The Bay

by L. A. G. Strong

  “Ah, they’re not bad when you get to know them,” Johnny said.

  “God preserve me from getting to know them.”

  Johnny grinned. “He’s preserved you so far.”

  We walked along, the pair of them wrangling, and I with my mind soaring in the air. I was flattered, foolishly flattered, and I was seeing all the time the girl’s flushed, laughing face, and the smile she had given me from the waggonette. I felt good, excited, raised above my two companions. The girl’s face followed me everywhere the next few days, and when presently I received a note from Lance Travers asking me to take a walk with him on Saturday afternoon, and go back to the house for tea, I was beyond myself with excitement.

  I have often tried since to account for that excitement. My behaviour over the whole business seems to me at a tangent from everything else. I can’t account for it, I can’t fit it into any scheme of things which I can recognise as mine. I suppose that my upbringing had been so one-sided, it left me wholly vulnerable to things I knew nothing about. Well, there it was. I can only tell you the facts. The I who underwent the experiences that follow was a new I, a stranger to the companion and pupil of Uncle John and the Doctor and Martin, but authentic. I can go straight back into what he thought and felt. What I cannot do is relate him to what went before.

  Well, I got through the days somehow, and went to meet Lance for our walk. To my vexation, there was another fellow with him. He was introduced to me, of course, but I don’t remember what he looked like. We set off on a walk that should have taken us a matter of two hours and a half. It was a sunny September day, but a gusty wind from the hills had something colder about it than its direction warranted. When we were well out, we found what the chill was. It was rain. That’s another thing that makes me feel I was in some sort of a way bewitched. Usually I can tell what the weather will be. I can smell it, sense it, anything you like. But this time, either my faculty failed me or I didn’t listen to it.

  We looked at one another as the first drops lashed down. We had no coats.

  “It will only be a shower,” Lance said.

  I shook my head. The sky overhead was pale and clear, but above Three Rock hung a grey cloud, just like fluff you sweep from the floor, and though the wind blew strong the cloud didn’t stir. I knew what that meant.

  “Well,” said Lance, “since we’ll get wet anyhow, we may as well go on as turn back.”

  This was good sense anyway, so on we went. Instead of lifting, the rain grew worse. The wind dropped, and down it came in rods, a cold, white rain. In half an hour we were wet to the skin. By the time we reached the Travers’s villa in Rathmines, we looked as if we’d fallen in the sea. There was one good result, however: the third chap excused himself. He lived a mile away, and went off home to have a hot bath and change his clothes.

  No sooner did we reach the door, than I got a glimpse of the discipline that had made Lance what he was. Mr. Travers came out into the hall, his newspaper in his hand, a pair of glasses half way down his nose.

  “Lance,” he said, “I am very displeased with you. Very displeased indeed. You had no business to go out without a mackintosh in such weather. You have made your mother very anxious. Go in at once and apologise to her.”

  “I’m very sorry, Father.”

  “I said, apologise to your mother. Go in to her at once.”

  “I’ll make puddles on the floor, Father.” Mr. Travers took out his pipe.

  “Are you arguing with me?” he enquired: and stood aside as Lance went past him into the room, leaving me alone with him in the hall. He looked at me grimly over his glasses. I feared I shared in the rebuke, and I was right.

  “Very foolish,” he said. “Very foolish and inconsiderate. Coming in all wet into the house.”

  Now I truly believe that if anyone in my own milieu had so grossly broken every rule of hospitality, I’d have walked out. But the unknown thing that had happened to me was far-reaching. I said quite meekly, “Would you rather I went home, sir?”

  He softened a bit at that.

  “No, no,” he said gruffly. “Come on in. We’ll fit you out somehow. Lance!”

  All this time I had heard a murmur of Lance’s voice and a grieved feminine voice.

  “Lance!” called Mr. Travers again, and the feminine voice said hastily, “Run, Lance, quick. Your father wants you.”

  Lance came out. “Yes, Father?”

