He shook his head almost sadly.
“No, no. You have been done irreparable injury.”
“But why, sir?”
He got up, and began to pace up and down the room.
“I will tell you why. When you first came to my house, and I saw that you took an interest in Muriel, I watched you closely. I am not easily deceived in these matters, and I saw that your feelings were immature and undeveloped. You say you love her. I daresay you do, but it is as a boy loves. Or it was. Now, by this terrible immodesty, she has thrust a choice upon you to which you should never have been subjected. You are too young.”
I was so far encouraged by his tone, and so far inwardly dismayed by his diagnosis, to feel the need for asserting myself.
“Do you mean, sir, that you will not let me marry Muriel?”
He stopped dead. “Marry!” He could not have looked more astounded if I had proposed to burn her at the stake.
“Do you mean to tell me,” he said, “that you would be willing to marry a girl who had made a harlot of herself?”
It was my turn to stare. “I don’t understand, sir.”
“Good God,” he shouted, “must you make me repeat it? A woman who has offered herself to a man is—is——” He could not finish.
“She knew I would not dare to tell her I loved her, so she helped me out. I thought of her as far above me. I do still. And I want to marry her.”
For a long time we looked at each other. I met his eyes now with confidence.
“Marry her,” he said contemptuously at last, with a snort that was half a sigh. “How can you marr her? You haven’t a penny. And you’re too young.”
“At least, sir, let us be engaged. You say I love her only as a boy. Give me a chance to show that I really do love her. Give me a chance to save, and show what I can do.”
He stared at me for so long that I thought he had gone into a trance. Then he walked to the door.
“Go home now,” he said. “You have said enough for tonight. I must talk this over with Muriel’s mother. You shall hear from us soon.”
I got up.
“May I not have a word with Muriel, sir?”
“You may not. Not now. Good night.”
He showed me out, almost hustling me from the house, barely giving me time to get my hat and coat, and shut the door. I heard him bolt it.
Well—it was over, and he hadn’t killed me. In fact, the more I thought of the interview, the more I began to congratulate myself. I may have begun abjectly, but towards the end I had fully held my own. All this opposition made me feel certain that I loved Muriel, and I burned with a genuine indignation at the monstrous charges against her honour. Was the whole world mad? First Uncle John, then the Doctor, and now her own father spoke of her as if she were one of the quayside girls, like Eily. I could see no enormity in what she had done, and came to the conclusion that Mr. Travers was unhinged on the subject. Anyway, I kept telling myself, I had been in a man’s situation. I had asked a formidable and well-to-do man, my superior in title and station, for his daughter’s hand, and had not been kicked down the steps—not quite, I was forced to add, with an honest grin, recollecting the speed of my dismissal. I was launched in the new world with a vengeance.
Two days later I had a letter from Mr. Travers. It was very short and to the point. If I still wished it, I could be admitted to a probationary engagement with Muriel. Mrs. Travers and he would be pleased if I would come to the house on Sunday afternoon next, and he remained, mine very truly, Gerald Travers.
I spent my Saturday as best I could. At first I was divided between a walk in the country and a ramble along the quays down the North Wall. In the end, feeling lazy, I chose the latter. It didn’t commit me to a distance, as a country walk did. You could just wander from ship to ship, and turn back at any moment. I met a number of cats, and had conversations with all but one, a starved-looking grey with wild green eyes, which ran away behind some crates of soda water. I saw Eily, dressed in a new rig out, talking to two Danish sailors off a Copenhagen timber ship, and I slipped quickly out of sight. She was swinging one leg, as she always did, and I heard her laugh, oddly deep for a woman, and full of enjoyment. The sight of her put me at odds with myself, and I walked fast for the next half hour, feeling depressed and restless, and angry, because I could not understand why. I was poor company for myself that day, and I got home tired, but still restless. I was still young enough to resent those periods of unease when we are caught between excitements and becalmed, those minor tunnels which we have to go through, so often without warning, those periods of emptiness that nag like a tooth which will neither ache nor let one forget it. Here was I on the threshold of the biggest development of my life, if not in the middle of it, and I was assailed by an interval that was actively null and devoured me. It should have been impossible, I told myself. But, like so many things that should be impossible, there it was.
