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Sara Seale
Maggy was young, alone in the world after her father's death,
untrained and too inexperienced to make much of a way in life;
although she had a job of sorts, as companion/dogsbody to a
tyrannical old lady, life did not seem to be holding out much of a
future for her. Garth Shelton, years older than Maggy, crippled and
embittered, was indifferent to anything that life might have in store
for him. All the same he was touched by young Maggy's plight - and
in a quixotic fit he proposed marriage to her as the one way in which
she could escape. And so began their strange life together - a
marriage that was no marriage, between two people who might yet
come to realise their growing feelings for each other, if only Maggy
could forget the one barrier to Garth's loving her - his former love,
the elusive and lovely Sabrina.
CHAPTER I
THE hour of relaxation was almost upon the Imperial Hotel. Lights
sprang up in the gaunt building; soon the residents would settle down
to their cocktails, their bridge, and music in the Palm Court. Along
the windy terrace overlooking the sea, only a few hardy spirits were
left. Old Colonel Lamb was already collecting his rugs and air
cushions, and Admiral Beading concluded the last of his breathing
exercises. A girl at the far end of the terrace lingered, her arms
resting on the stone parapet, staring motionless out to sea, and from
his wheelchair Garth Shelton watched her, wondering wearily what
she thought about as she gazed ahead, so still and for so long.
It was nearly dark, and she turned suddenly, with a suggestion of
guilt in her movements, and began to, walk back along the terrace.
"Good-night, Mr. Shelton," she said as she passed the wheelchair.
"Good-night, Maggy."
The soft, shoulder-length hair was whipped round her pale face by
the wind as she smiled at him shyly, and he wondered idly why she
always looked different at this hour of the day.
At the end of the terrace she met Doolan coming to wheel in his
master's chair.
"You're wanted, miss," he said, his long Irish upper lip pulled down
with more disapproval than usual.
"Oh, dear! It must be later than I thought," she said, and began to
hurry.
"Past six o'clock, and black as the inside of a cow it'll be this night,"
he grumbled, but Maggy had started to run.
The overheated rooms of the hotel seemed stifling after the raw cold
of the October evening. Maggy found herself waylaid by one
member of the staff after another, all with the same message.
"Mrs. Smythe-Gibson has been asking for you for the last twenty
minutes."
Borne upwards in the lift, she was surrounded by her own
disconcerting reflection in the mirror-lined compartment, and caught
her breath like a child. This was not Maggy, the paid companion,
who stared back at her under the bright lights. This was the Maggy
Mrs. Smythe-Gibson disliked. Hair wild and unconfined, eyes - the
clear untroubled eyes of the delicate- sighted - still bright with that
hour's release on the terrace.
"Second floor," chanted the lift-boy, and she scuttled through the
gates like a small scared animal.
The Imperial's appointments were very magnificent. Everywhere
luxury swamped the beholder. Carpets so thick that, they dragged at
the feet, central heating so hot that the air almost shimmered. The
food was superb, with special attention paid to the diets of the
clientele of a Spa hotel, and the service was excellent. Only the very
rich could afford to stay at the Imperial.
As she opened the bedroom door after a guilty knock, Maggy
thought, not for the first time, how well her employer fitted all this
glittering opulence.
Mrs. Smythe-Gibson was a massive woman in her middle fifties. Her
fat little fingers were loaded with jewels, and she was at that moment
fixing a diamond clip in the brassy waves of her too-golden hair. She
had just completed her elaborate evening make-up, and the dressingtable at which she sat was loaded with the formidable array of
cosmetics without which she never travelled. Vast pots of cream, cut-
glass bottles of lotion, six shades of powder, and all the attendant
array of rouge, lipsticks, mascara, eye-shadow, nail varnish in every
make and colour. It was a nightmare packing them up so that they
didn't break.
The diamond clip in place she leant forward to peer in the mirror and
pluck a hair from a mole with a pair of tweezers.
"Where have you been?" she demanded as soon as Maggy had shut
the door. "I've had the whole staff looking for you. You know
perfectly well that I need you at this hour."
"I was on the terrace," said Maggy. "I'm always on the terrace after
tea."
"Trying to scrape acquaintance with that Shelton man, I suppose."
Mrs. Smythe-Gibson turned round to look at her. The cold
protuberant eyes surveyed the girl calculatingly, and active dislike
came into them.
"What do you think you look like?" she said. "Hair all over the place,
and where are your glasses? I've told you time and again not to take
them off."
Maggy looked guilty.
"I only need them for reading," she protested. "And hardly for that
now. They said my sight would grow stronger as I grew older, and I
would probably be able to do without them altogether."
"Nonsense! That's just sheer vanity. Go and put them on. You know
you're always mislaying them otherwise, just when I require some
service. You'd think" - the petulant mouth turned down at the corners
- "I'd be entided to some consideration after all I've done for you. I
don't know what I pay you for, I'm sure, keeping you here in luxury
into the bargain. Was he there?"
"Was who there?" asked Maggy, bewildered.
"Mr. Shelton, of course. Don't be more half-witted than you need. Or
is it just girlish dissembling?"
"Oh - yes, he was there," said Maggy wearily.
"Did he speak?"
"Yes, he spoke."
"What did he say?"
"He said 'Good-night, Maggy,'"
Mrs. Smythe-Gibson's eyes narrowed.
"Oh, he said 'Good-night, Maggy,' did he?" she mimicked. "Are you
trying to be impertinent, my good girl?"
Maggy felt bewildered again.
"No," she said. "You asked me what he said, and that's all he said.
That's all he generally ever does say."
Mrs. Smythe-Gibson's heavily powdered face creased in a
contemptuous smile, and her ill-temper seemed suddenly to vanish.
"Poor man," she said complacently. "Such a sad thing, that accident.
They say he will never walk again, though I see no reason why that
should make him so disagreeable. I've asked him time and again to a
drink, but he always refuses. Such a distinguished-looking man, and
shell for a change. Or a little expedition - that man of his could lift
him into the car."
"He doesn't notice me," said Maggy. "He doesn't really notice
anyone."
Mrs. Smythe-Gibson glanced at her sharply, then compressed her
full, .rouged lips. Exasperating child! Maggy was in one of her vague
moods.
"Get me into my gown," she snapped, "and then go and do something
to your own appearance, for goodness' sake ! And remember your
glasses. At least if they're on your nose you won't lose them."
Maggy liked her bedroom. Certainly it was very small, being only the
dressing-room adjoining Mrs. Smythe-Gibson's suite and was not
originally intended for sleeping in. The furniture consisted mainly of
a vast masculine compactum and a fixed basin. The management had
added a small divan bed for Maggy, and she had to get out of bed to
turn out the light, but, as Mrs. Smythe-Gibson justly observed, why
pay extra for another room when she had booked a suite in any case?
Besides, the girl was at hand if she was wanted in the night, which
was often the case. Mrs. Smythe-Gibson, unable to sleep after a
heavy and too rich meal, required to be read to, massaged, or even
just a recipient for complaints.
But the hour before dinner, when Mrs. Smythe-Gibson had gone
down for her ritual of sherry, was different. Then the room was
Maggy's own. She could sing and talk to herself without fear of
interruption. She could even lock the door, a safeguard which she
didn't dare indulge in at night.
She kicked off her shoes, bounced happily on to the bed, and was
soon lost in a daydream, or rather a continuance of the daydreams she
had each evening on the terrace. She would imagine some miracle
that would release her from her present bondage; perhaps someone
would want to marry her or, better still, A kindly stranger would offer
her a new and impossibly congenial job, for Maggy as yet only
dreamed of marriage as a means to' freedom. She sighed. Mrs.
Smythe.-Gibson's paid companion had little chance of establishing a
personality of her own. True, there had been that nervous young man
with the stammer who had held her hand at Torquay last summer, but
that had only been because none of the other girls would look at him.
And there was the elderly colonel who pinched her behind, but he did
that to all women under forty, and Maggy had wanted to kick him.
But the; women were worse. They despised and made-use of you at
the same time, and they took advantage of your youth and your
position to work off their own disappointments and ill- temper.
Maggy thought she would like to work for a man. She was used to
men, for she had never known her mother, and her father had
occupied the whole of her affections and indeed the whole of her
short life.
The daydream, as it always did, slipped back into the past. She
imagined herself back in the big, ugly rectory on the north side of
London, with its sparsely furnished, draughty rooms and its air of
having collected all the fogs in London in its grey and smoky walls.
She supposed it must have been a depressing house, but she had
never found it so. Her father had a gift for happiness which enriched
the most uncongenial surroundings. There had never been much
money, for it was a poor living; the rectory had been far too big and
expensive to run, but it had a warmth quite independent of its many
discomforts. And there was Ellen, who had ruled them all, who
alternately scolded and petted, and who did battle with bills and
tradesmen and the practicalities of life which seemed for ever to
elude her unworldly master.
Ellen had come for the month when Maggy was born, and stayed on
to take charge of the distraught household after the death of the
baby's mother. The Crayles had been a devoted couple. Geoffrey
Crayle, although his sweetness never became embittered, never got
over his wife's death. In later years, he sometimes supposed he
should have married again for Maggy's sake, but he never did, and
Ellen stayed on and became part of their very bones.
Maggy blinked a little as she thought of Ellen now in another job and
as thoroughly uprooted as Maggy herself. She had fought that final
bout of influenza; with a valiance which never tired, and even when
pneumonia set in she had not despaired. But Geoffrey Crayle's
overworked nervous system had failed him at last.
"I'm sorry, Ellen," he had murmured apologetically, and died.
"What's the use!" cried Maggy angrily and aloud, and dug her heels
into the bed.
What was the use of dwelling on something that was so final and still
so recent? Think rather of those annual fortnights at the farm, of the
smells and tastes, intoxicating in their novelty, of the sweetness of
idle summer days with the frets of the parish far behind them and all
the green countryside for their mutual delectation. Then they would
stride the Sussex downs together or picnic in some quiet wood while
Geoffrey Crayle unfolded impossible plans for Maggy's future. She
never went to school. Her father taught her at home in his spare time.
Later she went out to classes, and three times a week to the College
of Music for piano lessons.
"We'll keep the school fees for later on," her father would say,
ruffling his daughter's soft brown hair. "Your music must come first,
Meg - and study abroad perhaps, when the time comes."
But even then, the young Maggy listening so ardently had known that
it would not be so. When the time came, the little store would be
gone, robbed little by little to help some needy parishioner or to pay a
forgotten bill. And so it was. After all the outstanding bills had been
paid, there was nothing in the world left.
She smiled as she thought of her father saying so often; "The
daughters of clergymen always end up as paid companions. Never
become a companion, Meg - it's not even respectable, for your spirit
is in subjection, not to God, but to Mammon. You are too pretty for
that. You'll marry - but not, I beg you, into the clergy!"
Well, here she was, that very thing he had abominated, and Mrs.
Smythe-Gibson was Mammon indeed. Useless, grasping, vain, all the
things Geoffrey Crayle had least tolerated in life, but what else,
thought Maggy, could she have done, at eighteen with no worldly
assets and little education? After an upbringing so sheltered, Maggy
had shivered in the cold wind of reality and thought herself lucky to
encounter Mrs. Smythe-Gibson.
Only Ellen had rebelled.
"It's never the life for you, Miss Maggy," she had stated. "I know her
sort, spending her days in the fleshpots of the world - a Jezebel if
ever I saw one. She'll use your youth for her own ends, catching the
men with your innocence, for her own left her in the cradle, I
shouldn't wonder. And if it isn't that way, then you'll be no better
than a ladies' maid and not as well used. Stop awhile with your old
Ellen till something else turns up. I have a few pounds saved."
Dear Ellen, how good she had been. But she had her own future to
think of and she was no longer young. It was a wrench parting from
Ellen, and even now, the anxious, disapproving letters still came
enquiring for her child's well-being. Maggy smiled a little ruefully.
Mrs. Smythe-Gibson's paid companion was not expected to notice
men, much less catch them. That was her own prerogative. But "no
better than a ladies' maid and not as well used," in that, at least, Ellen
had been right.
Maggy had been in Mrs Smythe-Gibson's employ for six months
now, during which time they had lived in as many hotels. At first she
had been too dazed with grief for her father to notice the encroaching
number of duties expected of her. In those early days, Mrs. SmytheGibson had employed a ladies' maid as well as a companion, but she
was shrewd enough to see very quickly that Maggy could easily fulfil
the functions of the two at half the salary. The maid was dismissed,
and Maggy, admitted to personal intimacies of which she had never
dreamed, knew her first contempt for human nature.
The careful building up of a lost youth seemed to her nauseating.
Squeezing that sagging body into corsets that were too small,
arranging the dyed hair, watching while cosmetics transformed the
puffy face into a travesty of what it had once been, revolted her. And
all for what? To hold dubious court for a few hours in the lounge of a
luxury hotel and listen to the insincere compliments of the few
sycophants which wealth always brought. In the security of her own
youth, Maggy despised them all, but she had learnt to hold her
tongue. Having been brought up in complete freedom of speech and
subject, she found it hard at first to efface her own personality. She
was too young and too sincere to guard her speech, but life was
teaching her already. She missed her father's companionship so badly
that it wasn't difficult to acquire reserve. She was perforce her own
companion and her only outlet lay in her private daydreams, those
fits of what Mrs. Smythe-Gibson acidly called mooning.
Now, with a start, she came out of her dreaming. The hands of her
father's shabby little travelling clock stood at five and twenty past
seven and Mrs. Smythe-Gibson liked to dine at half past in order to
have a long evening for bridge. Maggy leapt off the bed scolding
herself aloud. She would be late. Mrs. Smythe- Gibson would hurry
through the meal with outraged greed which would mean indigestion
and a wakeful night for Maggy.
She had meant to have a bath and make up stories while she
wallowed in the still new luxury of really hot water, but there was no
time now to do. more than wash her hands and face and change her
dress. She scrambled hastily into the only afternoon frock she
possessed and fastened it with her usual distaste. Mrs. SmytheGibson, who didn't expect her employee to dress for dinner, had
reluctantly bought it for her after surveying her scanty and still
adolescent wardrobe with disapproval. It was an ugly dress, beige, a
colour which didn't suit her, and it was a little too long and a little too
big. Maggy brushed out her hair and grinned at herself in the mirror.
At first it had been rather fun to get into the part of paid companion.
It was like donning a disguise and there were two Maggys; this one
and that other wind-blown Maggy on the terrace. One Maggy would
sometimes disconcertingly pop through the other and then Mrs.
Smythe-Gibson was displeased and had very early on ridiculed the
real Maggy into her proper place.
"But which is the real Maggy?" Maggy would sometimes demand of
herself, and after six months, she hardly knew.
She wasted another five minutes looking for the spectacles which her
employer rightly said were always missing unless they were on her
nose, and gave one last grimace at the glass.
"How Daddy would have laughed," she said, but as they sped down
the long-, sound-muted corridor to the stairs, she thought perhaps he
might have wept a little.
The next few days were wet and the terrace was deserted. Maggy
could no longer lean on the parapet and gaze out to sea, but she put
on a mackintosh and walked the length of the parade of the cheerless
little East Coast town and enjoyed the sensation of being nearly
solitary in the wind and the rain. Once she met the Admiral striding
along as if he were pacing the quarter-deck, but for the most part the
residents of the Imperial Hotel were snug in their central heating and
their bridge. The Admiral didn't recognise her, and they passed each
other without greeting.
Maggy thought of her fellow guests and wondered if they ever
discussed anything else than their health and their bridge postmortems. There were very few young people staying at the Imperial.
The season was over, and the wealthy hypochondriacs were dug in
for the winter. Maggy wondered how long Mrs. Smythe-Gibson
would stay, and supposed it would be until she had the usual quarrel
with the management which ended all their sojourns as Mrs. SmytheGibson grew weary of her surroundings. Maggy reflected that it was
only too easy to become bored and quarrelsome in such an
atmosphere. They all knew too much about each other to remain
normal. Sudden friendships, and sudden slights bred in that hot-house
air. Colonel Lamb would consider his gout of far more importance
than the General's heart, old Mrs. Danvers felt offended that she was
never included in dear Mrs. Smythe-Gibson's little parties, and Lady
Wing who, like Mrs. Smythe-Gibson, was there to slim, but who,
unlike her, rigorously stuck to a starvation diet, held in consequence
a jaundiced view of everyone.
Only Mr. Shelton managed to hold himself aloof, and that was
scarcely good management but sheer indifference. He appeared for
lunch, propelling himself skilfully in his wheelchair to his table in the
corner, but he never stopped in the .lounge, and acknowledged the
daily greetings of his fellow guests. None of them had got further
than passing comments on the weather, and Colonel Lamb invariably
remarked after the retreating chair: "Uncouth sort of feller, what?"
"And another thing. Mr. Shelton went through the lounge in his chair,
and that gushing Fitzjones woman fawned all over him and he froze
her, my dear - absolutely withered her up, and then bowed to me
quite graciously as he went out. After all, he must be half her age,
silly woman."
"But Mr. Shelton must be getting on," said Maggy, surprised as she
often was into rash remarks on the subject of ages. Mrs. SmytheGibson's age values were so odd.
"Do you call the forties getting on?" her employer said rather sharply,
then smiled forgivingly. "Yes, well, to the young and callow I
suppose it must seem so. But let me tell you, Maggy, no man
amounts to anything before he's forty, though Mr. Shelton might be
any age. It's difficult to tell when one never sees him move."
Maggy appreciated the shrewdness of this. It was the body far more
than the face which gave the clue to age. She looked at the pink,
slack flesh under her manipulating fingers and thought: You poor
silly thing. As silly as Mrs. Fitzjones in your way, thinking every
masculine politeness a confession of admiration. But there was no
compassion in her judgment. You didn't pity the Mrs. SmytheGibsons of this world. Their skins were as thick as the layers of
foundation cream which covered their faces.
On the third rainy evening, Maggy escaped a little earlier than usual.
The wind had dropped and the rain drifted across the parade in a thin
grey mist from the sea. She met no one until she turned back towards
the town again, and reflected with surprise that no one ever seemed
to venture out if it was wet. She supposed it wasn't Very inviting
unless you had been cooped up all day in a hot hotel, and was
surprised when she saw Garth Shelton's wheelchair moving slowly
towards her over the shiny asphalt.
He was alone, a tarpaulin cover across his knees, a dripping felt hat
pulled well down to meet the upturned collar of his burberry. It was
so unusual to see him out without the attendant Doolan that for a
moment Maggy hesitated. Then she said good evening and stood
awkwardly in his path. She could tell by the way his eyes focused
vaguely on her that he had been quite unaware of her and was
instantly sorry she had spoken to him.
"Hullo!" he said, and added gravely: "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"
Maggy didn't recognise the quotation and only thought he seemed
odd - happier somehow, even a little pleased to see her.
"I hope it's not running down your neck," she said seriously. "I mean,
it does, I find, when one sits and doesn't walk - the rain." She stopped
abruptly, wondering if that had been tactless.
"Yes, it does, now you come to mention it," he said. "I think I'll turn
back."
"Would you like " she began shyly, "I mean I could help push if
you're tired."
"Thank you," he said unemotionally. "Just that bit into the hotel
grounds would be a help."
He turned his chair with a quick twist and Maggy fell into step beside
him.
"So we've both escaped," he remarked suddenly.
"You, too?" she asked, surprised.
His voice hardened.
"No, there's no real escape for me. But I like to be free of Doolan for
a change."
"Yes, of course," said Maggy, and was silent.
She suddenly longed to ask him if it was true he would never walk
again, why he was here in this dreary East Coast spa when he could
be safe from prying eyes in that unreal-sounding Irish castle. But
these things one could not ask, one couldn't even think them for fear
of intruding on his privacy. '
They had passed the row of bathing huts, dismal in the rain and their
winter solitude, before he spoke again.
"What makes you work for that old woman?" he asked unexpectedly.
His voice had a rather attractive harshness as if he were unused to
conversation.
"It was. my first job," Maggy said and added naively: "You haven't
really much choice of jobs when you're quite untrained for anything,
you know."
"I suppose not," he said indifferently, and appeared to lose interest.
They passed the smaller hotels. The Grand with its neat window
boxes, the Majestic, its name blazing in neon lights like a picture
palace, and wedged between them, those two prim private residential
establishments, Beach Towers and Sea View.
Mr. Shelton seemed to be tiring, and Maggy put a tentative hand on
the back of the chair and began pushing. He didn't appear to notice
and they continued in silence until the imposing facade of the
Imperial loomed through the dusk. Maggy found herself wondering
foolishly whether Mr. Shelton had a wife, what she would say to a
semi-paralysed man getting soaked in the rain, and why she wasn't
"I was well looked after," his master said, and his harsh, rather
ironical tones made Mrs. Smythe-Gibson and her feminine bridge
four look up simultaneously and stare at the little party crossing the
lounge. "Good-night, Maggy, and thank you for your escort," he said
clearly and courteously, and disregarding everyone else, propelled his
chair with Doolan's help into the waiting lift.
CHAPTER II
WHETHER it was a case of damp stockings or not, the fact was
abundantly clear the next morning that Maggy had caught a cold.
"It all goes to show," Mrs. Smythe-Gibson stormed. "Sneaking out in
the rain like any little shop girl to pick up a man. I would say it
serves you right, but I am the one to suffer. Sniffing and sneezing all
over me and not content till you've passed your horrid germs on to
me. Why on earth I keep you, God knows - you're just plain
inefficient."
Maggy was tempted to reply: "Because nobody else will stay with
you longer than six weeks and you know it." But she contented
herself with saying she was sorry about the cold, but she didn't think
it was necessarily a mark of inefficiency. A cold was no respecter of
persons.
"Don't answer back," her employer snapped, and her bulging blue
eyes were as hard as marbles. "Your head's been turned, that's what it
is, my good girl. But don't think for a moment because you forced
yourself on a helpless man "
There was plenty more in the same vein. Maggy had heard it already
for half the night when in all probability the cold germs, assisted by
much broken sleep, were doing their worst.
"Don't think," Mrs. Smythe-Gibson finished, "that you can retire to
your bed and be waited on hand and foot. Use plenty of Vapex and
don't breathe all over me. I've plenty of jobs for you today."
The weather was fine again, and after a day in the overheated hotel,
Maggy longed to go out on the terrace for some fresh air, but Mrs.
Smythe-Gibson vetoed that.
"You'd better stay there till you're cured," she said ungraciously. "I'll
get no sense out of you in this state. Most inconsiderate, I call it,
wasting my time and my money, to say nothing of keeping me awake
at night."
So Maggy went gratefully to bed, conscious as the evening wore on
of a rising temperature and aching limbs. In the morning Mrs.
Smythe-Gibson, fearful now that she was perhaps harbouring fever in
her bosom, summoned the hotel doctor, insisting on an examination
herself before he saw Maggy.
"These girls ... all alike ... after all I've done for her... ingratitude ...
inconsiderate .. overtaxing my strength ..." The spate of words
continued all through the examination.
Doctor Mackinnon was a shrewd, plain-speaking little Scotsman. He
disliked Mrs. Smythe-Gibson rather more than the rest of his
hypochondriacal patients and was sorry for any employee of hers. He
had had very little to do with Maggy, and until he saw her, flushed
and tousle-headed in her narrow bed, hadn't realised how young she
was. He gave her a thorough overhaul, and asked her several
searching and unexpected questions.
"You cart set your mind at rest as to 'flu," he told Mrs. SmytheGibson dryly. "She has a feverish cold that needs watching, and she's
run down and wants plenty of rest. She'd best stay where she is for
several days. The child's starved."
"Starved!" shrieked Mrs. Smythe-Gibson. "My dear doctor, the girl
lives as I do. The best of everything and as much food as she can eat.
If she's been suggesting -"
"I wasn't speaking of the body," he said shortly. "She's starved
emotionally. She misses her father and hotels are no sort of life for a
young girl."
"If you're trying to imply that Maggy receives no kindness, all I can
say is -"
"Madam, the implication is yours," said the doctor, his bushy, sandy
eyebrows twitching with a trick they had when he was roused to any
sort of emotion. "Leave her severely alone. I'll be looking in this
evening and every day until she's well. Good morning to you."
"Well!" exclaimed Mrs. Smythe-Gibson, but because she had seldom
in her life been bullied by any man, she obeyed him.
The next few days were luxurious for Maggy. When the fever abated,
and the cold settled down to its normal stages of recovery,' she was
able to lie in blissful solitude, sleeping and daydreaming by turns.
She came to like very much the blunt little doctor who visited her
regularly and often stayed to chat. On his third visit he brought her a
book.
"It belongs to another patient of mine - Mr. Shelton. I told him you
were sick and he thought you might like something to read."
"Oh!" Maggy was surprised. Garth Shelton hadn't seemed to her the
sort of person who would bother himself about his fellow guests.
When Mackinnon had gone she examined the book with interest. It
was an old edition of The Wind in the Willows and on the fly-leaf was
written in a charming, decorative hand the one word, "Sabrina."
Her/imagination was immediately stirred. What a lovely name. Who
was Sabrina - his wife, his daughter? The handwriting matched the
name, graceful, delicate. Who had written it? Or was it perhaps Mr.
