‘Nevertheless,’ said her brother angrily, ‘it is damnably hard to hear the things that are being said about her.’
‘Who said anything about Sterrin?’ Maurice’s voice was roaring the words as the pair entered the drawing-room.
‘So you’ve heard?’ said Lord Patrick Cullen, seating himself at the card table and stretching his lame leg out on a chair. Maurice stood still. Patrick looked so obviously like someone who had let the cat out of the bag; and Captain Fitzharding-Smith was raising his eyebrows and coughing in a warning kind of way. Dominic took up the cards and shuffled them.
‘Come, Maurice!’ said Dominic dealing them out.
Captain Fitzharding-Smith almost grabbed a hand. ‘What shall we play for? Your usual, Dominic? Though I vow I’ve no livestock in my purse.’
‘Faith, then,’ replied Dominic, ‘I’ve no ready cash in my purse; it has got to be the usual; a sheep a point and a bullock on the rubber.’
Maurice threw down the cards. ‘I won’t play for stock. There is little enough of it on the land as it is.’
Sterrin came in and stood behind him. She had often seen Maurice play away a whole herd. This must have something to do with whatever Dominic had been saying to him about herself.
‘Look here,’ she said, ‘what is all the mystery? You are not afraid to lose a sheep or a few bullocks. Who said what about me? Out with it! I’m going to know.’ She turned to Dominic. ‘Come on, Dominic, you’ll tell me if I have to shoot it out of you!’
Her choice of threat caught the unsubtle Patrick off guard. ‘There’s been enough of shooting for one day,’ he said and immediately drenched his treacherous tongue with a long drink of port that emptied a full goblet.
Out came the story. Dominic had fought a duel over Sterrin, that very afternoon. He had spied the carriage as it emerged from Love Lane and had reined-in in time only to overhear the officer’s remark about his sister’s face, and her conduct.
Dominic wasn’t sure whether Sterrin was going to faint or explode. He put an arm around her. ‘I—I’m sorry I didn’t kill the bounder,’ he said in his gentle voice. Maurice regained his lost composure.
‘Don’t talk nonsense, boy! Duelling is no longer a pastime. It is murder. Why didn’t you stop it, Basil? As for you, Patrick, you ought to have had more sense.’
Patrick was getting a bit muddled and muttered something about chivalry and loyalty to one’s friends. And Captain Fitzharding-Smith, it seemed, had galloped, hell for leather, after the two officers immediately he got wind of the affair. By the time he had arrived at the rendezvous the offending party was nursing a wounded elbow. ‘Went through clean as a whistle,’ said Patrick and began tittering in a way that was irritatingly reminiscent of old Lord Cullen.
‘Stop laughing, Patrick,’ snapped Sterrin, ‘I don’t relish being the subject of your amusement.’
Patrick choked, half-way down another goblet. ‘Hoity-Toity!’ he spluttered. ‘You are a nice one to talk. I’ll wager you amused His Imperial Majesty with your hand-springs and what not.’ His fuddled brain was trying to sieve some salacious titbit about Sterrin’s sojourn in Paris.
Sterrin took a quick turn into the centre of the room, pulled off her belt and tied her skirts around her knees with it.
‘Look!’ she said briefly. Before they realised what she was about she had swept up her arms and the next moment a pair of shapely legs in plaid stockings were weaving high in the air. She walked on her hands till the tips of her toes set the dangling glasses of the chandelier chiming. ‘Now,’ she panted, straightening up, ‘there is the sum total of my behaviour in front of the Emperor. And it was at the Empress’s soirée. The Emperor only surprised us at the finish. Does that justify duels and gossip and the loss of a lady’s reputation? Does it?’ she blazed, untying her skirts and pushing back her hair into its snood.
Captain Fitzharding-Smith and Maurice O’Carroll, looking into the fearless eyes, wide and dark with anger, could readily imagine the harmless romp that had caused such pother.
Dominic at any other time, would have relished the performance. But the remark that had really made him fight the duel was not one about a frolicsome somersault. There had been an oblique reference to an actor; something about his being surprised in a bedroom—with his sister! It was, of course, unthinkable. All his life he had looked up to Sterrin; followed her lead in every prank. He fought with her, most of the time; but he revered her. She would never be capable of anything so furtive, or messy. Still, he had argued all evening to himself, her husband had been a bit long in the tooth, and Sterrin was so hellishly good looking. It wasn’t for turning somersaults that she had been cut out of that heritage of delicious wealth. There must have been something. He, too, looked into her indignant eyes and knew that he would never challenge her.
