Gabriel Galloway

by MARY LAVIN

15

UNDER normal circumstances, it might have been advisable to delay the wedding of Cornelius and Lily indefinitely, on account of her extreme youth, but because of the sense of strain in the house in Clewe Street, the wedding date was settled, and the ceremony took place two weeks after Lily’s seventeenth birthday.

The young couple left by train for a brief honeymoon. When they returned they were to take up residence with Theodore for a short time, until a suitable house could be vacated for them in the town.

It was assumed that they would return by train as they had departed, but on the morning of their arrival Theodore got a note from Lily to say that they would arrive sometime in the afternoon, and that they were coming by road.

“ They are hiring a coach! ” said Theresa. “This is only the beginning. You mark my words, Father, that man will give himself luxuries with the money that you could hardly be persuaded to spend upon necessities.”

“We mustn’t jump to conclusions, Theresa,” said Sara, gently. “They may have borrowed the coach.”

“I don’t see why they couldn’t travel in the train like normal people.”

“Now what difference can it make to you, Theresa, whether they come by train or by coach?” said Theodore testily.

“It doesn’t make any difference to us, Theresa,” said Sara, timidly. It was to Sara that Theresa turned.

“If they were coming on the train, there would be plenty of time for us all to sit down to supper together before Benediction; but if they come by coach, there is no knowing what time they will arrive, and I for one am not going to stay at home from the church to cater for the inconsideration of others.”

“Please yourself,” said Theodore, “both of you. But whether you’re going or staying, be sure to have a good meal laid out for them. And you’d better start getting it ready now, because it may not be after the train that they’ll arrive, but before it.”

The evening train came in, however, before there was any sign of the coach, and Theresa and Sara, having given the finishing touches to the supper table, left Mary Ellen and Theodore to welcome home the travelers, for when the hour of Benediction came and there was no sign of them, they felt it their duty to set off for the church.

Theresa and Sara had not long left Clewe Street and were hardly in Church Street when old Theodore, who had an ear for sounds even when they were two miles off, went out into the street to confirm his conviction that there was a coach coming into the town. He stepped back into the hallway, and calling out to Mary Ellen announced that the bride and groom would be into the town in another minute. Then he ran back to the door, with Mary Ellen after him; and by this time even Mary Ellen was able to hear the sounds of horses trotting at as festive a pace as would be expected of horses that brought home a young couple from their honeymoon.

“They are passing under the town arch now,” said Theodore, as the sounds deepened for an instant, being augmented under the arch with their own echoes. “They are turning into the square,” he said a moment later, when a cloud of sparrows flew up towards the steeple of the church from their more humble perches on the market-square cross. “They’re coming!” he shouted, as the horses’ hoofs began to be less distinct in the mixture of sounds that accompanied them all the time, but which were too faint to be heard until the vehicle was near — a rattling of trappings, a flick of a whip, and a rhythmical creaking of straps that proclaimed the vehicle to be well and lightly sprung.

The next minute it appeared in sight at the corner of Clewe Street, and traveling at such a neat pace that the horses took the curve in a wide sweep, showing off the entire flank of the carriage as well as the frontage, which alone would have been revealed had they kept close to the curb.

The carriage was black, in the main, but the wheel spokes, the door panels, and the shafts were painted with so light and so bright a shade of yellow that, although it was laid on with no more than the intention of relieving the somberness of the black body, it struck the eye at once and gave the impression of a very fancy, very out of the way, elaborate carriage.

From this carriage, out of each window, one at either side of the vehicle, there was a hand extended, waving already in acknowledgment of the waving that they expected would welcome them. Theodore threw up his hand and waved and ran forward to meet the coach.

16

BEFORE it was rightly brought to a standstill the carriage door opened and out jumped Theodore’s youngest daughter, clothed in all manner of capelets and feather boas and wearing upon her finger the band of gold that would make such a difference in the distribution of authority between herself and her sister Theresa.

“We’re back, Father! Just think of it. We’re back!” she said, and she hugged him. “Where are Theresa and Sara? Let me kiss them.” And she kissed Theodore again, and running back in an afterthought to the other side of the carriage, from which Cornelius was not yet alighted, having engaged himself with putting out Lily’s hat boxes and dressing cases before alighting himself, she kissed him too, as if this affection for those whom she had rejoined might not be supposed to make her forget that she now’ had another and more immediate claim upon her love. Then she ran into the hallway, her voice coming back like a bell.

“We’re back! We’re back!”

Theodore, meanwhile, had gone around to the other side of the carriage and begun to pile up in his arms the dress boxes and hat boxes that Cornelius was handing out from the carriage interior.

“ I’m glad to see you back,” said Theodore to Cornelius, and he put out his hand.

“I’m glad to see you, sir,” said Cornelius.

“Can I help?” said Theodore. “Give me that parasol.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Cornelius, and he handed out the parasol. Then he looked at it more intently and seemed to hesitate. “ I don’t think my wife ever uses that except when she is driving,” he said, looking at it reflectively, as if trying to ascertain which, out of a great number of fairly similar parasols, this particular one might be. Making up his mind, then, with a determination all the stronger for the amount of reflection spent upon it, he took the flowered brolly out of Theodore’s hand and threw it back again on the seat of the carriage. “We can leave it there. She will have it to hand when she needs it.”

