Memory came back to Wally of a road perched above the lough, and of a little runabout car driven by a man in motor-goggles: and of the boatman’s confidences.
“Then you’re Sir John O’Neill?” he asked.
“Yes—the first part of it doesn’t matter. The line goes back a good way, but I’m the last of it. But the old house is rather jolly; I hope you will all come and see it as often as you can spare the time.”
The car swung off the road as he spoke, and through a great gateway where beautiful gates of wrought iron stood open between massive stone pillars. A little gabled lodge, with windows of diamond lattice-work, was just within: a pleasant-faced woman in pursuit of a fleeing mischievous child stopped, smiled, and dropped a curtsey, while the three-year-old atom she had been chasing bobbed down in ridiculous imitation, her elfish face breaking into smiles in its tangle of dark curls. John O’Neill smiled in return; and the car sped on smoothly, up a wide avenue lined with enormous beech-trees, arching and meeting overhead so that they seemed to be driving into a tunnel of perfect green. Between their mighty trunks Wally caught glimpses of a wide park, where little black Kerry cattle grazed.
For over a mile the avenue ran its winding way through the park. Then the trees ceased, and they came out into a clear space of terraced lawn, blazing with flower-beds, and sloping down to a lake fringed with ornamental plants, and dotted with many-coloured water-lilies, among which paddled lazily some curious waterfowl which Wally had never seen. Beyond the lawn stood a long grey house; a house of old grey stone, of many gables, clad in ivy and Virginia creeper. Even to the Australian boy’s eyes it was mellow with the dignity of centuries. It was not imposing or majestic, like the old houses he had seen in England; but about it hovered an atmosphere of high breeding and of quiet peace: a house of memories, tranquil in its beauty and in its dreams.
The car came to rest gently beside a stone step, and in an instant a white-haired old butler was at the door, offering his arm to his master. John O’Neill got out slowly, and limped up the steps to the great doorway, where an Irish wolf-hound stood, looking at him with liquid eyes of welcome.
“I say—what a jolly dog!” Wally uttered.
“Yes, he’s rather a nice old chap,” said his host. “Shake hands, Lomair”; and the big dog put a paw gravely into Wally’s hand. He followed his master into the house.
The great square hall was panelled with old oak, almost black in the subdued light within. A staircase, with wide, shallow steps, wound its way in a long curve to a gallery overhead: and at the far end, an enormous fireplace was filled with evergreens. Eastern rugs lay on the polished oaken floor; in one corner a stand of flowering plants made a sheet of colour. On the walls were splendid heads—deer of many kinds, markhor, ibex, koodoo, and two heads with enormous spreading antlers, stretching, from tip to tip, fully eleven feet. They drew an exclamation from Wally.
“They belonged to the old Irish elk,” O’Neill explained. “He must have been a pretty big fellow; a pity civilization proved too much for him. He has been extinct thousands of years.”