Chapter 4

The story begins at the moment when my brother Robert and I had made our final arrangements for the expedition. These were considerable. Robert is a fisherman who takes himself seriously (which perhaps is fortunate, as he rarely seems to take anything else), and his paraphernalia does credit to his enthusiasm, if not to his judgment. For my part, being an amateur artist, I had strapped together a collection of painting materials that would enable me to record my inspiration in oil, watercolour, or pastel, as the spirit might move me. We had ordered a car from Coolahan’s public-house in the village; an early lunch was imminent.

The latter depended upon Julia; in fact it would be difficult to mention anything at Wavecrest Cottage that did not depend on Julia. We, who were but strangers and sojourners (the cottage with the beautiful name having been lent to us, with Julia, by an Aunt), felt that our very existence hung upon her clemency. How much more then luncheon, at the revolutionary hour of a quarter to one? Even courageous people are afraid of other people’s servants, and Robert and I were far from being courageous. Possibly this is why Julia treated us with compassion, even with kindness, especially Robert.

“Ah, poor Masther Robert!” I have heard her say to a friend in the kitchen, who was fortunately hard of hearing, “ye wouldn’t feel him in the house no more than a feather! An’ indeed, as for the two o’ thim, sich gallopers never ye seen! It’s hardly they’d come in the house to throw the wet boots off thim! Thim’d gallop the woods all night like the deer!”

At half-past twelve, all, as I have said, being in train, I went to the window to observe the weather, and saw a covered car with a black horse plodding along the road that separated Wavecrest Cottage from the seashore. At our modest entrance gates it drew up, and the coachman climbed from his perch with a dignity befitting his flowing grey beard and the silver band on his hat.

A covered car is a vehicle peculiar to the south of Ireland; it resembles a two-wheeled waggonette with a windowless black box on top of it. Its mouth is at the back, and it has the sinister quality of totally concealing its occupants until the irrevocable moment when it is turned and backed against your front door steps. For this moment my brother Robert and I did not wait. A short passage and a flight of steps separated us from the kitchen; beyond the steps, and facing the kitchen door, a door opened into the garden. Robert slipped up heavily in the passage as we fled, but gained the garden door undamaged. The hall door bell pealed at my ear; I caught a glimpse of Julia, pounding chops with the rolling pin.

“Say we’re out,” I hissed to her--“gone out for the day! We are going into the garden!”

“Sure ye needn’t give yerself that much trouble,” replied Julia affably, as she snatched a grimy cap off a nail.

Nevertheless, in spite of the elasticity of Julia’s conscience, the garden seemed safer.

In the garden, a plot of dense and various vegetation, decorated with Julia’s lingerie, we awaited the sound of the departing wheels. But nothing departed. The breathless minutes passed, and then, through the open drawing-room window, we were aware of strange voices. The drawing-room window overlooked the garden thoroughly and commandingly. There was not a moment to lose. We plunged into the raspberry canes, and crouched beneath their embowered arches, and the fulness of the situation began to sink into our souls.

Through the window we caught a glimpse of a white beard and a portly black suit, of a black bonnet and a dolman that glittered with jet, of yet another black bonnet.

With Aunt Dora’s house we had taken on, as it were, her practice, and the goodwill of her acquaintance. The Dean of Glengad and Mrs. Doherty were the very apex and flower of the latter, and in the party now installed in Aunt Dora’s drawing-room I unhesitatingly recognised them, and Mrs. Doherty’s sister, Miss McEvoy. Miss McEvoy was an elderly lady of the class usually described as being “not all there”. The expression, I imagine, implies a regret that there should not be more. As, however, what there was of Miss McEvoy was chiefly remarkable for a monstrous appetite and a marked penchant for young men, it seems to me mainly to be regretted that there should be as much of her as there is.

A drive of nine miles in the heat of a June morning is not undertaken without a sustaining expectation of luncheon at the end of it. There were in the house three mutton chops to meet that expectation. I communicated all these facts to my brother. The consternation of his face, framed in raspberry boughs, was a picture not to be lightly forgotten. At such a moment, with everything depending on sheer nerve and resourcefulness, to consign Julia to perdition was mere self-indulgence on his part, but I suppose it was inevitable. Here the door into the garden opened and Julia came forth, with a spotless apron and a face of elaborate unconcern. She picked a handful of parsley, her black eyes questing for us among the bushes; they met mine, and a glance more alive with conspiracy it has not been my lot to receive. She moved desultorily towards us, gathering green gooseberries in her apron.

“I told them the two o’ ye were out,” she murmured to the gooseberry bushes. “They axed when would ye be back. I said ye went to town on the early thrain and wouldn’t be back till night.”