Shelton's own writing in a book he had Once given away? But the
next day he sent up another book, and in it was his own name "G.M.
Shelton, Castle Floyne," and a date written in a small, neat, and
obviously masculine hand. Sabrina had inscribed her own name.
"It's kind of him," Maggy told the doctor. "Will you thank him very
much. I - I feel awfully sorry for Mr. Shelton. It must be terrible to be
paralysed."
"There are worse things," said Mackinnon dryly. "He's not sorry for
himself, I'll say that for him. Just indifferent, and perhaps that's
worse."
"Is it true he'll never recover?" Maggy asked shyly. She felt she
shouldn't be discussing someone who so plainly evaded curiosity.
The doctor shrugged.
"He's been to some of the best men in the country, I believe, and they
all tell him the same thing. An operation would be dangerous and
unless there is a real incentive to live on the part of the patient, few
surgeons would risk it."
Maggy's eyes opened wide.
"But doesn't he want to get better?" she asked in an awed voice.
The doctor shrugged again.
"Shock is a strange thing," he said. "Perhaps in a little while, when he
is stronger - but at present I should say he is a man with no interest in
the future whatever."
"How awful!" said Maggy, and sounded really shocked.
Mackinnon smiled reluctantly. He liked Maggy. She reminded him of
his own fifteen-year-old daughter at school in Bournemouth.
"Yes, it must be difficult for the young to understand a state of mind
.like that, but I think in his case there may have been other troubles."
Maggy didn't know why she had a swift mental picture of the name
Sabrina, written in flowing, graceful letters.
"What happens in a case like that?" she asked with pity. "I mean,
what happens to cause permanent paralysis and why can't it be
cured?"
The doctor's eyebrows twitched violently.
"It can be cured - that is, in certain cases," he said. "What happens is
this. Say the patient is thrown from a horse, as was the case with
Shelton, X-ray examination shows broken ribs with perforation and
collapse of one lung, and further examination suggests a clot of blood
pressing "on the spinal canal. The only treatment to save the legs
from permanent paralysis is an operation, but since the chest
condition is extremely dangerous, it's a risk that Could only be taken
at the patient's own desire."
"I see." Maggy's smooth forehead wrinkled with distress. "And
doesn't he really care enough? I mean, wouldn't it be better to chance
dying than be a cripple for life?"
Mackinnon rubbed his nose thoughtfully.
"I don't know, Maggy," he said. "You and I would think so, but then
we have our health and strength, and no mental abnormalities from
shock. Shelton, I honestly believe, is a mail with no interest in
whether he lives or dies, and if he dreads life in a wheelchair he gives
no sign. I think at present part of his will, his desire to be cured or
what you will, is as paralysed as his legs. It's quite a common form
that shock takes at first. Personally, I think he'd do better in his own
home and country than trapesing around these depressing English
health resorts."
Maggy sent back Mr. Shelton's books by the doctor as soon as she
finished them, but she kept The Wind in the Willows to return herself,
partly for the charm of reading and re-reading the story which had
been one of her father's favourites, and partly because the name on
the fly-leaf held a queer kind of intimacy with which she was loth to
part.
All too soon, once she was out of bed again, Mrs. Smythe- Gibson
demanded a return to duty, but on the first sunny afternoon,
Mackinnon ordered her to wrap up well and sit on the terrace until
tea-time.
The terrace was well occupied today. Maggy saw the General and
Mrs. Fitzjones discussing their symptoms in cosy isolation while the
Admiral and Colonel Lamb dozed in their deck chairs; Lady Wing's
"Well -" she glanced down the terrace to look for an empty chair, "Dr. Mackinnon said I was to sit in the sun."
"There's a chair here," he said briefly.
Maggy sat down beside him, feeling rather uncomfortable. She didn't
like to pull the chair further away, but at the same time she was sure
he wanted to be left alone. She snuggled down into the collar of her
coat and kept very still.
But apparently he wanted' to talk.
"Our friend the doctor seems to have taken a fancy to you," he
remarked. "He told me quite a lot about you on his various visits."
"Oh, did he?" said Maggy, surprised. "He's very kind, isn't he?"
"Why do you work for that old woman?" He had asked her that
before, and he sounded impatient.
"Well, you see." She tried to explain, conscious of the difficulty of
making things clear to someone who had obviously never been faced
with the same situation. "I- wasn't trained for anything. I was
educated at home which meant no exams, and you'd be surprised how
the silliest job these days seems to require a good G.C.E. Secreterial
courses and things like that need money for training, and when
Daddy died there wasn't any."
Garth Shelton frowned.
"But had he made no sort of provision?"
"He had in a kind of a way. I was going abroad to study music when I
was older, but I knew I never would, really. Daddy was terribly
generous. He gave everything away and then forgot he had."
She didn't see him again for - several days. Mrs. Smythe- Gibson
made up for the wasted time of Maggy's days in bed by keeping her
hard at any conceivable job she could think of, and on the few
occasions on which she was able to escape from the hotel, she
avoided the terrace and went for walks in the town. With the
exaggeration of the solitary, she was acutely conscious of
trespassing. It had been unpardonable to show curiosity on such
slight acquaintance. She wished passionately that she had never seen
Sabrina's lovely name written across the page.
Mrs. Smythe-Gibson didn't make things easier by constantly referring
to the one subject which really riled her. Although Maggy's
association with the unapproachable Mr. Shelton could scarcely be
termed by the wildest gossip as one of more than ordinary common
politeness, it was at least evident that she was the only human being
in the hotel who had claimed his attention at all.
"Since he does deign to speak to you," Mrs. Smythe-Gibson observed
sarcastically, "the least you could do is to try and get him to take
some interest in the life of the hotel. It's for his own good. The man's
a recluse and with that unfortunate infirmity he should be made to
come out of his shell."
"But, Mrs. Smythe-Gibson, he doesn't want to talk to people.
Besides, he's leaving here quite soon," said Maggy wearily.
"If you're implying" that a man of Mr. Shelton's breeding and
intelligence prefers the company of an ignorant little paid companion
to that of a woman like myself, well all I can say is..."
All Mrs. Smythe-Gibson could say took a very long time. When she
had finally finished, Maggy was reduced to tears and heartily wished
that Mr. Shelton and his wheelchair had never entered the smug
portals of the Imperial Hotel.
She snatched up a coat, knocking her glasses off the dressing table
and smashing them, and ran out of the room and down the stairs and
away from the imprisoning hotel. She sped along the deserted terrace,
and almost ran into Garth Shelton's wheelchair.
"Oh!" she said, and stood stock still. He was the very last person she
wanted to meet.
He regarded her thoughtfully, saw the tears still wet on her face, and
remarked:
"More trouble?"
She forgot her former avoidance of him and the cause, and because
she was still upset and therefore unguarded, found her self pouring it
all out. And as she talked she was aware of a difference in him which
finally silenced her. She thought he looked very tired and spent like
someone who has been through some great emotional crisis, and
there was a gentleness in his remoteness that was new.
"Have you had a bad day?'' she asked impulsively.
He smiled.
"Perhaps. Look, Maggy, can I help placate this virago?"
"You?" She looked at him astonished that he should be offering her a
portion of his own privacy. "Would you? It sounds so silly, but if you
could bear some time to have a drink with her or something, she
would be quite satisfied."
He grimaced.
"Aren't people odd? Well, it's little enough to ask. I shall be leaving
here in a day or two now, so I can't become embroiled. Tell Mrs.
"Move round, Maggy, and make room for Mr. Shelton's chair," she
said loudly. "Now this, Mr. Shelton, is a great improvement. I've
always said you should come out of your shell more than you do.
What are we in this world for but to help others endure their
infirmities?"
Maggy clenched her hands tightly. This was going to be quite
dreadful. She didn't dare look at Garth, but heard his harsh voice
replying courteously :
"That's very nice of you, Mrs. Smythe-Gibson. I'm afraid I've not
been very sociable while I've been here, but you know what it is."
"Oh, indeed I do, you poor man," exclaimed Mrs. Smythe- Gibson,
who didn't.
He ordered coffee and liqueur brandy which he insisted upon Maggy
having too} and the terrible conversation went on and on. Maggy
shrank into the ill-favoured beige frock and tried not to listen,
holding her big balloon glass between her nervous hands and staring
into the amber liquid. The string quartette had been rendering the
usual Palm Court syrup, but now they began to play the Brahms
Wiegenlied and Maggy's eyes filled with tears. She had played that
lovely air many times for her father; it held only happy associations;
they had no right to play it here.
"Where are your glasses, Maggy? You know your eyes are weak,"
said Mrs. Smythe-Gibson sharply, and Maggy became aware that
they were both watching her.
"I smashed them," she said defiantly.
Her employer's eyes hardened.
"How extremely careless," she said. "How do you suppose you are
going to attend to your duties tomorrow when you're as blind as a bat
without your glasses?"
"I'm not really," said Maggy patiently. "Besides, I've got another pair
somewhere."
"Then why didn't you put them on? Vanity?"
"Drink up your brandy, you haven't touched it yet," said Garth
Shelton, and he smiled at her over the rim of his glass.
The taste of brandy was unfamiliar to Maggy, and seemed to burn her
throat but afterwards settled in a comfortable glow somewhere in her
lungs.
"You'll be making the child quite tipsy, Mr. Shelton," Mrs. SmytheGibson said, and laughed self-consciously. "Now, tell me all about
yourself. I hear you have a beautiful old place in Ireland. I remember
my late husband always said to me: 'You must see Ireland before you
die, Gladys,' but I haven't achieved it yet."
And so it went on, and presently Maggy was aware that her employer
was frowning at her.
"Quite finished, dear? Then I think it's time you left us. There are
several little unfinished jobs waiting for you upstairs -remember?"
Maggy was glad to go. For one bad moment she thought that Mr.
Shelton was also going to take his leave, but he merely moved his
chair a fraction. His face registered nothing but cold politeness.
"Good night, Mr. Shelton, and thank you," Maggy said, and he
replied unemotionally:
"Good night, Maggy."
She never knew how long he had remained, for Mrs. Smythe- Gibson
didn't come to bed until nearly midnight. She seemed pleased with
herself and said she had won again at bridge, and once the face
cream, the chin strap, the slumber net had all been satisfactorily
adjusted she retired to bed with a novel and didn't disturb Maggy
until morning.
But Maggy was glad she didn't see Mr. Shelton the next day. The
kindness he had done her had not been worth his rudely invaded
privacy. It was with surprise, therefore, that she found herself
stopped by Doolan the following day with a message.
"If it was convenient to yourself, miss, the master would like to see
you. Could you be going out to the terrace this afternoon?"
"Yes, Doolan, I think so," said Maggy, a little puzzled. He had talked
about leaving very shortly. Perhaps he wanted to say good-bye.
She was unable to get away from Mrs. Smythe-Gibson until nearly
half-past three, and hurried out to the terrace to find Garth sitting as
he so often did, motionless, with his eyes closed.
As he heard her step on the gravel, he said without opening his eyes:
"Maggy?"
"Yes, it's me," she said, and stood looking down at him a little
nervously.
"Sit down," he said. "I want to talk to you."
She lowered herself into the same chair in which she had sat during
that other strange conversation, and he suddenly opened his eyes and
looked straight at her.
"Would you take another job?" he asked without preamble.
Maggy's eyes opened wide. It was the last remark she had expected.
"I'd give anything for another job - it would be heaven whatever it
was," she said extravagantly.
His cold eyes flickered for a moment.
"Well, not perhaps heaven, but better than the one you have," he
remarked dryly.
"Do you know something - something I'm capable of doing, I mean?"
"Would you work for me?"
"For you?" She was taken completely aback. "You mean as a sort of
companion? "
He looked as though something amused him.
"I suppose you might call it that," he said and continued rather
severely: "There's only one condition attached. I should require you
to marry me."
Maggy felt a little light-headed.
"You w-what?" she gasped.
"You'd better listen quietly while I explain," he said, and his harsh
voice was quite impersonal. "I've decided to go back to Floyne. Your
duties there would be very light. I don't expect people to fetch and
carry for me, and in any case, Doolan attends to my personal wants
which are very few. You might find it a bit lonely at first, but at least
your soul would be your own."
"But - do you mean you want someone to run your house?" asked
Maggy, struggling to grasp the reason for this extraordinary
proposition.
"Mrs Duffy sees to that."
"Then - then - I don't understand. Why marry me? "
"Ireland is not like England. The Irish are very respectable. Don't
interrupt, please." She found those chill grey eyes could be very
disconcerting, and lowered her own in silence.
"I have my reasons for including marriage in the arrangement," he
went on. "It will not be for very long in any case, so It needn't trouble
you - four months perhaps, six at the most."
She looked up then with a swift sense of shock, but was unable to
frame a question.
"I've seen the specialist again," he continued still in that level,
expressionless voice. "Apparently there's a new development. I won't
bore you with medical details, but the clot on the spinal canal is
shifting. It's only a matter of time before it reaches the heart and then
finish. So you see, Maggy, yours would only be a temporary post, as
it were.'
Wildly, Maggy said the first thing that came into her head.
"Was it the day you asked us to coffee - the day you first knew, I
mean?"
"Yes, it was," he said with a faint flash of interest. "How did you
guess?"
She remembered that he had seemed different, gentler and in some
measure, released, and she remembered, too, his unfailing politeness
CHAPTER III
IT was Mrs. Smythe-Gibson herself who finally decided Maggy.
Nothing could satisfy her the day following Garth Shelton's proposal,
and by the end of the day she was deliberately looking for
shortcomings.
Maggy, whose own problem had gnawed at her like an insistent rat
ever since she had wakened, was forgetful and clumsy, and during
the hour of dressing for dinner she knocked over and broke an
expensive bottle of perfume. It gave Mrs. Smythe- Gibson ample
opportunity to enumerate again all Maggy's failings, finishing up by
stating that her bath salts were disappearing.
"Helping yourself on the sly, I suppose, and thinking I wouldn't
notice. But that and the perfume will be stopped out of your salary,"
she said.
"I never touch your bath salts except to put them in your bath," said
Maggy wearily. "You told me to put in a double quantity lately, that's
why they've been going faster."
"Don't make excuses. I know what's going on around here. The last
girl I had used to borrow my perfume. I soon put a stop to that!, let
me tell you, so take care, Maggy."
Mrs. Smythe-Gibson was searching for a handkerchief, and soon she
exclaimed :
"Where's the Irish lace one I bought at Torquay? It's not among any
of these."
Maggy looked, but couldn't find it, aware of those greedy, protruding
eyes fixed on her movements.
"Perhaps the laundry sent it back with mine," she said. "I'll go and
look."
"And I bet you'll find it this time," said the strident voice.
The handkerchief was there among her own, together with another
belonging to Mrs. Smythe-Gibson. It was a thing which had often
happened before.
"I thought so!" said Mrs. Smythe-Gibson with triumph. "And I
suppose you thought you'd get away with that, too! Laundry, indeed!
Let me tell you, my girl, there's another name for things that do a
disappearing act."
Maggy stood very erect, and looked her employer straight in the eye.
"I'm not a thief, Mrs. Smythe-Gibson, and you know that perfectly
well," she said in a clear voice. "I'm just an outlet for your ill-temper,
and you know that too. The only mistake you've made is in thinking
all this time that I didn't know it."
"Well!" said Mrs. Smythe-Gibson with dropping jaw.
"You have to put up with a lot of things for your bread and butter,
when you're like me, untrained and rather young," went on Maggy
suddenly feeling as light as air. "And you learn in time that there are
different sorts, of jobs and different sorts of employers. I'm leaving
you, Mrs. Smythe-Gibson - at the end of the week."
Mrs. Smythe-Gibson's speechlessness gave way to bluster, abuse and
reproaches, but it was a feeble display, not up to her usual standard.
There had been something about Maggy that had told her she had
gone too far. Maggy listened with interest. Now that it was too late,
she had found out how easy it was to stand up to this type of woman.
"I'm going to another job," was all she would say when threats were
of no avail, and entreaties began. "No, I don't think I need tell you
where and who with. That's my own private affair." And she went
into her own room and shut and locked the communicating door.
She spent the rest of the evening in a mood of utmost tranquillity,
and when she went to bed, slept dreamlessly.
The next morning she asked if she might go out for an hour, and Mrs.
Smythe-Gibson meekly gave permission, so Maggy put on her coat
and went out on to the terrace to find Garth . Shelton.
He watched her coming with satisfaction.
"So you've decided to accept my proposition?" he remarked when she
stopped beside him.
She nodded, and some of that new-found self-assurance began to
leave her.
"Did you know I would?"
"It's all over the hotel that you upped and handed in your notice last
night. I didn't think you'd be so strong-minded." He sounded faintly
amused.
"She called me a thief," said Maggy.
"Well, it's the best thing you could have done. Now we can get on
with it. I shall want some particulars." He took a notebook and pencil
from his breast pocket. "Full name, please. Margaret-?"
"No, I was christened Maggy. It sounds sort of plain, doesn't it?"
"Surname?"
"Crayle," said Maggy, and thought how queer that you shouldn't
know the name of the girl you were going to marry. But she supposed
that there were very few people in the hotel who did know. Everyone
called her Maggy.
"Parents' full names?" She gave them and he wrote them down.
"Age, nineteen. You're of age. No consent necessary. That's all, I
think." He shut the notebook and returned it to his pocket. "Doolan
will see to all the forms and notifying the Registrar. I want to leave
here by Monday."
"There's one thing," said Maggy, and felt herself flushing. "Would
we be able - I mean would, it make any difference to you if we were
m-married in a church? My father would have liked it."
He frowned.
"Church? It seems rather pointless in the circumstances, but yes, I
suppose we could. That'll mean a special licence. Doolan must see to
it." .
"Thank you," said Maggy faintly.
He glanced at her sharply.
"It's, only a business arrangement, you know," he said more gently,
"designed purely to give you more rights than you would otherwise
have make the whole situation easier for us both, in fact. You're
very young, Maggy. It won't be much out of your life, and afterwards
you'll be able to meet and marry that nice young man who, I believe,
all young girls dream about."
But the idea was altogether too new for Maggy.
"Oh, don't, don't please talk like that - ever," she cried. "It'll make it
all so much more difficult.''
"All right, I won't," he said prosaically. "I didn't want you to feel
cheated, that's all. It's just another job, and I flatter myself that I can't
possibly be as bad as Mrs. Smythe-Gibson. Doolan will let you know
if there is anything to sign and make all the final arrangements."
He decided that it was unnecessary for Mrs. Smythe-Gibson to be
told anything. It would only mean a bad week for Maggy and a
source of gossip in the hotel. But Maggy told the doctor.
"Um ..." he remarked thoughtfully, and stood looking at her rather
fiercely, his bushy eyebrows twitching violently. "Well, I'm not sure
it isn't the best thing you could do, all things considered. A strange
fancy for a man in his condition to have. I shouldn't have said he
would have roused himself sufficiently to think of someone else."
"I don't think the arrangement is for my benefit," said Maggy
quickly. "It's just more convenient, like - like signing a contract."
"Maybe. At any rate it assures you of a comfortable future, and that's
quite a load off my mind." He rubbed his nose with a comic gesture
and shot her a quick bright glance. "You're not fond of him, are you,
Maggy?"
"Fond?" She considered the word in all its aspects. "I I don't think
so. I hardly know him."
"It's not nice waiting for someone to die - even a stranger. Have you
thought of that?"
Maggy hadn't really thought of anything beyond the immediate
implications of the situation. Now she had a moment's dim
perception of the doctor's meaning, and for an instant she was afraid.
procedure with deep misgiving. She didn't realise for some time that
Doolan's whole life was bound up in his master and nothing outside
was of any account at all.
"The weddin's fixed for Monday, nine o'clock sharp. We wishes to be
in London by lunch time. We will be meetin' ye at the church at that
hour, miss, an' will ye plaze be in time, for it's destroyed the master
will be if the cyar is kept waitin' without," he told her.
, Maggy gravely assured him she would be on time, and left alone,
thought how incongruous that phrase had sounded: The wedding's
fixed for Monday. Wedding had a gay and joyous sound to it, not a
word at all to be associated with that meaningless ceremony
scheduled for nine o'clock sharp on Monday. There should be another
name for such unions as this, and suddenly Maggy wished that she
had agreed to the Registrar's office.
In her anxiety to obey Doolan's instructions she was much too early.
Not knowing what to do with her suitcase, she pushed it behind a
pillar, and slipped into one of the back pews to wait. The church was
empty and very dark. Maggy listened to the rain beating against the
windows and became aware that it was also cold. The wet ends of her
hair clung round her neck and deposited little drops of water inside
her mackintosh.
The verger must have been waiting in the porch, for he opened the
doors to allow Doolan to push in his master's chair, then began to
precede them up the aisle. Maggy saw Doolan look anxiously round,
then stood up awkwardly. Garth looked straight ahead, and his tired
face seemed to match the greyness of the little church.
"I'm here," whispered Maggy, and took her place beside the chair.
The verger turned a startled face as she appeared like a small ghost
from the shadows, then motioned them to follow him to the altar
steps. Garth gave her a brief smile, but said nothing, and presently a
very old clergyman came out of the vestry, and without preliminary
began to read the marriage service.
To Maggy, the words had an acute poignancy. With my body I thee
worship ... but that was lies... to have and to hold from this day
forward ... that was a sacred trust... in sickness and in health, till
death us do part... and that held a terrible truth.
She could no longer see the clergyman's face through a wavering
mist of tears, and she knew a single moment of .outraged revulsion.
Then she heard Garth's unemotional voice making his responses, and
presently she made her own, a little shaky but quite clear. There was
no address. The old man gave them both a puzzled, uncertain glance
and the ceremony was over. The signing of the register was
accomplished in silence. Maggy, minus her glasses, screwed her eyes
up childishly as she wrote her name beneath Garth's. Doolan and the
verger witnessed the signature, and they left the church, quite
forgetting Maggy's suitcase on the way out.
It took a little time to settle Garth into the hired car which was to take
them to London, and Maggy stood in the shelter of the porch while
she watched Doolan's expert handling. Once she ran forward to assist
with the rugs, but was sharply ordered by Garth to, stay out of the
rain. When he was settled he beckoned her in beside him, and they
sat in silence while the chair was strapped on the luggage grid and
covered with a tarpaulin. Doolan got into the front seat beside the
driver and the car moved off. ' They drove out of the town along the
sea front, and Maggy looked for the last time at the imposing facade
of the Imperial Hotel, at the Grand and the Majestic and little Beach
Towers and Sea View. The rain had reduced them all to the same
depressing level.
"Glad to be leaving?" Garth asked suddenly. They were almost the
first words he had spoken to her.
She took off her hat and shook out her wet hair.
"Yes very glad," she said briefly.
He looked at the damp ends of her hair, which were beginning to
curl, and remarked:
"You're very wet."
"I walked to the church," she explained, and he frowned.
"You should have had a taxi. Doolan should have seen to it."
"It didn't matter," she said, and suddenly remembered her suitcase.
"Mr. Shelton!"
The grey eyes look at her with a hint of amusement.
tired and very young. Her face held the touching defencelessness of
all sleeping creatures, and for a moment he knew a weight of
responsibility for this day's work. His own life was done, but hers
was just beginning. Their association could riot at the best be for very
long, but in marrying her he had altered the whole course of her
existence.
He moved impatiently and she opened her eyes.
"Oh, I'm sorry," she said, and shrank into her corner of the can "Have
I slept all the way?"
"You probably needed it," he replied briefly; and reflected that there
was little need to feel responsible. The girl's future was at least
assured. He would see his lawyer as soon as he was back at Floyne.
He saw with relief that the car had turned into Dover Street and was
drawing up at the quiet hotel where Doolan had booked rooms for the
night. The journey had tired him. Maggy, glancing at his aloof face,
sighed. The forgotten suitcase loomed in her mind as the height of
inefficiency .'It was a bad start.
She stood irresolutely on the pavement while the chair was
unstrapped from the back of the car, and the hotel porter waited
discreetly to give Doolan a hand. She felt instinctively that Garth
disliked being watched when he was lifted into his chair. He spoke as
if directly in answer to her thoughts.
"Go into the hotel and register, Maggy, I shall go straight to my
room," he said, and she turned and passed in through the swing doors
and up to the reception desk.
"Yes, madam?" The reception clerk was impersonally courteous, but
she became all at once acutely conscious of her old mackintosh, the
shabby fejt hat - a relic of rectory days and the beige frock which
had seemed the most suitable garment in which to be married.
"My my husband" - she so nearly said "employer" "hooked
rooms for tonight. Shelton."
"Mr. Shelton? Oh, yes." The clerk's eyebrows shot up for a fraction
of a second. Garth was evidently known here. But the faint surprise
had gone from the clerk's eyes as he handed Maggy a pen and invited
her to register.
For an awful moment she wondered what to write. Should the names
be separate or together? She glanced surreptitiously at the
registrations above, and carefully wrote, "Mr. and Mrs. G. M.
Shelton, Casde Floyne, Ireland." She didn't know the county, and
wondered a little hysterically what the impassive clerk's reaction
would be if she were to say, "I'm sorry, but I don't know the name of
the county in which I live."
