Dear Shawn! How glad she was that she was so strong and healthy and had such good spirits always, so as to be able to cheer and comfort him. She smiled to herself, remembering how some of her friends had pitied her because she must always be uplifting his mood. She had never wearied nor found it an irksome effort. A serious sad thought came to her; when the hour of the inevitable parting came she prayed it might be her lot to be left desolate rather than his.
She looked at her little watch, a delicate French thing, with a tiny painted picture on the back framed within pearls ending in a true-lovers'-knot, one of Shawn's many gifts. Six o'clock. It was time Shawn was home. She was very glad he had not ridden Mustapha, as he had wanted to. Patsy Kenny had dissuaded him. Terry must have stayed on at Inch for tea. It had been a cold bright day, and it must be turning to frost, for the fire was burning so redly. The cold was on the floor too, for the little dogs had left their baskets and taken to the chairs, a thing supposed to be strictly forbidden, although as a matter of fact Chloë and Cupid were always cheerfully disobedient. She wished Shawn was home. He had gone up the mountains to a shooting-lodge, where was a party of men gathered to shoot red deer. He had been out overnight and he would be very tired when he came home after a long drive on an outside car. Well, after all, it was better than Mustapha. Patsy's unwillingness to see Sir Shawn go out on Mustapha had infected her, little nervous as she was where horse-flesh was concerned.
She comforted herself. It was not like those dreadful days when there had been trouble with the tenants, and she had sat in this very room, listening in anguish for the sound of the horse's hoofs coming fast. Terry had been away at his preparatory school then. She had never told any one her terrors. Perhaps some of the servants had guessed them. She remembered the night of the Big Wind, when Shawn had been out, and the house had shaken in the first onslaught of the hurricane, before he came.
There was a butler's pantry close to the drawing-room door which had always an open window. She had often stolen in there in the dark to listen for the sound of the mare's trot. Fatima had been Shawn's favourite mount in those days, and no one could mistake the sound of her delicate feet in the distance. There, with her ear to the night, Mary O'Gara had listened and listened, her heart thumping so fast sometimes that she could not be sure if she heard the horse's hoofs. Only, as she used to say joyously afterwards, there was really no mistaking Fatima's trot when she was coming.
Once, Rafferty, the old butler, who was dead now, had opened the pantry door suddenly, and had all but let the tray of Waterford glass he was carrying fall, for the fright she had given him.
She remembered how on that night of the Big Wind, when her terror was at its worst. Patsy Kenny had asked to see her about something or other; how she had gone into the office to talk to him; how he had talked gently about Fatima, how sure-footed she was and how wise, and how little likely to be frightened as long as she was carrying her master. He had wandered off into simple homely talk, about the supply of turf, how the fair had gone, the price the people were getting for their beasts; now and again leaving off to say, when the moan of the wind came and the house shook: "Glory be to God, it's goin' to be a wild night, so it is!" Or "That was a smart little clap o' win'. It's a great blessin' to be on dry land to-night."
Patsy's way with the dumb beasts was well known; and Lady O'Gara had said afterwards, when she had her husband warm and dry by the fire, and she too happy, being relieved of her terrors, to mind the storm which had not yet reached anything like its height, that Patsy had soothed her as though she were a nervous horse.
Shawn had been younger and stronger then. He had laughed at her fears and had insisted on making a night of it, keeping a roaring fire and lamplight all through the terrifying din, while the servants in the kitchen said their Rosary and prayed for the night to be over. Sometime in the wild late dawn, when the wind was subsiding, Shawn had made her go to bed, saying he would follow. But he had not come for a long time, and she had dropped asleep and wakened to his weary face beside her bed, and to hear him saying that, thank God, they had got out the horses, although the stables were all but in ruins.
As she thought over these things the fulness of her love for her husband swept her heart like a Springtide. It was sweet yet poignant, for she had the pity beyond all telling in her love for Shawn. Suddenly she began to be a little in dread because she had been going against what she knew were his wishes. Would he mind very much if Terry's choice were Stella and not Eileen? She hoped he would not—at first. Later on, when he knew little Stella better, with her soft appealing ways, he would be glad. Eileen would never be such a dear little daughter. Stella had not those ardent eyes for nothing.
Her disinclination to let the winds of heaven blow too roughly on the men she loved, for whom she had always the maternal pity, brought a sharp revulsion of feeling. After all, the world was for the young. They had never refused Terry anything. In a detached way the father was very fond of his boy. He was not necessary to him. No one was that except his wife: but he had been a kind, indulgent father. Why should not Terry wait a little till his father came to know Stella better? Things would be all right then. Shawn had seemed to avoid Stella, perhaps because he avoided Mrs. Comerford.