying down. Fiona thought that Sterrin O’Carroll needn’t be sassy because her ringlets were so natural. But Sterrin just gazed out of the window, regardless of the excited preparations. Belle Delaney was busy pouring urine from a large, flowered chamberpot into pretty china bowls and adding rosewater and lily-of-the-valley. She handed a bowl to Sterrin. ‘If you haven’t brought any old kid gloves to wear while this is soaking. I’ll lend you a pair,’ she said hospitably.

  Sterrin spotted Sir Jocelyn’s carriage. He’s going! She almost wailed it aloud. Belle misinterpreted the consternation on Sterrin’s face. ‘There is more rosewater in it than the other thing,’ she assured her. ‘Go on, it will make your hands soft and white.’ Sterrin took the bowl but did not use the lotion. Its third ingredient, she reflected, was overdoing hospitality.

  But the gay sound of th
e music drew her heart from its worries. A section of the military band that had played at the show had been kindly lent by the colonel to supplement the fiddlers and pianist. The wallflowers tried not to gaze enviously at Sterrin. They discussed the new paraffin lamps that graced the piano and buffet table. The novelty of the lamps gave them something to focus their eyes upon so that no gentleman would catch their eyes straying in his direction.

  Sterrin was never off the floor. She had to split her dances to cope with the demand. Then suddenly, blissfully, she found herself dancing with Sir Jocelyn. He had decided to wait for a dance before leaving, he told her, and his look conveyed that it was for a dance with herself that he had waited. Her mind went haring after an opening about the railroad and then she, too, became aware of the modern-looking lamps on the buffet table.

  ‘May I have some lemonade?’ she asked him. ‘I’ve never seen this kind of lamp before,’ she went on. ‘Are they a new invention of science?’

  Mrs. Delaney started to display their mechanism. ‘I believe in moving with the times,’ she said. ‘This does not burn out the way a candle does if you are absent from the room a while. You just turn it down like this—’

  ‘The dear knows what they will invent next,’ said an elderly lady. ‘First it was the iron road—’

  ‘Yes, indeed!’ Sterrin grasped at the cue. ‘I think that the iron railroad is the most wonderful of—’

  ‘Then,’ continued the lady, ‘they invented those horrid little slips for bringing bad news; and now lamps that will burn for hours in one’s drawing-room.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Delaney, delighted at her own progressiveness, ‘when you return to the room all you need do is this.’ She turned up the wick in a sudden spurt of flame. There was an ominous crack and half the glass chimney crashed on to the uncarpeted floor. ‘I think,’ said the elderly lady, ‘that I shall stick to candles.’ And Sir Jocelyn said that it was time for him to go.