An Irish cousin

Front matter

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Wah Lis

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Chapter II

To Miss Sarsfield, S.S. ‘Alaska, Queenstown. From W. Sarsjield.

“Awfully sorry I will not be able to meet you.

Drive to. Foley’s Hotel. Will be waiting you there.”

This despatch was put into my hand before I left the steamer at Queenstown. Its genial tone and eccentric grammar were quite in keeping with my ideas of an Irishman, These were at once simple and definite. All Irishmen were genial; most of them were eccentric, In fact, had my uncle and cousin met me on the pier, clad in knee-breeches and tailcoats, and hailed me with what I believed to be the national salutation, “ Begorra!” I should scarcely have been taken aback,

The outside car on which I drove from the Cork station to the hotel was also a realisation of preconceived ideas. In response to the bewildering proffers of “Inside or outside?” I had selected an “outside,” and was quite satisfied with the genuineness of the difficulty I found in remaining on it, as we rattled 5 through the muddy streets. The carman himself was perhaps disappointing. His replies to my questions were not only devoid of that repartee which I had understood to be the attribute of all Irish carmen, but were lacking in common intelligence ; and on his replying for the third time, “ Faith, I dunno, miss,” I concluded I must have hit on an unlucky exception.

The day had lost none of the brilliancy of the early morning. It seemed to me that the sun shone with a deliberate intention of welcome, and the unfamiliar softness of Irish air was almost intoxicating. Everything was conspiring to put me into the highest spirits; I laughed when my new dressing-bag was flung on to the pavement by the dislocating jerk with which the car pulled up in front of Foley’s Hotel.

As I walked into the hotel, the porter who had taken in my boxes went over to a tall young man who was leaning over the bar at the end of the narrow hall, and whispered something to him. He immediately started from his lounging position, and, furtively glancing at the mirror behind the bar, he came up to me.

“How do you do? I’m very glad to see you over here,” he said, with an evident effort to assume an easy cousinly manner. “I hope you didn’t mind not meeting me. I was awfully sorry I couldn’t get down to Queenstown, but I had important business in town.” It was perhaps a consciousness of the interested scrutiny of the young lady behind the bar that caused him to blush an ingenuous red as he spoke. “You'd better come on and have some luncheon,” he continued, without giving me time to answer him. “We've only got an hour before the train starts,”

I followed him into the coffee-room, thinking as I did so how different this well-dressed, rather awkward young man was from the picturesque and vivacious creature I had somehow pictured my Irish cousin to be. His accent, however, was unmistakably that of his native country ; or, rather, as I afterwards found, that of his particular part of it. His quick, low way of speaking was at first rather unintelligible to me, and almost gave me the idea that what he said was intended to be of a confidential nature; but on the whole I thought his voice a singularly pleasant one,

By the time our luncheon was put on the table he was more at his ease, and had even, with a sheepish half-deprecating glance from his light grey eyes, addressed me as “Theo”. The fraternal familiarity of the head waiter was, on Willy’s explanation that I was his cousin from Canada, extended in the fullest degree to me.

“Indeed, when I seen her coming in the door, I remarked to Miss Foley how greatly the young lady favoured the Sarsfield family,” he observed blandly ;

“and Miss Foley said she considered she had a sic likeness to yourself, captain.”

This was a little embarrassing. I did not quite know what I was expected to say, and devoted myself to my mutton-chop.

“T did not know that you were a soldier,” I said, as soon as the waiter had gone.

“Qh, well,’ replied my cousin, giving a conscious twist to his yellow moustache, “1’m only a sort of one —what they call ‘a malicious man’. I’m a captain in the West Cork Artillery Militia,” he explained ; “but nobody calls me that but the buckeens hereabouts.”

I wondered silently what a buckeen was, and why it should be so anxious to maintain the prestige of the militia, but did not like to betray too much ignorance of what might be one of the interesting old courtesy titles peculiar to Ireland.