Decidedly Julia’s conscience could stand alone.

“With that then,” she continued, “Miss McEvoy lands into the hall, an’ ‘O Letitia,’ says she, ‘those must be the gentleman’s fishing rods!’ and then ‘Julia!’ says she, ‘could ye give us a bit o’ lunch?’ That one’s the imp!”

“Look here!” said Robert hoarsely, and with the swiftness of panic, “I’m off! I’ll get out over the back wall.”

At this moment Miss McEvoy put her head out of the drawing-room window and scanned the garden searchingly. Without another word we glided through the raspberry arches like departing fairies in a pantomine. The kindly lilac and laurestina bushes grew tall and thick at the end of the garden; the wall was high, but, as is usual with fruit-garden walls, it had a well-worn feasible corner that gave on to the lane leading to the village. We flung ourselves over it, and landed breathless and dishevelled, but safe, in the heart of the bed of nettles that plumed the common village ash-heap. Now that we were able, temporarily at all events, to call our souls our own, we (or rather I) took further stock of the situation. Its horrors continued to sink in. Driven from home without so much as a hat to lay our heads in, separated from those we loved most (the mutton chops, the painting materials, the fishing tackle), a promising expedition of unusual charm cut off, so to speak, in the flower of its youth--these were the more immediately obvious of the calamities which we now confronted. I preached upon them, with Cassandra eloquence, while we stood, indeterminate, among the nettles.

“And what, I ask you,” I said perorating, “what on the face of the earth are we to do now?”

“Oh, it’ll be all right, my dear girl,” said Robert easily. Gratitude for his escape from the addresses of Miss McEvoy had apparently blinded him to the difficulties of the future. “There’s Coolahan’s pub. We’ll get something to eat there--you’ll see it’ll be all right.”

“But,” I said, picking my way after him among the rusty tins and the broken crockery, “the Coolahans will think we’re mad! We’ve no hats, and we can’t tell them about the Dohertys.”

“I don’t care what they think,” said Robert.

What Mrs. Coolahan may have thought, as we dived from the sunlight into her dark and porter-sodden shop, did not appear; what she looked was consternation.

“Luncheon!” she repeated with stupefaction, “luncheon! The dear help us, I have no luncheon for the like o’ ye!”

“Oh, anything will do,” said Robert cheerfully. His experiences at the London bar had not instructed him in the commissariat of his country.

“A bit of cold beef, or just some bread and cheese.”

Mrs. Coolahan’s bleared eyes rolled wildly to mine, as seeking sympathy and sanity.

“With the will o’ Pether!” she exclaimed, “how would I have cold beef? And as for cheese--!” She paused, and then, curiosity over-powering all other emotions. “What ails Julia Cronelly at all that your honour’s ladyship is comin’ to the like o’ this dirty place for your dinner?”

“Oh, Julia’s run away with a soldier!” struck in Robert brilliantly.

“Small blame to her if she did itself!” said Mrs. Coolahan, gallantly accepting the jest without a change of her enormous countenance, “she’s a long time waiting for the chance! Maybe ourselves’d go if we were axed! I have a nice bit of salt pork in the house,” she continued, “would I give your honours a rasher of it?”

Mrs. Coolahan had probably assumed that either Julia was incapably drunk, or had been dismissed without benefit of clergy; at all events she had recognised that diplomatically it was correct to change the conversation.

We adventured ourselves into the unknown recesses of the house, and sat gingerly on greasy horsehair-seated chairs, in the parlour, while the bubbling cry of the rasher and eggs arose to heaven from the frying-pan, and the reek filled the house as with a grey fog. Potent as it was, it but faintly foreshadowed the flavour of the massive slices that presently swam in briny oil on our plates. But we had breakfasted at eight; we tackled them with determination, and without too nice inspection of the three-pronged forks. We drank porter, we achieved a certain sense of satiety, that on very slight provocation would have broadened into nausea or worse. All the while the question remained in the balance as to what we were to do for our hats, and for the myriad baggage involved in the expedition.

We finally decided to write a minute inventory of what was indispensable, and to send it to Julia by the faithful hand of Mrs. Coolahan’s car-driver, one Croppy, with whom previous expeditions had placed us upon intimate terms. It would be necessary to confide the position to Croppy, but this we felt, could be done without a moment’s uneasiness.

By the malignity that governed all things on that troublous day, neither of us had a pencil, and Mrs. Coolahan had to be appealed to. That she had by this time properly grasped the position was apparent in the hoarse whisper in which she said, carefully closing the door after her:--

“The Dane’s coachman is inside!”

Simultaneously Robert and I removed ourselves from the purview of the door.

