With a far, fixed gaze and her mind in a state of internal combustion, she seemed a thousand miles away from Phyl and her affairs, fighting the battles of Ireland.
Phyl gathered the impression that, if she went to America Mrs. Hennessey would grieve less over the fact that she (Phyl) was leaving Merrion Square, than over the fact that she was leaving Dublin. She escaped, carrying this impression with her, went upstairs, dressed, and then started off for Mr. Hennessey’s office.
It was a cold, bright day and Dublin looked almost cheerful in the sunlight.
The lawyer looked surprised when she was shown into his private room; then, when she had told him her business, he fumbled amongst the papers on his desk and produced a letter.
“This is from Pinckney,” said he. “It came by the same post as yours, only it was directed to the office. It’s the same story, too. He wants you to go over.”
“I’ve been thinking over the whole business,” said Phyl, “and I feel I ought to go.”
“Aren’t you happy in Dublin?” asked he.
“M’yes,” answered the other. “But, you see—at least, I’m as happy as I suppose I’ll be anywhere, only they are my people and I feel I ought to go to them. It’s very lonely to have no people of one’s own. You and Mrs. Hennessey have been very kind to me, and I shall always be grateful, but—”
“But we aren’t your own flesh and blood. You’re right. Well, there it is. We’ll be sorry to lose you, but, maybe, though you haven’t much experience of the world, you’ve hit the nail on the head. We aren’t your flesh and blood, and though the Pinckneys aren’t much more to you, still, one drop of blood makes all the difference in the world. Then again, you’re a cut above us; we’re quite simple people, but the Berknowles were always in the Castle set and a long chalk above the Hennesseys. I was saying that to Norah only last night when I was reading the account of the big party at the Viceregal Lodge and the names of all the people that were there, and I said to her, ‘Phyl ought to be going to parties like that by and by when she grows older, and we can’t do much for her in that way,’ and off she goes in a temper. ‘Who’s the Aberdeens?’ says she. ‘A lot of English without an Irish feather in their tails, and he opening the doors to visitors in his dressing gown—Castle,’ she says, ‘it’s little Castle there’ll be when we have a Parliament sitting in Dublin.’”
“I don’t want to go to parties at the Viceregal Lodge,” said Phyl, flushing to think of what a snob she had been when only a few days back she had criticised the Hennesseys and their set in her own mind. These honest, straightforward good people were not snobs, whatever else they might be, and if her desire for America had been prompted solely by the desire to escape from the social conditions that environed her friends, she would now have smothered it and stamped on it. But the call from Charleston that had come across the water to her was an influence far more potent than that. That call from the country where her mother had been born and where her mother’s people had always lived had more in it than the voices that carried the message.