  “Take Mr. Mangan upstairs to the bathroom. Let him change his clothes there, where they will not harm the carpets. Bring him in dry clothes of your own. Change your own clothes, then come down to tea.” He took out his watch. “We have been waiting twenty minutes for you already. Where is Somerville?”

  “He has gone home, Father. He asked to be excused.”

  “It would have been more mannerly if he had come here first, on his way. However-Get on, boy, get on. Don’t stand there getting cold.”

  “This way.”

  Lance seemed more human at home. I found myself liking him for the first time as I followed him into the bathroom.

  “I hope you don’t mind Father. He’s a bit of a martinet, I’m afraid.”

  There was a sort of reluctant pride in his tone. I made some conventional reply, and proceeded to rub myself down and change into the clothes provided for me. Lance was a good deal taller than I, and the result, when I examined myself in the glass, was far from prepossessing.

  Then came a tap on the door. “Mr. Mangan?”

  It was Muriel’s voice, low and tremulous.

  “Yes?” I went across and opened the door.

  “If you give me your clothes——” she began, and at the same time, “How do you do?” said I.

  “How do you do? I can’t shake hands.” She was holding Lance’s clothes away from her, in a wet bundle. “I was going to say, if you will give me your clothes, I will put them to dry with Lance’s.”

  “Can’t I carry them down? You have as much as you can manage.”

  “You’ll get your hands all wet again.”

  “How terrible! I can dry them.”

  Our eyes met, and we laughed.

  “Muriel!”

  It was Mr. Travers, at the stair foot. We started guiltily.

  “Yes, Father.” Her voice was entirely different.

  “What are you doing up there?”

  “I’m showing Mr. Mangan where to put his clothes, Father. This way, Mr. Mangan.”

  She made her way down the narrow stair, craning her head to one side so as to see where to put her foot. Mr. Travers stiffened, and pointed to the clothes in her hands.

  “Whose are those?”

  “Lance’s, Father. I’m taking them to dry.”

  He glowered. “He should bring them down for himself, not leave it for his sister.”

  We came down, and as I went by him he stretched out a hand and quickly drew my coat over my undervest which was lying on top, giving me a glare as he did so. I stared uncomprehendingly. He made a noise in his throat, and motioned me brusquely on.

  The maid in the kitchen took our things from us in a shamefaced sort of way. We were all silent and half furtive. I turned, and saw Mr. Travers in the doorway. Muriel slipped out. I handed over the last of my garments to the maid, and he turned and led the way to the parlour.

  There, once we had our tea poured out and our food before us, he changed altogether, and became genial and charming. I never saw such a volte face. He laughed, told stories, chaffed Lance, pinched Muriel’s cheek, gave the very picture of an ideal father happy in the bosom of his family. I couldn’t make it out at all, and was too dazed to try. I ate and drank and answered in monosyllables and looked at Muriel.

  After tea we played games. It was all Greek to me, and my foolishness and clumsiness were such that the girl at once took pity on me and insisted on sitting beside me to teach me. She was gay and sweet and utterly free from self-consciousness. Several times she caught my sleeve and shook it and told me not to be so silly, and I glanced in dread
at Mr. Travers, but he seemed delighted, mocking at my discomfiture with so genuine and kindly a twinkle in his eye that I forgot all that had gone before, and expanded, laughing at my own mistakes and feeling that never in my life had I been so happy.

  After a long time I recollected myself, looked at the clock, and saw with consternation that it was twenty to seven. I jumped up at once, all apology, and said I must be going. Mr. Travers would not hear of it.

  “Nonsense,” he said. “You must stay to supper. Mustn’t he, Muriel?”

  “Of course,” Muriel said, smiling at me.

  Mrs. Travers went off to see how my clothes were getting on, and came back with the report that they were still not quite dry.

  “There you are,” Mr. Travers exclaimed. “If you will come in wet, you must put up with the consequences, however disagreeable.”

  That set me anxiously expostulating, but they all laughed at me, and put me at my ease again.

