The deluge, indeed! His pretty daughter, who was just twenty-one, found herself homeless, for the ancestral mansion now belonged to creditors; there was an auction, and the family goods and heirlooms were scattered to the four winds. Her brother Tom, who was serving in India—the supposed heir to a fine fortune, and living up to the belief—was compelled to leave his regiment, and promptly return to Ireland.
Tom Mahon was a manly, good-looking young fellow of six and twenty, with typical dark blue eyes and black hair, a capital polo player, a popular officer, but never likely to ignite either the Thames or the Liffey.
Fortunately Tom was practical; he sold off his guns and ponies, paid his debts, and, when he arrived, exerted himself to the utmost to pull things together. He decided not to emigrate to Canada and take Helena with him, as their relatives so eagerly suggested (relatives who lived in England, and were aghast at the downfall of the Mahons of Kil-Mahon), but to gather what he could from the wreck, and make a home for himself and sister. They could manage on little, and were not proud. There remained an insignificant scrap of the estate (possibly overlooked) and here at least was a roof for the outcasts, for the English Mahons had with one accord washed their hands of this crazy, reckless couple. Kil-Mahon was sold to an Irish-American, who had returned to his native country with an immense hoard of dollars; but Clontra, situated on the wrong side of the same county, a good-sized ivy-covered house with its rows of small windows facing north (that ancient and surprising fashion), still belonged to the Mahons. A flower garden, a small lawn, and a thick hedge separated it from a not much frequented highroad; in a field across the way were the remains of Castle O’Mahon—cradle of the race. At the back of the house was a matted, tangled garden, a large range of tumble-down outhouses, a few fields of fairly good pasture beyond, and, encircling house and fields, about four hundred acres of worthless bog—not the usual black bog, full of water-holes, and turf stacks, but “short grass” bog, dotted with clumps of furze bushes, and rushes, affording a certain amount of grazing for geese and donkeys.
Tom and Helena had lived two years at Clontra and effected wonders; the venerable garden was restored and prosperous; the outhouses had been patched up, the dull rooms gaily papered and made to look homely with a few odds and ends of wreckage and Helena’s clever fingers. In the yard were milch cows, and poultry; in the house several dogs and three family servants: old Pat, a handy man and groom, young Pat, gardener and herd, and Kate, the maid-of-all work—a dark little woman of forty-five, born and brought up on Kil-Mahon, a truly devout adherent of the Mahon race, a hard worker and “vocheen,” her particular and unintentionally blasphemous declaration on all occasions being, “Sure, ’tis all the will of God!”
The cows, poultry, and garden kept the place—so to speak—going, but the life was an extraordinary change to the two Mahons. Handsome Tom, as sub. in a smart regiment, with his polo ponies, dogcart—and perhaps a certain amount of side—was now working hard to earn his bread. Helena, the admired, petted, slightly arbitrary daughter of a house whose popular, genial head was an important factor in Society, was his efficient and industrious partner.
Here the brother and sister were moored in a sort of social backwater, and more or less forgotten. It is so easy to drop out of the swim! Tom, in rough tweeds and gaiters, rose at dawn to buy and sell cattle and calves at neighbouring fairs, or superintend the gardening and the small farm—and now and then, in the season, was offered a day’s hunting or shooting by old friends.
Helena managed the dairy and poultry, sold her butter and eggs and vegetables; she had a good market at Newbridge and the Curragh. Between the young cattle, and these items, the pair paid their way, and contrived to make both ends meet. Helena’s equipage was a donkey-cart or else shanks’ mare, Tom rode a rickety bicycle, and they were invariably spoken of as “those poor young Mahons.” All the same, they were by no means unhappy, and enjoyed excellent health and spirits, were fully employed from breakfast to supper, and had no time to meditate on their fallen fortunes. They were young and independent, they both loved animals, flowers, sport, and their own country.
“There is the baker’s cart, Tom!” said his sister, rising from her exertions in weeding a flower-bed in the front garden. “Isn’t it wicked to drive that poor horse!—he is dead lame in his near-fore.”
“Lame, I should think so!” assented Tom, as he looked over the hedge at a heavy red bread-cart, in whose shafts a powerful black horse hobbled painfully.
“Hullo!” he shouted. The man pulled up, though the Mahons were not customers. Kate was their baker.