Did she know, he wondered, how much slanderous gossip she courted? It had been less malicious when it had been assumed that she was an extremely wealthy young widow. Now that it had been established that she had been completely disinherited the gossips were saying ‘I told you so’ and telling more so. How could an old man wreak vengeance upon anyone so young and sweet! His eye ran over the morsel of lace edging on the snood that restrained her chignon. It was the merest concession towards the widow’s cap.
‘Sterrin,’ said Cousin Maurice, ‘you promised to show me that talking contraption that Tom Steele invented.’
A crate from Kilkenny, that someone had thought contained some of Lady Devine’s packed clothing, had been found on arrival at Kilsheelin to contain a Talking Machine that Sir Jocelyn had ordered before his death. Captain Fitzharding-Smith was diverted.
‘I didn’t know that Mr. Steele was an inventor,’ he said.
‘Indeed he was,’ said Maurice, ‘he has contributed most valuable improvements to this new incandescent lighting. There was a great inventor lost in him only he insisted upon traipsing after lost causes. Back in 1820 he was on the track of something in artificial lighting that has only been discovered recently by the modern scientists. But nothing would do for him but go off and help the Spanish patriots against Frederick VII.’
The gentlemen gathered round as she assembled the different parts. ‘Mr. Steele didn’t invent this,’ she explained, ‘he was carrying out experiments upon it before he died.’
Dominic’s carefully assumed sang-froid was tilted to an open-mouthed amazement, when suddenly a human voice—a man’s—came singing from the speaking trumpet. A woman’s voice joined in, but the mingled words grew shrill and out of tune. Sterrin turned the winch frantically and the voices sang in tune to the end.
‘By Jove,’ exclaimed the captain, ‘that’s incredible! I’ve never heard anything like it. I’ve heard attempts in Paris, but they were scarcely recognisable. They haven’t got that far in America yet.’
Cousin Maurice was so dumbfounded that Sterrin offered to wind him into speech. ‘It is not right,’ he said at last. ‘It is taking an ungodly liberty. Our bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost. I don’t believe that it was ever envisaged in the Divine scheme of creation that man should extract that portion of the body that is the human voice and put it, for amusement, into a—a yoke like that!’ He sat back and mopped his forehead. ‘Is there any more to it?’ Curiosity oozed through his disapproval.
Sterrin removed the cylinder and put in another. Out of the machine with startling suddenness, came a weird voice that just missed being sepulchral, owing to the tinny timbre of the mechanism.
‘You are engaged in blood,’ said the voice, ‘and are strengthening the enemies of your long suffering country—’
‘My God,’ breathed Maurice, ‘it is Steele himself—’
‘Now I address these words to you in the hope that, through the power of science, my voice may come to you and direct you from your folly. The prophetic utterance of the Liberator has come true. Before his lamented death, he said, “I shall not be six months in my grave before the flag of rebellion will be unfurled in Ireland”—’
‘Stop it Sterrin! Stop it, for God’s sake,’ cried Maurice.
She lifted the rotary spike from the groove. Dominic’s face was white. ‘Is it—is it one of those spiritualist things, a mechanical séance medium?’ he asked shakily.
‘Not at all, Dominic,’ she assured him, ‘Mr. Steele was just experimenting with his own voice to test the machine. That is the way he used to address the Whiteboys during the Repeal Movement.’
A knock at the drawing-room door brought Nurse Hogan to say that her Ladyship had got the impression that she had heard singing, and in view of Lady Sterrin’s recent bereavement—She looked at the closed piano. Over in its corner the great harp stood as silent as ever. Some of her Ladyship’s hallucinations, she thought, as she withdrew. She returned to say that her Ladyship had some embroidery silk and other materials ready for her cousins in Virginia for Mr. Maurice to send off. Nurse Hogan would bring them down straight away as her Ladyship might not be up when he would be leaving in the morning.
