“Why is it different, honey?”
Bessie was only half listening.
“Grown-up people aren’t afraid of things.”
“Maybe that’s because they’ve found out the things do them no harm.”
Dermot had not thought of that. He stood still, and opened a snapdragon between finger and thumb, in the way Eileen had shown him.
“There aren’t any bees in them now,” he said aloud, to himself. He tried several of the flowers, then trotted to catch up Bessie.
“They are afraid of some things, all the same, Bessie.”
“Who are, honey?”
“Grown-ups are.”
Bessie leaned back her head, and drew a deep breath of the breeze.
“They are afraid of some things, Bessie. Mummy’s afraid of mice, and spiders, and beetles. So’s Granny.”
“Beetles?”
Bessie stiffened into momentary attention, and pulled her shawl about her.
“Yes. Granny is afraid of them. And Mummy. And I don’t expect Munny likes them very much.”
“Ah,” said Bessie, relaxing again. “Them’s nasty things.”
She went slowly on down the path, humming. Dermot watched her. He was very fond of Bessie, and entertained a deep respect for her. She was not at all like anyone else. She was a Roman Catholic, of course, and Granny and Mummy had dark talks sometimes, in low tones, about whether she was trying to pros—pros—something Munny. But, whatever it was, it couldn’t be anything bad. Sensitive to character, the boy reacted as quickly and positively to Bessie as to a change in the temperature. Indeed, if an older understanding could have been projected into his mind, there would probably appear, in that early stage of awareness, more correlation between the senses, a less sharp distinction between objects and impressions. Many children include within their everyday range of vision phenomena which they do not realise are not shared by their elders ; and, by the time they do begin to realise this, normal fashions of perception influence them, and the extension disappears. Dermot, from his earliest years, could tell instantly the spurious from the genuine in personality. Bluff never deceived him. Plausible himself, and never depending upon reason for his own decisions, he was unimpressed by talk, and began very early to put off asking advice till he had made up his own mind. Bessie, he saw, was in possession of some secret which fortified her and enabled her to meet everything with calm and courage. She had come down the garden for years, without being afraid. Nothing would hurt her, because she was calm, and would go down the garden humming to herself and enjoying the evening. Standing there, his wits half on Bessie and half responsive to the scents and sights and sounds around him, Dermot understood, for a flash of time, that there was really no fear: that there was a state of calm self-possession, of luminous happiness, in which nothing could happen to the self. He was to come back to this knowledge, to need it and to realise it, three or four times later on in life, and always with the memory of Bessie, who introduced it to him.
The garden in the evening, the garden by day: it was a ceaseless source of interest to Dermot, and, truth to tell, his relatives were glad it was so. The baby needed the greater share of attention, and they were only too well pleased to turn him loose and see him absorbed in his own meditations, or in conversation with Mr. Caggen. The bent, straw-hatted figure of the gardener, turning up potatoes, would always have the small form squatting by his side. The long, pink worms, dangling from the turned-up clods, fascinated Dermot. Mr. Caggen would stoop, pick them up, and fling them aside, to avoid cutting them with the fork. It was a most unusual scruple, though Dermot did not realise this. Mr. Caggen had a superstition about them ; he believed they were good for the potatoes.
Dermot could not face the idea of picking them up. He watched Mr. Caggen with awe.
“What does it feel like, when you pick up a worm, Mr. Caggen?”
Mr. Caggen considered.
“Soft,” he said, finally.
Dermot stared. For some reason, the adjective left him deeply dissatisfied.
Chapter VII
Uncle Ben’s house was one of the world’s wonders. It stood on a cliff, which it surpassed in severity of appearance: for the cliff, though undoubtedly a cliff, sloped from one grassy patch to another, and did not become all rock till it had only a short way left to go. Even then, it was climbable at any point except that selected, with comfortable wisdom, for the house’s rubbish chute. A good-natured, easy cliff, it afforded its young explorers plenty of adventure with a minimum of risk. A path had been cut down it, enabling all but the infirm and greatly aged to reach the sea: and yet, when some elderly lady had regained the top, and stood to get her breath, she could look down and reflect that, past all doubt, she had negotiated a genuine cliff.