“Don’t be afraid,” said our hostess reassuringly, “he’ll never see ye--sure I have him safe back in the snug! Is it a writing pin ye want, Miss?” she continued, moving to the door. “Katty Ann! Bring me in the pin out o’ the office!”

The Post Office was, it may be mentioned, a department of the Coolahan public-house, and was managed by a committee of the younger members of the Coolahan family. These things are all, I believe, illegal, but they happen in Ireland. The committee was at present, apparently, in full session, judging by the flood of conversation that flowed in to us through the open door. The request for the pen caused an instant hush, followed at an interval by the slamming of drawers and other sounds of search.

“Ah, what’s on ye delaying this way?” said Mrs. Coolahan irritably, advancing into the shop. “Sure I seen the pin with Helayna this morning.”

At the moment all that we could see of the junior postmistress was her long bare shins, framed by the low-browed doorway, as she stood on the counter to further her researches on a top shelf.

“The Lord look down in pity on me this day!” said Mrs. Coolahan, in exalted and bitter indignation, “or on any poor creature that’s striving to earn her living and has the likes o’ ye to be thrusting to!”

We here attached ourselves to the outskirts of the search, which had by this time drawn into its vortex a couple of countrywomen with shawls over their heads, who had hitherto sat in decorous but observant stillness in the background. Katty Ann was rapidly examining tall bottles of sugar-stick, accustomed receptacles apparently for the pen. Helayna’s raven fringe showed traces of a dive into the flour-bin. Mrs. Coolahan remained motionless in the midst, her eyes fixed on the ceiling, an exposition of suffering and of eternal remoteness from the ungodly.

We were now aware for the first time of the presence of Mr. Coolahan, a taciturn person, with a blue-black chin and a gloomy demeanour.

“Where had ye it last?” he demanded.

“I seen Katty Ann with it in the cow-house, sir,” volunteered a small female Coolahan from beneath the flap of the counter.

Katty Ann, with a vindictive eye at the tell-tale, vanished.

“That the Lord Almighty might take me to Himself!” chanted Mrs. Coolahan. “Such a mee-aw! Such a thing to happen to me--the pure, decent woman! G’wout!” This, the imperative of the verb to retire, was hurtled at the tell-tale, who, presuming on her services, had incautiously left the covert of the counter, and had laid a sticky hand on her mother’s skirts.

“Only that some was praying for me,” pursued Mrs. Coolahan, “it might as well be the Inspector that came in the office, asking for the pin, an’ if that was the way we might all go under the sod! Sich a mee-aw!”

“Musha! Musha!” breathed, prayerfully, one of the shawled women.

At this juncture I mounted on an up-ended barrel to investigate a promising lair above my head, and from this altitude was unexpectedly presented with a bird’s-eye view of a hat with a silver band inside the railed and curtained “snug”. I descended swiftly, not without an impression of black bottles on the snug table, and Katty Ann here slid in from the search in the cow-house.

“’Twasn’t in it,” she whined, “nor I didn’t put it in it.”

“For a pinny I’d give ye a slap in the jaw!” said Mr. Coolahan with sudden and startling ferocity.

“That the Lord Almighty might take me to Himself!” reiterated Mrs. Coolahan, while the search spread upwards through the house.

“Look here!” said Robert abruptly, “this business is going on for a week. I’m going for the things myself.”

Neither I nor my remonstrances overtook him till he was well out into the street. There, outside the Coolahan door, was the Dean’s inside car, resting on its shafts; while the black horse, like his driver, restored himself elsewhere beneath the Coolahan roof. Robert paid no heed to its silent warning.

“I must go myself. If I had forty pencils I couldn’t explain to Julia the flies that I want!”

There comes, with the most biddable of men, a moment when argument fails, the moment of dead pull, when the creature perceives his own strength, and the astute will give in, early and imperceptibly, in order that he may not learn it beyond forgetting.

The only thing left to be done now was to accompany Robert, to avert what might be irretrievable disaster. It was now half-past one, and the three mutton chops and the stewed gooseberries must have long since yielded their uttermost to our guests. The latter would therefore have returned to the drawing-room, where it was possible that one or more of them might go to sleep. Remembering that the chops were loin-chops, we might at all events hope for some slight amount of lethargy. Again we waded through the nettles, we scaled the garden-wall, and worked our way between it and the laurestinas towards the door opposite the kitchen. There remained between us and the house an open space of about fifteen yards, fully commanded by the drawing-room window, veiling which, however, the lace curtains met in reassuring stillness. We rushed the interval, and entered the house softly. Here we were instantly met by Julia, with her mouth full, and a cup of tea in her hand. She drew us into the kitchen.

“Where are they, Julia?” I whispered. “Have they had lunch?”

