CHAPTER X
Within the next five minutes the man in the frieze coat was pioneering the man in the grey tweed through the jungle of fuchsias and arbutus which smothered the steep footpath leading down to the lake. A broken gate lying on the ground marked the extreme limit of Lota. Presently the lawyer and labourer were striding by the water’s edge side by side, and Mike resumed the relation of his story, precisely as if the thread had never been snapped.
“Ye see, old John Foley, who was terribly proud of Mary, was took off of a sudden in a fit, and of late his wife got queer in her head. They do say her mother was the same, though some made out it was tay-drinking; sure enough, she never had the taypot out of her hand. Whatever it was, she turned so mortal strange that Mary had to get her aunt Bridgie, Katty’s sister, to come over and help mind her; but it wasn’t better, but worse, she got-shockingly unaisy and restless and worrying in herself, or else sitting and never speaking, all as wan as some stone image. At long last she bid them send for the priest, as she had something on her soul. And when he come, she ups and she told him, and she told Mary, and she told any one that would listen, what I’m about to tell you.”
Here Mike cleared his throat energetically, and continued—
“And what do ye think Katty giv’ out? That her child died; it was always droopy, and she could not bear to part wid the other. She loved it as her own. Its father hated it, and would marry again, and rear a family, and never grudge her the pretty little girlie at all! And so she sent off her own dead baby to the grand place in England, and she kept the stranger, who has grown up fine and strong and clever, and everything that is surprising for quickness and talk.”
As Mike related this audacious case of child stealing, his companion’s expression changed from the countenance of the tolerant, easily amused listener, to that of a keen man of business, who is suddenly made acquainted with a most serious piece of intelligence. He removed his pipe, his lips set in one grim line, and his face was slightly flushed, as he glanced at his guide with a penetrating sidelong look.
No, the man was no garrulous “Ananias,” but an Irish peasant of a faithful and romantic nature, who still, year after year, week after week, haunted the place which had once held his ideal. To the best of his ability he was telling what he believed to be the truth.
“Katty took great pride out of the child, and soon forgot as she wasn’t her own flesh and blood; and as for John, he never knew, and he just lived for his daughter. Well, now Katty was growing old, and her sin rose up and faced her, her conscience tormented her, and she said she must ease her mind before she died. She made out she felt awful bad, and when Mary looked in her face with her ladyship’s own two eyes, when she smiled at her the same as her mother, she just stiffened in the bed!”
“And how did every one receive this amazing news? What did they say to it?” demanded Mr. Usher, in a sharp legal key.
“Oh, bedad, Mary laughed at it for pure nonsense. She was a country girl born and bred. To be an English countess with a castle and servants, and to wear a gold crown on her head, would just kill her, if it was true; but it was only a fairy tale, and she was her mammy’s daughter, and no one else——”
“What did the priest say?”
“Faix, his reverence give it against Mrs. Foley, too! Anyhow, she was too late; twenty-wan years had passed, and there was no call to go and upset a grand English family, and maybe for nothing. Katty, ye see, had no proof beyond her bare word; no papers, no witnesses. Every one jeered at Mrs. Foley’s queer notion, and treated the story as an elegant fine joke. Mary is no Englisher, and there’s not a lighter foot to dance a jig, or a better warrant to sing an old Irish lament, in all the country.”
“And is that the end of it? Eh?” said the lawyer briskly.
“’Tis in a way; howsomever, Katty still whinges and whimpers and moans, begging and praying them to make restitution—sometimes beating on the walls with her two bare hands, and crying by the hour; she can’t stir now, having lost the use of herself; and her legs being crippled with rheumatism, she sits in her chair all day. Whiles, she’s reasonable enough; but about Mary she is properly mad. She says she’s no child of hers—and calls her Lady Mary. Ye see the head of Katty is not right, and her own mother went the same way, so people just humours her; they are all very good to the poor crazy creature, she being a sort of ‘innocent’ in her old age.”
“I suppose they never imagine there is any foundation for her delusion,” inquired Mr. Usher.
“No; and if there was they’d hold Mary Foley hard and fast, and keep her, I believe, against all the lords in England; for she is one of themselves.”
“And what do you think yourself?”
Mike made no immediate reply, but took one or two loud sucks at his pipe. At last he said: “I believe, on me solemn oath, that there is something in the story all the same.”