  Supper was an uproarious affair. After it we had more games, and wound up with charades. At these, once I got the hang of them, I soon distinguished myself. We did, not the dumb crambo kind, but the spoken: and, though once or twice the realism of my Dublin accent made Mr. Travers look down his nose, when I was playing a low life part, I won many laughs. Muriel acted in one with me. She was supposed to be selling me fish. She couldn’t do it at all, she was much too ladylike, and anyway she was in kinks of laughter at me. Oh, I had a good evening, and went home with my heart warm and bursting, and my head in the stars. Only when I got into bed, and suddenly remembered Mr. Travers pulling my coat over my vest as I was carrying my clothes, and the basilisk glare he gave me, did misgiving stir in my heart. It was the sudden uncovering of something unexpected and unexplained, like finding a toad in a cupboard.

  After this, I was asked several times to the house. I kept on my best behaviour, and was careful to give Mr. Travers no grounds for offence. It has often puzzled me to understand why he tolerated me. I must have seemed to him uncouth: my accent, though it wasn’t really broad, was certainly not Rathmines, and my clothes were an odd mixture of good but odd things Ann Dunn had got me—I still had some of those, for I didn’t grow much after I was sixteen—and cheap things I’d bought because I either knew or could afford no better. I think the reasons were that Muriel was four years older than I, and that, watching us, and seeing how she mothered me and ordered me about, he concluded that I was safe. When young men came to the house and showed any sign of interest in her, he became morose and would hardly be civil to them. Like so many fathers, he was jealous, and did not want her to marry. She would have to marry some day, but he pushed it into the far distance. At least, that is how I read him today.

  At the time, of course, his attitude was pure gain to me, and Muriel and I were allowed to be together in a way that would have been out of the question had I been older. In those days it was impossible for a young man and a girl to see anything of each other alone, unless they were engaged or married. You simply couldn’t find out the things without which no sane girl or boy would get married today. You staked all on that preliminary attraction being permanent, on that first intuition being a true reading. Sometimes it was. Often, pitiably often, it wasn’t.

  So Muriel and I spent much of my scanty free time together. We played and we talked, always within sight of the others, and from admiring I grew to worship her. It was a boy’s love, selfless, asking for nothing, hoping for nothing. If anyone had suggested that I should kiss her, I would have recoiled as from a desecration. I worshipped her as a being infinitely good and delicate, far above me, beyond the understanding of my gross male clay. Her parents must have seen my feelings, and approved them as harmless, creditable, and showing a proper respect. “Showing a proper respect” was a great phrase with Mr. Travers. He used it of gardeners, tradesmen, young persons, and the lower orders. Generally they incurred his censure, for failing to show a proper respect. Now and then they showed it, and won his commendation. I took pains to be among the few. The respect I accorded to Muriel, to Mrs. Travers, and to him could hardly have been bettered. It was genuine. I felt that I had got the entrée to society far above my natural level, and I strained, in all honest humility, to learn and fit myself for it, and not to bring disgrace on myself. I was diffident, sensitive about my lack of background, and eager to please. I lost, for a while, my private judgment. I lost it willingly. I didn’t think it could apply to these high realms. I really and truly thought, on reflection, that a glimpse of my undervest would profane Muriel’s eye, and I turned hot in bed at night as I reflected on the crudity that had let me leave it unconcealed.

  What it all came to was that I accepted Mr. Travers’s actions and prejudices as laws of a new universe, not to be criticised, in exactly the same way that children will enquire what sort the schoolmaster is, so that they may conform to his wishes and save themselves from getting into trouble. They don’t question his wishes, any more than they question the weather. It’s fine, or it’s wet. He lets you do one thing, he won’t let you do another. I accepted Mr. Travers like that, and Mrs. Travers too. So when one day I asked Muriel if we couldn’t go out for a walk together along the canal, and she shook her head and said, “Father would never hear of it,” I felt I had been guilty of an indelicacy, and begged her pardon. Muriel’s world was dominated by her father. She quoted him, she referred everything to him, in her mind if not in actual practice. “Father wouldn’t like it” was the final condemnation.

  But, one Saturday, the miracle happened. It was a mild sunny afternoon, and Muriel had been indoors with a cold. Lance was at a football match, and would not be in till six o’clock. I arrived early, and was shown into the parlour as usual. Mrs. Travers, looking out at the sunshine, turned to Muriel.