Theodore was startled. “But if someone else hires the carriage before you need it again, won’t there be a danger of its being stolen?” he said, and he looked with perilous dread at the flowery parasol.

“Oh, there’s no fear of that,” said Cornelius. “No one will hire the carriage.”

“What makes you think that?” said Theodore.

Cornelius coughed, and put his head into the carriage again to take up another armload of boxes.

“There won’t be anyone using this carriage but ourselves, sir. I forgot to tell you that I thought it just as well to buy it. What was the good of paying for it in pieces, by hiring it every other day, as we would be doing, and yet this time next year, although we would have paid for it twice over, we would have no more right to stand on the footboard than if we had never put pen to paper to the tune of a penny! No, indeed, that’s not my method. The carriage is ours, sir.” And putting his hand on the top box to steady the lot as he passed in the doorway, Cornelius swung around so that his tailed coat spun in a curl as tight as a pig’s tail, and disappeared into the open door of his new home in Clew’e Street.

When Theodore recovered himself sufficiently from the surprise of his son-in-law’s revelation, he made a tour of inspection from one end of the carriage to the other, and there wasn’t a strap, spring, or panel in the entire W’agon that he did not open, wrench at, or otherwise test to his satisfaction; and as for the door, he tried it three or four times to see if the handle was working properly. When he had tried the handle for the fourth time, a field of further investigation presented itself and he stepped into the interior and sat down on the seat, from which place he not only examined the floor, the ceiling, the woodwork, the cushions, but examined as well every button upon every cushion to see that all were tight to the leather, firm, well-sewn, and, furthermore, unlikely to alter their condition of perfection for many a year.

Every button was tight. Every splinter of the bodywork was perfection indeed; and having failed to find a flaw in the carriage, old Theodore decided that it would be somewhat churlish to find fault with the man who, having had the recklessness to purchase a carriage, had still the good sense to choose one that was flawless and irreproachable. Theodore sat in it a few minutes more wondering at the temerity of his son-in-law in having spent so much of his father-in-law’s money without consulting that father-in-law. And he wondered if perhaps he had misjudged the indications of Cornelius’s thin faee and had married into his house a man with more tendencies to spend than to make money.

But his final feeling was one of pride. Here he was for the first time sitting in a coach of his own. It was a thing that he would never have contemplated buying, thinking that to do so would be to put himself above his position and make himself a cause of laughter to his contemporaries. But it was a quite different thing altogether for his married daughter and her husband to have bought such a vehicle. And so old Theodore swallowed his last misgiving on the price paid for the article, and upon the independence of this son-in-law in buying it without consulting him, and gave himself over to a last review of the coach, viewing it now, not as a critic, but as a fond possessor; and gradually the smile that had covered his face while he was waiting for the return of the couple came over his face again, and leaping down from the coach as lightly as his youngest daughter had leaped from it a few minutes before, he went into the house to hear news of the festive tour.

17

AS THE Misses Coniffe turned into Church Street, Sara thought for an instant that she heard a carriage echoing under the arch of the toll tower, and she mentioned the fact to Theresa.

“ I think I hear a coach,” she said, slow ing down a little in her pace.

“What if you do?” said Theresa, without slackening her pace. Sara hurried to make up the lost inches.

“I thought that it seemed impolite to be out when they returned.”

“I thought that we went over all that this morning,” said Theresa, “and that we made our decision.”

“Oh, yes,” said Sara, “but don’t you think it makes a difference when they are within hearing?”

“I don’t,” said Theresa, “and anyway the church is within sight!” They were just nearing the church gate. “I know’ that I wouldn’t turn around at the church gate and turn my back on the altar for anyone. But you may do as you please. You may feel differently about things. All consciences are not the same, I understand! And Theresa turned in the gravel path to the side-aisle door.

Sara hesitated, but only for an instant. Then she set after Theresa once more at a brisk pace, and by the time they reached the side-aisle door, she had put all her scruples behind her, and upon her face, which was lifted eagerly forward from the frill at her neck, there was the same expression of satisfaction as that which had been upon Theresa’s face since they set out from Clewe Street; and as they both reached out their hands for the holy water in the cold stone font, it could be seen from the vehement way that they sprinkled the water right anti left that they were not putting much penance upon themselves by this attendance at church.

The fact was that their nightly visit to the church constituted a major pleasure in the lives of the Misses Coniffe. This habit of churchgoing had developed long before the arrival of Cornelius, but there is no doubt that after the disappointments of his advent they threw themselves into their visits as into the only consolation available. Although both to Theresa and to Sara religion compensated in great measure for the fact that they were unmarried, yet for each one of them that compensation took a different form, and corresponded almost exactly with the pleasure that each would have derived from the state of marriage.

The strong example by which Theresa would have upheld a husband and family was not lost entirely for want of them, because as leader of the Women’s Sodality she was tireless in the standard she set for the rest of the congregation in such matters of devotion as the strict discipline of the eye, constant and rapid activity of the lips, and above all, in the inflexibility of her adherence to an upright posture while kneeling — a posture that allowed no modification either in the way of resting the arras upon the back of the pew before or in allowing the hips to lean for support upon the seat of the pew behind.