Looking at my cousin as he rapidly devoured his luncheon, I noticed that, in spite of his disclaimer of military rank, he took some pains to cultivate a martial appearance. His straw-coloured hair was clipped with merciless precision, and on his sunburnt forehead, a triangle of white, obviously cherished, marked the limit of protection afforded by an artillery forage-cap,

“J think J’d better be looking after your luggage now,’ he said, bolting what remained of his second chop, and getting up from the table with his mouth full. “I was quite frightened when I saw those two big mountains of trunks coming along on the car after you. And then when I saw you walk in”—he laughed a pleasant, foolish laungh—“I didn’t think you’d be such a swell!” he ended, with confiding friendliness. The terminus of the Cork and Esker railway, the line by which we were to travel to Durrus, was crowded on that Saturday afternoon. We had ten minutes to spare, during which I sat at the window and watched with the utmost interest the concourse on the platform. It had all the appearance of a large social gathering or conversazione. Stragglers wandered from group to group, showing an equal acquaintance with all, and displaying entire indifference as to the intentions of the train, while the guard himself bustled about among them with an interest that was evidently quite unofficial, My carriage soon became thronged with people, between whom and their friends on the platform a constant traffic in brown-paper parcels was carried on ; and I was beginning to think there would be no room for Willy, who had disappeared in the crowd. But the ringing of the final bell set my mind at rest, as I found that, contrary to the usual usage, this sound had the agreeable effect of almost emptying . the train.

Willy returned at the last moment, emerging from fe) An Trish Cousin.

the centre of a group of young ladies, with the wellpleased air of one whose conversation has been appreciated.

“Did you see those girls I was talking to?” he said, as we moved out of the station. ‘“They’re cousins of the O’Neills, people in our part of the world. They came down to see me off. There was a great mob there to-day, but there always is on a Saturday.”

“The O’Neills are neighbours of ours,’ Willy continued. “They live at Clashmore—that’s four miles from us—and they’re very nice people. Nugent, the brother, used to be a great pal of mine—at least, he was till he went to Cambridge, and came back thinking no one fit to speak to but himself.”

Not feeling particularly interested in the O’Neills, I

did not pursue the subject; but Willy was full of conversation. - “Ym just after buying a grand little mare in Cork. It was that kept me from going to meet you,” he observed confidentially. “I suppose you learnt to ride at your ranch, Theo? I tell you what: I bought her for the governor to drive, but she’d carry you flying, and you shall hunt her this winter if you like,”

My cousinly feeling for Willy increased perceptibly at this suggestion. __

“But,” I said, “if your father buys her, he will want to ride her himself, won’t he?”

An Irish Cousin. iI

“Is it the governor ?”—with an intonation of contempt. “You never see 42 on a horse’s back. He’s always humbugging in the house over papers and books. I believe he used to be a great sportsman and fond of society, but he never goes anywhere now.”

The two ladies who had started from Cork with us had got out a station or two afterwards, and we had the carriage to ourselves. But the extraordinary jolting and rattling of the train were not conducive to conversation, and, seeing that I was not inclined to talk, Willy relapsed into the collar of his overcoat and the Cork newspaper, and ended by going unaffectedly to sleep.

It grew slowly darker. I sat watching the endless procession of small fields ‘slipping past the window, until the grey monotony of colour made me dizzy. I leaned back, and, closing my eyes, tried to imagine the life I was going to, and to contrast its probabilities with my past experience. But a strange feeling of remoteness and unreality came upon me. I suppose that the mental exhaustion caused by so many new sights and impressions had dazed me, and I began to doubt that such a person as Theo Sarsfield had ever really existed. Willy, my Uncle Dominick, and my father flitted confusedly through my mind as inconsequently as people in a dream. I myself seemed to have lost touch with the world; my past life had slid away from me, and the future I had not yet grasped. I wasa solitary and aimless unit in the dark whirl that surrounded me, and the sleeping figure at the opposite end of the carriage was a trick of imagination, and as unreal as I. I became more and more remote from things actual, and finally fell from all consciousness into a sleep as sound as Willy’s.