“Is it lunch?” replied Julia, through bread and butter; “there isn’t a bit in the house but they have it ate! And the eggs I had for the fast-day for myself, didn’t That One”--I knew this to indicate Miss McEvoy--“ax an omelette from me when she seen she had no more to get!”

“Are they out of the dining-room?” broke in Robert.

“Faith, they are. ’Twas no good for them to stay in it! That One’s lying up on the sofa in the dhrawing-room like any owld dog, and the Dane and Mrs. Doherty’s dhrinking hot water--they have bad shtomachs, the craytures.”

Robert opened the kitchen door and crept towards the dining-room, wherein, not long before the alarm, had been gathered all the essentials of the expedition. I followed him. I have never committed a burglary, but since the moment when I creaked past the drawing-room door, foretasting the instant when it would open, my sympathies are dedicated to burglars.

In two palpitating journeys we removed from the dining-room our belongings, and placed them in the kitchen; silence, fraught with dire possibilities, still brooded over the drawing-room. Could they all be asleep, or was Miss McEvoy watching us through the keyhole? There remained only my hat, which was upstairs, and at this, the last moment, Robert remembered his fly-book, left under the clock in the dining-room. I again passed the drawing-room in safety, and got upstairs, Robert effecting at the same moment his third entry into the dining-room. I was in the act of thrusting in the second hat pin when I heard the drawing-room door open. I admit that, obeying the primary instinct of self-preservation, my first impulse was to lock myself in; it passed, aided by the recollection that there was no key. I made for the landing, and from thence viewed, in a species of trance, Miss McEvoy crossing the hall and entering the dining-room. A long and deathly pause followed. She was a small woman; had Robert strangled her? After two or three horrible minutes a sound reached me, the well-known rattle of the side-board drawer. All then was well--Miss McEvoy was probably looking for the biscuits, and Robert must have escaped in time through the window. I took my courage in both hands and glided downstairs. As I placed my foot on the oilcloth of the hall, I was confronted by the nightmare spectacle of my brother creeping towards me on all-fours through the open door of the dining-room, and then, crowning this already over-loaded moment, there arose a series of yells from Miss McEvoy as blood-curdling as they were excusable, yet, as even in my maniac flight to the kitchen I recognised, something muffled by Marie biscuit.

It seems to me that the next incident was the composite and shattering collision of Robert, Julia and myself in the scullery doorway, followed by the swift closing of the scullery-door upon us by Julia; then the voice of the Dean of Glengad, demanding from the house at large an explanation, in a voice of cathedral severity. Miss McEvoy’s reply was to us about as coherent as the shrieks of a parrot, but we plainly heard Julia murmur in the kitchen:--

“May the devil choke ye!”

Then again the Dean, this time near the kitchen door. “Julia! Where is the man who was secreted under the dinner-table?”

I gripped Robert’s arm. The issues of life and death were now in Julia’s hands.

“Is it who was in the dining-room, your Reverence?” asked Julia, in tones of respectful honey; “sure that was the carpenter’s boy, that came to quinch a rat-hole. Sure we’re destroyed with rats.”

“But,” pursued the Dean, raising his voice to overcome Miss McEvoy’s continuous screams of explanation to Mrs. Doherty, “I understand that he left the room on his hands and knees. He must have been drunk!”

“Ah, not at all, your Reverence,” replied Julia, with almost compassionate superiority, “sure that poor boy is the gentlest crayture ever came into a house. I suppose ’tis what it was he was ashamed like when Miss McEvoy comminced to screech, and faith he never stopped nor stayed till he ran out of the house like a wild goose!”

We heard the Dean reascend the kitchen steps, and make a statement of which the words “drink” and “Dora” alone reached us. The drawing-room door closed, and in the release from tension I sank heavily down upon a heap of potatoes. The wolf of laughter that had been gnawing at my vitals broke loose.

“Why did you go out of the room on your hands and knees?” I moaned, rolling in anguish on the potatoes.

“I got under the table when I heard the brute coming,” said Robert, with the crossness of reaction from terror, “then she settled down to eat biscuits, and I thought I could crawl out without her seeing me”

“_Ye can come out_!” said Julia’s mouth, appearing at a crack of the scullery door, “I have as many lies told for ye--God forgive me!--as’d bog a noddy!”

This mysterious contingency might have impressed us more had the artist been able to conceal her legitimate pride in her handiwork. We emerged from the chill and varied smells of the scullery, retaining just sufficient social self-control to keep us from flinging ourselves with grateful tears upon Julia’s neck. Shaken as we were, the expedition still lay open before us; the game was in our hands. We were winning by tricks, and Julia held all the honours.