‘I doubt,’ said Maurice, when she had gone, ‘if there is much use in sending any more gifts. I’ve had absolutely no acknowledgements and I’ve sent two separate consignments of stuff to Virginia. They used to acknowledge by the first possible boat.’
‘It is like the famine days,’ said Fitzharding-Smith, ‘only the situation is reversed. Now Ireland is sending food and things to America.’
‘With the difference that then every ship on the sea was cooperating to get the stuff here. Now they are trying to prevent a little humane help getting to the South—Look, Patrick is falling asleep. Call the carriage.’ Maurice turned back at the door. ‘Sterrin, for God’s sake get rid of that contraption. Destroy it. It may be scientific, but it is also diabolical. There is something irreverent about letting the voice of a dead man be heard after the grave has closed over him.’
When the gentlemen had gone, she stood looking down at the machine. She put her finger abstractedly on the rotary arm. Nurse Hogan shifted the bulky packet to open the drawing-room door. Her Ladyship had made up a lot of little luxuries and elegancies for her cousins, the O’Regans of Virginia. The poor ladies must miss their comforts. And they used to be so kind; sending all that food during the famine. ’Twas to be hoped that Mr. Maurice would be able to get it out from the Strand of the Little Music to some America-bound ship.
She peered into the shadowy drawing-room. There was no one there. She could have sworn that she had heard a voice. Sterrin, on a mischievous impulse, stepped back behind the window embrasure. Nurse Hogan took another step and froze. In the empty space a terrible voice was saying over and over—‘I shall not be six months in my grave—I shall not be six months in my grave.’ She dropped the parcel and ran screaming from the room.
Hegarty came rushing in. ’Twasn’t like Nurse Hogan to behave queer except in a very bad storm. Mother of God! She was telling the truth! He turned with a wailing gasp and collided with Pakie Scally. They grappled with each other to get away from the ghostly voice that repeated over and over ‘I-shall-not-be-six-months-in-my-grave-’ until the instrument jammed and ran out.
*
The following day was perfect for the regatta on Lough Dergh; the air was clear, the water sparkling. Sterrin’s black bombazine was conspicuous among the gay coloured gowns of the other ladies. It proclaimed more than her widowhood and its identity. It suggested heartlessness and lack of respect for the convention, her venturing to a festivity after so recent a bereavement, but what could be expected! It also gave excuses for coy glances towards the fair good looks of Dominic.
‘It doesn’t look quite de rigueur’ said Dominic withdrawing his eyes from the brown ones that ogled invitingly from beneath a red parasol.
‘I quite agree,’ said his sister, ‘a red parasol over that complexion is disastrous!’
‘Don’t be catty. I mean your being here.’
Sterrin trailed her fingers through the waters. Like the sparkling waters, she refused to be ruffled. A military band was playing the ‘Cricket’s Ramble Through the Hearth’. There was a sort of kinship between her and this lake. Once upon a time the O’Carroll chief had been known as the Lord of Lough Dergh and its waters and islands where they would have their hamper lunch was full of their family lore.
‘I say, Sterrin, you really do have no regard for conventions. I suppose that’s from being so much in the kitchen. I remember the way you used to trail about after that chap who cleaned the knives.’ It was a shot in the dark but he noticed that her hand came out of the water with a sudden jerk. ‘I just barely remember him,’ said Dominic. ‘Didn’t some of the servants say he became an actor?’
Something stirred in his mind. An actor! The officer he had challenged had made an unsavoury reference to an actor and—Lady Devine. Sterrin! The way she removed her hand from the water! Her face had gone still. She had been so vivid. All the way along she had been gay and full of laughing reminiscences and, despite the black veil, she looked like a schoolgirl in her ridiculous little straw bonnet.
A shot went off for the start of a race. Sterrin turned her head glad of the excuse not to answer. If Dominic were to guess! But Dominic was guessing already. He was adding two and two and almost making five. Ye gods! A servant! He had often thought his sister was an enigma. Especially when her face went remotely still like it was now. So that was why she had never seemed to bother about the men who hovered about her! That’s why she didn’t trouble to make more of a success of her marriage!