The house was different. It seemed the architect had felt very strongly about the cliff, and determined to set it a proper example, or at least so to continue it as to raise its status among cliffs. He had accordingly erected a sheer wall, of enormous height, varying it reluctantly with windows and a severe ledge, termed a balcony, and reached by a metal ladder. The balcony, one felt, had been added against his better judgment, and he was determined to make access to it as difficult and unattractive as he could. Even the windows seemed a concession to human weakness. They had no ledges, and stared from the blank wall like lidless eyes. Below and beside the house were two narrow lawns, connected by a steep grass slope, and the provision of these had enabled him further to tone up the cliff by carrying them as far forward as he dared, and building a supporting wall to prevent them from falling into the sea. By the time he had finished, the cliff looked like a mild and peaceful old elephant surmounted by an armoured howdah. The house, as far as it could be related to any human style, was bleakly Georgian: and a succession of occupants had tried with little success to soften its severity. A path, surrounded by bushes, had been cut to save visitors the abrupt descent of the lawns. The slope between these was so steep, and the lower lawn so narrow, that one could barely pull up from one’s compulsory run in time to avoid falling over the edge, and being precipitated down the chute. An angular chain, depending awkwardly from a few metal posts, made this disaster less likely, without adding much to the amenities of the place: and a ladder down the face of the wall took one to the cliff path aforementioned. Uncle Ben had added a wooden staircase with a balustrade, connecting the balcony with one of the drawing-room windows: but nothing could humanise the house’s sea aspect. It up reared its bleak grey wall, triumphant, in all weathers, unsoftened by any light of morning or late evening, a staring example of man’s power to go one worse than Nature.
The view it faced so blankly was one of the most beautiful in the world. High on the promontory of Dalkey Sound, with the Island on its left, the house looked full across the Bay of Killiney to the Wicklow Mountains. The pure line, the nobility, the ease and grace of that long curving prospect has never been captured in paint or words. It is one of those which, once seen, remain forever in the imagination: yet, since no effort of the memory can summon up the whole, but is reduced to a loving enumeration, at each return the view sweeps away, with one perfect gesture of its long curved arm, the piecemeal sketches of memory, and once more confronts the spirit with a panorama beyond its compass to build. Those whose houses look out upon it see it every morning anew. Those who see it for the first time are apt to be silent. It is liberal, free, and unstaged: no point monopolises it: but from nowhere was it better seen than from the absurd dwelling which the long-dead architect had reared to confront it—Delgany, the home of Uncle Ben. Indeed, there was no fathoming the ways of that architect, for with a fine allowance of ground on which to build, he had deliberately chosen the corner which presented the greatest difficulty, needed the most support, and was nearest to the road: so that one had the paradox of a house in its own grounds standing at the extreme edge of them, for all purposes like an ordinary house with a front door opening on the pavement. A stone path about twenty feet long, and iron railings
with a gate, gave the uttermost of privacy he would allow: and, as if regretting that concession, he had so placed the house that the road curved even closer in, and at one place ran almost directly beneath some of the windows.
But indoors—ah, indoors !—it was a different matter. For Dermot, with vague but exciting memories, adventure began with the very opening of the huge front door. The door had a sort of loose wooden lip, which hung down outside it along the ground, as protection against the terrific winds of winter. When the door opened inward, the lip doubled up on its hinge, and dragged along the floor with a queer noise all its own. For years this noise was to be the prelude to rapture, the first welcome back to this extraordinary, lovable house and its extraordinary, lovable inmates.
The hall was unnecessarily high, and rather gloomy. It was covered with a sombre but slippery oilcloth. It contained one or two rugs, which were as rafts sliding about its perilous expanse: a hatstand, shaped curiously like a lighthouse, and endowed with an uncanny ability to drop its burdens, one by one, for no visible cause or disturbance: a long narrow table, highly polished: two shiny wooden chairs, upon which no one ever sat: and the gong. Upon the table was a brass salver, containing dusty visiting cards, and a collecting box, from the mouth of which projected a slip of paper bearing the words “I.O.U. £100,000” in Con’s handwriting.