I did not get to sleep till very late, and then, when I had given up all idea of sleep, I woke late and found the sun was up. I was suitably apologetic to Mrs. Murphy, for being late for my breakfast. She gave me her bleak, kind smile.
“Ah sure,” she said, “you have a good right to the rest, and it a Sunday.”
This was a novel view, since the family always attended early Mass. I pondered it for some time, till it slipped out of my mind. I had other things to think of.
I fortified myself with a walk along the canal, ate a good lunch, despite its nearness to my breakfast, and presented myself at the Travers at three o’clock. The family, except for Lance, was assembled in the parlour. Mr. and Mrs. Travers both got up. I gave Muriel a quick glance. She was flushed with sitting over the fire, and her eyes were red from crying: and she had a sort of flannel bandage round her neck.
The atmosphere of the room was solemn and repressed. They might have been sitting to watch the hour when Lance was to be hanged. Mr. Travers was in front, so I approached him, but he stepped aside and waved me to his wife. Mrs. Travers looked uncertainly at me, then took my hand and gave me a little anaemic peck on the cheek. She then looked at Mr. Travers, who shook my hand. “Welcome,” he said heavily.
“Thank you, sir.”
I looked at Muriel, and smiled. She gave me her hand, and stood back quickly, her eyes downcast.
“We have decided,” said Mr. Travers, “that in the circumstances a formal engagement is unsuitable. If after a year or so you are both of the same mind, the subject can be reopened.”
I must have looked very blank at this, for he went on, “You can consider yourself engaged: but we prefer to keep the knowledge to the family, and not to tell outsiders.”
To my astonishment I heard my own voice, quite firm and steady.
“You mean, there is what is called an understanding between us?”
“If you like to put it that way.”
“I don’t,” I said. “I’d rather be formally engaged.”
He frowned. Mrs. Travers looked at him anxiously.
“I thought I had made it plain to you, at our last interview. An engagement to marry is of little meaning if there is no certain prospect of the marriage taking place.”
“In that case, sir, I can’t see that an understanding is any better.”
His face was beginning to congest. Fool, I said to myself, don’t anger him: yet something in me insisted that to stand up to him was the only way. I met his eye, and, although my knees shook, I lost all real fear of him.
He turned suddenly to Muriel.
“Go out of the room. I will call you when we are ready.”
“Yes, Father.”
She gave me a desperate look of appeal as she went, and I smiled at her. This is my business, I signalled. You leave this to me.
No sooner had the door shut than he started on me angrily.
“I object to your attitude. I do not understand it. I am allowing you what you asked, and now you begin to make difficulties. You agreed, when we talked together——”
> “I beg your pardon, sir. I did not agree to anything. I told you I wanted to marry Muriel. You sent me away. Then you wrote and said we might be engaged.”
“On probation.”
“Yes, sir, but engaged.”
“So you are—privately.”
“Are you so much ashamed of me, sir, that you won’t acknowledge the engagement?”
“You are talking like an inexperienced boy. I am only thinking of your good—both of you. It does a girl great harm to be publicly engaged, and then for the engagement to be broken off.”
“If you are hoping for that, you are making a mistake. At least, I shall not break it off.”
He held himself in with an effort.
“You are too young to know your own mind.”
“I know you think that, sir.”
Mrs. Travers suddenly broke in, to his surprise and mine.
“Mr. Travers is only thinking of your good, Luke. You see, what he is afraid of—what we are both afraid of—is that if Muriel had not let you see what she felt, you would have outgrown your feeling for her, and nothing of this kind would have happened.”