Miss Sara, on the other hand, had she been married, would never have had time to think of setting an example, so busy would she have been with small fussing cares for the physical well-being of her family. This fussing care was not lost, however, any more than the upright example of Theresa, for as chairwoman of the Altar Society, Sara had taken upon herself, to the infinite relief of the town matrons, the laundering, darning, and general repair of all the altar linens and cloths. Upon this duty she lavished great zeal and devotion, and with the residue of her zeal she emptied and filled the flower vases, polished the brass candelabra, and occasionally gave old Luke Humphries, the sacristan, a hand with straightening the pews when they had slipped out of line.

In consequence of these duties, the Misses Coniffe were privileged to remain in the church each evening when the rest of the congregation had been reminded that it was time for them to depart, by such hints from the sacristan as the rattling of keys, the shutting of the side doors, the removal of flowers from the altar, and finally the quenching of every candle except the one in his hand. When the church doors were shut, Miss Theresa repaired to the sacristy and sat there at work upon the membership list for the Sodality, and Miss Sara busied herself with going from pew to pew with Luke, collecting all beads, prayer books, and mortuary cards that had been lost during the day, and placing them on the high window ledge, where they could be seen and identified by the owners on the following Sunday.

On this particular evening Miss Theresa was in the vestry, working upon the Sodality list, and beside her on the table were a roll of red silk ribbon and a box of medals. The ribbons were to be cut, and a medal sewn to each strip, to make ribands for the new members of the Sodality before Miss Theresa left the vestry. Therefore she did not pay much attention to the fact that Miss Sara was unusually long. Once she lifted her head as she heard someone speaking to Sara in the chapel, but their voices were lowered in whispers and she could not distinguish them. She picked up another ribbon.

18

THE new voice was that of Mrs. Molloy. Under her arm she carried a large prayer book, further enlarged by the insertion between its pages of hundreds of holy pictures and mortuary cards.

It was one of these mortuary cards that Mrs. Molloy had lost and which she now came back to retrieve. It was astonishing that she could have missed one out of so many, but to Mrs. Molloy nothing was astonishing, nothing inexplicable.

“I’ve lost poor Lottie’s mortuary card!” she said, calling out to the indistinct figures of Sara and Luke as she sailed down the center aisle of the darkened church. “I missed it before I reached the gate,” she said, standing up on the front pew and groping on the dusty window ledge. “I wouldn’t wish for the world to lose it,” she said, retrieving a worn card, edged with heavy black paper lace, bearing numerous descriptive particulars of the deceased and a number of indulgenced prayers.

“But, do you know—” she stepped down from the pew under the window and advanced towards the high altar, in front of which Sara was standing, having lacked the presence of mind of the sacristan, who darted away in the direction of the side confessionals and who was busying himself with some obscure occupation that necessitated the banging and rebanging of the confessional doors — “do you know it’s most extraordinary the way I missed it. I was walking along and I was looking at the way the gates of the churchyard are peeling for want of a bit of paint and I thought to myself that it was a wonder Father Drew didn’t put a shade of paint on the gates. Now there are people who would say that the origin of a thought like that might be found in the fact of my daughter marrying a painter, but if you were to pause to consider the construction that would be put on your words in this town, it’s seldom or never you’d get occasion to split your lips apart at all, and you might as well have them sewn up, as my poor mother, God be good to her soul, was always threatening on me when I was a child. Well! As I was saying — I was thinking it would be no harm at all, and might be said to be a good thing, if Father Drew was to hire some young lad, not meaning my own son-in-law, you understand, although it’s my opinion that more is lost than is gained oftentimes by people being too backward about praising their own, and when it comes to a fine point, if you don’t do it yourself, others won’t either, and if it comes to that, Miss Sara, your own poor mother that’s dead and gone might have done a bit more than she did in the way of throwing out a hint about the fortune that would be left to you and your sister, Miss Coniffe, for if she did, you might both be married now and the fortune not rusting below in the vaults of the bank, although indeed, it won’t rust for long when your new brother-in-law comes back from his tour, by all I hear. But that’s beside the point and no concern of mine, although I wouldn’t wish you to think by my saying that, that I regret having given you a hint in that direction, but only a hint, mind you, because he’s a fine straight-standing man, and your sister Lily is lucky to have got him, because when all is said and done it’s better to marry, no matter what kind of man you get, than not to marry at all, isn’t that so?”

Mrs. Molloy rarely gave a person an opportunity of interrupting her by asking a question, but even the broadest bosom cannot hold an inexhaustible amount of breath.

“You were telling me about your cousin Lottie,” said Miss Sara, desperately, while Mrs. Molloy was taking a fresh draught of air into her bosom.

“Poor Lottie!” said Mrs. Molloy. “That is true. Well, as I was saying, I was looking at the railings and thinking to myself how badly they were in need of a stroke or two of paint —”

“And what happened?” said Miss Sara. This was the dangerous part in Mrs. Mo Hoy’s story, where an apparently limitless number of side currents were waiting, and ready, to sweep her away upon their diverging courses. “What happened?” she said again.