The appearance of Garth and Doolan saved her from further wild
reflections. Garth was saying to the smiling manager: "This is Mrs.
Shelton. I believe our rooms are ready for us," and they were
conducted to a couple of adjoining rooms on the first floor. The door
between the two rooms stood invitingly open, and Garth asked
Maggy which she would prefer-to have. While she was still
stammering that she didn't mind, the porter brought in the luggage
and stood waiting to be told where to put it.
"Leave mine in here for the moment, and put Mrs. Shelton's next
door," Garth said, and the porter turned to Maggy.
"Which is madam's?" he enquired.
Maggy wished the floor would open and swallow her up. She looked
helplessly at Garth and said in a small voice: "I haven't got any."
He looked surprised, then frowned and dismissed the man with a curt
nod.
"Haven't you even brought anything for the night?" he asked her
impatiently.
She explained about the suitcase, feeling miserably inefficient as she
did so.
"The Imperial is going to send on my trunk as soon as they have an
address," she finished apologetically. "I haven't got very much."
"Well, it doesn't matter. You'll have to see what you can do in an
afternoon. You'll need clothes anyway good country clothes." He
seemed for the first time aware of the mackintosh and its shabby
accompaniments, and eyed her with irritable concentration. "You'd
better go to Bromley and Davis. My sister has an account there, and
they know me."
"Your sister?" She had thought that he had no relatives.
"Yes. I'll give you a note for them. Get whatever you think necessary
and put it down. They'll know what you need."
"Oh, but - I only need a nightdress and a toothbrush and a sponge,"
protested Maggy. "I can wait for my clothes till my trunk comes.
Mrs. Smythe-Gibson only bought me anything if it was absolutely
necessary."
He began to look a little weary of the whole discussion.
"This situation is a little different, and I am not Mrs. SmytheGibson," he said shortly. "Doolan should have reminded me."
It was the strangest day Maggy had ever known. Already it seemed
as if some other girl had stood in that ugly little church and been
married to a crippled stranger. It was not Maggy Crayle who had
arrived at that exclusive hotel without any luggage, and signed the
register in an unfamiliar name, and who now sat in a Regent-street
tea-shop, staring at her new wedding ring.
Garth was remaining in his room until the evening, gathering strength
for the tedious journey the following day, and rather than lunch alone
under the inquisitive eye of the maitre d'hotel, Maggy had sought the
anonymous refuge of a tea-shop, where she ordered a poached egg on
toast and a cGp of coffee. In her bag Garth's note reposed, together
with twenty pounds, handed to her by Doolan for "taxis an' sich-like
expenses." She sat there, staring at her ring, and remembering it was
her wedding day. Doolan had bought the ring, bringing a selection
for Maggy to try. Doolan had arranged everything - Maggy felt, with
a nervous grin, that she had married him and not Garth, and
wondered again what the lugubrious Irishman privately thought of
the affair.
At last, reluctantly, she left the friendly shelter of the tea-shop and
walked unwillingly to the imposing portals of Bromley and Davis,
whose windows she had gazed into in rectory days, but whose doors
she had never entered in her life. She had no faith in Garth's
peremptory command to buy what she needed and charge it to him.
Very conscious of her own shabbiness she faced the haughty stare of
the chief saleswoman and braced herself for polite dismissal.
But the charm worked. Feeling a little dazed, Maggy found herself
Swept into a fitting room, the humble mackintosh removed and hung
carefully on a hanger as if it had been mink, while two girls ran
backwards and forwards under the sales- woman's direction bringing
frocks, suits, coats, lingerie, and displaying them in bewildering
succession.
"I - I really don't know. There seems so much to choose from."
Maggy looked a little helplessly at the sleek saleswoman who raised
her eyebrows for a moment and looked amused.
"Will you allow me to make a few suggestions, modom?" she said
crisply.
With Maggy's thankful acquiescence she consulted Garth's note
again, then began swiftly to make her selections. Maggy wriggled in
and out of garments until her hair was in wild disorder ; she was
fitted and pinned and measured and finally treated like any tailor's
dummy. The saleswoman soon ceased consulting a customer who
plainly had so few ideas on sartorial matters, or such little interest.
She was a strange customer altogether, this shy little girl with the
impossible clothes; not the sort of sister-in-law one would expect the
correct Mrs. Moore to have. Still, the Shelton money was there, and
properly dressed, well - you never could tell.
"Not beige," said Maggy suddenly, pointing to a camel hair coat. It
was the only opinion she expressed in the whole afternoon.
Once she said in rather alarmed tones:
"But I don't need all these things. My - my - Mr. Shelton only wanted
me to have something suitable for the country."
The saleswoman smiled, but looked a little surprised.
She sat in the hushed and rather gloomy lounge until dinner time,
looking at endless Punchs and Spheres, and feeling rather as if she
was in a dentist's waiting room. The room began to fill about halfpast six and expensive-looking dowagers and equally expensivelooking families up from the country sat about drinking sherry and
talking in low tones. One weather-beaten looking lady of
indeterminate age sat alone, drinking double whiskies while she
perused a copy of Horse and Hound and shot appraising glances at
Maggy from a pair of faded but very penetrating blue eyes.
Dinner proved rather an embarrassment. Garth Shelton was evidently
a valued client. The maitre d'hotel himself hovered over Maggy's
table and she sat alone, feeling very self-conscious in her
unbecoming, ill-fitting dress. A waiter brought a bottle of champagne
packed in ice in a silver bucket and opened it with much ceremony.
"Oh, but I didn't order wine," protested Maggy uncomfortably.
The maitre d'hotel hurried up.
"Mr. Shelton's manservant left instructions, madam," he said
smoothly.
Maggy watched the golden bubbles with alarm and wondered if
Doolan had told them she was only married today. She had never
tasted champagne, and speculated a little fearfully as to how many
glasses would go to one's head. After the second she decided that she
had better stop. She was feeling better and less conspicuous, but the
prickling in her nose had ascended to the top of her head. It was
probably a sign.
She gazed round the room with new confidence, and reminded
herself with surprise that only last night she had been dining with
Mrs. Smythe-Gibson, wearing the hated beige dress, and her glasses.
Well, she still wore the dress, but soon she could throw it away, the
"Oh," said Maggy blankly, and wondered what strangles could be. It
sounded very uncomfortable.
"Where's your husband?" suddenly demanded her inquisitor.
Maggy blinked.
"Upstairs," she said truthfully, and decided almost immediately that
she must go to bed. "Good-night," she said politely. "Thank you for
the bulls-eye."
"Extraordinary !" remarked the woman, and popped another bullseye into her mouth.
Maggy found that by walking very carefully in a direct line she could
proceed without disaster, but although she was still aware of
unfamiliar sensations in her legs and head, the feeling of elation had
evaporated. It was only a quarter to nine, but there was nothing to do
now but go to bed.
She undressed quickly, put on the new nightdress, and got into bed,
remembering too late that her hot water botde also reposed with the
suitcase behind a church pillar. She switched out her bedside light
and lay listening to the late traffic roaring down Piccadilly.
A thin pencil of light showed under the communicating door. Garth
was still awake.
All at once Maggy felt very sorry for herself. After all, it was her
wedding night. She would like to have looked in and said good-night.
She lay between the cold linen sheets, twisting the unfamiliar ring
round her finger while the tears came with a rush. Then just as
suddenly, her eyelids were heavy in the darkness and she was asleep.
CHAPTER IV
To Maggy, unrefreshed from her heavy sleep, the long journey
seemed interminable, and she wondered how Garth could stand it.
She privately thought it madness for a sick man to attempt such a
journey in one day, but he gave little sign of discomfort save a
growing irritability when he spoke, which was rare, and he plainly
suffered no pain.
Maggy had a disconcerting sense of being unreal. She was no longer
an individual, but merely a part of Garth's luggage trailing in the
wake of his wheelchair from train to boat, from boat to car. But as
she leaned over the rail on deck, watching the English shore recede,
she experienced her first realisation of what she had done. She was
being borne away from all she had ever known by a stranger to a
strange country, and as long as life held them together there was no
escape. Panic rose in her, so that she prevented herself with difficulty
from shouting: "Stop the boat I Let me go back!" Suddenly becoming
aware of being watched, she turned to find Garth looking at her with
a curious expression, and reluctantly she went and sat behind him in
a vacant deck chair.
"Regretting your decision?" he remarked sardonically.
"How did you know?" she asked, startled into honesty.
"You have a revealing face. For a moment all the panic in the world
was there."
"Perhaps it was only natural," she said defensively. "All this is very
new to me."
"It's not for long," he said, curtly, indifferently.
The crossing was bad. Garth was apparently unmoved, but Maggy,
meeting her first experience of the sea, knew with a sinking heart that
she was a bad sailor. That, she thought desperately, would be the
final indignity, to be ill under the chilling eyes of this remote
stranger.
He spoke without looking at her.
"There's a cabin booked for me. I won't be using it. You'd better go
down."
"But oughtn't you to rest?" she asked faintly.
"Do as you're told." His tone was sharp.
"Yes, Mr. Shelton," she said automatically, and struggled to her feet.
She was aware of his exasperation as she rose, and hastily adding:
"Garth," fled along the deck.
She lay in his cabin, listening to the creaking of the boat, and
muttering to herself: "Garth, Garth...I'll never remember ..." and
wishing she could swiftly sink to the bottom of the sea.
She must have slept a little, for when she next became conscious of
thought, she was aware the motion of the ship was steadier and a
steward was telling her that they would be in in twenty minutes. She
splashed cold water on her face, and feeling rather like a disembodied
spirit, went up on deck. She thought Doolan looked at her with
disapproval, but Garth said: "Feeling better? " and when she replied
that she was, nodded briefly.
"Think you can stand a four-hour car trip on top of this?"
"If you can stand it, I can," she retorted with spirit, and he raised his
eyebrows.
"No feeling in your legs seems to produce much the same result
elsewhere," he remarked, and took no further notice of her.
Maggy looked steadily ahead to where the Wicklow Hills rose from
the sea in a thin veil of misty rain. This was Ireland, the country of
which she knew nothing, that improvident land of rain and bogs, of
horses and fairies, of potatoes and the curse of Cromwell. Gulls rose
screaming from the water as they made Dunlaoghaire harbour, and
following Doolan and the wheelchair down the gangway, Maggy
stepped 'on to Irish soil and heard for the first time the sound of Irish
voices.
They waited their turn at the Customs, and she listened to the
confused babble of talk which rose on all sides. Heated discussions
flared between passengers and Customs Officers, which, just as
Maggy was expecting a free fight, dissolved into the utmost
amiability. Jests and naive curiosity as to the contents of trunks and
suitcases raised much appreciative laughter and Maggy nervously
began to wonder how her meagre nightdress, toothbrush and sponge
would fare at the hands of these flippant young men. But the official
who dealt with them took one loot at Garth's wheelchair, exclaimed
piously: "Och - God help ye, sor!" and immediately marked their
unopened luggage with chalk.
A closed Daimler waited for them outside, and the driver, a redhaired young man in dirty tweeds, shook Garth by the hand.
"Welcome back, Mr. Shelton, sor," he said with a wide grin. "An' you
not on your two feet yet ! Isn't that an ould ladies' contraption to be
gallivantin' arround in, now? Will I -give ye a hand with the liftin',
Pat Doolan?"
Maggy's eyes widened at this unfamiliar form of address and she
looked a little anxiously at Garth. But he merely nodded, made some
reply to the young driver, and waited with quiet indifference to be
lifted into the car. The young man regarded Maggy with frank
curiosity as she got in beside Garth, and to her shy thanks as he threw
a rug over her knees, he replied:
" 'Tis nothing at all, miss. The English feel the could, God help
them!"
She wondered if this odd young man could be Garth's chauffeur and
if, later, she would have to explain to him that she was Garth's wife.
Garth himself offered no explanation to either of them, and watching
his dark profile for some sign of pleasure at returning ,to his own
country, she could find none. The, cold indifferent mask she had
become familiar with in England showed no hint of warmth or
interest, and he paid little attention to his surroundings, but stared
straight ahead. He was right, thought Maggy with her first hint of
impatience. No feeling in his legs produced no feeling in his heart or
head.
She was still conscious of the effects of the crossing, but she looked
with eagerness out of the window. The Georgian rosiness of Dublin
was a fleeting glimpse and soon their road settled down endlessly to a
vista of spreading moors, a bright glint of emerald bog, the gleam of
loch water, and hills rising gently to the grey, misty sky. A land of
half-lights, perhaps of fairies, thought Maggy, shut away alone in a
delight that was a little fearful. How beautiful they are, the lordly
ones who dwell in the Mils, the hollow hills.... Unlike English
servants, Doolan and the driver kept up a flow of talk, and Maggy
wished she could sit in front and ask the red-haired young man
questions. Once she asked Garth where they were going and
immediately the chatter in front ceased.
Garth frowned, as aware as Maggy was of the driver's interest.
"Galway - the west coast,'' he replied briefly.
"It isn't meself who is sick, Mr. Shelton, sir," she retorted. "Let me
take a look at you. Is this all those fine English doctors could do for
you? Och you're destroyed entirely!"
It seemed an odd sort of greeting to Maggy, but Garth appeared to
think it quite normal, and even gave the woman one of his rare
smiles. Maggy thought he looked very exhausted, and his sallow skin
had the appearance of parchment.
She-stood just inside the dimly lighted hall which seemed to stretch
endlessly away into the shadows, and smelt the first bitter sweet
smell of burning turf. A fire glowed on a big open hearth and the
flames played on dim portraits and a profusion of panelling in black
bog oak. She was so tired that she was aware of only one thing at a
time, and the strange new scent of the turf fire was still occupying her
Senses when she heard Garth say:
"This is my wife, Duffy. Maggy, this is Mrs. Duffy who runs the
house for us."
Maggy became aware that the woman was looking at her with a
curious expression. Surprise, perhaps a hint of patronage - she was
too tired to know which. She held her hand out shyly.
"How do you do," she said.
The housekeeper's face became watchful again.
"How do you do, ma'am," she said respectfully, and the careless
brogue was somehow dimmed as she spoke to Maggy. "May I wish
you every happiness on behalf of meself and the staff?"
"Thank you," said Maggy, and suddenly wanted to cry. She had an
absurd conviction that this woman knew she was only a paid
employee like herself; that although she was prepared to enter into
this idle farce she was not for one moment fooled.
The door had been shut upon the red-haired driver, and Doolan was
piling the luggage in the hall.
"You'll be wanting to go straight to your room, sor," he said quietly.
"Mrs. Duffy will have prepared it downstairs as you ordered."
"I'll be takin' Mrs. Shelton up, then," the housekeeper said. "Will you
fetch up the luggage when you have the master settled, Doolan?"
"Och, ye can be carryin' it yerself, Mrs. Duffy, 'tis but this weeshly
cyardboard wan," said Doolan, and Mrs. Duffy picked up Maggy's
case from Marks and Spencer with polite amazement.
"Is this all ye have, ma'am?" she asked, and Maggy felt too weary to
explain.
She stood, hesitating, looking at Garth, but he was already turning his
chair round.
"Good-night, Maggy," he said in just the tones he had always used on
the terrace of the Imperial, and it was with an effort that she stopped
herself replying from force of habit: "Good night, Mr. Shelton."
"Good-night," she said, and followed Mrs. Duffy up the stairs and
into the unknown shadows above.
She slept the deep, dreamless sleep of utter exhaustion and for a
moment upon waking, couldn't remember where she was. A young
girl in a blue print dress was drawing the heavy brocaded curtains.
An early morning tea tray stood On a table beside the bed.
By daylight, proportions fell into place, but the room had a sombre
air. Rugs of dark faded pattern covered the black oak floor, and the
bed hangings and curtains were the colour of old claret. The bed
itself boasted many mattresses, the top one of which was of goose
feathers, and Maggy felt like the princess in the fairy tale who could
not sleep for the pea which lay underneath.
Her tea finished, she climbed with difficulty out of the bed and ran
across to the window, curious to see what lay outside Castle Floyne.
The wind had dropped, but a fine rain was falling almost silently,
blotting out the distance in mist. Was this, then, the meaning of
Bridgit's soft day?
Maggy's room was at the back of the house, and below her, it seemed
almost directly, there lay a great expanse of water. The far shore was
only just visible through the mist, and seemed to fade into an outline
of low, rugged hills. The house must be built at the end of the loch,
for to the right the moorland rose in an unbroken sweep so far as the
eye could see, and somewhere beyond must lie the sea, for Maggy
could just hear the rhythmic roll of waves on a rocky coast. A wild
country, and a strange, alarming people.... Maggy shivered in the
damp chill of the October morning, and slipping her old mackintosh
over her nightgown, went into the corridor to prospect for the
bathroom.
She always remembered her first day at Floyne as one of the longest
she had ever spent. Mrs. Duffy was waiting in the hall to take her to
the breakfast-room, and while Maggy ate she stood by the door in an
attitude of respectful meekness and awaited her orders.
"I was to say, ma'am, that the master is keeping to his room today,
and would you be stating your wishes, please."
Maggy looked alarmed.
"There isn't anything I want, thank you, Mrs. Duffy," she said
hurriedly.
"You will be takin' over the runnin' of the house, no doubt, ma'am, so
I will hand over the keys and explain my system."
The housekeeper's voice sounded tight and, as when she had
addressed Maggy the night before, her brogue was more controlled.
Maggy looked at her quickly. Was this one of the duties which Garth
expected of her? But no, he had distinctly said Mrs; Duffy ran the
house. It would never do to offend the housekeeper without more
definite instructions.
"Did Mr. Shelton discuss that with you?" she asked timidly.
The woman gave her a glance of suspicious curiosity, and Maggy
knew that she was thinking it odd that a new wife shouldn't know her
husband's wishes in such matters.
"I have had no opportunity of speaking with the master," she said
stiffly. "Until Doolan's telegram four days ago, nary a wan knew he
was married."
Maggy's heart sank, and she thought: Gh, dear! She's going to resent
me.
"I think it's much better that you should carry on as before," she said
hastily. "I'm sure Mr. Shelton wouldn't want things any different."
She smiled tentatively, but there was no response in the
housekeeper's face.
"Just as you say, ma'am. Likely as not you would not be
understanding Irish ways. If you will please ring when you've
finished an' I will bring in the staff."
but she didn't like to prospect further since she had no idea which
room it was.
Lunch was laid for her in the breakfast-room, and she was thankful
not to have to sit in solitary state in the vast, chilly dining room.
Afterwards she put on her mackintosh and went out into the rain to
explore the grounds. There seemed to be no definitely planned
garden, a peculiarity she was to find of many Irish country houses;
only a great expanse of lawn which dropped gently to the waters of
the loch, and in front of the house open grassland which' was
bounded from the road by low iron railings.
"I never in all my life," said Maggy aloud, "saw such a treeless
place."
But there were trees on the other side of the house, Irish yews planted
like sentinels along a paved terrace, and down by the loch, willow
and rowan hung their drooping branches in the rain. The brilliant
orange of the rowan berries seemed to Maggy the only splash of
colour in that grey day.
By tea-time she had the uncomfortable feeling that she was not
earning her keep. So far she had idled away the day and had not
Begun to think of what her duties were going to be. She would like to
have enquired for Garth, but didn't care to question Mrs. Duffy or
one of the maids, who would presume she would be acquainted with
the state of her husband's health. She never saw Doolan, and it didn't
occur to her to send for him.
Mrs. Duffy made no further appearance that day and had presumably
retired in umbrage to her own quarters, and Maggy sat by the turf fire
in the silent library and wondered what to do next.
It was Doolan who sought her out in the end, and she felt quite
pleased at the sight of his familiar, lugubrious face.
On the third day the rain stopped, and Maggy set out early meaning
to walk across the moor and find the sea. Garth was still keeping to
his room, and so far there had been no summons for Maggy.
She sometimes wondered if he was worse than Doolan led her to
suppose, but no doctor had been summoned to Floyne and there was
no hint in the servants' manner that there was grave illness in the
house. Mrs. Duffy went about her duties as usual, and if she thought
it odd that Maggy never visited her husband she made no sign. But
little Bridgit was young; she was also new to Floyne, and Maggy
sensed the puzzlement and curiosity behind the girl's enquiries for the
master's health. Bridgit, at least, must think the new mistress's
apparent lack of interest both strange and unnatural.
The whole situation, thought Maggy, plodding with unaccustomed
feet through the strong, springy heather, was strange and unnatural
now that she had leisure to think about it. Her position at Floyne was
utterly false, and she was beginning to wonder what possible duties
as a companion could justify the step she had taken. When he's about
again, she told herself with determination, there'll be things to do,
letters to write, reading aloud; perhaps estate accounts, only I'm not
very good at figures.
And she wondered again what her father would have thought of the
affair, and Ellen. She must write to Ellen and tell her of her marriage,
and as she pictured the surprise and probably satisfaction with which
the old servant would receive the news, Maggy's eyes filled with
tears. Dear Ellen with her years of stern devotion to the Crayles;
Ellen with her rigid views of right and wrong. Would she approve if
she should know the truth?
Maggy reached the highest point of the moor and climbed a curious
rock formation to look at the view. From here the browny-green
ground sloped steeply away in little ridges and hummocks, slipping
eventually into the rocky cliffs which dropped to the sea. Far in the
distance, beyond the blueness of Gal- way Bay, the Islands of Aran
lay like some mythical monster half in and half out of the water.
Maggy had never imagined such solitude. Not a human dwelling was
to be seen for miles, and she turned to look behind her to where
Floyne lay sprawled in grey isolation by the little loch that Bridgit
had called Lough Sidhe, which meant the fairy loch. A wild desolate
country, thought Maggy, beginning to retrace her steps, and wishing
for the hundredth time since she had arrived that she had worn
anything else but Mrs. Smythe- Gibson's beige dress in which to be
married. An afternoon frock, however drab and ugly, was utterly
unsuited for Irish country mornings, and the hem was already soaked
and draggled from her walk across the moor.
There was a car standing empty in front of the house, and Maggy
hesitated, suddenly panic-stricken. Callers! There had been callers
yesterday whom she had managed to avoid, but this was lunch-time.
She crept into the house and made a dash for the stairs, but not before
she had seen Mrs. Duffy in close conversation with a tall dark
woman through the open door of the breakfast room.
"Here is Mrs. Shelton," she heard the housekeeper say, and, still
unused to being referred to by this name, was about to leap up the
stairs with all speed when the stranger advanced into the hall.
"Well!" she said, and stood staring at Maggy with thick, raised
eyebrows.
Maggy stood staring back like a child caught running away and for a
moment neither of them spoke, then the other woman said with a
faint note of patronage in her brisk voice:
"I'm Eunice Moore. How d'ye do?"
Maggy looked blank.
'I'm afraid I I don't know who you are," she stammered. Someone
should at least have acquainted her With the names of possible
neighbours.
The thick dark eyebrows drew together in a frown which was faintly
reminiscent.
"I'm Garth's sister," she said shortly. "Don't tell me you didn't know
he had a sister!"
Maggy felt acutely embarrassed. The only person who had briefly
alluded to the existence of Mrs. Moore had been the saleswoman of
Bromley and Davis, and Maggy had completely forgotten.
"Of course, how stupid of me!" she said quickly, but not quite
quickly enough.
"I don't believe you did know!" Eunice said, and her eyes flickered
oyer Maggy with unflattering curiosity. "Oh, well, until a few days
ago we didn't know Garth had acquired a wife. Duffy insisted that I
stay for lunch. I hope you don't mind."
Maggy had the impression that it wouldn't have mattered if she did
mind, but she said with difficulty:
"I'm very pleased. Will you excuse me while I go and tidy?"
Mrs. Duffy, presumably in honour of the stranger, had ordered lunch
to be served in the dining-room, and Maggy sat at the head of the
long polished table in a state of miserable shyness. She found her
sister-in-law both alarming and formidable, and although the
conversation consisted only of banalities while the servants were in
the room, she was aware of a .purposeful curiosity and something
else besides behind the abrupt questions and answers.
Eunice Moore was a domineering and not very imaginative woman
who all her life had liked to rule. She had been unable to rule either
her father or her brother, so had turned her attentions eventually to
Johnny Moore, a doctor with a growing practice in Galway who had
been in love with her since she was seventeen. She had hoped for a
more worldly match than Johnny, but although handsome, she had
succeeded in driving most men away by her manner, and when she
had passed the age of thirty she had been glad to take Johnny, whose
devotion had never wavered. If, during the ten years since their
marriage, his hopes had settled into gentle tolerance, she was
unaware of it. She was still ambitious for her husband and her
children, and she had for too long confused the force to drive with the
force to love to recognise any failure in herself. At forty-one she still
thought of herself as Miss Shelton of Castle Floyne rather than Mrs.
Johnny Moore, a country doctor's wife.
After lunch they went into the library to drink their coffee.
"I see you've made no alterations as yet," Eunice said, glancing about
her. "Damn' inconvenient house, isn't it? No electricity, no telephone,
indifferent plumbing, and cold as charity. Most Irish houses are the
same, only Floyne seems to have more than its share of archaic
discomfort."
Maggy said nothing. The discomforts of Floyne were no concern of
hers.