My slumbers were at length penetrated by a shriek from the engine. I sat up, and saw that Willy was taking down his parcels from the rack ; and in another minute we were in the little station of Esker.

A hat with a cockade appeared at the window.

“Hullo, Mick. Is it the dog-cart they’ve sent ?”

“?Tis the shut carriage, Masther Willy,” said Mick ; “and ’tis waiting without in the street.”

With some difficulty I followed Mick through the crowd of carts in the station yard, to where a landau and pair were standing in the road. The moonlight was bright enough for me to see the fine shapes of the big brown horses, who were evincing so lively an interest in the caprices of the engine that the coachman had plenty to do to keep them quiet.

“You're welcome, miss,” said that functionary, touching his hat; and I got into the carriage, followed by Willy, with the usual impedimenta of-male travelling youth,

“It’s a good long drive,” he said, arranging rugs over our knees—“ twelve Irish miles, But we won’t be very long getting there. You won’t have time to be tired of me—I hope not, anyhow.”

This was more like my idea of the typical Irishman, but was, nevertheless, rather discomposing from a comparative stranger. It was said, moreover, with a , certain conquering air, which plainly showed that Willy was not accustomed to being found a bore. I could think of no effective reply, so I laughed vaguely, and said I hoped I should not.

We had been driving at a good pace for about an hour, when we left the high road and began the ascent of along steep hill. At its summit the carriage turned a sharp corner, and I saw below me, on my right, a great sheet of water all alight with the misty splendour of a full moon. Black points of land cut their way into the expanse of mellow silver, and the small islands were scattered like blots upon it.

“That's Roaring Water Bay,” said Willy; “and that mountain over there’s called Croagh Keenan ”— pointing to a shadowy mass that formed the western limit of the bay. “ You haven’t anything to beat that in Canada, I’ll bet!” An assertion which I refrained from combating.

Our road now lay for a mile or two along the top of a hill overlooking the bay, and though Willy had spared no efforts to beguile the way for me, I was tired enough to be extremely glad when the carriage swung sharply between high gate-posts, and we entered the avenue of Durrus,

As we passed the lodge, I caught, in the moonlight, a glimpse of the pretty face of a girl who opened the gates, and asked who she was.

“ She’s the lodgekeeper’s daughter,” said my cousin.

“ She looked very pretty.” a

“Ves, she’s not bad looking,” he said indifferently. “ There are plenty of good-looking girls in these parts.”

The drive sloped down through a park to the level of a turf bog, which it skirted for some distance, and then entered a thick clump of trees, through which the moonlight only penetrated sufficiently to let me see that they were growing in a species of reedy swamp, from which, on this cold night, a low frosty mist was rising. We were soon out again into the moonlight, the horses quickening up as they came near their journey’s end. I saw a sudden gleam of sea in front, and on the left a long, low house, looking wan and ghostly in the moonlight.

Chapter III

As the carriage drew up at the hall door it was opened by a stout elderly man, who came forward with such empressement that for a moment I thought it was my uncle. Providentially, however, before I had time to commit myself, he exclaimed :—

“Your honour’s welcome, Miss Sarsfield !”

Willy checked further remark on his part by shovelling our many parcels into his arms; but as soon as we had got into the hall, he let them all go, and caught hold of my hand and kissed it.

“Glory be to God that I should have lived to see this day! I never thought I’d be bringing Masther Owen’s child into this house, Thank God! thank God !”——He hastily let go my hand, as a tall bowed figure came across the hall to meet me.

“Well, my dear Theodora, so you have found your way at last to these western wilds,” said my Uncle Dominick, and kissed me on the forehead, taking both my hands in his as he did so,

His manner was an extreme contrast to Willy’s ee)

16 An Ilrish Cousin.

affable familiarity, and I was struck by the absence of Irish accent in his voice, which was of a mellifluous not to say alarming propriety.

He led me into the room he had just left, a small library, and placed a chair for me in front of the fireplace.