They picnicked on an island. Sterrin showed Dominic the spot that was haunted by Teresa De Burgha and the last O’Carroll to hold the title of Lord of Lough Dergh. Young Lord O’Carroll had come to keep a tryst with Teresa, daughter of the De Burgha, the Norman Chief, who had seized his property. De Burgha bored holes in O’Carroll’s boat, not knowing that his daughter planned to elope in it. The lovers were drowned as they eloped and their shadows were supposed to haunt the waters.
‘The O’Carrolls were not fortunate in their loves,’ she concluded dreamily.
‘What about Mamma and Papa?’ he asked. ‘Their romance had a lake for its setting, the Lake of Nightingales. They were very happy.’
‘But not for long,’ said Sterrin. ‘Mamma can never forget her lost happiness,’ and to herself she murmured, ‘but at least she had it, however short it lasted.’
Dominic had no more doubts. Ye gods! She was still hankering after a servant-cum-actor! As Mamma loved Papa! But Papa was a great gentleman. He almost said it to her.
‘I wish,’ he said instead, ‘that I had known the people you used to know, the Bard and all his stories, but most of all Papa. I remember so little of him.’
‘He was a lovely Papa,’ said Sterrin and then she spoke his own thoughts aloud, ‘and he was a very great gentleman.’
Dominic lay back on the sward and closed his eyes. Sterrin’s remarks about Papa set him thinking. She was the replica of her father. Her standards were as high; her assessments as keen. If she loved an inferior, he could be no inferior person. He tried to recall something of the chap. Tall, well set up; well spoken, too, as good with horses as Big John, more deft in the house than Hegarty. Now that he bothered to recollect him, Dominic recalled that he had become a sort of young major-domo before he went away. Egad! Was that why Mamma had urged Sterrin to marry Devine?
As they started the homeward drive they found the roads thronged with people moving against them. Not the regatta onlookers but farmers, peasants and shopkeepers. There was a good flow of smart phaetons. Amongst the horsemen she recognised Donal Keating. He passed the carriage looking straight ahead. Dominic hailed a barrister friend to ask him what it was all about. He tried to halt but was borne on by the crush. Suddenly the landau came to a standstill and Big John clambered stiffly down and examined the horses’ feet. One of them had cast a shoe. ‘There’s a forge not fifty yards down the road,’ a gentleman passing in a phaeton pointed back. As he pointed a tall, broad-shouldered man pushed towards them. He raised his ha
t to the occupants of the carriage and then turned to Big John. ‘I don’t doubt but it is to my forge you are pointing. It’s sorry I am to disappoint you, but it is closed till the meeting is over.’
The crowds were heading for a meeting on the slopes of Slievenamon. ‘But surely,’ said Dominic, ‘that is not sufficient cause to leave us stranded. We have fifteen miles to travel. I am Sir Dominic O’Carroll.’
The man raised his hat again. ‘I would be proud any other time to oblige an O’Carroll of Ely O’Carroll, but this is no ordinary meeting, sir. High officers from the American War will speak and Mr. Kickham will preside at the meeting—’
‘The writer—the man who writes for the Irish People, in Dublin?’ asked Dominic.
‘Yes, sir, there are other writers to speak also. Mr. O’Leary and Mr. Thomas Clark-Lubey—’ Dominic turned to Sterrin.
‘Mr. Lubey is a scholar of Trinity. I’ve heard about him.’ He turned to the blacksmith. ‘You will only miss a few moments of your meeting by shoeing our horse. Your attitude is scarcely obliging.’
The man took out a heavy watch. ‘I cannot afford to miss these few moments, Sir Dominic.’ There was an independence in the friendly tone. ‘I happen to be on the committee of the meeting.’
He did not miss Dominic’s raised brows, ‘But,’ he continued, ‘if you would like to attend it, there is a short cut down a boreen at the back of my field. You could wait there away from the crowd. I think bad of the young lady waiting—’
‘You won’t keep me waiting,’ said Sterrin, standing up, ‘I’m going to the meeting.’ She reached him her hand but the blacksmith cupped her waist with his great hands and swung her to the ground delightedly. Dominic sat on for a moment in dignity then found himself following his sister’s lead as he had done all his life. As they passed through the empty forge he nudged Sterrin towards a stack of newly-forged pikes leaning against a corner.
‘Nice peaceful implements for a forge! So that’s why they have a blacksmith on their committee!’
The Big Wind Page 66