Eunice eyed the girl sitting opposite her in uncomfortable
expectancy. That hideous and unsuitable frock could eclipse more
beauty than Maggy could ever lay claim to, but the child was a
mouse. A little nobody with nothing to say for herself and eyes that
were too big for her face. What on earth had possessed Garth? Come
to that, in his present condition, what on earth had possessed Maggy?
Eunice's cold eyes, so like her brother's, narrowed unpleasantly.
Floyne was Floyne even if its master had lost the use of his legs.
"Surely you're too young for a nurse," she said with a slight drawl.
"A nurse?" Maggy looked surprised. "Oh no, I was never a nurse.
What made you think that?"
"Rumour had it that my brother had married his nurse. It's quite
common, I believe."
Maggy looked at Eunice leaning back at ease in her expensive
tweeds, and slowly flushed. She knew quite well what the other
woman was thinking, but she hadn't supposed she would make her
meaning so plain.
"Where did you meet him?"
"We - we were staying in the same hotel."
"Really?" Could she have been "the receptionist?
Eunice got to her feet looking annoyed. For all her gaucheness, the
chit was like a little clam.
"Oh, I can find my own way," she said. "I've known this house a
good many years, you know. He's downstairs, I presume, in the same
room as before?" "I-I suppose so."
Eunice's thick eyebrows lifted, "You suppose? But, my dear child,
don't you know?"
Maggy stood there in the drab beige dress that was too big for her,
and felt her courage slipping away.
"You see," she explained, "I haven't seen his room since we came
here."
Eunice laughed and walked towards the door.
"Really?" she remarked. "How very odd in a young bide. What must
the servants think?"
Maggy didn't answer. By this time she knew that the servants thought
it very odd indeed. At the door Eunice turned and looked her up and
down.
"How old are you, Maggy?" she asked.
"Nineteen."
"Nineteen! Garth must be out of his mind!" she said, and shut the
door behind her.
CHAPTER V
THAT same day Garth sent for Maggy.
Eunice's interview with her brother had lasted a brief half- hour, and
when she returned to the library, two bright spots of colour burned in
her sallow cheeks.
"Trapesing round to English spas doesn't seem to have done him
much good," she said angrily to Maggy. "He's still as helpless as ever
and his temper certainly hasn't improved."
Maggy looked at her with widening eyes. Didn't she know her
brother was dying?
"He's seen a good many specialists," she said tentatively.
"And all told him the same thing," Eunice retorted. "An operation
might save him."
"It's a risk."
"And what's the alternative? A wheelchair for life! Any ordinary man
would take a chance, but Garth seems just as indifferent as he was
when Johnny persuaded him to go to England. And on top of it all
this crazy marriage. It beats me."
She pulled on her thick driving gloves viciously and all the irritation
and baffled curiosity resulting from that unsatisfactory interview
were in her next words to Maggy.
"I should have thought you at least would have persuaded him. What
did you marry him for, otherwise?"
Maggy knew her first spark of anger.
"I hate them all!" she told her blurred reflection in the glass. "The
Sheltons, brother and sister, and the gossiping servants. You were a
fool, Maggy Crayle, if you ever thought you could tackle a job of this
kind."
She ran a comb through her soft hair which was learning to curl in
the humid moorland air, powdered her pink nose with a shaking
hand, and went slowly downstairs to Doolan who was waiting for
her.
His melancholy face creased in a rare smile.
"Don't you be mindin' her, ma'am, she upsets us all," he said
surprisingly, and for the first time Maggy thought of him as a human
being.
She followed him down the flagged passage feeling a little calmer,
and Doolan knocked on a door and left her. At Garth's reply to the
knock, she opened the door and stood hesitating on the threshold.
"Come in, Maggy," he said. 'Tm afraid I've been lazy. I should have
sent for you before."
The room had evidently beep a study, for it still retained its deep
chairs, its desk, and its well-filled bookshelves. A bed and a
screened-off washstand were the only signs of its change of character
and Garth himself was up and sitting in his wheelchair by the fire.
Maggy crossed the room and stood looking down at him.
"Are you feeling more rested?" she asked gently.
"Oh, yes. As I said, I've just been lazy."
She sat, on the edge of her chair, twisting her wedding ring round
with nervous fingers. Looking at her with the firelight playing on her
flushed cheeks, and the long, soft hair curving round her neck, he
wondered why he had never realised before how young she was.
Eunice was right in that. She was a child, and had things been any
different he had had no business to marry her.
"I'm sorry your first impressions have been so unfortunate," he said
gently. "I've been remiss, I'm afraid. I flung you into a new life and
gave you no warning of what to expect."
"It would have helped to have had a rough idea," she said a little
forlornly. "There's been no one to ask about things, you see, and
people - the servants ask me things and I don't know the answers."
He looked suddenly a little tired.
"Yes, I've managed badly," he replied. "But we'll make a better show
of things from now on. I'll be dining with you tonight, and tomorrow
I'll be about again as usual."
"Then I can begin my duties?" said Maggy in relieved tones.
"Your duties? Oh, yes, I'll think of something," he said vaguely.
"What I really wanted to talk to you about was my own affairs. I
haven't said anything to Eunice about the latest verdict on me, and I
don't intend to. Johnny - well, Johnny's a different matter - he's a
doctor and - I don't know yet. But it's better no one should know.
That's our secret, Maggy, and I trust you. As you can see for yourself,
we're not a very populated neighbourhood, fortunately. There's bound
to be a little talk at first. People will either think you're a designing
hussy or I'm a selfish cad, but that doesn't matter very much. Later, it
will all be easily explained. In the meantime, I hope you won't find
life at Floyne too irksome."
"Amuse yourself how you like," he said on one occasion. "I'm afraid
you must find it dull, but Floyne is very isolated."
"But I came here to work - in some sort of capacity," she replied
indignantly.
For a moment his cold gaze rested on her thoughtfully.
"Oh, yes, so you did, Maggy," he said a little helplessly. "Well, later
there'll be calls to return - things like that. My social activities are
somewhat restricted, but that needn't stop you."
People had called; the Lynches from across the loch, the Shannons
from Castledrum, and old Lady Rynd driving ten miles in her antique
and famous electric brougham. For the most part Maggy had been
able to avoid them. She hadn't stopped to think that the calls must be
returned.
At the end of the first week, Maggy's new clothes began to arrive
from London. Mrs. Duffy signed for the gaily striped boxes with
compressed lips. It was clear what she thought of a young bride who
had arrived without luggage and worn the same unsuitable dress ever
since. But Bridgit was as excited as Maggy herself, and each freshly
unpacked garment drew further extravagant admiration and frank
approval at Maggy's changed appearance. They bent together over
frothy layers of tissue paper, their eyes bright with pleasure. It was an
event in the quiet routine of Floyne.
Maggy herself, who had experienced so little satisfaction in the
choosing of her clothes knew her first delight in pretty things. They
were the first good clothes she had ever worn and the saleswoman at
Bromley and Davis had done her job well. Maggy danced across the
floor of her vast, chilly bedroom, and surveyed herself in the oldfashioned cheval glass.
"I look quite nice," she exclaimed in surprise, observing with interest
the effect of smoky-blue angora on her eyes.
"Sure, ye look a drame of elligence, ma'am, an' as slender as a sally
wand that'ud break in two." Bridgit, her hands on her own strong
hips, watched approvingly. "A child ye look, an' the master chained
to an' ould gintleman's chair, the cray- thure!"
Maggy was still unused to the innocent frankness of the Irish, and to
hide her embarrassment, she pounced on the old beige frock lying in
a discarded heap on the floor.
"No one's ever going to wear this again. I shall burn it," she cried,
and ran out of the room and down the graceful curving staircase to
the hall.
The chill silence of Floyne rose to meet her, so that for an instant, she
paused, uncertain. No one was about. With a guilty glance over her
shoulder, Maggy ran to the fire, and flung the dress on to the glowing
turfs. On her knees, she seized the poker and pushed and beat the
dress further into the fire, watching with glee the badge of her recent
, servitude blacken and smoulder. It was a long time catching, and
refused to burn properly, choking the fire and emitting a cloud of
acrid smoke.
"What on earth are you doing?" asked Garth's voice unexpectedly
behind her. Maggy had not yet got used to the sudden silent
appearances of the wheelchair, and she jumped, dropping the poker
with a clatter. Sitting on her heels, she stared dumbly up at him
feeling like a child caught stealing jam.
"What are you trying to do?" he repeated curiously. "Set the house on
fire?"
There was so much time in which to dream that Maggy often caught
herself thinking of Garth. Here against his own background he was
just as unapproachable as he had been at the Imperial. He never
spoke of his life before his accident and there was nothing in the
impersonal emptiness of Floyne to give a clue to what manner of man
he had been. Mrs. Duffy was not the gossiping kind, and Bridgit,
who was only too ready to talk, was a recent addition to the staff.
Only old Casey, the groom, provided any hint of what the master
with the use of his legs had been like. There was nothing now for
Casey to do, and Maggy would come upon him sometimes gazing
wistfully at the line of empty loose boxes in the stables, sick for the
horses which had been his life.
"Sould they was, very wan of them," he mourned. "An' the craythure
that destroyed him the gintlest of thim all. It should niver have
happened."
"How did it happen, Casey?" Maggy asked.
But he shook his head and pursed his old lips and just repeated :
"It should niver have happened, an' himself the finest rider in the
West. Niver reckless, you mind, but without fear. He rode hard an' he
drove hard. A wan for speed was Mr. Shelton."
Maggy looked at the long black Lagonda standing useless in the
garage. No one but Garth had ever driven it. It was difficult to
imagine him strong and active with a restless passion for speed. How
had it been possible to readjust his oudook to this cold detachment?
"He's still without fear," she said slowly. That at least was true. He
even looked on death with the same indifference.
The old man gave her a shrewd glance. He liked Maggy and was
sorry for her, but the ways of the quality were quare entirely.
"He was born ould, that wan," he remarked obscurely. "There's niver
any telling with the master's kind."
No, thought Maggy sitting opposite her husband after dinner by the
fire, there was never any telling. Soon he would close his book, and
with a brief good-night, would wheel himself off to his own rooms.
Maggy sighed. It would be nice to have someone to talk to.
On one of the rare fine afternoons of that rainy November, Maggy set
out to return her calls. The Daimler which had brought them from the
boat, she learnt, had been a hired car from Galway. Garth kept no
chauffeur, and Maggy was driven by one of the gardeners in the old
Hillman which was kept for station work.
Maggy sat in the back of the car in her new tweed coat and expensive
brogues feeling nervous and painfully young. It was not, she thought,
part of a paid companion's job to return calls, but that of course arose
from the complication of being Garth's wife as well. Maggy, feeling
at times rather like Alice in Wonderland, began to wonder which she
was.
Just before she had started out he had looked at her with a quizzical
expression and said:
"You won't forget you're Mrs. Shelton and not Maggy Crayle, will
you?"
She had assured him she would try and remember, and wondered if
she was not making a success of her job. She wished he could have
come with her, but he went nowhere, and had seen no one since his
return except his sister and his lawyer.
Bumping over the bad Irish roads, Maggy clasped her gloved hands
tightly in her lap and muttered over and over again "Mrs. Garth
Shelton: Mrs. Garth Shelton." The gardener, unlike most of his race,
was not talkative, and she gazed at the back of his red neck and felt
embarrassed at having to be shut up in a car with him for most of the
afternoon. It would take, several hours to cover the distance which
lay between each house, but it didn't seem to matter what time you
called on people here. Perhaps they'll all be out, Maggy thought
hopefully, but she was unlucky; they were all in except the
Fitzgeralds.
Each house was very much like its neighbour, smaller, more
ramshackle editions of Floyne, with acres of grassland, and ill- kept
gardens. At Ballycurrah, Maggy pulled a rusty bell three times with
no result, and was just creeping thankfully away when the front door
flew open and a loud imperious voice shouted:
"Oh, no, you don't, me girl! Come in and let me look at you."
Old Lady Rynd was an alarming apparition on first acquaintance.
Shp had a face exactly like a parrot and wore an elaborately dressed
wig of flaming red. She flourished an ear-trumpet as antique as her
car, and it was a long time before Maggy realised the old lady could
hear perfectly well when she wanted. She drove Maggy into a room
crammed with Victorian knick- knacks, and apparently hermetically
sealed windows, and proceeded to fire questions at her at an alarming
rate.
"H'm! Not Garth's cup of tea, I shouldn't have thought," was her
opening remark. There seemed to be no answer to this, so . Maggy
said nothing.
"Would you have thought so?" demanded the startling old lady, and
thrust her ear-trumpet into Maggy's face.
"I - I don't know what his tastes were," said Maggy faintly.
"What? Speak up, child. You're mumbling."
"I don't know what his tastes were," shouted Maggy.
"Why not? He liked 'em high-couraged - like his horses. Are the
rumours true?"
"What rumours?'' Maggy backed away.
"Keep still, child. The stories Eunice has been spreading! Scraped
acquaintance in some health spa, sick-room stuff, married him before
you could say wink."
"It wasn't a bit like that," said Maggy, and felt her colour rising, and
although she spoke in her normal tone of voice, Lady Ryndchuckled.
"Garth's not one to be caught," she said. "Hard nut, Garth. Secret as
the devil, too, and I've known him all his life. Not much of a bridal
for you, though, eh?" She dug Maggy in the ribs with the eartrumpet, and emitted another fiendish cackle.
"I think I must be going," Maggy yelled desperately into the eartrumpet.
"Don't shout, I'm not deaf," said Lady Rynd severely. "Besides,
you've only just come. Don't take any notice of me; you're as big a
shock to me as I am to you."
"Am I?" said Maggy disbelievingly.
"Out of the schoolroom. Damn shame! Garth's played a dirty trick.
Are you in love with him?"
"No," shouted Maggy.
All at once she became painfully conscious of his wheelchair, the rug
over his helpless legs. It was not the sort of joke to have repeated to a
man tied for life to a cripple's chair, and one's employer at that. She
suddenly felt rather miserable.
"I -I think I'll go to bed, if you don't mind," she said lamely, and got
awkwardly to her feet.
"Don't let my affliction embarrass you," he said, and she saw that his
eyes were mocking her. "Half your attraction, Maggy, was that you
never appeared to be sorry for me."
"How can you say that?" she cried in distress.
"I'd much rather say it - and think it," he returned dispassionately.
"Good-night, Maggy."
CHAPTER VI
NOVEMBER was a month of wild storms. For days at a time the gale
tore at the rocky west coast and it was impossible to venture out of
doors. Floyne at those times was a stronghold of desolation. The
wind shrieked round the house and down the chimneys and lamps on
their brackets in the many passages flared eerily in the draughts.
Maggy, shut up for so many hours in the high, empty rooms, huddled
over the sulky fires and thought of the long winter with dismay.
There was so little to do, and although the work of cataloguing the
library filled her mornings, there were the long, dark afternoons to be
got through, and the strange, uneasy evenings. Although Garth
appeared now for most meals, he seldom settled down in any of the
living rooms until after tea, and sometimes he kept to his own room
for two or three days at a time. Maggy sometimes wondered if he
found their periods of isolation together as difficult as she did herself.
He seemed very rarely disposed towards conversation, and she knew
no more of him than she had on first acquaintance.
He would sit opposite her with a book on his knees, sometimes
reading, sometimes leaning back with his eyes closed as she
remembered him on the terrace of the Imperial Hotel. Then Maggy
would glance surreptitiously over the top of her own book at his
weary, impassive face and wonder what he thought about during
those long spells when he might have been asleep. But he seldom
slept, she discovered, and once or twice his disconcerting eyes had
opened suddenly as if he knew she was watching him. Then his lips
tightened, whether in irritation at being watched, or in suspicion of
unwanted compassion, she never knew, for he made no comment,
and Maggy, feeling as though she had been caught listening at
keyholes, hurriedly averted her own eyes.
She did not feel pity for him. He was still to her something not quite
real, like Floyne itself and the desolate countryside.
She could not think of him as a tragic figure, for his own detachment
was like an; armour which no emotion might pierce. But at night,
lying in her vast feather bed, she listened to the wind, and wondered
why he had married her.
Although six months with Mrs. Smythe-Gibson had taught Maggy
that a companion's place is to be seen and not heard, she had a natural
instinct to talk and ask questions that was more readily starved here
at Floyne than in any of the hotel of her acquaintance. Until six
months ago she had been used to her father's unstinted
companionship every evening of her life, and she could have
dissipated much of her loneliness talking to Garth, had he been more
approachable. Instead, she made do with Bridgit, to Mrs Duffy's
obvious disapproval.
"If you would not encourage the girl to chatter and gossip, ma'am,
she would be getting through her work quicker," she said once.
Maggy felt reproved. She had encouraged Bridgit to spend long
hours discoursing on leprechauns and banshees, the neighbours and
the staff in her rich, Irish voice, until it was difficult to separate one
from the other. But Bridgit was young. She was the only person
interested in Maggy herself, and she was a fount of ignorant
superstition and wise folklore. Maggy had a warm affection for her.
Once, on Norah the elderly parlourmaid's afternoon out, Garth had
caught them both laughing and chatting while Bridgit laid the tea in
the library. They were unaware of him until he was half-way across
the room, when they immediately fell silent. He made no comment
when Bridgit had gone, but he glanced once or twice at Maggy, the
animation still lingering in her eyes, although the laughter was wiped
from her lips. It was not possible from his expression to know what
he was thinking.
The unused grand piano standing in the deserted drawing- room had
been a temptation from the start. Maggy never knew why she had
hesitated to try it, for it would have proved a loved companion
through many a long empty hour. But one afternoon when the wind
had dropped and only the rain fell from the skies which had been
grey and overcast for nearly a fortnight, the longing for selfexpression became too strong. What reason had she for not touching
the piano? She had not seen Garth for nearly two days. If she couldn't
talk then she would play.
She opened the heavy lid timidly, and stood for a moment fingering
the keys before she sat down on the old-fashioned revolving stool.
Softly at first, she struck a few chords, and then as the fine quality of
the instrument became apparent under her hesitating fingers, she
wandered into half-forgotten phrases of her student days, her cheeks
flushed with pleasure. Here was no neglected concession to drawingroom furnishing. Someone kept this piano regularly tuned. The notes
were a little stiff as if they had not been played for some time, but the
tone was exceptionally fine. Maggy's fingers, stiff at first, like the
keys, gradually became more accustomed. Slightly intoxicated by the
almost forgotten delight in making music she forgot her diffidence.
The keys were cool and alive under her strengthening touch. Music
filled the high room, stirring it to warmth.
She was unconscious of the door opening and was aware of someone
in the room with her only when a voice spoke almost at her elbow.
"Mrs. Shelton, ma'am, will you stop this instant, please!"
Maggy, startled, broke off in the middle of a phrase, the notes
finishing in a discord. Mrs. Duffy, her black eyes snapping with
anger in her white face, shut the keyboard lid almost on to Maggy's
fingers.
"The piano is never used, now. The noise disturbs the master," she
said, and her expression added: "Without permission, too. Little
upstart!"
The pleasure drained from Maggy's face.
"I'm sorry," was all she said. "I didn't know."
Yet she had known. Otherwise, why had she never touched the piano
before?
She wondered whether she should apologise to Garth when she saw
him that evening. But he made no mention of the incident himself
and she decided that perhaps he hadn't heard her.
So the days slipped into December, each one like the one before. If
the weather was fine enough, Maggy took her favourite walk to the
Shamus Stone, that odd rock formation from which she had had her
first view of the sea and the Isles of Aran lying in the water like some
fairy phantasy. She liked to stand on the topmost stone which rocked
a little, and feel the wind whipping- her face while she stared across
the Atlantic. Sometimes when - Garth sent a message by Doolan that
he would be lunching in his own room, she would bring sandwiches
and eat them curled up in the heather in the lee of the rocks.
Bridgit didn't approve of these visits to the Shamus Stone, but Maggy
could never discover its history. Bridgit was full of the legends and
superstitions attaching to almost every landmark in the West, but of
the Shamus Stone she would say nothing save that it was "onlucky
entirely," Maggy meant to ask Garth some time, though probably he
was not much interested ia country superstitions.
One morning in early December Maggy decided on an expedition to
her favourite haunt which, on account of the weather, she had been
unable to visit for over a fortnight. The storm of the night before had
died with the dawn hours, leaving a day that was rare in Maggy's
short experience' of Ireland. The sun shone from a sky which was
blue and innocent of clouds, and the deepened colour of moor and
hills had for her a new and unexpected beauty. She walked with a
light heart. Here was a day that even the austerity of Floyne couldn't
spoil. Here in the heather above Lough Sidhe, she was free to be
herself, to shout and sing if she chose, with no Mrs. Duffy to deny
her. The hired Daimler was coming from Galway after lunch to take
Garth on one of his rare, unspecified errands. She was free of them
all until tea-time. She curled up in the heather in the shelter of the
Shamus Stone and began to eat her sandwiches.
She heard no sound of anyone approaching, but she was aware
suddenly that someone was standing on the topmost stone. She could
hear it rock. At the same moment a couple of Water spaniels
discovered her own presence and stood snuffling and uttering little
excited yelps.
"What have you got there - a fox?" called a man's voice from above
Maggy's head, and almost in the same breath, a wild figure, all flying
legs and arms, leapt straight over her into the heather.
Maggy let out a startled cry; the dogs barked again, and she found
herself looking up into a pair of the bluest eyes she had ever seen.
"For the love of God!" exclaimed the stranger. "And who in the
world are you?"
Before she could answer he said: "No, don't tell me. You're a
changeling. You're the vixen of the Shamus legend in mortal form.
Or you're little Bridgit - remember?
"They stole little Bridgit
For seven years long;
When she came down again
"So you're Garth Shelton's new wife," he said slowly, and sounded
amused. "For the love of God, what next!" '
Maggy drew away a little.
"Is there something queer about me?" she demanded a little defiantly.
She was not prepared to put up with the unspoken criticism of the
first young man she had met since coming to Ireland.
His attractive, slightly mocking face assumed a quick gentleness.
"Not queer, only unexpected," he told her softly. "To tell you the
truth, when I first saw you sitting there with your shy eyes and hair
falling to your shoulders, I thought you were a child of fourteen.
Garth is a lucky man. You are enchanting, my dear."
The delicate colour flooded Maggy's cheeks. He was the first man
who had fever told her she was enchanting. She had no words for him
at all, and he, watching her confusion, with a sharp flash of interest,
understood it perfectly.
"I'm Rory O'Malley," he said easily. "I live with my aunt on the other
side of the loch from Floyne. We'll be meeting one of these days."
"The Lynches?" Maggy asked, trying to remember who had called.
"No. We live further down. A very small house with very large
stables. My aunt cares for nothing but her horses. I don't expect she's
called. She never calls on anyone."
"I don't think my husband has mentioned -" began Maggy, wondering
why she had never heard of Mr. O'Malley or his aunt before in a
place where neighbours were so few and far between.
He looked amused.
"Probably not. We all know each other quite well, but Garth was
never much of a one for visiting - even before the accident."
"Wasn't he?" asked Maggy simply, and by her very simplicity
exposed her ignorance of all her husband's life before she married
him.
She pushed the packet of sandwiches towards him.
"Do share my lunch. Mary Kate always gives me more than I can
eat," she said, eager to make some friendly gesture because he was
the first human being to whom she had been able to talk naturally for
nearly two months.
"Thanks."
They sat side by side, munching contentedly, the mild winter sun
warm on their faces, and the tang of the sea on their lips as they ate,
and all at once Maggy knew that she could talk. Here was a
companion, young like herself, quick to sympathy, quick to laughter,
making her laugh. With him she could laugh over old Lady Rynd and
her electric brougham, her wig and her ear- trumpet, the Lynches'
vagueness, the Fitzgeralds' harmless snobbery.
"Though mind you, old Amelia Rynd is all there. Doesn't give a
damn for anyone and, if she likes you, she's your friend for life," he
said.
"I find her rather alarming," confessed Maggy, and began talking
about Mrs. Duffy.
"Well, old Duffy was always a bosom friend of Eunice's," he said. "If
she'd had her way she'd have taken the old girl along when she
married, but Johnny for once put his foot down. Said he couldn't
"He had fallen in love with a fairy woman who was a woman by
night and a vixen by day. He swore to catch the vixen so that he
could keep her always in captivity, and he hunted her with his dogs
one day and they killed her here right by the Shamus Stone, and the
Sidhe carried him off then and there and he was never seen again
from that day to this. The country people say he still rides on wild
nights, compelled to hunt for ever as a punishment."
Maggy shivered.
"Like the Flying Dutchman compelled to sail for ever," she said.
"Only he was saved by Senta's sacrifice."
"Irish gods are more implacable," he laughed. "Will the story stop
you from coming here?"
She laughed in her turn.
"Of course not - how silly! I often come here. It's my favourite
place."
Again he shot her that odd enquiring glance.
"Is it?" was all he said. "Then I shall know where to look for . you."
They had talked for two hours and the warmth was beginning to go
out of the sun. Maggy realised it was getting late.
"I must be getting back," she said, and got to her feet, stretching. She
climbed on to the Shamus Stone and stood surveying the wide sweep
of sky and sea and moor with glad eyes. "On a day like this, I can
understand the magic," she said happily, and didn't know that young
O'Malley himself was part of the magic.
