Love of Brothers Part 21

"My dear, what is it?" she asked in dismay.

"Oh, Cousin Mary--you know that story Major Evelyn told us about Robin Gillespie. Well--isn't it awful?" she broke into sobbing. "I wouldn't listen to him when he asked me to be engaged to him. He said he knew he was a poor ... poor ... beggar, but ... with that to spur him on ...

he could do anything. I was ... horrid. I told him to ask ... Brigid.

He said it wasn't Brigid he wanted ... it was me. He got ... angry at last ... and now... I know I loved him ... all the time."

Lady O'Gara troubled as she was, could not refrain from smiling, but as Eileen's tears apparently had overtaken her during the process of brus.h.i.+ng her hair, and the long mantle of greenish grey, silver-gold hair hung about her face, Lady O'Gara's smile pa.s.sed unnoticed.

"Do you think ... it would seem ... very forward of me to write to him?" asked Eileen; and then looked from the curtain of her hair with wet eyes but a new hopefulness.

"I should ask Brigid. He may have acted on your advice."

"Oh, but he hadn't time," said Eileen, whose strong point was not humour. "He went away at once, broken-hearted. Besides, I should have known if he had made any advance to Brigid. Cousin Mary, _would_ you mind very much if I went home for a little visit? I know that I have only just come back--but still..."

"Certainly not, Eileen." Lady O'Gara had a feeling that just at present Eileen might be a jarring element. "Make your own arrangements, my dear. I am very glad if it will make you happier."

"Oh, _thank_ you," said Eileen, with effusion. "You are always so sympathetic and understanding, darling Cousin Mary. You see, if Robin has come back as Major Evelyn says, he might be with his people just at this moment."

CHAPTER XVI

THE DEAD HAND

Terry came to his mother a week later with a look in his face which made her want to take his young head in her arms and weep over it. A shadow had fallen on his comely youth. He looked "grumpy," as he had been accustomed to look in his darling childhood when he was about to have a croupy attack, at which times the sense of injury against all the world had been part humorous, whole poignant, to his mother's mind.

"What is it, darling?" she asked, although she knew before he spoke what was the matter.

"I have been talking to Father," he broke out. "Mother, it is intolerable. He says he will not consent to my engagement to Stella.

As though he or anybody could prevent it."

"You have not quarrelled?" she asked in quick alarm, anxious for both her men.

He laughed angrily.

"Oh, we didn't shout at each other, if that is what you mean. He told me he would never consent to my engagement. Why? In the name of Heaven why? I asked him that and he wouldn't answer me. He told me to come to you. What bee has he got in his bonnet? I should have thought--Stella is a sort of little sister of Terence Comerford, from whom I am called, whose death I have always understood shadowed Father's life. Oh, I know you've been throwing cold water on me, leading me up to this. I knew when you would not let me shout it out that first night, as I wanted to, before all the world. Father said something about Eileen. Ridiculous! We have never thought of each other. As a matter of fact she has a young man of her own. I always knew he wanted me to marry Eileen. As though I ever could have married any one but Stella!"

She did not at all resent her husband's laying the burden of comfort upon her. He had always left Terry to her.

She looked at his young angry face. He was ramping up and down the little boudoir like an animal in a cage. He was adorably young and she loved him. What was she to say?

"I'm not a child," Terry went on. "Things can't stand like this, as Father expects them to, apparently. One doesn't throw over a girl one loves better than life for no reason at all, and Father will give none except that the marriage is unsuitable. How can it be unsuitable except that I am so unworthy of her? Mother"--he stopped suddenly in his pacing to and fro--"you can do anything with Father. Make him see sense. You know my whole happiness depends on this--and hers. It has gone deep with me."

Suddenly he turned away, and putting his two arms on the mantelpiece he laid down his face upon them.

She went to him and stroked his hair softly. He looked up at her and his eyes were miserable, and so young.

"Darling," he said, "you have always been good to me. Can't you talk Father over? I am going away to-morrow. If he persists in this insanity I shall chuck my commission, go off to Canada and try to make a home there for Stella."

"Terry!" The name was wrung from her like a cry.

"You see I couldn't stay, darling, hanging round in the hope that Father might change his mind. I couldn't stick being engaged and not engaged. I should hate to leave you, of course, darling, but then you wouldn't come. You'd never leave Father. He says his decision is final, but he gives me no reason for it. It is the maddest way of treating a man I ever heard. What does he mean by it?"

"He was always a very indulgent father, Terry. If he refuses you a thing you desire so much he must have a good reason."

She felt the feebleness of her plea even before he turned and looked at her.

"That is really foolish, Mother," he said. "I beg your pardon if I am rude. I'm not a child, to be kept in the dark and told that my elders know what is best for me. Do you know his reasons?"

She had been dreading the question, yet she was unprepared with an answer.

"I see you do," he went on grimly. "But of course you won't tell me, if Father will not, though he sent me to you."

The poor lady was profoundly wretched. Tears were not far off. She would not for the world have wept before the boy. He had enough to bear without her tears.

"Where is your father?" she asked.

"He is in his office. You will speak to him? You angel! Tell him how impossible it is that Stella and I could give up each other. You love her, Mother, don't you? The bird-like thing! I remember you said at first that she was like a bird. She has flown into my heart and I cannot turn her out. Say..."

"I will say all I Can, Terry. Do you feel fit to go back to the others?"

"They don't want me. They are quite happy knocking about the billiard-b.a.l.l.s. Evelyn would know, and I don't think I could stand little Earnshaw's chaffing ways."

Boyishly he looked at himself in the gla.s.s. He had rumpled his hair out of its usual order. There was a bright colour in his cheeks. He looked brilliantly handsome. What he said was:

"Lord, what an outsider I look!"

She left him there and went off to look for her husband. Her heart was very heavy. Already she knew that the compromise she had to suggest would be received with scorn. It was a weak womanly compromise, just the kind of thing a man will put his foot on and squelch utterly.

He turned round as she came in.

"Well, Mary," he said. "I've been having a very unpleasant discussion with Terry. It ended where it began. He would not listen to me."

She came and stood behind his chair. The fire was low in the grate.

There was the intolerable smell of a smoking lamp in the room. The reading-lamp on the table was flaring. She turned it down and replenished the fire. The discomfort of it all--the room felt cold and dismal--depressed her further.

"The poor boy!" she said. "What are we to do, Shawn? You can't expect him to give up Stella without any explanation. He would be a poor creature if he could--not your son or mine. Shawn, you will have to tell him. How could you leave it to me?"

"And if I do, what then?"

She shook her head. She did not know what then: or rather she did not wish to answer the question.

She was sitting on the arm of his chair. He leant his head against her wearily. In the gla.s.s above the chimney-piece, tilted towards them, she saw his face and was frightened. Were the purple shadows really there, or did she only imagine them?

"If such a story had been told to me about you, Mary," he asked, "do you suppose it would have made any difference? I would have said like an ancestor of mine:

"Has the pearl less whiteness Because of its birth?

Has the violet less brightness For growing near earth?