Once past these objects, a visitor turned to the left and saw a passage with rooms opening off it, a staircase up, richly carpeted, a staircase down, not carpeted at all. Over this social distinction presided, butler-like, a grandfather clock, with an aloof appearance and a remote, uninterested tick. The first rooms to which Dermot was conducted, and the most important, were the drawing-room and dining-room. The former had huge, high windows: that was the first thing that struck him. It was also very large. Despite the bric-à-brac and occasional tables of the period, one could go for quite a long walk across its carpeted spaces. One window, as we have said, led to the balcony: in front of the other stood a large brass telescope. Dermot had to be held up, to see through this. The only foretaste of its marvels he received was a gentle bump in the eye and a hazy, swimming view of part of Bray Head, brought astonishingly near. But there were other marvels, easier of inspection. In a glass cupboard lay the dried jaws of a shark, gaping wide and terrifying. It had been captured by Uncle Ben in the South Seas, from over the ship’s side, with a bait of rancid pork. In a bottle, half covered with spirit, was coiled a centipede. On the floor, beside the sofa, stood the painted wooden model of a pig, with jointed legs: a creature so cunningly contrived, with so derisive and malign an expression, that generations of dogs had mistrusted it. Their uneasiness had been heightened by the family, who would slide the pig across the uncarpeted edge of the floor, or stand it beside them in a menacing attitude where they lay asleep, and then wake them up with a start. Dermot nursed it, noting with a certain surprise its plebeian expression, and deciding that he could never be fond of it as he was of his toy monkey. This, suffering apparent eclipse before the reality of Paddy, was all the time compensated by an extra flow of private devotion, being taken every night to bed, and joining stiffly in games with Pucker’s kitten. One could never take the large hard pig to bed. Besides, the kitten would scamper off at the very sight of it.
Eileen took him upstairs to wash his hands. This ceremony he performed with great care, being on his best behaviour, paying a whole day’s visit for the first time by himself: but he was able to note two fresh things. First, that the smell of Uncle Ben’s bathroom was quite unlike the smell of the bathroom at home, and second, a matter so strange it had to be brooded over for a long time, that Uncle Ben’s bath had no taps! just handles ; no place at all, that he could see, for the water to flow in.
“Are you ready, Dermot?” The girl hesitated, standing on one foot. “Do you——”
“I’m quite ready, thank you.”
“Come on, then.”
They went down. Aunt Patricia was waiting for them at the foot of the stairs. She took Dermot’s hand, giving him a smile which wrinkled her eyes and nose. Anne, the elder girl, was standing by the window of the dining-room. She turned as they came in.
“How do you do, Dermot,” she said in a hearty voice. It was her manner with children. Towards other people she was quiet, and rather shy. Dermot stared up at her, his brows contracting. She took out a handkerchief hastily, and applied it to her thin, delicate nostrils.
“Come here, Dermot, pet. Sit by me. Can you get up—you can. That’s grand. Now where are those others? Where’s Father? Where’s Con? I had them both in me sight a minute ago, and they’re gone off now. Well, I declare.”
“He-e-e-re we are, here we are. Punctual to the minute.” Uncle Ben’s voice boomed up the uncarpeted stairs from the lower regions. A couple of seconds later, he came in the door, rubbing his hands together. Con followed. He grinned at Dermot, and made a face. These two had been downstairs, to wash their hands at a tap. For some reason, they preferred this to the bathroom, though there was only cold water and a chip of hard yellow soap.
“By the holy! “Uncle Ben stopped still, snuffing like a bloodhound. “Oh, by the holy—that’s a grand sniff. What have you for us to-day, Mother? Sn-oo-oo-ph! I never smelt a better in all my days.”
“Ah, Ben,” said his wife, with spirit, “stop your sniffing, and sit down to your food like a Christian. Sure what way is that to be going on, before the child.”