He didn't offer to walk back With her, but calling to his dogs, sprang
off the rock and walked away through the heather.
It was downhill most of the way back to Floyne, and Maggy ran,
jumping over gorse bushes, plunging carelessly into peaty pools
because it was good to be young, to have found a friend, to have
slaked her thirst in human companionship. After the long days of
storm and rain, shut up in the silent house, she was intoxicated with
freedom. Even the house itself seemed less alien as she pushed open
the heavy front door and came into the quiet hall.
The drawing-room door stood open, and a patch of sunlight fell full
on the shining grand piano, catching small motes and particles of dust
in a dancing haze. No one was about and Garth -was out. Maggy,
with a swift glance over her shoulder, flung her coat in a heap on the
floor and darted into the drawing-room to lift the lid of the piano.
Once, just once when the house was deserted, she would let her new
happiness run out of her fingers.
She touched the keys eagerly and began to play a Strauss waltz. She
had forgotten the title, but the gay lilt was as familiar as the swing of
the dance itself. Let old Duffy come and tell her to stop. Let anyone
interrupt until she had come to the last delicious phrase. Her fingers
were becoming more supple, her touch more sure, and the lovely
singing tone of the piano lingered on in the room as she finally
stopped playing.
"Thank you," said Garth's voice with grave politeness, and she
whirled round on the revolving stool to see him sitting in his
wheelchair just inside the doorway.
In a moment, the happiness was wiped from Maggy's face, and she
looked the picture of guilt. Of all things to happen! Of all wretched
things to happen on such an afternoon as this....
She began to stammer.
"I - I'm terribly sorry. I thought you were out. I would never I
mean if I'd known you were back " She stopped miserably, seeing
his quick frown of irritation.
"Why should you apologise?" he said coldly. "You play very well."
"Mrs. Duffy said the noise disturbed you," she explained. "She
stopped me the other day."
"Did she? Very officious of her. Play whenever you like, Maggy.
Nothing disturbs me."
But he was disturbed now, as Maggy could see when he propelled his
chair up to the piano.
"Thank you," she said doubtfully. "It's a lovely piano."
He looked at her curiously.
"You seem different today," he said slowly. "Just now you were
happy. Perhaps I haven't seen you happy before." He gave a wry little
smile and she was silent, not understanding the trend of the
conversation at all. It would almost seem that his detachment was
slipping.
"I'm afraid you've been shut up here too much of late - all this bad
weather and one thing and another. Go out and see people. You've
met nearly everyone now."
He sounded irritated again as if she had failed in her duties.
"I haven't been asked," she said, feeling a little nervous.
"People don't ask you in Ireland," he said impatiently. "You just drop
in."
"Oh," said Maggy. "I don't think I should be very good at that."
"You must learn to adapt yourself, my dear," he remarked briskly,
and Maggy thought a little forlornly that she must have been learning
to adapt herself ever since adolescence.
He started to wheel his chair out again.
"Well, play the piano whenever you feel inclined. I'll speak to Duffy.
She takes too much upon herself at times," he said. "There's a whole
pile of music in that cabinet which you can amuse yourself with the
next wet day."
But it was some days before Maggy summoned enough courage to
take him at his word. Every morning now, Mrs. Duffy herself
ostentatiously dusted the piano, but the gesture was denied by her
compressed lips and added shortness of manner to Maggy. Garth had
clearly given his orders and they were one more black mark against
the interloper.
Maggy was worried by the housekeeper's continued hostility.
Whatever the woman's private view of her employer's marriage might
be, she couldn't know the true facts and Maggy herself had given her
no cause for such an attitude. But Mrs. Duffy in her small way added
much to the difficulties of Maggy's position in the house. She firmly
discouraged any attempts on the girl's part to make friends with the
other servants, so that Maggy who would have liked to take an
interest in Mary Kate's lumbago, and Norah's nephew in the Civil
Guard, felt awkward on her rare visits to the kitchen and was obliged
to invent weak- sounding reasons for being there at all. It was trae
that Mary Kate would inevitably say: "I've just wet the tay, ma'am,
will ye be havin' a cup?" Mary Kate was motherly and wheezy and
looked on Maggy as an under-nourished child who needed feeding
up. But if Maggy accepted, enjoying the big flagged kitchen with its
smell of new bread and hot potato cakes, Mrs. Duffy was sure to
CHAPTER VII
TWICE now had that charming name leapt at Maggy from a printed
page. The Wind in the Willows, The Cherry-Blossom Wand, and
Sabrina's name linking the two lovely titles.
For the first time since she had come to Floyne Maggy's thoughts
returned to the unknown owner of the name, and she tried to
remember what Garth had said. "She doesn't exist." Was she dead, or
was she just a figment of the imagination - a name in an old book, a
stranger to him as she was to Maggy? She began to play Sabrina's
song.
"I will pluck from my tree a cherry-blossom wand,
And carry it in my merciless hand,
So I will drive you, so bewitch your eyes,"
With a beautiful thing that can never grow wise."
Maggy shivered a little. Perhaps the room was cold. Turf didn't seem
to throw out heat in the same way as coal. "Light are the petals that
fall from the bough,
And lighter the love that I offer you now"
She broke off abruptly. The music was as cold and brittle as i the
words, but its delicacy fascinated her. She started again and | played
it right through from the beginning, humming the air. That evening,
Garth didn't offer to read to her. He looked tired and was unusually
silent. Maggy had the impression that he had heard her playing
Sabrina's song and was displeased.
She didn't touch the piano for the next two days, but walked instead
each afternoon up to the Shamus Stone. On the second day she saw
Rory O'Malley sitting on the topmost stone, a gun propped beside
him against the rock.
"Hullo!" he called out when he saw her. "I thought you must have
deserted old man Shamus, or been carried off by the Little People."
"I've been twice when you weren't here," said Maggy, and he
laughed.
"Did you come and look for me?" he asked, amused at her
ingenuousness.
"Of course. You're the only person I have to talk to," she replied
simply, and climbed on to the Shamus Stone beside him.
He crinkled his nose at her and she thought again how very blue his
eyes were.
"I don't know whether to take that as a compliment or not," he
laughed. "It has rather a last hope suggestion about it. Don't you talk
to your husband?"
"Y - es," said Maggy doubtfully. "But that's different."
He regarded her serious face with amusement.
"Have you discovered that after only two months of marriage?" he
asked mockingly.
But she lifted grave, clear eyes to his.
"I didn't mean it was different because he was my husband," she
explained like a conscientious child. "He is different. You see, I don't
know him very well."
The mockery went from his face.
"You're a strange girl," he remarked. "I would very much like to
know how that marriage came about, and so would half the district."
"Oh, it's very simple. You see " Maggy stopped. It was so natural
to talk to Rory, as if she had known him for years, that she had been
on the point of explaining the whole situation to him.
"Well, what do I see?" he asked curiously.
"Nothing," said Maggy, and shut her lips firmly.
His attractive mouth curved up in a wide grin.
"I see one thing very clearly," he said.
"What?"
"Oh, no, Miss Curiosity. I can keep my counsel, tool What did you
do before your marriage, or are you straight out of the schoolroom?"
"I was companion to an old lady and we lived in hotels," said Maggy,
and began to tell him about Mrs. Smythe-Gibson.
"For the love of God!" he exclaimed. "To think such women exist!
What drove you to such a life? Have you no people?"
She started to talk about her father, and having started she couldn't
slop. He was the first person to be interested in her life as Maggy
Crayle, and the dull ache which had been with her ever since her
father's death found exquisite relief in words. Her eyes were bright
with tears as she finished talking and he leaned towards her and
kissed her on the cheek.
"You loved him very much, didn't you, Maggy?" he said gently.
"And it's lonelier here than life in hotels. More time to think."
"Yes," said Maggy, grateful for his swift understanding. "There's so
little I can do at Floyne."
the fire, and listening to the small regular rustle as Garth turned the
leaves of his book; one cannot hold on to time. Even with knowledge
of the future one was helpless. She looked across at Garth. Perhaps in
a year she would look back and think: if only I had known him better:
if only I hadn't wasted the days. They were strangers to each Other,
yet Maggy knew with frightened clarity that his death could not leave
her untouched.
She was aware all at once that his eyes were on her.
"What were you thinking?" he asked abruptly.
"I -" she searched wildly for some reply which was far from the truth,
and could think of nothing. "I don't know," she said lamely.
He looked at her gravely, the lines of his face etched deeply in the
lamplight.
"Don't think," he said with sudden harshness. "Believe me, it's quite
profitless." He closed his book and began to turn his chair round.
"Eunice and her husband are coming over to dine tomorrow night.
I'm sorry, but I couldn't ignore my sister's demands any longer. You
might tell Duffy."
"Very well," she said, and glad of the excuse to evade his eyes, she
ran across the room to open the door for him.
He held out his hand with an unusual gesture of friendliness, and for
a moment she took it, feeling the hard pressure of his fingers.
"Good-night, Maggy," he said, and wheeled his chair past her
through the doorway.
Johnny Moore was a thin stooping man of nearly fifty with a gentle
ascetic face which reminded Maggy of her father. She liked him
instantly and thought there was genuine interest and pleasure in his
eyes as he shook hands.
"Well, Garth, it's good to see you again," he said, smiling down at his
brother-in-law. "I expect you're glad to be home."
"But high time you were out of that contraption with a brand- new
wife and all," said Eunice with faint malice.
To Maggy's relief the Fitzgeralds arrived and Eunice, ignoring
Maggy, immediately began pouring out the drinks which were set out
on a small table.
It would have been a difficult evening if it hadn't been for Johnny.
Eunice made it quite plain that she regarded her brother's marriage as
a rather poor joke and although she made an effort to be polite to
Maggy, her manner was a mixture of half- amused patronage and illconcealed curiosity. The Fitzgeralds were also curious, but they
managed to hide the fact more successfully, and although Maggy
found them dull they provided a check for Eunice. But Johnny,
sitting on her left, although he didn't talk very much, gave her a
feeling of sympathy and support. Whatever he thought, Johnny
would be tolerant. Once or twice she caught him glancing at Garth
with a shrewd professional eye and she thought he looked a little
puzzled.
Johnny for his part watched Maggy with interest. A child, yes
Eunice had been right there - but a mousy little nobody who had been
just clever enough to catch a sick man on the rebound - that wasn't
Maggy. He watched her sitting at the foot of Garth's table, very
straight and slender in her leaf-green frock, and thought she looked
like some delicate flower. Her fine bones had a brittle look in the
candlelight, and the soft brown hair curling gently on to her shoulders
gave her the look of a grave child as she listened carefully to the
conversation.
"You must find Floyne a little lonely," he said kindly, and she turned
to look at him with wide grey eyes which couldn't focus easily at
short range.
"It isn't that," she said, speaking as if they were alone and hadn't met
for the first time only that evening. "It's feeling so useless."
He nodded and looked thoughtful.
"Yes, I can understand that, although, of course, you know you're
quite wrong. Why otherwise should he have married you?"
The pupils of her eyes, already larger than they should have been,
dilated.
"Yes, I used to think -" began Maggy, and stopped suddenly.
She was aware of Garth throughout the meal, dealing with the
women each side of him, replying to Mrs. Fitzgerald's small talk,
listening to Eunice's biting comments, equally indifferent to both.
She was glad when the port was placed on the table and she could
give the signal to rise.
"Don't stay too long, Hugh," said Eunice from the doorway, "I want
Johnny to have a look at Garth." In the hall, she said to Maggy: "I'll
take Eileen upstairs. Don't bother to come. I know my way."
Maggy stood watching them, and as they disappeared round a bend in
the stairs, Mrs. Fitzgerald's clear voice floated back to her:
"But very presentable, my dear! I thought you said -"
Maggy went into the drawing-room and stood with her back to the
fire. She felt alien and gauche and even the clinging velvet folds of
her charming frock gave her no feeling of confidence. Dinner had
been no worse and no better than she had expected, but Garth himself
had given her little help. It had been left to Johnny to rescue her from
the sticky patches. Garth in his supreme detachment possibly didn't
notice that there were any. In his own fashion he was probably
disliking the evening as much as she.
Eunice and Mrs. Fitzgerald, no doubt seizing the only opportunity for
discussing her thoroughly, came down after a long interval, and to
Maggy's relief, Hugh Fitzgerald came into the drawing-room a few
minutes afterwards.
"As always, my dear Eunice, I've obeyed your instructions and left
them to it," he said with heavy gallantry. "And now, Mrs. Shelton,
tell us what you think of old Ireland."
In the dining-room, there was a short silence when Hugh had left.
Johnny, who had moved into his wife's place, fingered his port glass
without speaking for a moment, then looked suddenly at his brotherin-law.
"Do you want me to give you the once-over?" he asked gravely.
Garth met his eyes with faint mockery.
"There's nothing you can tell me that I don't know already," he said
lightly. "And Eunice isn't really interested, you know."
"Eunice is not very sensitive," said Johnny quietly. "But that has its
advantages. The sensitive ones have a devil of a time in this world.
Why did you marry Maggy?"
For a moment Garth looked startled.
"I suppose all this means that you think I should never have married
her," he said impatiently. "A child of nineteen tied for life to a man in
a cripple's chair. Is that what you think?"
Johnny's eyes were still absent.
"No," he said thoughtfully. "No - I don't think you'd do that. But be a
little careful. Do you want to get back to the others now?"
"Well!" said Eunice when she saw them. "What did Johnny make of
you?"
Garth's black eyebrows lifted sardonically.
"I'm not sure. You'd better ask Johnny," he said, and sounded
amused. "If you want to know, we didn't discuss my health at all."
Eunice gave an exclamation of annoyance.
"How like you, and how like Johnny! Well, I'll tell you this, my dear,
you may be five years younger than I am, but you look about ten
years older now, though I say it myself."
"That," said Garth suavely, "should give you every satisfaction." He
held out his hand to Maggy, and she came to him a little uncertainly.
"Will you play for us, Maggy?" he asked with gentleness.
She looked surprised and then a little dismayed.
"Oh, I couldn't - I mean I don't think anyone wants -" She broke off
and looked appealingly at Johnny who was watching them quietly.
"I want," Garth said, and slipped his hand round her waist, giving it a
gentle squeeze.
She looked down at him in surprise. He had never before touched her
in this way, and looking at him she saw that for the moment he had
dropped the cold indifferent mask he habitually wore, and was
smiling up at her encouragingly.
"Go on!"
"All right," she said, and went and sat down at the piano.
But her fingers felt cold as she touched .the keys. What could jhe
play for these people who plainly didn't want to listen? Only then
Johnny leaning up against the mantelpiece regarded her with interest.
She couldn't see Garth's face at all.
She began to play a Chopin nocturne. Chopin was somehow right for
after dinner playing to a not very appreciative audience. Polite
sounds greeted the final notes and Eunice cleared her throat as if
about to speak. Garth's voice said quickly: "Don't stop."
Brahms ... Brahms was easy to listen to.... In the middle of one of the
waltzes, Maggy stopped, and because for her it always brought
release and comfort, she began to play Bach's Jesu, joy of man's
desiring, and as the lovely flow of that quiet music filled the room,
the essence of it entered into Maggy and brought her peace.
"Quite an accomplished little pianist," said Mrs. Fitzgerald, sounding
surprised. Johnny said nothing, but watched her face with a curious
expression. Eunice said grudgingly:
"You're good, Maggy. As good as Garth used to be. Usen't you to
play that last thing, Garth?"
So it was Garth himself who had played Maggy's piano! She turned
swiftly to look at him, but he was sitting well back in the shadow and
it was difficult to see his expression.
CHAPTER VIII
As Christmas approached, Maggy began wondering what she ought
to do about it. Her own Christmas this year was sadly simple. There
was only Ellen left to remember, and perhaps a few cards to some of
her father's old parishioners who would miss his own kindly
greetings. But there were Garth's friends. There was holly and
mistletoe and a tree - a big tree in the great hall bearing gifts for the
staff. She asked Garth for a list to whom cards should be sent.
"Cards?" He frowned. "What for?"
"Well, Christmas is only a week away."
"Is it?" He sounded surprised. "I never send cards, so you needn't
worry about that. But thanks for reminding me. Duffy had better go
into Galway soon and see about the things for Eunice's children."
"I could do that," said Maggy eagerly.
"Certainly, if it amuses you, though Duffy's always done it."
Maggy felt chilled. Had he never indulged in Christmas shopping,
then, even before he was paralysed?
"I'd like to. Shall I get the things for the servants - to put on the tree, I
mean?"
He looked astonished, then mildly irritated.
"What on earth would be the point of having a tree here?" he said
impatiently. "We're all adult people, and the servants have their own
festivities anyway. At least I suppose they do. They always have their
complement of whisky and porter and a cheque each. Doolan sees to
that."
Maggy looked at her own list and began planning presents for the
staff. A tree would obviously be silly, but there was nothing to stop
her from taking her small personal gifts to the servants' hall and
presenting them herself. Garth made her a generous allowance which
she had no opportunity of spending, and she would at least enjoy her
own share in this Christmas.
The grey hazy town was full of bustle. Fat turkeys hung on the
market stalls, which were bright with holly, and on every side rose
the cadenced sound of Irish voices bargaining. Maggy left Murphy
and the car in the market square and wandered through the crowds,
enjoying the rich-flavoured scraps of talk as she went. Galway still
struck her as a foreign town, with its narrow streets, its hint of
Spanish architecture, and the stacked piles of scarlet flannel outside
the drapers' shops. On this soft, grey afternoon with the light already
fading, she was very conscious of the sad beauty of this old town
with its air of gentle decay, and she had a sudden nostalgia for
cockney voices, the smell of tubes, lighted buses, crude with
advertisements, and the friendly roar of traffic.
Twice she lost herself and had to be directed by loquacious passersby. People addressed her as "milady" and "missy," and sometimes
"me jewel." Confused, she took another wrong turning, and walked,
straight into Rory O'Malley carrying a saddle on one arm and a horse
blanket on the other.
"If it isn't little Bridgit, and judging by the look of you your friends
have all gone again!" he exclaimed.
"I'm lost," laughed Maggy. "And I was just hankering after the smell
of a nice fried fish shop in the North End Road. I'm really trying to
do my Christmas shopping."
"Well, wait now till I've dumped these in the trap, and I'll come with
you," he said, and she turned and walked along beside him.
"Was I really getting tight?" asked Maggy with alarm. "I remember I
felt rather queer. You see, it was my wedding day."
"God save you, you poor innocent!" Miss O'Malley exclaimed with
fervour. "And why couldn't your husband have taken a private room
for you both and got drunk himself? That's always been his trouble,
the poor creature -no women, and not enough drink."
"Come now, you old reprobate, that's no way to talk to a young bride
about her husband," laughed Rory. "Pay no attention to her, Maggy,
she has no mind above the General Stud Book. I'm taking her
Christmas shopping, Aunt, and then I shall give her some tea."
"Do her good," said Miss O'Malley with emphasis. "Meet me here
and don't keep me waiting after half-past five. The mare's tricky after
dark."
The afternoon passed gaily enough with Rory making the choosing of
presents a merry task. He proved invaluable with suggestions for
Garth's unknown young nephew and niece, whom he described as
"unpleasant brats, domineering like their mother." Mrs. Duffy
presented the greatest problem, since Maggy felt that whatever she
chose would be received with disapproval. Rory facetiously
suggested that a bottle of liver salts would be the most appropriate
gift, but finally they found something suitable and Maggy's shopping
was finished.
As she accompanied Rory to the place she had chosen for tea, Maggy
remembered Garth. She would have liked very much to buy a present
for Garth, even though his own money would pay for it, but she
hadn't the slightest idea what to get. If he gave her anything at all she
supposed it would be a cheque, the same as his other employees - a
cheque to be put aside and added to that future ..annuity. An annuity
had a bleak, old-maidish sound which chilled Maggy when she
thought of it. Old servants were pensioned off with annuities when
their employers died or no longer had any use for their services. No,
it was impossible to choose a present for Garth.
The harbour lamps were alight when she walked with Rory back to
the market square, and a faint afterglow still hung over the
Connemara hills. They passed stalls hung with holly and mistletoe,
and men and women went by laughing, carrying great bunches of the
stuff. The berries were good this year, and the branches were heavy
with brilliant scarlet clusters. I will have holly, thought Maggy
suddenly. Christmas without holly isn't Christmas.
She bought lavishly, Rory bargaining light-heartedly with a little man
with bandy legs who might have been a jockey. Between them they
carried the prickly stuff to the car and dumped it in the back. Murphy
looked sourly at the heap of greenery and remarked:
"For what would you be wanting to spind good money on the likes av
that? Sure, it grows in the hidges."
Maggy laughed, said good-bye to Rory, and got into the front seat
beside the driver. Her mind was still full of Garth as Murphy
threaded his way through the crowded streets, and seeing an antique
shop she ordered him to stop. The window was crowded with junk,
but Maggy had caught sight of a dusty, graceful goblet wedged in
among the rubbish. Garth collected glass. Here perhaps was the right
gift.
The stuffy little shop was ill-lighted, and Maggy stood fingering the
goblet doubtfully. She knew nothing about glass, but the shape and
pattern of vine-leaves pleased her.
"Is it genuine?" she asked timidly.
"Michael's an atheist," said Kathy grandly. "Did you play in the band
in Uncle Garth's hotel in England?"
' "Of course not, why should I?"
"Oh, Mummy said you probably did. Uncle Garth's a cripple for life,
isn't he? Do you push him around in a bath chair?"
"When Uncle Garth dies, we inherit Floyne," Michael said
conversationally, and added encouragingly: "But I don't suppose that
will be till I'm grown up, and of course you may have children."
"Don't be silly," said Kathy in a superior voice. "How can Uncle
Garth-"
To Maggy's intense relief, Johnny put his head out of his surgery
door.
"Hullo, Maggy!" he exclaimed with pleasure. "I wondered who the
children were talking to. Come and have a glass of sherry."
Sitting opposite Johnny in his untidy study, she thought again how
nice he was and how strange it should be that he had produced such
obviously Shelton children.
His eyes twinkled at her suddenly.
"Found the brats a bit unnerving?" he asked, and she laughed.
"Some of their remarks are a little alarming," she admitted.
"They're going through a precocious stage. Eunice encourages them,
afraid," he said. "Garth much the same? "
"Yes, he doesn't seem to vary very much. I've often wondered does
he have much pain? "
It was close on seven o'clock when she got back to Floyne. Garth
would be dressing for dinner. Murphy helped her carry in the holly
and pile it in a gay heap in the hall. Tomorrow she would begin
decorating. As the last bundle was brought in, Mrs. Duffy came
through the dining-room door and stood looking at the holly.
"What's all this?" she demanded of Murphy, ignoring Maggy, who
had usurped her privileges in the matter of Christmas shopping.
"I bought it for the decorations," Maggy said, annoyed with herself
for the immediate feeling of guilt which always assailed her in the
housekeeper's presence.
Mrs. Duffy turned her bright, snapping eyes on Maggy.
"The master will not tolerate that stuff in this part of the house, if
you'll excuse me, ma'am. If you had asked me before you went, I
could have told you we never decorate Floyne."
"I've already spoken to Mr. Shelton, Mrs. Duffy," said Maggy, her
temper rising. The woman's attitude in front of one of the other
servants was insufferable.
"I've had no other orders, ma'am, except the usual ones. The master
mislikes litter," Mrs. Duffy said. "Take the stuff away to the servants'
hall, Pat Murphy, before the master sees it. The staff will be glad of
She was late for dinner that night, and Garth seemed Curt, impatient
at being kept waiting. Maggy watched him surreptitiously throughout
the evening, trying to imagine him in different circumstances. But it
was difficult to picture that quiet detachment being pierced by
warmth and laughter. Had not Rory said of him: "Garth was always a
cold, reserved sort of creature.... He was born old." Was anyone
really born old, she wondered, or did life sometimes do that to you
before your time? Eunice had been right, Maggy thought with a little
shock of pain. With his greying hair and thin, lined face he might
easily, have passed for forty-five. His lack of movement, the swift,
silent passage of his wheelchair took any suggestion of; youth from
him, and it was hard to visualise him as he must have been only nine
months ago, an active normal man.
He looked up suddenly from his book and she hastily transferred her
gaze to the fire.
"I must take up a library subscription for you, Maggy," he said. "I'm
afraid there's nothing very modern to read at Floyne."
She felt awkward, wondering if he resented her sitting idly opposite
him, lost in her own thoughts. He had stopped reading aloud to her of
late, and she missed the closer intimacy of those evenings.
"Thank you," she said meekly.
"Did you find what you wanted in Galway?"
"Yes," she said, and thought of the goblet which she had carefully
Washed and hidden in the bottom of her wardrobe. But she said
nothing about the holly so gaily bought at the market stalls. After all,
what was the point of holly if no one felt like Christmas?
Christmas Eve was a day of wild storms. Garth, who didn't appear to
be so well, kept to his room, not even joining Maggy for dinner, and
she went to bed early, wondering as she passed through the silent
hall, dim with shadows, what it must have looked like last year with
its lighted tree and the curving staircase echoing with careless
footsteps.