“Well, as I was saying,” said Mrs. Molloy reprovingly, “I was walking out the churchyard when I caught sight of the gates, and I said to myself, ‘Those gates could do with a splash or two of paint!’ Then I began to think of how bright and shining they used to be when I was a young girl. I remembered the way, when I was a child, if we saw a spot of mud on the railings we used to wipe it off with spits on our handkerchiefs. That’s a fact. We used to do that! We were always playing around the church — those were the days before the new cemetery was bought — and another thing that we used to do was to walk around the graves back of the church and if there was any moss or dirt on a tombstone we used to get a bunch of grass and wipe it off. We were very particular about the churchyard. We took as much pride in it as if it was our own back yard. The older people used to laugh at us. All except one! And that was a cousin of mine, Lottie by name, who was the same age with my father although she was a first cousin of mine at the same time. Poor Lottie — not that I called her Lottie to her face, ever — I was too young for that, although young people now adays haven’t the same respect for names and Christian names that we had then — poor Lottie used to encourage me. She used to ask me where I was playing, and when I said in the churchyard, she’d say, ‘You’re a good child, and when your poor cousin Lottie goes to her reward one of these days I hope you won’t let any dirty moss creep up over the letters of her name on the headstone. ‘ Even after I was grown up. Cousin Lottie used to chat to me about the shortness of the time left to her on this earth. She often kept me up in her room for an hour or more showing me her shroud. Yes! Her shroud! She gave an order for one to be made and sent to her, and she kept it in a box under her bed, at the right-hand side so she coidd reach for it easily if she felt herself slipping away any night before she had time to rouse the house. She kept it in a box under the bed, but she often took it out and shook it and examined it, and ironed out the creases and left it hanging up for a while to air. Whenever she did this she used to leave it hanging up till I came to see her. ‘ I had my shroud out yesterday, ‘ she used to say to me, ‘and I didn’t put it away because I knew you’d like to look at it, not like some other people I know who don’t seem to remember ever having heard the saving that we know not the day nor the hour! ‘ She used to give a queer crooked look at her husband Matty when she said this because poor hlatty couldn’t stand the sight of the shroud, and even went so far, I’m told, as to pass some very disrespectful remarks about it. You could hardly blame him, in one way, seeing that he was a good ten years older than Lottie at the time. On the other hand, seeing that they didn’t get on too well together, you’d think he wouldn’t mind so much seeing her making her preparations for departure. And such preparations! The shroud was only the beginning. She went further than that. She had a cardboard box fitted up with a cross and a prayer book, and a tablecloth of linen, still from the mark of the iron, and a glass bowl and a towel — all the things that the priest would need if he was called in suddenly by someone that might not know the layout of the house, or where to put their hands on what he would need. Now this is a practice that I believe wouldn t be considered out of the way by others, although I myself would as soon think of cutting my own grave-sods as I would of bringing myself that close to the thought of my owni skeleton. But poor Lottie was never one to do anything by halves, and when she had cross and bowl, sheet, shroud, and corpse-pillow all ready and laid out in a drawer, she began to get round her husband to let her order her coffin. But although Matty was a man that didn’t draw the line where he ought to have drawn it, that didn’t mean that he would go on forever without drawing it somewhere. He drew the line at the coffin, and put his foot down on it too. There was a regular disturbance in the house for wrecks over it all. And although it’s not my practice to repeat the gossip of others, there were a good many people that said he should have let her get it and that if she belonged to them they’d be glad to see the coffin carried into the house to remind them of the day they’d be lifting it out again. But talk like that was only’ jealousy, that s my belief; and when the day did come for Matty7 to order a coffin for Lottie, the neighbors had good cause to be jealous because, seeing that the poor thing didn’t die for a good thirty-seven years after collecting her funeral clothes and death baggage, they had the mortification of seeing better linen and worsteds on the corpse than they had on their own backs; for although everything changes, they say, there is nothing changes like the quality of textiles, and you get no cloth today to equal that which was to be got yesterday. And talking about the change in the quality of textiles, there was a great change in the quality of paper too between those days and our days, and in respect to that article too, Lottie was not behindhand in getting an advance on the times. “When they opened her closet, what did they find, piled up as neat as you like, but a stack of mortuary cards, ready and printed, and a picture of herself on every one of them — as nice a picture as ever was taken of her, standing by the rosebush in her father’s garden, years before she ever met Matty, much less married him.”

Mrs. Molloy held out the card for Sara’s inspection.

“Look at that black lace edging. You wouldn’t get that nowadays. And look at the quality of the paper. There is no date on it, of course, and it doesn’t say the age at which she died, but I remember something she said to me once about those things not mattering much if you had as many indulgenced prayers as the card would hold, although now that I come to think of it, it’s a great wonder she didn’t put a date on them, for she was always of the belief that she’d die before the year was out, every year! Well, anyway, every single one of the mortuary cards was in its envelope and addressed to the different persons of the town who would be expecting to receive one.” Mrs. Molloy drew another breath. “Of course, seeing that she lived for so long after all, she might have spared herself the trouble, for the greater part of the cards had to be put in new envelopes, as the people they were intended for were dead before herself. However, there were a few that were still alive and they were sent their cards, although I believe that it was a cause of great consternation to some of them to get cards w ritten in the hand of the woman whose death was announced on them. And one particular person — I won’t mention a name because there was talk, at the time, of a lawsuit being taken against poor Matty, as if it was his fault! one particular person took such a turn at the sight of the dead woman’s writing that she fell in a fever and was buried three days after poor Lottie herself.”

