I drifted away by myself to see how well the house would suit Barbara. The lake was like a sheet of glass, in a frame of dense green wood, hanging from the gardens by the red ribands of the fuchsia hedges. Here and there I saw thin spirals of smoke: it was turf smoke, though I could not smell it. From Castlemaine, in the west, the air blew soft and salt from the Atlantic. I cursed the malevolence of man that disturbed such peace and desecrated such beauty. I cursed, too, the fate that had sent me to an English school, because there was none good enough in Ireland, so robbing me of one home without giving me another.
“I’m a married man,” I told my agent, “since last I was here. I don’t care to bring my wife over till things are more settled.”
That, he assured me regretfully, was what every one said; but I should be comfortable enough if I did not make trouble. He was himself an avowed republican, not from any hostility to the king, whom he admired, nor from devotion to the forms and spirit of republicanism: he wanted peace; and, whether Sinn Fein would achieve it or not, no other party had succeeded. Sinn Fein was feared, if not respected; and the English only remembered Ireland when they were frightened. If Redmond and his lot had put the fear of God into the English one half as well as the others, they would be lords and ministers and the rest now, like Mr. Law and the man who prosecuted Roger Casement. My agent disapproved of Sir Edward Carson’s politics but admired him as the Irishman who had put more fear of God into the English than any one since Parnell.
The one sentimental relaxation that this hard-headed, soft-spoken man allowed himself was that Parnell was still alive and would come back to lead Ireland.
“If I could find a purchaser . . .” I began.
“An Englishman? The house would be burnt over your honour’s head if the whisper of it ran round!”
“Then,” I said, “I may as well be getting back to London.”
My agent protested with touching fervour, but I was uneasy at being separated from Barbara. Two days after I landed at Kingston, she telegraphed: “Missing you dreadfully hope you arrived safely and are coming back immediately all my love bless you”; and, if her language seemed still a trifle neurotic, she had almost recovered her tranquillity by the time she wrote to describe the Whitsuntide party at Croxton Hall. The week-end had been uneventful; and, though Eric Lane was in the house, I could not read any embarrassment between the lines that described their meeting. The nervous excitability, however, of which I had seen too much evidence in London, betrayed itself once in a comment on a rumour: “You remember the Miss Maitland you met with the O’Ranes? She’s here. A pretty little thing! Obviously in love with Eric. I’d give anything to see him happily married, but I hope he’s not serious about this child. She’s too hopelessly young, she’d send him mad in a week. It’ll be too tragic if he lets another woman make a mess of his life.” The next day Barbara telegraphed again, telling me once more how much I was being missed and offering to join me at Lake House.
I returned to London as soon as I had finished my business and was met at Euston by a shivering form in a scarlet tea-gown and an ermine cloak.
“You crazy child, you’ll give yourself pneumonia!,” I cried as I hurried her into the car through a double line of smiling porters.