“M-m-m. Never mind, Mother darling. Dermot and I know what smells good. Don’t we, Dermot boy? Faith we do.”
Dermot opened his mouth, but the reply was not formulated. That did not matter. Uncle Ben went on happily without it.
As the meal progressed, Dermot, his eyes wide with wonder, beheld dietetic variations compared to which Grandpapa’s were as nothing. Lunch at Uncle Ben’s was a mix-up of all the meals together—except possibly breakfast. After the stewed fruit which was served as a pudding, they ate bread and jam. They ate cake. They drank tea. Dermot felt as if the world were coming to an end. He politely refused to partake of these unusual delicacies, but a sense of excitement, at their very presence, grew in him. It was all a part of the strangeness of life at Uncle Ben’s.
Though he did not know it, he was a subject of some interest to the family. They knew and liked Dermot’s father, but laughed at his English ways, his precision, his resentment of their own happy-go-lucky life. They could not for a long time understand how Margaret had married him. The fact that he too was of Irish origin—which nobody would have suspected—only made it seem the queerer. Legends of Dermot’s delicacy, and of the precocity of his intelligence, they received lightly, as proving only that his parents made too much fuss of him. He had been too small for the family to see much of him, before this year, and they welcomed the first opportunity to study him away from home. He did not talk at his meal, applying himself to its consumption with great care, and a grown-up composure. He ate very slowly, and appeared to notice little: but this appearance, as we know, was deceptive.
After lunch, Uncle Ben took him off by the hand, showed him round the house and garden, told him about the capture of the shark, and of the centipede: took him into the billiard room, and showed him the pictures of his different ships: and explained simply the idea of the game of billiards. Dermot asked question after question, to which the sailor gave precise and detailed replies. The beginning of a long friendship was cemented in that half-hour. Dermot found someone who gave a wealth of information in answer to every question, and who did not seem to mind being questioned, like most grown-ups. Grandpapa was another: but Grandpapa had a way of going on long after the interesting part of the question was answered, and one was dying to interrupt him with a new one. Granny would answer a few questions, but she became absent-minded, and began to think of something else. Daddy would answer them, sometimes: but Daddy at the present time was remote, almost forgotten: not a part of life. Mummy would answer a few, but she often did not know the answers. Or she would laugh, and run her lazy
white fingers slowly through his curls, and say:
“What a lot of things my little Dermot wants to know to-day.”
Mummy could always bring him round to her mood, and make him smile back at her: but he did not approve of being headed off from what he was seeking.
“You are beautiful, Mummy,” he would say sometimes, unwillingly. It was true: he thought her the most beautiful lady in the world. Indeed, when he read the word “lady” he always thought of his mother, with the swish of her long flounces, her perfume, her smile, her slow, musical voice, and her white, lazy hands. Yet, often, her beauty was an interruption, of which he was more than half conscious: distracting him from the pursuit of his thoughts.
Bessie would answer a good many questions, though sometimes there would come a reference to her mysterious “wicked elba’,” and he would withdraw, discomfited. Munny lacked the exact knowledge he sought, and tended to reply to all “Why’s” with the formula, “Y’s a crooked letter, and you can’t make it straight”—a reply which, from the very first, seemed to him stupefyingly irrelevant.
“Will you teach me to play billiards one day, Uncle Ben?”
“Faith, I will, son. Many’s the game we’ll have, please God.”
“Uncle Ben—why do you say ‘please God’ so often?
“Well, little son—we couldn’t have any games, or do anything at all, if it didn’t please God to spare us, could we?”
Dermot considered.
“No,” he replied, thoughtfully.
“Your Mummy and Daddy have told you all about God, son, haven’t they?”
Uncle Ben’s voice sharpened ever so little, in suspicion of another and more serious eccentricity.
“Oh yes, ages ago. And I read ‘Line Upon Line’ for myself, every night. And Munny reads me a hymn always, before I go to bed. And Granny made me learn ‘I am only a little Sparrow.’ And——”
The Garden Page 6