“Well, just imagine that!” said Miss Sara, and into her voice she tried to put a tone of finality.

Mrs. Molloy drew herself up. “There you are! The dead have their own ways for accomplishing their wishes. They may not be able to speak but they have other ways. Depend upon it. Take my word for it. They have their ways.” And having come at last to the end of her narrative, she brought into effect the gift of the second-best orator — that is to say, although she had not the salt of brevity with which to season her story, when she came to the end of it she broke off with such abruptness that even those most desirous that it should end were disconcerted that it should do so with so little warning.

“Poor Lottie!” said Mrs. Molloy. “May the Lord have mercy on her.” And saying this she dropped upon her knees, got up again, and wheeled towards the aisle. “Good night to you both,” she said with a certain shade of severity in her voice, as she caught a glimpse of the clock in the sacristy and realized that half her night had been wasted talking to the only two people in the town who had little or none of the small coinage of conversation with which to repay the prodigality of those who had.

19

WHEN Theresa and Sara came back from the church, although it was not very late the bridal couple had retired for the night. It was the custom of the sisters to drink a cup of hot water before retiring, and as they were waiting for the kettle to boil they sat in the back drawing room and discussed the adjustments that would be necessary in the house. But as Theresa spoke, she often stopped in her sentences and waited impatiently, with an expression of exasperation on her face, because, overhead, the ceiling occasionally shook as Cornelius crossed the floor above, going from the dressing table to the chest of drawers, from the chest of drawers to the washhand basin. Every sound from overhead was an irritant that called forth a comment.

“We should not have given them that room. The floors in these old houses are not fit for heavy men’s feet trampling them down. We’ll have the ceiling down around our ears one of these nights.”

To Sara, however, the sound of Cornelius’s feet brought no irritation. Perhaps she felt grateful that, having had the bad fortune to lose him as husband, she had gained him as a brother. Instead of crushing her affection for him, she had set about adjusting it to his new relationship with her. Once or twice, however, she shivered slightly when the ceiling shook, although it was Lily’s light feet that she heard running across the floor overhead. Another time she heard a chair overturned in the room above, and there was a lot of laughing.

When the hot water had been drunk, and the cups rinsed at the sink, the sisters went upstairs themselves. They were going quietly and without speaking until, suddenly, in the dusk, Theresa in passing the door of Lily’s room struck her foot against something on the floor.

“What is this?” She held the candle up and peered down. On the mat outside the bedroom door there were two pairs of shoes — one pair of large tan shoes with strong, sturdy toes and heels, and a small pair of black calfskin shoes with high heels and pointed toes. “This is going too far!” said Theresa. “They were allowed to make this their home, but they need not think that they can make it a hotel.”

“Perhaps they forgot,” said Sara. “Perhaps they thought they were still away. I’ll give them a rub of the brush and we can speak to Lily privately about it in the morning.”

She was stooping to pick up the shoes. Theresa caught her arm. “You’ll do nothing of the kind,” she said, sternly. “Leave them there. When they find them unpolished in the morning they’ll take the hint, and not leave them out tomorrow night.” She drew herself up. “In the meantime I don’t intend to let this pass. I see a light under Father’s door. He’s not asleep yet. I’ll step in and tell him about this. It’s a good opportunity to let him see the liberties that that man will take if he’s given too much freedom. I was looking for an opportunity like this to say something of the kind to Father.”

She lowered the candle and advanced towards her father’s door, but just as she reached the door, Theresa once again struck her foot against something on the floor, and at the same moment she thought she heard a smothered giggle from Sara. Looking down, Theresa saw that outside her father’s door, in the center of the mat, were her father’s muddy boots with which he had taken his bedtime walk in the garden. He had seen Cornelius’s shoes, and instead of adopting the attitude that his eldest daughter would have expected from him, Theodore had considered it an excellent idea and one from which he could profit himself.

To understand the sense of effrontery with which Theresa, and Sara too, although to a lesser extent, had suffered upon seeing the shoes and boots left outside the doors to be cleaned, it must be understood that in families of their class in almost every town in the country, although there was always a servant, and often more than one, to do the work of the house, — to cook, to clean, to serve the meals, to answer the door, and to do a thousand services in running from one room to another, from the attic to the cellar, — it was the custom that these services must be in the communal interest, strictly dedicated to the running and ordering of the house, and that no personal services were to be expected by any individual.

Holding that view, it was of course a great shock to Theresa that Cornelius should leave out his shoes to be shined; and that Theodore encouraged him was utterly intolerable.

20

As THE weeks went by, however, it became apparent that Cornelius had a totally different view from Theresa of the purpose for which money might be spent, and on one or two occasions he pointed out to Theodore that there was only one real difference between people like the Fanshawes for example, and the Coniffes themselves.

“And that difference is money! You don’t need to tell me.” said Theodore, repeating one of the stock remarks used by everyone in the town when confronted with some evidence of the difference between their own manners and customs and those of the county families.

