She called through the bars and Patsy Kenny came to open for her. Seeing him she sighed. More complications. Her mind was too weary to tackle the matter of Patsy's unfortunate attachment to Susan Horridge. Not that she doubted Patsy. She had a queer confidence that Patsy would not hurt the woman he loved. People would talk, were talking in all probability. What a world it was! What a world!
Of late Patsy had refrained from visiting the South lodge so far as she knew. Sir Shawn had said to her only a day or two before that Patsy had taken up the fiddle again—Patsy was a great fiddler—that he could hear him playing his old tunes night after night. There had been an interval during which the fiddle had been silent. She thought that, with the simple craft of his class, Patsy might have played the fiddle to let possible gossips know that he was at home in the solitude which in the old times before Susan came he had never seemed to find solitary.
"Is that you, m'lady?" said Patsy. "The dark was near comin' up wid ye. I'd like if you'd the time you'd come in and see Susan. She's frightened like in herself an' she won't listen to rayson."
"Why, what's the matter?" asked Lady O'Gara, turning towards the lodge, while Patsy re-padlocked the gate. She did not wait for his answer, which was slow of coming. Patsy was always deliberate.
In the quiet and cheerful interior of the lodge she found a terrified Susan. Michael lay on the hearth-rug before a bright fire, Georgie sat by the white, well-scrubbed table, his cheek on his hand, the lamplight on his pale fine hair, watching his mother anxiously; the lesson book on top of a pile of others, was plainly forgotten.
Susan seemed desperately frightened. She got out the reason why at last, with some help from Patsy Kenny. She shook as she told the tale. She had been washing, outside the lodge, earlier in the day, fortunately out of view of the gate, when some one had shaken it and cursed at finding it locked. Susan had seen his hand, a coarse hairy hand, thrust through the gate in an attempt to force the lock. The man, whoever he was, had gone on his way, seeing the futility of trying to enter by the strongly padlocked gate. Susan had locked herself in the lodge till Georgie had come home from school, when the two of them had fled to Patsy Kenny for protection.
"The poor girl will have it that Baker has come back," said Patsy, scratching his head. "She says she knew his voice an' the wicked-looking hand of him. If it was to be him itself—but I had the Master's word for it he had gone to America—he wouldn't know she was here. I keep on tellin' her that, but she won't listen."
Lady O'Gara had a passing wonder about Shawn's having known that Susan's husband was gone to America—she had not associated the person who had saved Shawn from accident at Ashbridge Park with Susan's graceless husband.
"He might find out by asking questions," said Susan. "He's only got to ask. There's many a one to tell him."
"I was goin' to your Ladyship," said Patsy. "The two frightened things can't be left their lone in this little place. The heart would jump out of her. Can't I see it flutterin' there in her side like a bird caught in your hand."