Bridgit had told her how on Christmas Eve the country people placed
lighted candles in their windows to invite the Christ- child in should
He be passing. Maggy had thought it a charming custom, and when
upon reaching her room she found the curtains drawn back and a
single candle burning on the window- sill, she wanted to weep for the
simple friendly gesture of the kindly girl.
She lay awake in her shadowy four-poster for a long time, watching
the little flame burn down and listening to the wind tear at the ivy on
the walls. Her thoughts went to Garth in his room on the other side of
the house. Was he lying awake like her, listening to the wind, and
thinking of heaven knew what? Tomorrow I will give him my goblet,
she thought, as she sleepily turned over, and for the first time she had
a conscious desire which almost hurt to get inside the mind within
that imprisoned body.
But for most of Christmas Day Maggy had no opportunity to present
her gift. Garth still kept to his room, and since the weather was still
stormy, it seemed unlikely that he would leave k for his customary
preamble round the grounds. Maggy would have liked to have gone
to church in the morning, but the Hill- man had been requisitioned to
take the servants to Mass, and there seemed no other means of
getting there.
After lunch she went into the servants' hall to hand out her presents,
and although they all looked a little surprised that she had come
herself, they seemed quite pleasedMary Kate, in the timely absence of Mrs. Duffy, insisted that Maggy
drank a glass of port with them. She tried to remember their separate
personal histories and say a friendly word to each, but she felt herself
an intruder. Holly and paper streamers decked the room in rich
profusion, the outdoor servants had flushed, shining faces, and a
strong aroma of spirits hung over everything. Maggy left, envying
them their festivities, although she felt she had embarrassed them,
and it warmed her heart to hear the cook's fat-voice exclaim as the
door closed behind her :
"Now, wasn't that the kindly spirit, the poor English heretic!"
She went back to the library to find Garth sitting in his wheelchair,
looking at the two Christmas cards which graced the mantelpiece.
"Oh, a happy Christmas!" she said, and paused in the doorway,
deciding to run upstairs and fetch the goblet.
He turned his chair to look at her.
"A happy Christmas, Maggy," he said, then nodded in the direction
of the cards. "Who are they from?"
One was from Ellen, and one, unexpectedly, from Rory O'Malley. It
had been nice of him to think of her. Maggy crossed the room and
handed them down for Garth to see.
At Rory's signature he looked up sharply.
"I didn't know you two knew each other," he said, and at the tone of
his voice she jumped.
"I've only met him two or three times," she said, puzzled by his
manner.
"He seems to think he's on fairly familiar terms, and why does he call
you Bridgit?" She was beginning to feel a little scared by the
grimness of his expression.
"It's rather silly really - it's from some verses - Up the airy mountain,
down the rushy glen - you must know it," she said incoherently.
"I don't see the connection," he remarked coldly. "Where did you
meet him?
"At the Shamus Stone."
"The Shamus Stone!" he repeated, and there was an odd expression
in his eyes. "Do you often go there?"
"Quite often, I like the view."
"I see," he said.
Maggy asked, feeling bewildered: "Do you mind?"
He was silent for a long minute, then he replied shortly:
"No, I don't mind," but whether his answer applied to her visits to the
Shamus Stone or her meeting with young O'Malley she had no idea.
She hesitated for a moment, but when he appeared to have no more to
say she went out of the room to fetch the goblet. She wasn't more
than a few minutes, but when she came back to the library he had
gone. She stood there, turning the odd-shaped parcel round and round
in her hands. Perhaps she had better not give it to him after all. There
had been nothing for her on the breakfast table that morning, except
the two cards and an unexpected volume of early Elizabethan music
from Johnny. It might embarrass him if she gave him a present when
he had none for her.
How angry he had sounded! Maggy wondered what had been so
startling in the brief little exchange, then she realized that it was the
first time she had seen him shaken out of his frigid detachment into
"For your own sake, I think. When I used to see you going about that
dreary spa you seemed different. I hadn't realized how young you
were, or how vulnerable. It was a mistake."
"You don't think," blurted out Maggy before she could stop herself,
"that I would embarrass you by - by falling in love with you?"
He smiled then, and looked at her a little strangely.
"No, Maggy, I don't think that," he said gently. "Your time will
come. But you have a tender heart - even for a stranger."
"You've never talked like this to me before," she said wonderingly.
"You seem to know much more about me than I do about you."
"Perhaps I wasn't as detached as I appeared."
"Wouldn't it be easier if we could be like this instead?" she asked
simply.
"No!" he said a little roughly. "You'll find as time goes on that
detachment has a priceless value."
"I shouldn't find it very easy - to be detached, I mean," she said
seriously.
"Probably not at nineteen," he said a little dryly. "But try and
remember just the same - if you stop on at Floyne."
Was he trying to warn her against a dawning emotion he half
suspected? He had once told her that the chief thing which had
attracted him about her was the fact that she was never sorry for him.
For the first time dread leapt at her. He might die in a month, in a
week, tomorrow; and she understood in full Mackinnon's warning:
"It's not nice waiting for someone to die even a stranger." And
tonight Garth was no longer a stranger. He was the silent companion
CHAPTER IX
JANUARY was bitterly cold, and snow came to take the place of the
rain to which Maggy had become so accustomed. Even the blazing
turf fires could not warm the big, stone-flagged rooms at Floyne, and
Mrs. Duffy had all meals served in the small breakfast room. Ice lay
at the edges of the loch, and there was ice each morning in the oldfashioned ewer in Maggy's bedroom.
She liked to walk when she could to the Shamus Stone and look at
the changed country in its covering of white, but Garth seemed
opposed to walks on the moor. Bog holes hidden by the snow were
dangerous, he said, and the moors treacherous for one who didn't
know them. Indeed, for a little while, it was impossible to venture out
at all. The roads were ice-bound and the tradesmen from Galway
were unable to deliver to houses as isolated as Floyne.
Maggy returned to her cataloguing, but even with an extra sweater
and a coat, her fingers grew so numb that she was obliged to abandon
her task after an hour, and seek the warmth of a fire. It was difficult
in these snow-bound days to fill the hours between breakfast and
bedtime, and the snow seemed to affect Garth, confining him to his
own room with bad headaches.
But Maggy was bolder now. Christmas had seemed to mark a subtle
change in their relations, and on the second occasion he was not well
enough to leave his room, she sent a message by Doolan asking if she
could see him.
It was late afternoon and the room was already shadowy, for the
shutters had been half closed to keep out the hard snow light from
outside. She stood by the bed looking down at him and thinking how
long he seemed. It was the first time she had seen him out of his
wheelchair. He was always very fastidious in the matter .of his
appearance, and even now, after a bad night and day, his face was
smoothly shaven and his thick hair neatly brushed.
He opened his eyes and smiled at her rather wearily.
"What did you want to see me about, Maggy? he asked.
"Nothing," she said. "I just came to see how you were. I thought
there was perhaps something I could do."
He looked surprised, as if he was unused to people enquiring for him.
"There's nothing you can do," he said, and moved his head
impatiently. "It'll pass. It's only a bad head. I don't sleep very well."
"I could take it away," she said diffidently.
"You? I doubt it, Maggy."
"Will you let me try?'
He sighed.
"Go ahead. As long as I don't have to talk."
Careful not to jolt him, she balanced herself on the edge of the bed
just behind the pillows and began to stroke his forehead and temples.
At first she could fell him stiffening to resistance, and she wondered
if he was one of those people who dislike being touched, but after a
bit he relaxed, and closing his eyes, yielded to the gentle pressure of
her fingers.
"Are my hands too cold?" she asked him once.
He replied without opening his eyes.
"My father used to get headaches from overwork," she told him. "I
could nearly always take them away."
"Tell me about your father," he said, and she began to describe the
rectory, and her father and Ellen. She even made him laugh with
stories about some of the parishioners and Ellen's methods of dealing
with them, and as she described her old life, the little struggles, the
simple pleasures, the hard work at her music, the annual fortnight
with her father on a Sussex farm, she was unaware of the nostalgia in
her voice.
"You must have been very happy," he said a little sadly.
"My father was a happy person," she replied. "We never had much
money, but it didn't seem to matter."
"No, I don't think it does if you have other things."
She thought he sounded almost envious.
"But when your parents were alive, didn't you " She broke off, not
knowing quite what she had meant to ask.
He gave a small crooked smile.
"My parents weren't in the least like that," he said. "Eunice and I
were brought up to be seen and not heard in the good old- fashioned
way. I don't think we've ever been a family to inspire much affection
in each other."
"Oh," Maggy said rather blankly. She found it difficult to imagine a
childhood without affection, but thinking of Garth and Eunice she
was bound to admit there was little enough there.
"My parents didn't believe in an equal footing between parents and
children. A great many of their generation were the same," he said,
and added with an odd expression: "There's at least this to be said for
their methods. By the time life ups and deals you a dirty one you've
learnt not to expect much from human relationships."
"Oh," said Maggy quickly, "I'm sure you're wrong. If you haven't
affection to build on you're left with nothing."
He looked at her strangely.
"Perhaps you're right," he said slowly. "I've never thought about it."
It was the nearest he ever got to speaking of himself.
Through the long evenings together he often encouraged Maggy to
talk of old times. He seemed to enjoy hearing about a childhood
which must have been so different from his own, but he never
alluded to his life before the accident, and Maggy had the impression
that he wished to forget it. With the knowledge that in such small
ways she could be of service to him, she lost much of her old
constraint with him. She had ceased to feel awkward at his long
silences, knowing that her presence no longer irritated him.
Sometimes he would put down his book and ask with genuine
interest of what she was thinking, and quite often she continued a
train of thought aloud, watching his old detachment lift for a while as
he listened.
But this closer intimacy had its darker side. Each day she came to
know him better brought a sharper realisation of what lay before her.
"Don't think," he had once said to her, but there was little else to do
at Floyne, She tried to marshal her thoughts into the right channels,
and told herself repeatedly that death, when it came, could only be a
release for him. She had no right to resent him his indifference to life.
She was only a guest in his house, bearing his name for a brief while.
He had come into her life as a stranger, and as a stranger he would go
out of it, but she knew she would miss him abominably.
She walked further than she had intended along the Castledrum road,
lost in her own thoughts, and turned off to take a short cut home
across the Plain of Cluny, a piece of moor she didn't know very well.
Here the sun had not penetrated very much, and in places the snow
lay thickly, covering bog and heather alike with treacherous
smoothness. Several times Maggy slipped and fell, and the suction on
her shoes should have warned her that she was heading for bog.
She was in it before she saw the spiky tips of the reeds piercing the
snowy surface, and the icy water rose to her waist. Instinctively she
fought to free herself, but with every movement she sank deeper, and
her panic gave way to stark fear. Bridgit had terrible stories of cattle
being sucked under bogs in the space of minutes, and once a drunken
farmer returning from market had fallen in the Black Bog and been
rescued only in the nick of time.
She tried to pull herself out by tufts of reeds, but they came away in
her hands, and her own tracks in the snow were only cheerless
testimony of how near she was to firmer ground. She remembered
Bridgit saying that you must never fight a bog for it only sucked you
in further, and she gathered all her courage to remain still. She could
just see the Castledrum road, but it was a lonely piece of road at all
times, and since the snow had come the chances of a passer-by were
very slim.
The minutes seemed endless to Maggy, waist-deep in the icy slime,
her teeth chattering with fear and bitter cold, her eyes fixed on the
Castledrum road. Would they become anxious at Floyne, she
wondered, when she didn't return for lunch? And with that thought
her spirits rose. Mrs. Duffy at least knew where she had gone.
It was very quiet. Only her own thumping heart and the sharp little
snapping noises of the thaw broke the frightening stillness. Then, as
she was wondering how long it would take to be completely sucked
under, another sound broke the silence. The sound of a horse's hoofs
on the thawing road, and the crisp crackle of wheels.
Maggy shouted with all the strength that was left in her. She could
see the horse and trap now, proceeding with slow caution along the
slippery road. Would she ever make the driver hear? She shouted
again and the horse stopped. With an effort that made her sink further
into the bog, Maggy shouted again, and a figure jumped down from
the trap and started running across the moor in the direction of the
bog.
"Coming!I" called a familiar voice. "Hold on!"
It caused her no surprise that Rory should be her rescuer. He had a
habit of being there when needed.
He followed her tracks to the edge of the bog, then lay down full
length and stretched out a hand.
"Come on, you can make it," he said encouragingly. ,
Once, twice, she reached out to him and couldn't touch him, but the
third time she managed it. A firm hand caught her in a grip of iron
and started to pull. At first it seemed as if she was being sucked in
further with every effort, but Rory wriggled nearer the edge and took
firm hold of both her wrists.
"Just relax, and leave it to me," he said, and grinned reassuringly. "I'll
have you out in no time."
Maggy grinned back.
"It must be the Little People have hold of my feet," she said shakily.
Slowly he drew her out of the quaking mass which squelched and
bubbled at each movement, and at last, when the pain in her arm
sockets seemed unendurable, she Was lying beside him on the snowflecked heather.
"And what possessed you," he demanded severely, "to walk across
the Plain of Cluny in the snow?"
Maggy sat up and surveyed what she could see of herself with
dismay.
"What a ghastly mess," she said, then turned eyes that were still wide
and dark with shock upon Rory. "If it hadn't been for you -" she said,
and stopped, shuddering.
"You must thank my Aunt Kate with her pestilential insistence that I
took a horse and trap on these treacherous roads to Mulligan's to
carry back a load of oats," he said lightly, and pulled her quickly to
her feet. "You're drenched through, Little Bridgit. I must get you
back to Floyne before you die of pneumonia on me; How long had
you been in that confounded bog?"
"I don't know. What's the time now?"
"Two o'clock, near as no matter."
"I'll be frightfully late for lunch," she said childishly. "Garth likes
punctuality."
He helped her into the trap and wrapped a rug round her, but her
teeth were still chattering as they drove up the treeless bleak
approach to Floyne. Shock and the cold were making her feel a little
light-headed, so that it was no surprise when the front door swung
open at the sound of their approach, and Garth himself wheeled his
chair on to the porch.
At the sight of Rory his face hardened, but all he said was:
"Another time, Maggy, if you're going to be out to lunch you might
leave word with Duffy, We've been waiting since one o'clock."
"You might have had to wait considerably longer if I hadn't happened
along," Rory said cheerfully. "I found her up to her waist in a bog."
Maggy got down from the trap, and for the first time Garth saw the
condition of her clothes and the whiteness of her face.
"Where on earth have you been?" he asked sharply, and Rory
answered for her.
"The Plain of Cluny!" Garth exclaimed. "But didn't you know that it
has one of the worst bogs in the West of Ireland? Good God, child!
You aren't safe to be out alone!"
Maggy opened her mouth to say that Mrs. Duffy had not warned her
of the bog, then shut it again and stood there staring at him. Mrs.
Duffy had clearly said: "Try the Casdedrum road and the Plain of
Cluny. 'Tis nearer and will be a change." She had said nothing about
the bog, which she must have known would be hidden by the snow.
Garth saw the little colour there was in her face drain away, leaving it
white and pinched.
"You must be drenched," he said quickly. "Go straight upstairs and
have a hot bath. I'll send you up some whiskey."
Rory, an odd expression on his face, had climbed back into the trap.
He didn't appear to expect to be asked into the house.
Garth said rather stiffly:
"Thank you, Rory. I owe you a debt for this."
"And for something else, I think, as things have turned out," Rory
said, and gathering up his reins he turned his horse's head and drove
off without another word.
Despite the whiskey and the bath, Maggy couldn't get warm. The
erratic water system of Floyne was not at its best in the afternoon and
the water had been tepid. Maggy huddled over a fire for. the rest of
the afternoon, alternately dozing and thinking of Mrs. Duffy.
The housekeeper had hastened into the hall when Maggy came down
again and burst into voluble speech.
"Oh, ma'am! To think of you gettin' in the bog!" she exclaimed. "I'll never forgive myself, indeed and indeed!" Her little
black eyes darted to Garth, " 'Twas I said to Mrs. Shelton: 'Try the
Casdedrum road,' I said, 'by the Plain of Cluny,' and never thought to
mention the bog, for sure, doesn't everyone know it? ' 'Twould be a
nice change from the Shamus Stone,': I said, but I never thought to
mention the bog."
Garth's eyes rested on her thoughtfully for a moment.
"Careless of you, Duffy," was all he said, however, and wheeled his
chair into the library.
He watched Maggy with concern as she shivered in her chair.
"I'm afraid you've caught a chill," he said. "How long were you in the
water?"
"I don't know - it seemed hours. I suppose about half an hour, really,"
she replied.
"I think you would be wise to go to bed."
"It isn't a bed, it's a bog," she explained very carefully. "Feel it, it
squelches."
His expression altered.
"I'm going to take your temperature, and then I'm sending for
Johnny," he said quietly.
The thermometer registered nearly a hundred and four. Garth shook it
down deliberately, then went to the door and called to Doolan.
"Go down to Mulligan's and ring up for Dr. Moore to come out here
at once," he said. "I'll stay with Mrs. Shelton till he- comes."
Maggy slept fitfully through the morning.. When she opened her eyes
she could see Garth sitting by the bed in the wheelchair, and couldn't
think how he had got there. Perhaps he was like the Cheshire cat. If
she looked long enough he would disappear.
"But I don't want you to disappear," she said plaintively. "I like it
when you're there."
"I won't disappear," he assured her gravely. "Try and sleep."
Once she said: " 'Sabrina fair,
Listen where thou art sitting -' How does it go on?"
" 'Under the glassie, cool, translucent wave' - don't talk, Maggy."
Johnny didn't get out till lunch-time. He had had a busy morning, he
said, and the roads were still pretty bad. He looked a little curiously
at Garth, whom he had not expected to find up stairs, then crossed
over to the bed.
"Well, my poor child, what have you been doing to yourself?" he
said.
"Possibly not," said Johnny. "But if she were my servant I'd get rid of
her - for many reasons." His shrewd eyes rested on Garth's tired face.
He looked strained and rather old. "How are you yourself?" he asked
gently.
Garth's cold eyes were immediately guarded.
"Just the same, thanks. My concern at the moment is for Maggy," he
said briefly.
Johnny rose to go and stood looking down at his brother-in- law with
a curious expression.
"You could have made her a good husband despite the difference of
age," he said strangely. "Well, I'll be looking in first thing tomorrow.
Get a good night's rest yourself if you can."
For several days Maggy was content to lie in blissful idleness,
sleeping, and in a waking state of drowsy forgetfulness, the changing
light on the high ceiling her only indication of the passing hours. At
first the fever left her too weak to do more than glance at the books
which Garth daily sent up to her, but by the end of the week she had
grown tired of her own company and was worrying Johnny to let her
get up.
Garth didn't come again himself, but sent her formal little messages
by Bridgit. Bridgit also brought other messages. Mary Kate prepared
special dishes and sent them up with anxious enquiries; Norah's
nephew in the Civil Guard sent her magazines which eventually
found their way to Maggy's room, and old Casey picked the first
snowdrops and laid them on her breakfast tray. Maggy was both
touched and surprised that the servants should think of her, and she
resolved that when she was well again she would effect closer
contact with them, despite Mrs. Duffy.
"How did you know? Did he tell you? " she said.
Johnny lit a cigarette and threw the spent match into the grate.
"I've suspected for some time," he said slowly. "Little things he said,
his refusal to let me examine him, and later, you yourself. Besides, it
was the only explanation I could find for this marriage. He was
obviously a stranger to you, and I didn't think he would have married
at all in the circumstances unless there was some special reason. I
suppose you never thought at the time that you were undertaking a
very disagreeable job?"
"It seemed," said Maggy unhappily, "just another job like nursing or anything. I have to earn my living, you see, and I've no real
qualifications."
"I see. And what are the terms of your bargain? I take it Garth's made
some provision?"
"Oh, yes, he was very generous. He's settled an annuity on me - so
that I won't have to be a companion to old ladies any more. The only
thing that worries me is that I'm so little use to him. He doesn't really
need a companion at all." Her smooth forehead wrinkled in distress.
"I asked him once why he had married me, and he said he wanted to
leave something of his own behind him and not be lonely at the end.
Do you understand that, Johnny?"
He gave a sharp sigh, and the long ash of his cigarette dropped
unheeded on to his waistcoat.
"Yes," he said. "When it comes to the point, very few of us want to
die alone."
"Then you think-"
"I think," he interrupted a little roughly, "that life seldom works out
as one plans it. There is always the human factor to be accounted for
no matter how dispassionately we plan, and the human factor is apt to
be disconcerting."
She didn't altogether understand him, but suddenly she was afraid.
The first exquisite relief in being able to talk freely to someone was
drowned in fear of Johnny's next words. He was too wise, too farseeing for her to understand as yet, and truth was sometimes
frightening.
Garth's entrance put an end to the conversation, and Maggy turned to
greet him with relief.
"Hullo!" she said, and watched him with anxious inquiry as he
wheeled himself across the room. She hadn't seen him for over a
week.
He brought his chair alongside her sofa with the deft little turn she
knew so well, and looked down at her critically.
"Well, you look as if a puff of Wind would blow you away,"
he remarked with a smile. "But Johnny assures me of your progress,
so I suppose it's all right. It's good to see you down again, my dear."
She flushed at the unusual warmth in his voice, aid reflected that his
eyes weren't really cold, only a clear, penetrating grey.
Johnny watched them both with a thoughtful expression.
"I'm well now," Maggy said quickly. "Johnny says J can go out in a
day or two."
"Is that right, Johnny?" asked Garth. "She doesn't look very strong to
me."
"She's all right. A bit run down, but she knows my treatment for
that," replied Johnny shortly.
Garth raised his eyebrows.
"What is it? I must see that she obeys orders."
Johnny smiled kindly at Maggy.
"I doubt if it would be effective in the circumstances," he said, and
got up to go..
They listened to "the sound of his car dying away down the drive,
then Garth said:
"How are you really feeling?"
"Oh, miles better. It's only my legs that are still a bit wonky," she
said, and immediately felt embarrassed.
For a moment his old Sardonic expression returned, and he said a
little mockingly:
"Don't let the fact that my legs are more than wonky prevent you
from referring to yours."
She smiled uncertainly, and for the first time wondered what it would
be like if he were able to move about, to carry her downstairs in his
arms as Johnny had done.
"What is this treatment that brother Johnny was so mysterious about?
"he asked.
"He wanted me to go away for a bit," Maggy said. "But I told him I
had no friends and anyway I didn't want to go."
"Oh, I see." His expression changed. "And supposing I said you were
to go?"
Maggy's eyes filled with the easy tears of convalescence.
"But you wouldn't," she pleaded, and would have said more had
Norah not brought the tea in at that moment.
He didn't refer to the subject again just then, but later in the evening
he said suddenly :
"Maggy, about this question of your going away. I've been thinking
for some time that it would be the best thing." "Why?"
"Oh, for many good reasons."
"Do you want me to go?"
He moved impatiently.
"That's neither here nor there. But if you must have a reason, then say
I want you to go."
She seemed to shrink into her corner of the sofa.
"If you really want to send me away," she said, "I've no choice, have
I? I can always try and get another job."
A look of pain crossed his face.
' "That wouldn't be necessary," he said coldly. "If you remember, I've
made provision for any sudden eventuality."
But she had seen that momentary flash of pain. She was no longer
afraid of his coldness. She slipped off the sofa and on to the floor
beside his chair.
"If it's for my sake," she began tentatively, "don't think I don't realise
that - that things will be difficult for me. I know that. I still want to
stay."
Her face was averted and the long, soft hair almost hid her profile
from him. He tucked a strand behind her ear.
"It's not altogether for your sake," he said gently.
She looked up then, trying to read his face.
"Do you want me to go?" she asked again, but this time he had no
immediate answer.
"I would like," she said, feeling carefully for words, "to be able to
look back on this time and - and feel I had helped. I know you so
little, but that would comfort me very much. Can you understand?"
He looked at her strangely.
"Yes. I think so."
"Then as long as I don't worry you "
"You don't worry me, Maggy."
"- you'll let me stay? "
He regarded her gravely without speaking for a moment, then
straightened the rug across his knees with a deliberate gesture,
"Perhaps we neither of us have much choice," he said. "Very well,
Maggy. We won't speak of it again."
CHAPTER X
WITH the coming of February a new softness visited the moor. There
were gentle days when the savagery of the hills was lost in grapeblue shadow and the brown bogs showed patches of brilliant green.
Tinkers came to the gates of Floyne peddling their wares and telling
fortunes, and there were early lambs among the little horned
mountain sheep. Spring was not far off, and Maggy with the scent of
the crushed bog myrtle under her feet knew her first affection for this
wild country.
"I can understand;" she said to Rory, "why the Irish believe in fairies.
There's a spell on this country. It isn't quite real."
"In the spring," Rory said half seriously, "the old gods return to
Ireland. Cuchullain and the Red Branch Knights, Kehar of the Battles
and the sons of Usna."
There were soft days when fog crept up from the sea and the moor
and the hills were blotted out for days, and Floyne was a gaunt
imprisoned monster. Then suddenly the sun would break through and
the hills rose from the vanishing mist in fresh beauty, and Maggy
could believe that it was not so long ago that the old gods trod the
shores of Ireland.