“You do!” cried Mr. Usher, coming to an abrupt halt, and fixing his sharp eyes on his companion.
“In troth I do,” rejoined the old man doggedly.
“What grounds have you to go upon for supposing there is something in it?” asked the lawyer.
“Faix, it’s no sacret,” he answered, with an air of sullen resolution; “any one would see it that had eyes in their head. John and Katty was as black as two crows. Mary has hair like a copper kettle, a white swan throat, a dancing eye, and a little weenchie hand. Oh, I declare she’s the born image of her ladyship. Now, is not that strange?” and he turned and looked fixedly at his companion’s hard-set, wizened face.
“Not if she is her daughter!”
“Whisht!” he cried, turning about, as if he feared that the very trees had ears. “Never let that pass yer lips; I only whisper it in my heart, when I go there alone, and sit on the terrace of a Sunday—and to you, a black stranger, it makes no matter what I say; and somehow it’s a relief to give out me thoughts to another creature, whether a gentleman or a man.”
“Has this strange likeness struck other people?” inquired Mr. Usher, in his cool, judicial tone.
“No, sir!”—now drawing up his bent back, and speaking with overwhelming dignity. “You see none of the neighbours had much chance of seeing the Countess. She was mostly out boating, or staying at home. It’s twenty-wan years ago, ye know, and not a sowl remembers whether her hair was black or yellow. Now, I saw her every day, and I can never forget her, for I never saw any wan like her, and never will again.”
“Except Mary Foley,” amended his listener. “Is she not admired, and remarked all over the country?”
“No, I can’t say rightly that she is, though the young men does be wild about her; the old people and the women says she’s no great shakes; she’s too slim and small-made for the Kerry folk, and has no colour; they talk of her sperrit, and her singing and dancing, and her clever, smart chat, within three parishes: but they don’t say much of Mary’s looks, bekase, sir, they are a rough sort of ignorant people, and she’s out of the common.”
“I must confess I should like to see her!” exclaimed Mr. Usher.
“An’, sure, what’s to hinder ye? That’s aisy enough, if ye will give yerself the trouble to walk up some afternoon to Foley’s farm; there ye will see Mary herself standing in the doorway, ready for a word and a joke, and the house behind her just anyhow! She has no great heart for work, though she has a kind heart for the poor, and all the dumb creatures.”
“Well, you have told me a most interesting story,” said Mr. Usher, as he came to a halt, “and I shall do my best to make the acquaintance of Mary Foley. Look here!” he added, as if struck by a sudden thought, “don’t say a word of what you’ve been telling me, to your wife. Women talk.”
“Sure, man alive, don’t I know that, when I’ve buried three!”
“Three wives?” repeated the old bachelor incredulously. “Three?”
“Yes, faix—and all had a bit in the bank.”
“Then you must be what they call a warm man.”
“Augh, not at all”—with a gesture of repudiation—“what with bringing them home, and putting them out, they cost me a sight of money! As for what I’m after telling ye, sir, ’tis Bible truth, and here our roads goes different ways. Augh, not at all!” he exclaimed. “Sure, I would not be taking your silver, sor—it was a relief to me to spake. Well, well, then, I’ll not say agin the tobacco! I’m thankful fer your company and yer kindness to a bothered old man, listening to his quare, foolish talk”; and, with a hasty nod, Mike turned his back on Mr. Usher and hobbled away.
“But was it all quare, foolish talk?” the lawyer asked himself, as he stood gazing after the retreating figure. “Was it one of two things: a mere ‘mare’s nest,’ or ‘a pretty kettle of fish’?”
He was, by one of the strange coincidences (which really occur more frequently than is supposed), Lord Mulgrave’s solicitor, agent, and man of business. Five-and-twenty years previously he had succeeded his father in the same responsible and lucrative billet. Mr. Usher remembered perfectly, and with a poignant regret, the first Lady Mulgrave, a truly exquisite creature. Her reception by the family had been cool and suspicious; she brought but a small fortune, and she was half French: a member of a great race (ruined and scattered by the Terror), the head of which, on small means, and in a contracted circle, still endeavoured to maintain their ancient pride and traditions.