All misgiving left me. I saw I had them in a cleft stick. Mr. Travers was not thinking of my good or of Muriel’s. His inconsistency showed that. He was mortally afraid that people would get to hear of what had happened, afraid to such a degree that he would even let me into the family circle sooner than have it known. At the same time he didn’t want to lose Muriel, and so he was trying to postpone her marriage to me as long as he could. (I was wrong there, as I afterwards found out. What she had done affected him in just the same way as if his wife or mistress had been unfaithful to him. He had lost his love for her. That is what hit him so hard. As far as he was concerned, she might now do what she pleased. But I was fantastically ineligible as a son-in-law.)
I watched them both, and chose my words.
“I am glad for you to take every precaution for Muriel’s sake,” I said. “I want that too. But, at the same time, I would like you to think of me. I have my feelings and my pride. I want to be able to go to my relations and my friends and show Muriel to them. I’m so terribly proud of her. Surely you can understand that.”
“I could,” he said harshly, “a week ago.”
“Oh, Gerald!” Mrs. Travers cried: then bit her lip as he turned on her.
“You had better leave us, Mary.”
She went out, feeling for her handkerchief. Mr. Travers stared deep into my eyes. I did not flinch.
“You demand to be publicly engaged to Muriel,” he said at last.
“I don’t demand anything, sir. I’m not in a position to do so.
He all but sneered at me.
“I am glad you realise that.”
“Demands are not a good start for family life, sir. After all, if I marry Muriel, I will be one of your family. Please don’t mistake me, sir. I know perfectly well what an honour that is. I know my position is not equal to hers. I know I’m not well educated, and that I’m poor. I know it so well that, as I told you, I would never have said a word to Muriel: never. But now that she loves me, I’ll fight for her for all I’m worth. What would you think of me, sir, if I didn’t? What sort of a lookout would it be for our marriage, if I wouldn’t even stand up to you and ask to be engaged to her?”
I listened to myself, in wonder half at my own audacity, and half at the words and the reasoning that came from some new part of me that I knew nothing about.
Mr. Travers looked at me searchingly. I could not fathom what was going on behind his frowning brows.
“Very well,” he said at last. “You may be publicly engaged.”
“Thank you, sir. That is very generous of you. I promise I will do everything in my power to see that you never regret it.”
We shook hands. He went to the door.
“I will send Muriel in to you.”
I waited, my heart singing with joy. Good for you, I said to myself. You stood up to him and beat him. You are a man, damn it, you are a man, after all!
Muriel came in. She looked at me, hunted, troubled, beseeching.
“Oh, Luke. I have brought you such trouble. I never dreamed——”
“Nonsense,” I said. “You did just——”
“Was he terribly angry?”
“He wasn’t angry at all. What’s more, he says we may be publicly engaged.”
She stared at me, her eyes slowly widening.
“Luke! And you want to. You want me.”
“Want to! What do you think I’m here for?”
“Luke! And we may be engaged. I—I can’t believe it.”
“Try.”
I stood, looking at her, my legs wide apart, my head on one side.
“Well,” I said, “aren’t you going to kiss me?”
She rushed to me, and put her mouth blindly up to mine. The force and passion of her kiss almost knocked me over backwards. It was like a blow. I staggered, regained my balance, and did my utmost to respond: but once again a tiny cold dismay gleamed in my heart.
“Why have you got that thing round your neck?” I asked, leaning my head back and looking at her. I was standing now with my hands clasped, holding her round the waist.
“I had a sore throat. It’s better now—you won’t catch it. Mother made me keep this on, in case. You aren’t afraid of catching it, are you?”
“Silly,” I said. “Of course not.”
She sighed, and nestled into my arms.
Chapter VIII
From that day the whole atmosphere of the house changed, and a warm possessiveness folded me in. Mr. Travers assumed over me an authority equal to that which he exercised over Lance and Muriel, and Mrs. Travers became soft and motherly. That same evening, she came in bearing a jewel box of carved wood. From it she took a small cardboard box, and out of that, buried in wads of cotton wool, a heavy, stuffy-looking ring.