“You must be cold after your long journey. Sit down and warm yourself,” he said politely, adding another log to the furnace that was blazing in the brass-mounted grate.

He rubbed his long white hands together and drew back, so as to let the light of the lamp fall on my face.

“And your uncle and aunt in Canada—Mr. and Mrs. Farquharson—you left them quite well, I hope? I daresay they resent your desertion very bitterly?”

I explained that the two years of ranch life that I had spent in Canada since my mother’s death had not appealed to me, and that, in a household of twelve, the blank caused by my departure could not be irreparable. “In fact, I am thankful to get back to Great Britain again!” I concluded, warming one frozen foot after another, while my uncle stood with his back to the lamp, and surveyed me with guarded intentness. From his letters I had expected him to be formal, in an old-world, courteous way, but this strained and glacial geniality was a very different thing, and it disconcerted me considerably,

It was a distinct relief when, at this juncture, Willy came in, and offered to show me the way to my room. We passed through the dark entrance-hall, whose depths were inadequately lighted by a cheap lamp, its orange light forming a dingy halo that contended hopelessly with the surrounding gloom. At the end of the hall was a broad flight of stairs, that at the first landing branched into two narrower flights leading to a corridor running round the hall. Passing along one side of this corridor, Willy opened a door at the end of it.

“Here you are,” he said; “and I told them to bring you up a cup of tea; I thought you looked as if you wanted it”—with which he took his departure.

I was touched by Willy’s unexpected hostess-like thoughtfulness in the matter of the tea. My uncle’s reception had chilled me. I was tired by my long journey, and the darkness and silence of the house had a depressing effect upon my spirits. For weeks this arrival at my father’s old home had been constantly in my mind, staged and acted by myself with a vast outlay of enthusiasm and hope; now that it was over the enthusiasm had gone as dead as flat champagne, the hope was drowned in disillusionment, even in foreboding.

I looked round me as I sipped my tea, and did not 2 feel enlivened by what I saw. The room was large and bare. The paper and the curtains of the two windows were alike detestable in colour and pattern. The enormous bed had once been a four-poster, but the posts had been cut down, and four meaningless stumps bore witness to the mutilation it had undergone. A colossal wardrobe loomed in a far-off corner; a round table of preposterous size occupied the centre of the room. Six persons could comfortably have dined at the dressing-table. In fact, the whole room appeared to have been fitted up for the reception of a giantess, and was quite out of proportion to my moderate stature of five feet seven.

I have always disliked more than one door in a bedroom, as it seems to me to afford to ghosts and burglars unnecessary facilities; and my dislike of my gaunt apartment reached its climax when I saw a door in the corner on the farther side of the fireplace from the door into the corridor. It had been papered over along with the walls, and was almost suspiciously unobtrusive. I opened it, and found that it led into a moderate-sized bedroom. The moonlight which came through the uncurtained window lay in greenish-white patches on the uncarpeted floor, and showed a few pieces of furniture, shrouded in sheets and huddled in one corner. In spite of its chill bareness, an effect of recent occupancy was given to it by a chair that stood sideways in the window, a few tattered books on the floor beside it.

I went back to my own room with an unexplainable distaste, slamming the door behind me, and proceeded to dress for dinner with all speed.

With the unfailing punctuality of a newcomer, I left my room as the gong sounded, and, hurrying down, found my uncle and Willy waiting for me in the library.

The dining-room was a large and imposing room. A moderate number of portraits of the most orthodox ancestral type hung, interspersed with mezzotints of impassioned Irish clergymen, on its panelled walls. A high old sideboard of what seemed to me an unusual shape stretched up to the ceiling on one side of the room, and the plate upon it twinkled in the blaze of the fire.