How beautiful they are, the lordly ones, who dwell in the kills, the
hollow hills....
She met Rory several times at. the Shamus Stone, and once he took
her to the Plain of Cluny and showed her the great mass of shifting
bog now plainly distinguishable from the heather.
Maggy shuddered as she looked at the evil, bubbling slime.
"If it hadn't been for you-"
to him tonight, and assure him that she would let Rory know his
wishes.
But she didn't see him again that day. Doolan brought her a message
that his master wasn't so well and would be remaining in his room.
He didn't send for Maggy.
She walked the next morning to the Shamus Stone, wondering how
best to tell Rory that their meetings must end without implying too
personal a reason.
As she had been about to start from the house, Mrs. Duffy had said:
"Off to the Shamus Stone again, ma'am?"
Maggy nodded curtly, very conscious that it had been the
housekeeper's gossip which had thrust these innocent meetings under
Garth's notice.
Mrs. Duffy gave her a strange look.
"It's surprising you should be so fond of the Shamus Stone," she said.
"It was there the master had his accident. But perhaps you didn't
know?"
Maggy had not known. She had never yet discovered how that
accident had happened, but she was not going to give the woman the
satisfaction of asking.
Was that perhaps Garth's reason for his dislike of Rory? Did he think
that the ill-fated Shamus Stone, besides being the scene of the
disaster which had wrecked his life, was also a lovers' trysting place?
She wondered with faint surprise why she should mind the ending of
this pleasant companionship so little. Rory had meant youth and
laughter, all the things which she had missed since her father's death.
Yet, in the face of Garth's unexplained objection, it seemed a small
thing to give up to please him.
She saw Rory standing on the stone watching for her and he gave a
shout and came leaping through the heather to meet her. She watched
him, conscious of something lacking in herself that she felt so little
response. She had been grateful for his friendship, more grateful still
for his admiration, but she contrasted his charm and his active youth
with Garth's sombre immobility, and did not find it strange that her
desires were chained to that wheelchair.
"I can't stay very long," she said. "Garth's not so well and I must get
back."
He was aware of a new reserve in her, and thought he detected a
slight embarrassment as they sat down in the shelter of the pile of
rocks. The breeze was stiffening and gulls were wheeling and
screaming over Lough Sidhe.
"It'll blow tonight," Rory said. "The gulls are well inland. I'm off
again tomorrow, Maggy. I shan't see you for about a month." He
thought she gave a little sigh of relaxation and grinned suddenly. "Is
it a relief?" he asked half-mockingly. *
She met his vivid blue eyes apologetically.
"It'll make things easier," she admitted. I meant to tell you today that
- that I've got to stop seeing you. It does sound silly, doesn't it?"
He contemplated her embarrassed face with amusement..
"Does husband Garth suspect a fine intrigue?" he asked.
She laughed.
"Not really. But he's sick, and Eunice and those awful children and
Mrs. Duffy between them have put funny ideas into his head."
"I told you Duffy was a mischief-maker."
"Yes, but I think it's partly the Shamus Stone itself. I didn't know till
this morning that it was here the accident happened."
"A lot of things happen at the Shamus Stone," he said ambiguously.
"It has a curse on it."
"Do you believe that?"
"Perhaps. One believes a lot of funny things in Ireland. But the
rationally-minded Garth doesn't believe in curses or fairies. He thinks
I've been making love to you."
"It all sounds so silly," she said again.
"Not so silly," he retorted, and looked at her with kindly mockery. "I
could have made love to you at any time, you know, and quite often
wanted to."
"Did you?" said Maggy, with the surprised curiosity of a child.
"Of course. Besides being very attractive you have the added charm
of knowing so little about it. I'll never forget how you blushed that
first day when I told you you were enchanting. Very refreshing."
She blushed again.
"I told Garth I should always feel kindly towards you for that," she
said simply.
He pushed his hands through his red hair, making it stand on end.
He raised an eyebrow.
"Did Garth give you that impression?"
"Perhaps. He never spoke of her. No one ever speaks of her, but once
I found her name in a book and on an old song. It's a lovely name."
His eyes were thoughtful.
"I've wondered ever since I first met you," he said slowly. "Didn't
you know they were once engaged?"
For a moment it came as a shock, then so many things became
clearer. Mrs. Duffy's cryptic references, that unexplained Christmas
party, even Garth's aversion to Rory who must be associated with so
many memories. And she remembered how so long ago now she had
played Sabrina's song.
"What happened?"
"After the accident," Rory said, "Garth refused to allow her to be tied
for life to a cripple. She went away to America and he married you.
Strange, isn't it?"
"Oh!" Maggy shrank back against the rock. "But surely she would-"
"Stick by him?" There was a small mocking twist to his lips as if he
was secretly laughing at her. "I believe Sabrina was all ready to do
her stuff, but you should know by now that the Sheltons are a
stubborn lot."
"I don't think," said Maggy, making a new discovery, "that Garth
would be stubborn if someone really loved him. He's never had much
affection, and he's lonely."
"I wouldn't know about that," he said, watching her curiously. "I
should think Sabrina never gave affection in her life. Fire, passion,
excitement, but not affection."
Maggy clasped her hands round her knees and shook the longhair
back from her shoulders.
"Tell me about her," she said. "Is she as lovely as her name?"
He watched a gull wheeling overhead in silence for a moment, then
he said:
"Yes, I suppose she is. Sabrina is like a flame. She burns you up. A
wild tempestuous creature with tremendous vitality. She was crazy
for Floyne and the Shelton jewels and Garth, because he didn't fall
for her."
"But he was going to many her?"
"Oh yes, she got him in the end. She was a magnificent horsewoman
among other things, and she finally succeeded in shaking him out of
that queer, cold reserve of his. He was crazy about her."
Maggy was silent, trying to imagine the Garth of those days, and a
remark of old Lady Rynd's popped into her head: He liked 'em highcouraged - like his horses. Sabrina riding his horses, driving his
black Lagonda at breakneck speed. No wonder Eunice was amused
when she first beheld Maggy.
"Oh, poor Garth," she said softly. "I always thought that queer
indifference couldn't just be caused by an accident. It isn't natural for
a man not to care whether he lives or dies."
"Yet he married you," said Rory shrewdly.
"That," said Maggy, "is quite different."
Garth was still remaining in his room, but after lunch Maggy went
along the passage and knocked on his door.
He wasn't in bed, but she thought he looked very tired as he turned
his head at her entrance.
"Are you all right?" she said, regarding him with anxiety* "You look
most awfully tired."
"I had a bad night," he said. "I quite often do."
"Why didn't you send for me P" she demanded. "I've got you to sleep
before now."
He didn't reply immediately, and she stammered awkwardly like a
child.
"I - I'm sorry I argued with you yesterday. You have a perfect right to
your wishes in your own. house. I won't meet Rory again."
He smiled and she was struck again by the change in his face. He
looked ill.
"It's I who should apologise," he said. "I shouldn't have spoken as I
did. See him if you want to, my child. You have little enough
pleasure as it is."
Her eyes filled with tears.
"It would be no pleasure if I thought I was hurting you," she said
gently. "I -I understand so much more now, Garth."
"Do you? I wonder what?"
But she couldn't speak Sabrina's name to him.
"Things - connected with you. "
He frowned and his eyes were very penetrating.
"I'll stay here for the rest of the day, if you don't mind," he said as she
walked to the door, then added in gentler tones: "Come and see me
after dinner if you can put up with my ill- temper."
But when dinner-time came, Doolan brought a message to say his
master was going to bed and thought it better if he was not disturbed.
Rory had been right. It was blowing hard. Maggy sat alone in the
library listening to the wind howling round the house, unable to
shake off an unreasoning foreboding. She thought of Sabrina's story
and tried to picture her as she must have seemed to Garth: beautiful,
passionate, tempestuous as the wind tearing at the windows.
She remembered some lines of verse they had read together:
I am a quiet gentleman,
And I would sit and think;
But my wife is walking the whirlwind
Through night as black as ink.
But what had Garth to do with a love so stormy? Did he still love her,
or had she swept by leaving him cold and empty?
Bridgit brought her some tea at ten o'clock and stood prepared to
chatter.
" 'Tis a wild night," she said, rolling her fine eyes like a nervous colt.
"They do be sayin' at Mulligan's that Shamus rides again. 'Tis bad
luck, I'm tellin' ye."
"I'm not surprised at what they might see with Mulligan's raw
whiskey inside them," Maggy laughed.
"Ah, there's trouble comin'," Bridgit insisted, and added dramatically
: "I heard the banshee keenin' meself this very night. Tis a death that
means."
Maggy shivered.
"Rubbish, Bridgit," she said sharply. "It was the wind. You shouldn't
believe this superstitious nonsense."
"Nonsense is it!" exclaimed the girl. "An' didn't Micky Doyle see the
vixen with his two eyes right there on the Shamus Stone the very
night before the master fell off his horse? And the day ye trippit in
the bog the lookin'-glass fell down in the servants' hall and was
crackit in half which the same is bad luck on the house."
"Both quite natural occurrences," retorted Maggy with a confidence
she was far from feeling. "Go to bed, Bridgit, or you'll be making me
dream."
But when, her tea finished, she lighted her candle in the inky hall and
started up the stairs, she glanced a little fearfully over her shoulder. It
was easy to believe in banshees and the like in the dark corridors of
Floyne, with the shadows fleeing before the wavering flame of her
candle and the wind moaning round the house.
The fire in her room was low and she built up the turfs carefully, as
Bridgit had taught her, so that it should last through the night. When
she was ready for bed she climbed into the high four-poster, disliking
more than ever the heavy hangings which seemed to shut her in. She
left one candle burning for company.
She woke several times to the sound of shutters banging and the
creak of the old woodwork in the house. A branch of ivy was tapping
in the wind on one of the windows, and the sound of it became more
insistent, penetrating at last to her drowsy consciousness. It was not
the ivy. Someone was knocking at the door and an urgent voice said:
"Will ye waken, ma'am? Will ye waken an'open the door?"
Maggy ran ahead of him down the stairs, clinging to the bannisters to
steady herself in the gloom.
"Knock up one of the men and tell him to go to Mulligan's at once
and ring up Dr. Moore and ask him to come out here immediately,"
she ordered. "Hurry I Oh, why isn't this benighted house on the
telephone?"
" 'Tis no use, ma'am, I'm thinkin'," said Doolan gently.
"Nonsense!" Maggy stamped her foot. "Do you think I'm going to let
him die? Hurry, hurry!"
She felt her way in the dark along the passage to Garth's room, and as
she opened the door she could hear his difficult breathing.
His face was ashen against the pillows and the sweat stood out on his
forehead.
He smiled with difficulty when he saw her.
"I didn't mean you to come," he said in a whisper. "Doolan insisted."
"Of course Doolan insisted," she replied. "He should never have left
you in the first place. Garth, didn't the specialist give you anything
for - for this sort of emergency? "
"Some heart tablets:"
"Where are they?"
"Right-hand drawer of the desk."
She pulled the drawer open and found the bottle unopened.
"Do you mean to say you haven't taken any?" she demanded, filling a
glass with water and shaking the tablets into the palm of her hand.
He closed his eyes.
"Why prolong it?" he said.
Maggy stood over him and her eyes blazed.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" she announced. "How many?
Quick!"
"Two." He opened his eyes again and the ghost of a smile touched his
blue lips. "How fierce you look, Maggy I It's no use fighting the
inevitable."
"You talk even more nonsense than Bridgit does," she said crossly,
slipping a supporting arm under his head. "And if you think I'm
going to give her the satisfaction in the morning of proving her old
banshee right, you're wrong. Swallow them down."
"What banshee?" he asked when he had obeyed her.
"When should you have the next dose?"
"In an hour; if necessary. What banshee?",
"Don't talk," she ordered him. "Give the stuff a chance to work."
She gave him some brandy, then sat by him in silence, wiping the
sweat from his forehead at regular intervals, and listening intently for
any improvement in his breathing. Doolan came back and said
Murphy was on his way for the doctor.
"You haven't sent for Johnny? " Garth murmured fretfully. "Of
course I've sent for Johnny," she said firmly. "Doolan should have
done it hours ago, just as he should have insisted on you taking those
tablets." She glared at Doolan from the bed.
At the end of an hour his breathing seemed less distressed. She gave
him two more tablets, and presently a little colour came bad to his
face and his lips lost their blueness. He was definitely easier.
"Trying to cheat death, Maggy?" he asked as she gave him the third
lot of tablets.
"I see no point in rushing to meet him," said Maggy hardily.
There was a suspicion of a twinkle in his eyes as he looked up at her.
"I don't know you in this avenging angel mood," he said. His voice
was much stronger and he was breathing more naturally. "You're
always surprising me."
"Well, if you thought I was going to weep all over you and do
nothing you were quite wrong," she retorted. "I was very angry."
"Yes, I could see you were. Not at all the mouse of my dear sister's
imagination."
"I'm no mouse when roused," said Maggy severely. "And I'm roused
now."
This time his smile was almost a grin.
She looked at the clock. It was nearly four.
"Do you think you could make me some tea, Doolan?" she said.
"And bring me a glass of milk, an egg and a whisk and some sherry."
"Yes, ma'am." The old man glanced towards the bed, and his long
upper lip trembled.
"Not this time, Doolan," Maggy said with a rather wavering smile.
He looked at her with respect and then shuffled out of the room.
CHAPTER XI
THERE was a long silence after he had gone. The unexpected anger
which had supported Maggy through those few hours had gone,
leaving her afraid. She watched Garth as he lay in a fitful sleep and
felt suddenly very tired. Cheating deathThat was all she had done,
prolonging his life for a little while until the day when death would
be cheated no longer.
She thought he still slept, but presently he felt for her hand and held
it.
"I'd like you to know," he said without opening his eyes, "that I've
left you Floyne."
Her fingers felt stiff in his.
"Left me Floyne! But - but I don't understand," she stammered.
"You probably won't want to live here. You don't like it very much,
do you? But everything I have comes to you. I wanted you to know."
She felt dazed.
"But-but why?"
He smiled faintly and opened his eyes.
"Isn't it usual when a man marries a wife?"
"But I never was that sort of wife. You were most generous in your arrangements. I -"
"You've been a good wife to me, Maggy," he said strangely. "I like to
think when I am gone all this is yours."
"An' wasn't it only last night I heard the banshee keenin'! I toult ye,
ma'am." Bridgit, her eyes enormous in her scared face, stood like an
avenging sybil, a lamp in her hands.
"Put that lamp down, Bridgit Connolly, and get to the kitchen with
your blather!'' Mrs. Duffy spoke sharply.
"How is himself, ma'am?" Mary Kate's eyes rested kindly on the
girl's tired face. She seemed the only one with real concern for Garth.
"I think he'll be all right now, Mary Kate," Maggy replied. "Dr.
Moore is with him. Will you all go now, please?"
They filed out in varying stages of night attire. Only Mrs. Duffy
remained.
"I should have thought, ma'am, that it would have been only right for
you to inform me at once of the master's condition," she said, and
Maggy knew that she was offended again.
Maggy said quietly, trying to be patient: - "There's nothing you could
have done."
"That's as maybe," replied the housekeeper, tossing her head. "But I
have a position in this house, Mrs. Shelton, ma'am, and 'twas only
right I should have been there to give an eye to the poor master."
A little of her old anger returned to Maggy. She looked the woman
straight in the eye and said:
"It appears to me, Mrs. Duffy, that you consider your position a long
way before your master's welfare, and it's not your place to tell me
what I should or should not have done. Now will you please go. I'm
very tired."
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that. It's just that I'm rather tired."
He looked at her with tenderness.
"You've been a marvel from all I hear. Doolan has conceived the
greatest respect for your handling of the situation. 'Put the fear of
God into the master, an' her a wheeshy bit of a crayture!' he told me."
She gave a watery smile.
"I was angry because I was frightened," she confessed. "And then
when I saw he wasn't trying to help himself I got mad, I wouldn't
have dared to talk like that otherwise."
He shook his head.
"Oh jes, you would. I suspect you'd dare a great deal if necessity
demanded, Maggy. You're one of the high-couraged ones."
"Oh no," said Maggy in a tired voice. "That was Sabrina."
"Sabrina?" Johnny frowned. "I know about Sabrina now. It make it
easier to understand Garth's attitude."
"Does it, Maggy? I've always found it made it more difficult; But
we'll talk about these things another time. You're dead to the world,
and when we've had some hot coffee I want you to go to bed and
sleep till tea-time."
"Oh, I couldn't do that," she said quickly, "I must go back to Garth."
"You'll do as I tell you, young woman," he ordered with kindly
severity. "I've given him an injection and he'll sleep as long as you
do. You'll be no earthly use to Garth or anyone else in your present
state. I shall be here, so there's nothing for you to worry about."
"Doolan ought to go to bed too. He's been up all night," she said.
"He's the only one who really cares."
Johnny gave her a little shake.
"He's already gone. More sense and more respect for my orders than
you."
She smiled and pushed her hair wearily back from her face.
"All right, I'll go," she said. "I feel safe when you're here. You
wouldn't fool me, Johnny?"
"No," he said gravely. "I wouldn't fool you, Maggy. The danger is
over for the present."
She slept till four o'clock, the heavy dreamless sleep of mental
exhaustion, and the light was already going from the loch when she
went to the window: She drew the curtains again and lighted the
candles. It seemed a long time since she had seen the daylight.
Mrs. Duffy was adjusting the wick of a lamp in the hall when Maggy
came down, and she immediately made for the staff door in offended
silence. Johnny came out of the library and looked at Maggy
critically.
"That's better," he said approvingly. "Garth's awake now. You can go
and see him."
She stood beside Garth's bed and suddenly felt a little shy. He was
hollow-eyed and looked exhausted, but the old detached indifference
was there. "Well, you had things your way this time, Maggy," he said
a little mockingly. "If it hadn't been for you, I would have been dead,
so I suppose it's only polite to say thank you." ,
"You don't she hesitated a little, "- you don't resent it, do you?"
His expression altered.
"No, I don't resent it," he said gently. "I'm very touched for your
concern."
"And if ever - if ever you have another attack and I'm not there, you'll
-"
"I'll do my best, Maggy," he promised gravely, "Although there'll
come a time when those tablets won't help."
"I know."
He looked at her oddly.
"You're very brave, aren't you? Very brave and very honest. I ought
to have sent you away long ago."
"That wouldn't have helped either of us," she said simply.
He felt his unshaven chin with distaste, and she knew that he disliked
her to see him like this.
"Perhaps not. But all the same, I'm asking too much of you."
"No," said Maggy. "If you need me you can't ask top much of me."
But later, back in the library with Johnny, she said with pain:
"Will there be more attacks like this before "
He looked at her with compassion.
"Crazy is right. A good many men have been crazy about Sabrina,
but I should think precious few have loved her. She was greedy and
demanding like a little animal. I don't believe she ever touched the
fundamental Garth. I don't believe anyone's done that until you came
along."
"Me?"
He smiled.
"I may even be wrong there. But I do believe you've taught him the
meaning of affection, and that's a thing the Sheltons as a family have
known very little about."
She was .silent, thinking of Eunice and wondering why Johnny had
married her - Eunice who had always wanted Floyne.
"Johnny," she said in a puzzled voice, "did you know he had left me
Floyne? He told me last night. Floyne, the Shelton jewels everything. I can't understand it."
He smiled again, and looked suddenly happier.
"No, I didn't know," he said with a twinkle. "Think it over, Maggy.
Floyne is a big responsibility to tackle single-handed."
In the days that followed Maggy thought many things over. She
thought she had changed since she had first come to Floyne, and she
looked back with wonder at the shy, immature girl in the shabby
mackintosh who had stood beside Garth in the ugly little church that
wet October day and married him with no thought to the future.
Yes, she had changed. She had learnt that life has a habit of repaying
one's actions in unexpected coin, and no human heart can say boldly:
"Thus I am, thus I will remain and no man can alter me." Even Garth
had changed. Who knew what thoughts and conclusions those strange
months had brought him? Had things worked out for him as he had
planned so coldly on the terrace of the Imperial Hotel, or had he
found, as she had, that the armour of detachment has its chinks?
She remembered him saying at Christmas: "Nature, I suppose, is
always incalculable. Emotions become fluid again, even when limbs
can't." Had his thoughts returned again to Sabrina, cruelly reminded
of that other Christmas when Floyne had held warmth and love and
laughter? Yet at Christmas he had changed his will.
- He told her that one evening as she sat in. his room after dinner. She
no longer felt diffident of her reception. He seemed glad to have her
with him, and while he was still in bed she had formed a habit of
running in and out with odd pieces of news. Sometimes she would
play for him, leaving the doors open so that he could hear the notes
of the piano, a little muffled, across the hall between. But more often
she wpuld sit by his fire, answering his idle questions and
occasionally asking some of her own. He had lost much of his old
remoteness, propped up in bed, and Maggy became aware that he
possessed a dry humour . which in other days must have made him a
good companion.
"Tell me about your childhood," she said once. "I know so little
about you, and Floyne is a strange house. There are no photographs nothing to tell you about the people who have lived here."
"That's probably my youthful revolt to clutter," he told her with a
smile. "My mother came of a generation who littered the rooms with
photographs mostly of relations and friends I'd never even seen.
After my parents died I made a clean sweep of the lot. We were
never a very united family."
She glanced round the room.
"But your own interests," she said softly. "Your friends, your
horsesall the usual indications of one's own personal tastes."
His face hardened.
"I have no friends," he said coldly. "And such tastes as I had no
longer matter."
She looked at him with the clear untroubled gaze which he had come
to know meant that she couldn't focus very easily. It gave her a
helpless, rather childish aspect which touched him.
"I think that's wrong," she said gently. "If you have no friends it's
because you've never needed any, and tastes what one is oneself always matter."
He smiled reluctantly.
"I expect you're right, Maggy, you usually are. A clean sweep of my
own personal reminders is probably merely a form of escape."
"I can understand that," she said quickly, "though I still think you're
wrong. There's comfort in the little things. They don't always hurt.
You know, I used to think you really were indifferent. I found it
awfully hard to understand. It seemed so - so unnatural."
"I think at the time I first met you, I was," he said and added
shrewdly: "Even you with your childish ignorance of life would
hardly have married me if I hadn't been."
She was silent, and he said prosaically:
"I don't know if I've really done you a good turn by altering my will."
She looked up, startled.
"You don't know anything about me if you can think that," she said,
and suddenly wanted to cry. "I want you to be cured more than
anything in the world. If - later on - you didn't want me here, I could
go away."
"Oh, my dear child!" His voice was suddenly harsh. "It's you I'm
thinking of. I said I would have cheated you because if I lived I
shouldn't want you to go away." His eyes were suddenly tormented.
"I should expect a marriage as marriage is meant to be between a
man and a woman. We don't believe much in divorce in Ireland, and
for all the chilly automaton I've allowed you to think I am, I'm not
made of stone. I'm sorry, Maggy, the thing's unthinkable."
"It's unthinkable that you should refuse!" she cried. "There are other
people you matter to as well. Johnny, Doolan, Eunice in her queer
way. And me. You matter terribly to me, Garth," she finished in a
small voice, and all at once she was crying.
"Don't," he said, and touched her cheek with his fingers. "I should
have sent you away, my child."
She tried to smile through her tears.
"I promised you I would never embarrass you if I stayed," she said.
"I'll go to bed now."
He did an unexpected thing. He pulled her down into his arms and
kissed her as a lover might. She leant her head against his shoulder
and felt the lean hard line of his jaw against her wet cheek.
"Garth -" Her arm tightened round his neck. "For my sake-"
He moved his head sharply, and the gaze he turned on her was one of
such passionate intensity that for a moment she was startled.
"Go to bed, Maggy, you're tired out," he said harshly. "And, Maggy
we won't talk of this again - understand?"
She stood up, and rubbed her wet lashes with a despondent gesture.
"Yes, I understand. Good-night, Garth."
"Good-night, Maggy," he said, but he watched her gravely as she
turned the lamp down and left him there in the firelight.
In a few days Garth was out of bed and back in his wheelchair. He
would sit most afternoons in the weak February sunshine in the lee of
the house, staring out across the loch, and Maggy wondered if he was
thinking of Sabrina who used to row across the water in Miss
O'Malley's old dinghy.
"I've failed," Maggy said unhappily to Johnny on his final
professional visit. "I put it all badly and he won't consider it."
"I'll talk to him," Johnny said, but she never knew what passed
between the two men.
"Garth was always an obstinate cuss," Johnny told her. "These cold,
repressed people are the devil to talk sense into."
"And yet," said Maggy, looking at the tender evening sky which held
all the promise of things to come, "I don't believe that he's really
indifferent. I believe he wants to live."
Johnny stared thoughtfully over her head. "
"I don't think he's indifferent," he said quietly. "I think he's got
another bee in his .bonnet now. I think he feels that by living he may
muck up your life, Maggy."
She looked at him with uncomprehending distress.
"But I've tried to tell him," she said. "I don't seem able to make him
understand."
"Well, I don't know," Johnny said. "You may have got further than
you think. I believe for a long time the thought of death has caused a
struggle we have known nothing about. He's a brave man, Maggy."