  “Such a lovely afternoon,” she exclaimed. “It’s a sin to be indoors. Muriel, you ought to go for a walk.”

  “I’d like to, Mother. But there’s no one to take me.”

  I swallowed, flushed, and ventured.

  “Would you let me, Mrs. Travers? I’d take great care of her.” Muriel jumped up and clapped her hands.

  “Oh, Mother. Do let him.”

  Mrs. Travers hesitated, then smiled graciously.

  “Very well, darling. Go upstairs and put on your hat and coat. And your boa, to keep your throat warm.”

  So, with precise charge where to go and what to do, I was allowed to take Muriel for a walk. It was an afternoon of amazing beauty. The last of the leaves were falling, and the placid surface of the canal was patined with every shade of brown and gold. Old codgers fished along the banks, contemplating each in motionless trance the little upright float among the leaves.

  We did not talk much at first. I was in rapture, and suddenly shy of her. I kept stealing sidelong glances at her, seeing her soft cheek above the feathers of the boa, and a coil of soft bright hair that seemed the very colour of the lightest leaves. Her eyes sparkled. She was happy. All at once she turned, and caught my adoring gaze. She looked back along the bank, flushed, and gave my arm a shy squeeze.

  “I do like walking with you—Luke.”

  I couldn’t see, I couldn’t hear, darkness roared round me, I all but fell into the canal.

  “I like walking with you, Miss Travers.”

  I dared to look at her. She pouted reproachfully.

  “Miss Travers?”

  “Muriel.”

  “That’s better.”

  She gave my arm another squeeze, and in a minute we were walking along, fathoms deep in the eager talk of young people discovering each other. We talked about ourselves, about the world, about God, about books—her reading seemed extraordinarily restricted, even to me: the hand of Mr. Travers was heavy on it—about everything. I told her all about myself, about Ann Dunn and Aunt Edith, about Uncle John and the Doctor, and her expressions of fascinated sympathy thrilled my heart. Warmed by them, I saw everything that had happened to me in a new light. I became an object of great interest to myself, a figure of pathos
.

  “You poor Luke!” Muriel exclaimed, several times. “You poor, poor boy. How brave you have been; how wonderful!”

  I didn’t quite swallow that, but it made me love her goodness of heart, and I could not but realise how greatly I had succeeded in deepening her interest in me.

  “Now tell me about you,” I said.

  “There isn’t much to tell,” but she proceeded to tell it. The towpath sped unnoticed beneath our feet, the golden afternoon rushed by. Before we realised where we were, our feet were pointed home, and we were near the door.

  Muriel stopped in a kind of despair.

  “We must talk,” she said. “We must. What can we do? Goodness knows when we’ll get another chance.”

  A tremendous thought struck me.

  “I know,” I said. “We can write. Write letters to each other,” I went on, as she looked blank.

  Her face clouded. “Father would never let me write to you.”

  “Must he know?” It was the first rebellion, born of strong need.

  She stepped back, her eyes widening.

  “I couldn’t possibly write without his knowing. It—it would be underhand.”

  “I don’t see that,” I said doggedly. “He couldn’t object to the things we talk about. It’s only the idea of it he could object to. Muriel—please! You don’t know how much good it does me to talk things over with you. I’ve no one to talk to, as you know, except Uncle John and the Doctor. And I hardly ever see them. And——”

  “I know,” she exclaimed, her face darkening in sympathy. “I know.”

  “Oh, Muriel, please! You’ll be doing me such a tremendous amount of good. Say you’ll write to me.”

  “But how—Father will see your letters, and ask to read them.”

  “You don’t mean to say he reads your letters!”

  “He or Mother; every one.”

  “But,” I exclaimed, “you’re grown up.”

  “Father doesn’t think so. He says you can’t be too careful of a young girl.”

  I looked at her, but her face was serious and troubled.

  “Well,” I said, “hang it all, you’re not afraid of me, are you? I can’t do you any harm.”