We sat down at the long table; and while Willy and his father were absorbed in overcoming the usual embarrassments offered by soup to the wearers of moustaches, I amused myself with speculations as to who was responsible for the subtle combination of yellow and magenta dahlias that adorned the table. I concluded that the artist must have been the old butler, Roche; and as, at the thought, I involuntarily loo!.ed towards him, I found his eyes fixed upon me with the abstracted gaze of one who is trying to trace 2 * a likeness, Our eyes met, and he shuffled away, but I felt sure that he had been searching for a resemblance to the irregular attractive face which, from a miniature of thirty years ago, | knew must be what he remembered of my father. I sincerely hoped he found it.

“Tt is quite an unusual pleasure to Willy and me to see a charming young lady at our bachelor-table—eh, Willy?” said Uncle Dominick, lifting his face from his now empty soup-plate, and smiling at me.

Willy, whose flow of language seemed checked by his father’s presence, gave an assenting grunt.

“It is a long time since there has been a Miss Sarsfield at Durrus, and it is thirty years since she died. You will find Willy and I are sad barbarians, and we shall have to trust to you to civilise us.”

I am quite unfitted to deal with the compliments of elderly gentlemen. On this occasion I failed as signally as usual to attain the requisite quality of playful confusion, and diverted the conversation by a question about a claret-coloured ancestor, who had been staring at me from his frame over the fireplace ever since we had sat down to dinner.

“That is my grandfather,’ said my uncle. “ Dick the Drinker, they called him. He neither is nor was an ornament to the family ; but his wife, the beautiful Kate Coppinger, is worth looking at. In fact, my dear ”—with another smile and a little bow—“ directly I saw you I was reminded of a miniature which we have of her.”

“Y hope she looks Irish,” I responded. “I have always tried to live up to my idea of an Irish girl; but though my hair is dark, I haven’t got violet.eyes.”

“ No, nor any one else either. I never heard of them out of a book,” said Willy, abruptly.

It was almost his first contribution to the conversation; but his father took no more notice of him than if he had not spoken, and went on eating his dinner, taking longer over each mouthful than any one I had ever seen.

“Then, am I not like the Sarsfields?” I asked.

My uncle paused and looked hard at me for a second or two, letting his heavy eyebrows drop over his eyes, with a peculiar change of expression.

“In some ways, perhaps,” he said shortly. Then, turning to Willy, “ Nugent O’Neill was here this afternoon to see you about the stopping of some earths. I told him to come over and dine here some day next week, Not”—turning to me—“that he is much of a ladies’ man, but he is a gentlemanlike young fellow enough ; very unlike his father,’ he added, in a bitter tone.

“Why, is Mr. O’Neill very objectionable?” I said.

I felt an unmistakable kick under the table, and

Willy, with an admonitory wink, slurred over my question by saying :— :

“T can tell you, O’Neill would be pretty mad if he heard you calling him Wr He’s The O'Neill, and his wife’s Madam O'Neill, and they wouldn't call the queen their cousin.”

My uncle silently continued his dinner, but I noticed how unpleasant his expression had become since The O’Neill was mentioned.

I finally made up my mind that his face was one I should never care for. He was decidedly a handsome man, though unusually old-looking for his age, which could not have been more than sixty.

His thick dark eyebrows lay like a bar across his high forehead. A long hooked nose dropped over an iron-grey moustache, which, when he smiled, lifted in a peculiar way, and showed long and slightly prominent yellow teeth. His unwholesomely pallid skin was deeply lined, and hung in folds under the dark sunken eyes, giving a look of age which was further contributed to by the stoop in his square shoulders. As I glanced from him to Willy, I concluded that the latter's blonde commonplace good looks must have been inherited from his mother.

Rousing himself from the morose silence into which he had fallen, my uncle proceeded to apply himself to the task of entertaining me by a dissertation on the

An Trish Cousin. Te da trade and agriculture of Canada. I soon found that he had all the desire to impart information which characterises those whose knowledge of a subject is taken from pamphlets; but I listened with all politeness to his description of the country in which I had spent the pasttwo years. Willy maintained a discreet silence, but from time to time bestowed on me glances of sympathy and approbation. Evidently Willy did not know how to talk to his father.