She thought that after her conversation with Johnny, Garth seemed to
withdraw himself from her again. It was as if by trespassing on
forbidden ground she had driven him back into his old remoteness,
and watching him during those silent evenings when he read or lay
back with closed eyes, she wondered how long that quite aloof
manner had hidden rebellion against his wrecked life.
She longed to break down his reserve, but the right words would not
come. As in the early days it seemed an impertinence to trespass. It
was only, she thought with surprise, when she was angry that she
could forget herself and say the things that were in her heart.
She had avoided the Shamus Stone since she had learnt that Garth's
accident had happened there, but one morning she felt impelled to
visit it again. The lovely place drew her in spite of herself. She liked
to stand on the topmost stone and watch the breakers out at sea. She
stood there now, listening to the screaming gulls and thinking of
Garth alone with his thoughts as she was with hers.
A horse and rider came cantering slowly across the moor, and as they
drew nearer, Maggy saw it was Miss O'Malley in her old-fashioned
coat and shabby breeches. She had seen her before exercising her
young stock on this lonely bit of moor.
"Hullo!" Kate O'Malley called when she was within hailing distance.
"How is your husband?"
Maggy climbed down from the rocks and went to meet her.
"He's better, thank you," she said. "He had a bad attack about a
fortnight ago."
"Yes, I'd heard. Doolan told my man, Reilly, it was thanks to you
he'd pulled through."
The young horse was sidling round Maggy, fluttering his nostrils and
blowing apprehensively.
"Why have you never been over to see me?" Miss O'Malley
demanded in her abrupt fashion. "Steady, my love. Steady, my
darling! She won't hurt you."
Maggy was silent, not knowing what to say. She had never acquired
the Irish habit of dropping in uninvited on comparative strangers.
"Is it Rory?"
"Rory!" Maggy was startled into speech. Miss O'Malley swung
herself to the ground and, looping the reins over her arm, stood,
soothing her nervous horse.
"I knew you and he were meeting. I wondered if Rory was up to his
old tricks. It's a lonely life for a young girl shut up at Floyne with a
crippled man."
"Oh!" Maggy felt the colour sting her cheeks. Did the whole
countryside suspect those innocent trysts? Did Garth himself?
Kate O'Malley looked at her shrewdly.
"No, I see I was wrong. I apologise," she said. "But knowing my
graceless nephew, I wondered. He's fond of you, you know."
"He's always been my very good friend," said Maggy gravely. Miss
O'Malley grinned suddenly.
"Then it's the first time any attractive woman's been able to say that
of him," she said. "Perhaps he's fonder than I suspected. Poor Rory.
He's not used to honest women,"
The horse now stood still under her caressing hand, stretching out his
lovely neck now and again to snatch at the heather.
This woman was almost a stranger, yet Maggy could ask:
"Was Sabrina honest?"
Kate O'Malley's shrewd eyes were thoughtful.'
"What do you know about that affair? " she asked.
"Only that she was very lovely, that Garth was going to marry her,
that the accident put an end to all his hopes."
"The accident was not entirely responsible for that," the older woman
said shortly. "Maggy, I've never understood this marriage of Garth's.
I don't know you, but I like you. I liked you from the moment I saw:
you getting slightly tipsy in Black's Hotel. I'm going to tell you a
story."
CHAPTER XII
"To understand everything, I must go back a bit," Kate O'Malley
said, and they both moved with unspoken agreement into, the lee of
the Shamus Stone. They stood, side by side, leaning against the rock,
and the young horse, unsuspicious of a stranger any longer, quietly
cropped the sparse, salt-tainted grass.
"Rory and Sabrina are cousins, you know. Rory has always made his
home with me, and Sabrina used to come for long visits. They grew
up together, and later, when Sabrina had finished her education she
came back here to help me with the horses. She was a magnificent
horsewoman and a great help with the young stock. But she was
restless. She would never stay long, and used to go gallivanting off
abroad, dear knows how, for she had no money of her own. She was
beautiful, and had amazing vitality, and men could no more resist her
than a horse can oats. She and Rory were lovers long before she
knew Garth."
Miss O'Malley paused and watched a gull wheeling overhead.
"It meant very little," she went on prosaically. "I think Sabrina has
always had lovers. She can't help her nature which is to crave
passion, excitement, change. She's not vicious, or even heartless, but
like a badly broken filly, knows no discipline. No one man could
possibly satisfy her - certainly not Garth who would never understand
such a nature as hers. And so we come to Garth."
She paused again and Maggy waited, not interrupting at any moment,
her eyes fixed on the distant blue of the sea.
"Garth had always led his own solitary life at Floyne, troubling
himself very little about neighbours, so they seldom met. But he saw
her ride once at some show or other, and asked her if she would care
to exhibit his horses for him. After that, she used to go up to Floyne a
great deal and ride his horses and she won him a good few cups in
the ring. Whether it was the glamour of Floyne and the Shelton
jewels, or whether it was the fact, that Garth himself was different,
and had little use for women, I don't know. Possibly all three. But she
made a dead set at him and if Sabrina troubled herself sufficiently to
go out after a man- she could be pretty devastating.
"At first she had little success. Garth admired her skill with horses,
and he would scarcely have been human if he had been entirely
indifferent to her interest, but for a long time, I think he was just
amused. Certainly he gave her no encouragement, and that only made
her all the more determined to get him, and in the end she did. When
a man as cold and reserved as Garth Shelton finally gives in he's apt
to do it thoroughly. He was infatuated with her, but I think he didn't
love her. One doesn't love the Sabrinas of this world. She told me she
was tired of wandering; she wanted to settle down. Settle down!
Sabrina will never settle down long after she's "an old woman and all
her charm is gone. I told her so, but she only laughed. She was
always very sincere in her dealings of the moment. Rory came home
for their engagement party at Christmas, and by the New Year she
had revived that old affair, probably because she didn't understand
Garth's conventional approach to a love affair. They used to meet up
here at the Shamus Stone, and I sometimes warned her that she was
playing a dangerous game. It meant nothing to her, and very little to
Rory, but if Garth ever found out I knew it would be the finish of
them both.
Already she was tiring. It was a marriage which could only have spelt
disaster, and I think she knew it. He found them one day by the
Shamus Stone - probably just where We're standing now in the lee of
the rocks. I think Mrs. Duffy had made mischief. She used to spy on
them, I know. Anyway he found them. Rory said afterwards that they
never knew how long he had been watching them before a movement
from his horse startled them. They sprang apart then and Sabrina
cried out, frightening the young horse, which reared and threw him
against the rock. I suppose in a way you could say Sabrina was
directly responsible for the accident. Anyhow, she wrecked Garth's
life, and later, when he released her from her engagement, though she
made the gesture of being willing to go through with it, she knew he
had finished with her."
At last Maggy spoke.
"Why have you told me all this?" she asked.
"Because," said Kate O'Malley, "I knew Garth wouldn't, and because
I'm the only person who knows the truth."
But Maggy wondered. Country people knew these things. Old Casey
had known when he had said so long ago to Maggy; "It should niver
have happened." Mrs. Dufly had guessed at least part of the story and
had got rid of Sabrina as she had tried to get rid of Maggy in the bog
of Cluny.
"And what is the truth?" she said slowly. "That she Wrecked his life
so completely that he had no wish to live? That even now "
Miss O'Malley glanced at her curiously.
"I know nothing about your relations with your husband, but don't let
Sabrina come between you," she said unemotionally. "The feeling he
had for her was more of a fever than anything else. And when a fever
leaves you it takes with it all your will power, all your emotions for a
time. That's why I told you this story, my dear. Others, who knew
Sabrina, might have given you the wrong impression."
"Thank you," said Maggy, and added wistfully: "If only I'd known
earlier."
But would it have made any difference had she known f Could she
have done anything towards the building up of that lost faith in
Garth?
Long after Kate O'Malley had left her, she sat crouched in the
heather, turning over that tragic little history in her mind. So many
things became clear. His silence on all matters immediately
preceding his accident, his indifference at the time for anything
further life might do to him, the shutting away of himself into a
world where pain couldn't touch him again.
Yet, that night when he had kissed her for the first time, she had been
aware for a moment of conflict and torment, as if, too late, he
understood that life Mid Sabrina had cheated him....
It was late when she got back to the house. Mrs. Duffy met her in the
hall and informed her that Garth had already lunched. Maggy thought
she looked strange, and for the first time she wondered if the woman
was quite normal.
Her black eyes held an odd glitter as she said:
"I told the master you would be visiting the Shamus Stems. He
wouldn't be likin' that, of course. The Shamus Stone has a strange
power. Wasn't it there the master was destroyed, no Iras? I'm
surprised at your likin' for it, Mrs. Shelton, ma'am, indeed an' I am."
Maggy tried to pass. In the light of her recent knowledge, the
housekeeper's innuendoes were loathesomely plain.
"I'm not interested in your opinions, Mrs. Duffy," she said coldly.
"Where I choose to go is no concern of yours."
"Is it not, then!" The woman's voice rose. "Let me be tellin' you that
whatever goes on at Floyne is my concern. You'll never be mistress
He turned his chair abruptly and Maggy followed him into the library
feeling considerably shaken by the events of the day.
But she dressed for dinner that night with a lighter heart. With Mrs.
Duffy's going a load seemed lifted from the house, for something of
Sabrina went with her.
She had preserved a strained silence to the end. Bridgit told Maggy in
awe-struck tones: "Sure, it was as if a spell was on her and she afraid
to open her lips. An' the wildness in her two eyes. 'Twas as if the
madness was on her."
For a moment, Maggy was uneasy. The woman hardly seemed sane.
"Where will she go, Bridgit?" she asked.
"She has friends in Galway. Murphy is drivin' her in," Bridgit replied,
and added with the callous carelessness of youth: "She'll not want
with the master's generosity. She's ould, that wan, but she's tough as
an' ould biddy, bad cess to her!"
But Maggy was still faintly troubled.
Bridgit fastened her frock for her, and she went back to the dressingtable and unlocked a drawer. Garth had asked her to wear the
sapphires tonight, and she opened the long flat case which held the
necklace, and sat quite still for a moment, staring into it. The case
was empty. Maggy opened each case with shaking fingers, but they
were all empty.
"Bridgit, they've gone!" she exclaimed.
The two girls stared at each other for a horrified moment, then
Bridgit sank down on the edge of the bed with a small shriek.
"Och! The fairies have charmed the jools away!" she wailed. "The
leprechaun has thim tuk for his crock of gowld!"
"Nonsense!" said Maggy sharply. "It's no leprechaun but a common
thief."
It was criminal, of course, not to have put the sapphires back in the
safe. Any key would open that old-fashioned lock; Keys! A bunch of
keys jangling against a black alpaca dress!
"Stop keening, Bridgit, and tell me if Mrs. Duffy has left yet," she
said quickly.
"The eyar is beyant, but the ould devil won't move,". Bridgit said.
Maggy pushed her towards the door.
"Quick. Find Doolan and tell him to come to me at once in the
breakfast-room," she said. "And don't say a word of this to anyone,
Bridgit. I don't want Mr. Shelton to be worried."
She ran down the stairs wondering how best she might deal with this
situation without calling on Garth's authority. Mrs. Duffy had talked
very wildly about the sapphires earlier in the day. It was entirely
typical that she should have taken them as a last vindictive-gesture.
Doolan came, looking anxious, and when Maggy hastily explained,
suggested at once that Garth should be fetched.
"No," said Maggy stubbornly. "If there's any kind of scene it may
upset him and bring on another attack. I'm going to get the jewels
back myself, but I want you to come with me."
She followed him down the lamp-lit passages to the housekeeper's
room and threw open the door. Mrs. Duffy was sitting motionless by
a dead fire with that dazed expression still on her face. She wore her
outdoor clothes and a pair of black kid gloves, but she made no
attempt to rise when Maggy came in.
"Mrs. Duffy," Maggy said quietly, "will you please give me the
sapphires?"
The woman turned her fixed gaze in Maggy's direction.
"What would I be doin' with the Shelton sapphires?" she asked in a
dull voice.
Maggy looked at her steadily.
"I know you have them," she said. "Give them to me, plea. I don't
want to have to call the police."
"The police, is it?" The housekeeper's dazed expression changed to
one of outraged cunning, and her voice was shrill: "The police will
never set foot in Floyne."
"Ah, come on, now! Give the jools to the mistress," coaxed -Doolan.
"Is it lost, they are, then?" Mrs. Duffy assumed an air_of innocence..
"No," said Maggy. "They're stolen."
Mrs. Duffy turned on her.
"You'll be callin' me a thief, now J" she cried, and her Mack eyes
glittered. "You had me driven from Casde Floyne which was me
home, an' if the jools go with me, 'tis only to their rightful place.
You'll not be feelin' the Shelton sapphires round your white neck
again, me line girl, an' you with no right to them at all."
Maggy turned to Doolan.
"Fetch Mary Kate and Norah, and explain what's happened," she
said.
He left the room; looking a little dubiously over his shoulder, but
Mrs. Duffy spoke no further word until he returned with the two
women.
"Mary Kate," Maggy said apologetically, "I'm afraid I'll have to ask
you to search Mrs. Duffy. Start on her handbag."
Mary Kate looked uncomfortable, and Mrs. Duffy said-in an ominous
voice :
"Lay one finger on me, Mary Kate Doyle, an' I'll box your ears."
"I wouldn't like to be doin' that same, ma'am," the cook said in a
flustered voice. Mrs. Duffy might have been given notice, but she
was still the housekeeper of Floyne whose word was law.
But the gaunt, elderly Norah, perhaps with the assurance in the
background of a nephew in the Civil Guard, had no such scruples.
"Hould her, Pat Doolan," she remarked tersely, and made a snatch at
Mrs. Duffy's handbag.
The woman gave a scream of rage and began to fight Doolan, who
was holding her down in her chair. Maggy had an impression of
excited faces outside the open door. Bridgit,Tier fine eyes round with
curiosity, Theresa peering, open-mouthed over her shoulder, while
Murphy, hastening to the scene, was already taking off his coat,
shouting: "Is it a fight?"
Maggy took the bag from Norah and quickly searched through.it. The
jewels were all there tied up' in a handkerchief, and she gave a sigh
of relief. She was afraid Mrs. Duffy would be wearing them."
"Let her go," she said to Doolan. "Now, Mrs. Duffy, will you"
But she was unprepared for the woman's sudden spring. As Doolan
loosened his grip, she flung herself at Maggy, tearing at her bare
arms, trying to snatch the necklace from her. Her strength was
surprising. Doolan and Murphy dragged her off and held her
struggling while she screamed at Maggy: : "Give me the jools!" she
shouted. "They belong to Shelton women. You and one other have
thought to wear them, but you never will. 'Tis Miss Eunice should be
here, mistress of Floyne an' wearing the jools. Miss Eunice is the
eldest and not a poor crippled crayture like -" She broke off and her
eyes resumed their dazed expression as she stared at the door.
Maggy turned and saw Garth's wheelchair on the threshold.
"She took the sapphires," she said weakly.
"I know. Bridgit fetched me."
"I was afraid she'd be doin' ye a mischief, ma'am," said Bridgit
apologetically.
Mrs. Duffy had become quiet and sullen.
"I was takin' them to Miss Eunice," she said over and over again.
"Go with Murphy, now, Duffy," Garth said quietly. "The ear's
waiting. Doolan, drive in with them and get Dr. Moore. He'll take
care of her."
Mrs. Duffy marched out between the two men without another word,
and Bridgit ran to the back door to watch. "The cyar's started, sir,"
she called after a few minutes. "Good," said Garth. "Come and have
some sherry, Maggy. You must need it."
Maggy felt she did need it. The whole day had been altogether too
eventful.
"Why didn't you call me?" Garth asked gravely as he poured out the
sherry.
"I didn't want to upset you," she said. "I thought I could manage.
Garth, do you think she's mad? "
He frowned.
"She's certainly headed for a nervous breakdown. She's always had a
kink about Floyne and the female line of the Sheltons," he said, and
added harshly: "It was criminal of me to have kept her on. She might
have done you some harm. I should have got rid of her after that bog
episode - Johnny warned me - only I couldn't bring myself to believe
that that had been deliberate. Will you forgive me, Maggy? I can't
forgive myself."
"Oh, please - how could you know?" said Maggy quickly. "But I'm
glad she's gone."
The next morning Maggy consulted Norah who seemed to approve of
her shy proposal that she should take over the running of Floyne
herself.
"Sure, an' a housekeeper's onnecessary entirely," she agreed
cheerfully. "An' 'twill give ye somethin' to do these long days."
Maggy spent a pleasant morning learning where the linen and other
household things were kept, encouraged by Norah and Mary Kate
who, now that Mrs. Duffy had gone, were disposed to be garrulous,
and that evening she said to Garth:
"Don't let's have another housekeeper. I'd like to try and run the
house myself." ' '
He seemed about to reply to that, then changed his mind and -asked
instead if she would drive into Galway, in the morning and do some
errands for him.
"And I want you to choose a wireless set," he said unexpectedly. "It
will help to pass the time for you here, and there's often good music
to listen to."
"Thank you, I'll like that," she said. She had often wondered why he
had no wireless himself.
She took the book from him and idly turned its pages. Oirthe fly-leaf
his name was written in his own neat hand. G. M. Shelton,
"What does the M stand for? I've often wondered," she said.
"Michael."
"Michael. That's nicer than Garth. Garth has a cold, severe sound.
The dictionary says a garth is an open space between two cloisters. I
used to think you were rather like that."
"Did you, Maggy?" he said, but she watched his eyes immediately
become guarded and knew that for some reason or other he was
afraid of personalities.
She gave him back the book, and he read for a little while then lay
back in his chair without speaking. She watched his still face, the
lamplight falling across it lending it a strange mobility, and she was
conscious all at once that he was under some great strain. Feeling that
in watching him she was intruding on something she was not meant
to see, she reached for a book, and at her movement he immediately
opened his eyes.
"It's a long evening, isn't it, Maggy?" he said impatiently, and she
knew that for some reason he wanted to be alone.
She put down her book, unopened, and glanced at the clock.
"It's nearly ten o'clock," she said.
"Yes. Well, I think I'll go to bed."
She was used to his sudden exits and entrances, but she looked
puzzled as he began to turn his chair.
"We're a queer race, aren't we?" he said, catching the puzzled look.
She ran across the room to open the door for him.
"Someone once told me that you had to believe in fairies to
Understand the Irish," she said with a laugh. "Do you agree?"
"Perhaps." He gave her a strange look. "You shouldn't find that
difficult. You have a very touching innocence, my dear."
"Have I? It sounds awful!"
He smiled, gave her a long look, and seemed about to add something
more, then held out his hand. His fingers felt hot and dry as they
pressed hers, and as always, she was surprised by the strength in
them.
"Good-night, Maggy," he said quietly, and turned his chair into the
hall with a deft, quick movement.
He wasn't out of his room when Murphy came round with the car in
the morning, and Maggy set off with a holiday feeling. It would be
market day in Galway and she enjoyed the hustle and bargaining, and
it was nice of Garth to have thought of a wireless.
She was some time choosing a set, and driving back over the bumpy
roads behind the silent Murphy, she was afraid she would be late for
"Yes, I'll remember that," she said. "If - if the operation is successful,
Johnny, will it be complete?"
"If all goes well, there's no reason why he shouldn't lead a perfectly
normal life eventually," he told her gravely.
"How long?"
"It's impossible to say. He's got to be taught how to walk again,
remember, but in a few months - less if he responds quickly to
treatment. Maggy -" he paused, "- I want you to realise that, if he
comes through, things won't be easy. At first there'll be a certain
amount of pain - probably cramp - bad days when he'll be irritable
and despondent when progress seems; slow. You'll have to be patient
and infinitely tactful. He won't like witnesses to his efforts to move in
the early days."
"I don't think," said Maggy, "I would embarrass him. I've helped him
before. You see he's used to me, now - like Doolan or his chair."
He looked at her curiously.
"My dear, when a man loves without being able to make love, he's
apt to be sensitive of his blunderings," he said gently.
She gazed back at him, her eyes dark with questioning, and the
colour flooded her cheeks.
He smiled and said, as Rory had:
"You don't know very much about love, do you, Maggy?"
"No."
He sighed.
The rain stopped about three o'clock, and a dense sea-fog crept over
the moor, muffling all sound, and pressing round the house with
clammy fingers. All that afternoon Maggy returned to her
cataloguing; working with patient thoroughness, and in the evening
she sat in the cold drawing-room and practised; scales, arpeggios, old
studies she had learnt as a child. There was something anonymous
and impersonal about scales which shut out thought, but upstairs in
her sombre bedroom, she knew she couldn't escape.
"Hope and pray if it helps you," Johnny had said. In a household
where prayer had been as natural as three meals a day, Maggy had
never had any difficulty in praying, but when, tonight, she knelt up in
her vast bed, as she had knelt as a child in her cot, years ago, she
could think of no words to say.
Lying there in the darkness, she tried to recall every expression,
every inflection of Garth's voice as he bade her good-night for the
last time. He had given her a long, searching look, as if he wished to
memorise her face, and there had been a moment when he had
seemed about to say something - had he meant to tell her then? But
his voice as he wished her good-night had been .just as usual. Goodnight, Maggy like any other night of their lives. ...
The sedative Johnny had left for her began to take effect....
There was no wind; only the fog pressing silently round the house.
Bridgit's banshee could not keen tonight....
She awoke from dark nebulous dreams to find Bridgit drawing the
curtains.
"What's the time?" she asked, starting up in bed.
The girl looked at her with curiosity.
"Near ten o'clock. I let ye be, ma'am, for ye was sleepin' like a little
child."
Ten o'clock! Then it was all over. Even now Garth might "Why did you let me sleep?" she asked with pain.
Bridgit's face expressed a rough gentleness.
"Sure, an' what good would it do the poor master if I'd wakened ye?"
she retorted. "Stop grievin' now. 'Tis our Blessed Lady will bring him
back to ye walkin' on his two legs."
Maggy was grateful for such faith. For Bridgit, Our Lady, the saints
and the Little People were all mixed up together, and they were all
equally powerful.
She hurried through her dressing and went downstairs. She was
thankful for Mrs. Duffy's absence in the house and she answered
Norah's kindly enquiries as best she might, wishing she could talk to
Doolan, who understood. But Doolan had gone with Garth to Dublin,
and was even now perhaps sitting in one of those falsely bright:
waiting rooms in the nursing home waiting for news.
Johnny had told her it would be some time before they could hear. He
was driving out himself as soon as he had word from the nursing
home. That couldn't be for a long time yet, unless -r Maggy grew
rigid. If the news was bad, they might know already. Was that why
Johnny had insisted on coming himself rather than send a message
through Mulligan? Did he Suspect -? Six to four against, he had said.
Six to four against.... Maggy left the rest of her breakfast untouched,
and fetching a coat, went out of the house.
The fog had cleared away, leaving a morning of brittle beauty. The
earth smelt sweet and fresh after the rain, and the sky was a delicate
duck's-egg blue, meeting the dark horizon of the moor. It was going
to be a fine day.
Maggy found herself in the stable yard without quite know- ing how
she got there. There was new moss growing between the cobbles, and
out of the brilliant green, tiny, star-like flowers thrust their fragile
heads: The cobbles were worn smooth and shiny by the hoofs of
many horses.
Casey was there, swilling out a loose-box that was already spotless,
and for a long time Maggy watched him at his work, listening to the
cool scrape of bristles on wet stone and the contented hissing which
came from Casey's old, puckered lips. He was aware of her, but
without rudeness, he took no notice of her.
"Casey," she said suddenly, "tell me about the horses. Their names their colours - everything." She sat on the old stone mounting-block
and fixed her eyes with great intentness on the brown turf stacked up
in a corner of the yard.
"Well, now" The old man left his work and sat down on an
upturned bucket.
He seemed to talk for hours. His soft voice rose and fell in the gentle
cadences he used to his horses. Names-flashed in and out of his
speech like kingfishers. Chantacleer ... Coronach ... Golden Pavilion
... lovely words like notes of music..
"Go on," she said when he stopped, and he would immediately begin
again: "Well, now ..."
Long after, it seemed, there was the sound of someone calling her
name, and running footsteps in the yard. She looked up and saw
Mulligan waving his disreputable billycock hat in the air.
Maggy smiled.
"Thank you, Mr. Mulligan, it was very good of you," she said.
"Casey, take him up to the house and get yourselves a, drink."
"I will that, ma'am," Casey's voice rose. "Glory be to God l- An'will
there be horses again at Floyne?"
Maggy saw there were tears in the old man's faded blue eyes, and his
lips were trembling.
"Perhaps, Casey," she said gently, and got up and walked towards the
moor.
The tough heather roots dragged at her feet as she steadily climbed,
and small birds, disturbed, rose, crying into the quiet air. Already the
bogs were starred with a minute white flower. In a month the brown
moorland would be covered with flaming gorse.
The Shamus Stone rose grey and implacable against the tender sky,
and a little red animal, a young vixen, perhaps, darted for cover into
one of the crannies of the rocks.
Maggy stood on the topmost stone and looked towards the sea. Her
face was wet with tears.