“I don’t mean money,” said Cornelius, frowning at the interruption. “I have reason to know that your income, sir, is equal to that of Colonel Fanshawe, and that your capital is greater. The only difference there is between him and yourself is in your attitude to your money — in the uses to which you both put your money. With his money he has bought leisure and comfort for himself. He lives in a fine house and he has surrounded himself with beautiful things. He has not spent the money recklessly, because his property represents a good sound investment, in which his capital is safe, and from the work of the farm land and the letting of his cottages he has a good steady income.”

“Now take my office,”Cornelius continued, because it was apropos of which room he would apportion for his use that the topic had arisen on this particular occasion. “Take my office. I do not intend to have it become a stuffy place, with an accumulation of dusty and useless documents, like old Kane’s office. I intend to keep my room more like a study; a calm, quiet place. I can never understand why it is considered likely that a client will be inspired by seeing evidence of a hundred other cases that are being dealt with at the same time as his own.”

“I see your point,” said Theodore, but it was quite clear that although he may have seen the point, he could not see beyond it.

“Take that coach I bought,” said Cornelius. “Even that was a step forward. It lets people see that one is not to be dependent on others, that one is not afraid to spend today if it means a saving tomorrow, and above all that one has not a false opinion of the value of money. In short, it lets people see that I know what I owe to myself. Then there is this house. It is very well built, and I would like some day to have it as an office, but as soon as we can have a house built in the country, I think that Lily and I should get out of town. Living in a town is in itself an admission that one attaches too great an importance to money-making. You should live in the country yourself, sir. In fact I am surprised that you have not moved out of the town long before now. I think that when Lily and I are having a house built we might as well make it a sizable place, and all move out there. What do you think, sir? ”

Theodore, however, was not thinking. He lived in an age and in a class in which it had been considered wise that the more money you made the less evidence you showed of it. Theodore would not add a new footscraper to his doorstep until he had made several judicious references to the dirt and mud that was carried into the house. He would make it clear to the whole town that the carpets were being destroyed and that if a new scraper was not bought there would be the expense of a new carpet. When the scraper eventually appeared, therefore, it would be more an object of commiseration than resentment; and instead of being envied for having it, Theodore would be pitied for having had to spend money upon it.

There was one person in the town, however, who saw through these subterfuges, and that was Theresa. She was not deceived by this pretense. She was worried, but she kept silent until the day Cornelius suggested that it would be a great help to him if he had a horse, and a great help to his reputation if he rode to hounds.

“If I were seen at the Hunt meetings I would attract the right kind of clients. Shopkeepers and poor farmers are not worth the trouble of catching their custom. I want to attract a different type of client. And I know where I can get a good chestnut filly for very little.”

“You want to ruin us! That’s what you want!” said Theresa, who came into the room unexpectedly in time to hear the end of the proposal. “You want to spend every penny we have. My father may be a blind fool — but I am not. I see what you’re aiming at!”

“Who’s a blind fool?” said Theodore, bristling at once and swinging around to face his daughter with fury and indignation.

Theresa defeated her own purpose. She had provoked her father s anger against herself. Given a little time to consider the situation, there is no knowing the way he might have reacted to the new proposal, but in turning his anger upon herself, Theresa had caused her father to become the ally of his son-in-law, and so before the young couple were four months married, Cornelius possessed, as well as the carriage horses, a thoroughbred chestnut mare with white fetlocks, a touch of white on the face, a longish mane, and a devilish temper.

21

Two weeks after the Wilful Filly was led into the yard, she threw Cornelius going over a ditch, and fell and rolled over him. The Master of the Hunt, Colonel Christopher Fanshawe, and three grooms brought his body home, covered with coats, on a cart.

“It’s a shocking affair,” said Colonel Fanshawe, standing in the narrow hallway, after breaking the news to Theodore. He was greatly at a loss for words. “This is the first fatal accident that I have ever seen on a hunting field — and I’m riding to hounds since I was seven years old.” He paused, A new aspect of the accident occurred to him. “You have to be bred to hunting,” he said. “I always heard that, said.”

The grooms shuffled their feet and were glad of an opportunity to speak. “That’s right,” they said. “You have to be bred to the hunting.”

Theodore bowed his head.

At the time that all this was taking place downstairs the three sisters were sitting in Theresa’s room, which faced on the street. Theresa and Sara were sewing, and with their heads bent over their work they had not seen Colonel Fanshawe coming down the street. Lily W’as not sew’ing but was sitting on a hassock at Sara’s feet. She was turning over the pages of a catalogue that had come that morning from a furnishing establishment. When the knock sounded on the door below, Lily was the first to look up.

“Oh, that couldn’t be Cornelius home so early,” she cried, but on the mere possibility that it might be, she threw down the catalogue and raised her head to listen. “I hope Mary Ellen is downstairs,” she murmured, getting hastily to her feet.

“Of course she’s downstairs,” said Theresa. “Where else would she be, I’d like to know!” For she read clearly in Lily’s flushed face her desire to run downstairs and open the door. Then, as there was a sound of footsteps in the passage underneath, Theresa took up her sewing again.

“Are you satisfied now?” she asked, “They got in, whoever they were.”

Lily stood irresolute still. For a few minutes she tried to dissemble her curiosity as to who had arrived, but at last she could not hide it any longer.

“I wonder who it was,” she said.