As dinner progressed, I observed that, if Roche allowed his master’s glass to remain empty, he was at once given a sign to refill it, and my uncle became more and more diffusely instructive.

During dessert a pause at length gave me an opportunity of changing the conversation.

“TI saw such a pretty girl at your gate lodge as we drove in,” I said. “She looked delightful in the moonlight, with a shawl thrown over her head.”

If Uncle Dominick had looked black at the mention of The O’Neill, he became doubly so at this apparently inoffensive remark. Glancing for explanation to Willy, I was amazed to see that he had become crimson, and was elaborately trying to show his want of interest in the subject by balancing a fork on the edge of his wine-glass.

“Yes,” said my uncle; “she is a good-looking girl enough, and no one knows it better than she does.

When people in that class of life are taken out of their proper place”—with great severity—“they at once begin to presume.”

Willy upset his wine-glass with a sudden jerk. For my part, I was so taken aback by this tirade, that I thought my safest plan lay in immediate flight. Willy got up with alacrity, and, following me from the room, opened the drawing-room door. He looked confused and annoyed.

“Can you take care of yourself in there for a while?” he said. “Ill be with you in a few minutes.”

CHAPTER. LV,

THE room was cold; I at once made for the fire, and, to my surprise, found the hearthrug occupied by an untidy little girl, who was engaged in dropping grease from a candle over the coals to make them burn. On seeing me she sprang to her feet, and, with apologetic murmurs, she gathered up a coal-box and retired in confusion.

I concluded that, improbable as it appeared, this was the under-housemaid, and reflected with some astonishment on the incongruities of the Durrus establishment. However, I afterwards found she held no Official position, but was a satellite of the underhousemaid’s, privately imported by her as a species of body-servant or slave. In fact, at the risk of digressing, | may here add that in process of time I discovered that the illicit apprenticeship of a young relation was a common custom of the Durrus servants, and in the labyrinthine remoteness of the servants’ quarters they could be concealed without fear of attracting the master’s eye. 25

In spite of its top dressing of grease, the fire was not a tempting one to sit over, and I roamed round the large ill-lighted room, taking in with amazement the varied style of its decorations. It was, in startling contrast to the rest of the house, painted and papered in semi-zsthetic hues, pale sage-green and pink being the prevailing colours. This innovation of culture had not, however, extended itself to the furniture, which was of the solidly ugly type prevalent fifty years ago. Heavy mahogany tables, each duly set forth with books and daguerreotypes, stood uncompromisingly about, causing a congestion among the lesser furniture. The pictures, which had been taken down at the repapering of the room, leaned against the wall with their faces inwards. I turned one of the nearest to me, expecting to come upon a family portrait, but found it represented a Turk of truculent aspect, worked in Berlin wool—a testimony to the amount of spare time at the disposal of the ladies of Durrus. The thick coating of dust on my fingers which was the result of this investigation did not encourage me to make any further researches, and an examination of the old china on the marble chiffonnier between the windows had equally disastrous results. In one corner there was an ancient grand piano, which to my astonishment proved to be in good tune. I had not been playing for very long when Willy

An Trish Cousin. a7 came in, and, without speaking, placed himself beside me.

“Well, I declare!” he said, as I finished playing one of Schubert’s impromptus, “it’s a long time since I heard that old piano. I got it tuned the other day on purpose for you, and you know how to knock sparks out of it, anyhow! I héard Henrietta O’Neill playing that piece once, and it didn’t sound half so well— though, I can tell you, she thinks no end of herself.”

“By-the-bye, Willy, why did you stop me when [| began to speak of Mr, O’Neill 2?”

“O'Neill,” corrected Willy.

“Oh, well, OVez//, but what was the harm of talking about him?”

“No harm, as far as I am concerned, but the governor hates him like poison, I believe they had some row in my grandfather’s time—I don’t know exactly what—and they never made it up since. But there’s no regular quarrel; I go to all their parties, and I think the governor rather likes Nugent and the girls.”