The Duc de Hernoncourt, with much-reduced rental, clung to the home of his ancestors. (The Château de Verbèrie, a famous gem of French architecture, lying remote from cities, and surrounded by a moat, the two wings flanked by turrets, with pointed roofs, is a well-known picture on the local post-card.) He married an English lady, mother of the future Countess Mulgrave. During a tour through the valley of the Oise, Lord Mulgrave had been entertained by the de Hernoncourts—his distant connections—and later, when Madame La Duchesse and Mademoiselle Joseline came to London, he had persuaded the young lady to remain in England, as his wife. Mademoiselle de Hernoncourt had hair the colour of a copper kettle, a mignonne face, a wonderful personal charm, precisely as described by her former gardener. She was a lady of a distinctive appearance—once seen, never forgotten. Even the bloodless little lawyer recalled her with an emotion that he was unable to classify or explain. If this girl Mary Foley was her image, she was undeniably her daughter, and Katty’s ravings were no ravings, but embodied the painful truth.
Oh, yes, the painful truth! Lord Mulgrave was childless; his present wife had been a fascinating little widow with one girl, when he married her, fifteen years previously. Her ladyship was smart, ambitious, devoted to society, dress, and social diplomacy; her daughter was also smart and up-to-date, who shot and danced, acted and smoked; she and her mother managed his lordship, who was a tall, taciturn man of fifty, fond of fishing and of peace—proud, reserved, and ceremonious. What would be the effect of introducing an uneducated Irish peasant girl—a girl celebrated for “sperrits” and “chat” into this aristocratic and exclusive circle? Mary was, of course, a Catholic. She had never been in a carriage, or seen a silver fork, in her life. Yet if all this circumstantial evidence went for anything—not to speak of Katty’s confession—she was Lord Mulgrave’s only child and heiress. It was in a highly perturbed frame of mind that Mr. Usher pursued his way to the hotel. He had so much food for meditation that he made a very poor dinner, and was unusually silent. Questioned by his sister with respect to his excursion, his replies were brief and unsatisfactory. “He had walked about eight miles. Yes, it was a pretty country. No, he had not met any motors.”
Subsequently, as he sat out in the garden after dinner, smoking cigarette after cigarette, his sister, Miss Usher, who knew his moods, came over and took a seat beside him and said—
“Bence, I see you are getting your old London expression, and thinking of some business.”
He nodded assent.
“Can’t you leave it behind even for six weeks, and enjoy yourself like every one else? You know you promised me you would.”
“Yes, Emily, I know I did. It is all very well to say I’ll leave business behind me; but what can I do when it follows me here?”
“What do you mean?” she demanded. “There were no letters for you to-day.”
“Never mind, my dear, I’ve got some hard thinking to do. A most serious case has recently come to my notice.”
“Well, I suppose”—rising as she spoke—“I’d better leave you to do your thinking alone. I can be no help, can I?”
“No—or—By the way! You poke about the neighbourhood a good deal, and are in and out of the houses, looking for bits of china, and studying the people, as you call it. Have you ever come across a place called Foley’s farm?”
“Foley’s farm,” she repeated. “Yes, at Foley’s Corner. Quite a small farmer lives in it, I believe. I stopped there the other day to ask the way, and saw a beautiful girl.”
“Oh, that’s a common sight in these parts.”
“Yes, I know—of a certain style; black hair and grey eyes put in with a dirty finger. But this one is of another type. Chestnut locks, a graceful figure; she carries her head like royalty, and Vandyck would have been proud to have painted her hands, though they are rather red I must confess. I have promised to lend her some magazines, and will take them up to her one of these days.”
“Take me, too—will you?”
“But, Bence, you are not in earnest? Why, you grudge every hour you have not a rod in your hands.”
“I’ll give the fish a holiday. I should like to see something of the natives—the Irish at home, and that sort of thing.”
“All right, then, I will escort you up to ‘Foley’s’ as they call it; only too happy to have your company. Well, good night.”
As she moved off, her brother remained immovable, buried in thought and tobacco-smoke.
“No harm in going to see the young woman, at any rate,” he reflected. It committed him to nothing. After all, perhaps he ought to leave well alone. Apparently the girl was happy; her present home was her natural sphere. She was but a peasant. Why upset her life and the lives of others who were all content with their lot? Yes, to stir in the business would be a grave and responsible action. “Better let sleeping dogs lie”; and having arrived at this conviction, Mr. Usher sought his couch.