Theresa, to whom this remark had been addressed, said nothing, but Sara, who had only begun to be aware of the strain between the other two, felt compelled to say something.

“If it is anything that concerns us,” she said, “Mary Ellen will come up and tell us, I suppose.”

Lily turned to her.

“It might be Cornelius after all,” she said. “He told me this morning that if they drew Colonel Fanshawe’s cover he might be back early.”

While Lily was speaking, Theresa stopped sewing, although she kept her head bent. This was partly to hear what Lily was saying, but partly too it was to try to catch what was going on below, for her own curiosity, although unmotivated, was not altogether inactive. As she could hear nothing from downstairs, however, she had been forced to concentrate entirely on what Lily was saying; and on hearing her young sister glibly and familiarly making use of an expression that would have been incomprehensible to all three of them a few months previous, an unspeakable irritation swept over her and she threw down her work.

“And what if it was Cornelius!” she snapped. “Is that any reason for flying down the stairs two steps at a time? Let me tell you this, Lily Galloway! I may be an old maid, but I know that being married doesn’t put a woman beyond cheapening herself. Take my advice and don’t be in such a hurry running after that husband of yours, or it’s a poor opinion he’ll have of you in the end — if he hasn’t begun to have it already.”

“Oh, Theresa!” Sara half rose from her chair and looked in fright at Lily. But Lily was standing firmly on her two feet, and to Sara’s surprise she had her chin held up defiantly.

“There’s no fear of that,” she said. “There are some people you cannot make too much of, no matter how much you try.” And then and there she turned on her heel and ran over to the door. “It must be Cornelius,” she said. “In any case I’ll go downstairs; it’s not very pleasant up here.”

Far quicker than Theresa, Lily had caught the sound of voices below, and resting on the security of having her young husband’s support, she made for the stairs. When Lily had run down the first flight of stairs, however, she paused on the landing. There were men’s voices in the hall all right, and she could hear Theodore’s voice among them. But she did not hear Cornelius. He must be getting out the decanters, she thought; and going down another step or two, she inclined her head in the direction of the dining room. No sound came from there. Lily hesitated once more. Then to her relief she heard her father call Mary Ellen. She stood still.

“Mary Ellen!”

Lily’s lips parted slightly and she put her head to one side, Did she fancy it, or was his voice peculiarly weak — old ? And why was Mary Ellen not going to him ? There! She heard Mary Ellen go into the hall.

“Mary Ellen.” No, she did not fancy it; his voice was plainly queer. “Mary Ellen. Go upstairs at once and prevent the girls from coming down.”

Lily put out her hand and caught the banister rail. Prevent them from coming down? There was something wrong. A strange beating started in her head. She clung to the rail and waited to hear more, unable to stir a step. Mary Ellen too must have been stunned, for Theodore spoke sharply.

“Why are you standing there?” he said. “Do as I tell you at once. Keep them upstairs until I call you.”

Lily came to her senses suddenly. Forgetting all that had gone before, she now thought only of getting back to her sisters. Turning around, not waiting for Mary Ellen, she ran up the stairs again and burst into Theresa’s room.

“Theresa! Sara! There’s something the matter. Something has happened!” she cried, and then incoherently she tried to repeat what she had heard.

Theresa and Sara sprang to their feet. Lily’s confusion, more than her words, made them feel there was something wrong, but when a minute later Mary Ellen ran into the room, what she had to say was no more enlightening than what Lily was stammering.

“Just a minute. Keep calm, both of you,” cried Theresa, and upon Mary Ellen, at least, Theresa’s words had some effect, for a great strain had been lifted from her upon discovering that whatever was the matter the sisters had some inkling of it, and it was not left entirely to her to tell them about it.

“Not that I know, myself,” she said, turning in answer to Theresa. “ All the Master said was that I was not to let you downstairs. ‘Keep them upstairs, Mary Ellen,’ he said. Those were his words.”

Sara sank back into her chair.

“Oh, it’s something dreadful!” she cried, and she put her hands up to her face.

Theresa, however, made for the door.

“ Such nonsense,” she said. “If there’s anything wrong, I should be down there.” But quick as Theresa was, Lily got to the door before her.

“Perhaps something happened to Cornelius,” she said. “I’ll go down, too.”

All at once an idea occurred to Theresa. She caught Lily by the arm and held her back. Then she turned to Mary Ellen.

“Just a minute,” she said. “If there were anyone needed, my father would have sent for me. Tell me, Mary Ellen — who is down there? Did you see anyone? Who was that who came in a few minutes ago? ” Then without waiting for a reply to any of her questions she turned back to the others, staring particularly at Lily with a cold and meaning look. “It may be,” she said slowly, “that something has occurred that it is not suitable for us to see.”

“Why, what do you mean, Theresa?” cried Sara, starting up again and putting her hand to her heart. At the first hint of trouble she had been ready to faint, but this suggestion of something unusual acted upon her like sal volatile.

“I mean what I said,” replied Theresa, and she looked directly at Lily.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Lily, “but I suppose you’re hitting at me.”

“Why should you think that?” Theresa asked, measuring out her words slowly and carefully. “If what I suspect is true, then we’ll all suffer the shame of it.” She turned back to Mary Ellen again. “ Well, ” she said impatiently, “did you hear me asking you? Who is down there?”