Mr. Travers put down his paper, got up, and took it from her.
“Here is your engagement ring,” he said. “It would be impossible for Luke, out of his salary, to afford a suitable ring. This ring has been in the family for three generations. I put it on Mary’s finger. Now you shall put it on Muriel’s.”
There was nothing I could say. I got up, took the ring, and, with the best grace I could muster, put it on Muriel’s finger. I fumbled, and all but put it on the wrong finger. Muriel and her mother exchanged smiles.
So began a hold over me closer and more insidious than I could have imagined. The worst of it was that three parts of me liked it. They had me every way. I did not know the usages of the society they represented, I had had no mothering since Ann Dunn died. However strongly I might have stood up to Mr. Travers, against Muriel and her mother I had no defence at all. Not that I really tried to defend myself. Instead I set out humbly to learn all I could about this new world. I suffered a score of inroads into my way of life. My clothes were mended, my buttons sewn on, my socks darned, but in exchange I suffered my shoes to be condemned, my ties to be chosen for me, and soon my shirts. Muriel persuaded me I needed a new suit, and I was led off by Lance to Mr. Travers’ tailor, to whom Mr. Travers had already “spoken”, so that he would not charge me too stiff a price. Mr. Travers had indicated what he considered a suitable cloth. I had to change my laundry, because, they said, it was careless about buttons. Muriel got possession of a hat of mine she didn’t like, and gave it away. They even tried to prescribe the books I should read. And, if ever I showed signs of jibbing, there would be an exchange of loving glances between Mrs. Travers and Muriel, which meant that Muriel would bamboozle me round to it in the end. I don’t want to exaggerate such resentment as I felt, for, as I say, nine tenths of me consented to the slavery. I told myself that I was learning now what I ought to have learned years before, if my lot and preference had not lain among low company.
Low company was always undoing me. Try as I would, the cloven heel kept showing. One thing I had dug in my heels over was the church I went to. I had one close
to where I lived, and I did not see why I should change. What was more, I’d been once or twice to theirs, and with the best will in the world I couldn’t like it. It was cold and forbidding, and the congregation suburban, dull, respectable, with their sniffs and their chilly glances—I hated it after the warm disreputableness, the old snuffy priest, the comfortable town atmosphere of my own church. So, after going with them a couple of times, I backslid to my own church. What I used to do was go and meet them when they came out, and take Muriel for a bit of a walk before returning to Rathmines for Sunday dinner.
One fine shiny morning, after it had rained all night, I wandered slowly up the road towards the church. I often had to hang about a bit, waiting for them to come out, but on a morning like this it was a pleasure. I propped my back against a stone, leaned on my walking stick, and listened to the birds singing—it was just like the start of a ballad—and I looked at the little etched clouds that came across from the mountains. The sunlight spilled in my face: I half closed my eyes, and beamed like a cat on a roof. So bemused was I with all the brightness of the morning that I barely heeded a vague shuffling sound, and only opened an eye on it when it was supplemented by wheezes and a hoarse cracked muttering. A figure swam before my eyes, and for an instant I thought one of the ravens from the Doctor’s picture had materialised on a Brobdingnagian scale, and flapped to a halt before me. Startled, I opened both eyes wide, and beheld a shuffling, dreeping old crone, complete with stick, hump, black shapeless garments, wisps of foul grey hair, rheumy grey eyes, a red-tipped nose, and a bonnet like a battered coal bucket. She was only a yard or so off, and before I could move she slithered up to me, and laid a withered and very dirty claw upon my arm.
“Mother o’ God, sir.” It was an old tired creak of a sound, battered as her bonnet, a huskiness rather than a voice. It was like the strings of an instrument that have all gone slack and hoarse in an empty room. “Mother o’ God, sir—there’s me breakfast, if I could only get a hoult on them.”
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