Taken by surprise, Mary Ellen stumbled to get out her words this time before Theresa interrupted her again.

“I hardly took time to look,” she said, “but I think it was Colonel Fanshawe.”

Theresa smiled. “I thought so!

“What did you think?” cried Sara and Lily together.

Theresa ignored them.

“Was there anyone else?” she demanded.

“There were two other men,” said Mary Ellen. “I don’t know who they were.” Then she thought for a moment. “I think they were two grooms,” she said.

The smile on Theresa’s face deepened.

“I think I know why my father didn’t want us to go down,” she said, and this time she addressed herself to Sara. To Lily she turned as if on an afterthought. “You may go down if you like, she said. “Perhaps, after all, it might he as well for you to accustom yourself to such sights.” She moved away from the door.

Lily stared at her.

“What do you mean, Theresa?” she begged pitifully. But instead of opening the door, she moved back a few paces from it nervously. “What does she mean?” she cried, turning to Sara, to Mary Ellen. But they too were ignorant of Theresa’s meaning, although they had begun to suspect that it was unpleasant, whatever it was.

Theresa meanwhile had sat down again and taken up her sewing.

“Colonel Fanshawe, you said, Mary Ellen?” she queried, as if absently, and then she made a soft murmuring sound, a kind of humming to herself, as much as to say there was something queer about that fact in itself.

A small flicker of pride came into Lily’s face.

“Cornelius must have asked him home,” she said. “He said that he intended to do so,”— she faltered suddenly, — “but he meant to our new home, I suppose.

“Oh, no doubt,” said Theresa. “And I suppose he intended to invite Colonel Fanshawe’s grooms.”

Lily bit her lip.

“I forgot the grooms!” she exclaimed.

“Well, I didn’t,” said Theresa. “As a matter of fact, that was what first made me suspicious. Tell me, Mary Ellen. Did you see nothing of Mr. Cornelius flown there?”

Mary Ellen suddenly felt that she was being made use of by Theresa to torment Lily.

“No!” she said shortly.

“You didn’t hear his voice?”

“No!”

“That’s rather strange, isn’t it?” said Theresa looking at Lily. “If Cornelius brought his friends home with him, it’s a wonder Mary Ellen didn’t see anything of him.”

Theresa, however, was dragging things out too much. Lily moved over to the door again as if she would be driven to end her suspense by going downstairs. Theresa was forced to shorten her method. “It looks to me,” she said, “as if it was Colonel Fanshawe that brought home Cornelius, not Cornelius who brought home Colonel Fanshawe.”

For a minute no one understood what Theresa meant. Then all three of them understood at once, Sara and Lily glanced at each other startled. Then Sara glanced away and her eyes sought Mary Ellen’s. But Lily faced Theresa.

“How dare you!” she said. “How flare you suggest such a thing! Cornelius never touches a drink. Why, even at our wedding he didn’t even touch a drop of the port wine.”

“That’s nothing! That doesn’t prove anything at all. There is always a first time for everything. And it’s those that are least used to it that make the worst fools of themselves when they start.”

But Lily only cried out her disbelief again. “It isn’t true! It isn’t true!” she cried, and to the astonishment of all of them, but particularly of Sara, she stamped her little shoe on the floor. “It’s not true! It’s not true! It’s not true!” And then, relying on the fact that no matter in what condition she might find him, unlike the others, she had a husband downstairs to back her up, Lily stamped her small foot on the floor again and went one further with defiance. “Even if it was true,” she cried, “what business is it of yours, Theresa Coniffe?”

With that, tossing her head, Lily ran out of the room.

22

WHEN she got outside the door, however, feelings that Lily had hidden from her sisters rushed into her heart. Just the same, she continued to go down the stairs. But this time again she had gone no farther than the first landing when a voice called out from below. It was Theodore again.

“Is that you, Mary Ellen?” he asked, calling up the stairs.

“No, Father, it’s me — Lily. I’m coming down.”

From below, there came an exclamation. Then her father called up again. “Don’t come any farther!” he cried in a voice that made her, against her will, stand still. The next minute he was coming up the stairs to meet her, his face so strained and drawn that she put out her hand reassuringly and patted him on the arm.

“It’s all right. Father,” she said. “There is no need to hide anything from me.”

Theodore looked up somewhat confused.

“Did Mary Ellen go up to you?” he asked. “I didn’t think she knew.”

Lily’s heart misgave her.

It must have been true after all — what Theresa had hinted. She looked at her father. He had stretched out a hand to her, but she remained where she was, only raising a little on her toes to try to see beyond him; only elevating her head a little to try to hear if there was any sound in the lower rooms. But when she could neither see nor hear anything, she looked down at her father with a pitiful expression on her small white face,

“Where is he, Father?” she said, trying to speak lightly. “Theresa guessed what was the matter. You see —” She came to a halt, hating to bring out the words. She was determined to put a face on things, but she spoke so low he could hardly hear her. “She said there probably were refreshments served at the Meet and that —” she halted again and then hurried on — “and that perhaps Cornelius took a little too much; that it went to his head; that he —”

She said no more. Theodore waited to hear no more. With one step he was beside her, and he caught her in his arms. “My poor child,” he said. “My poor child.”

At the same time there was a sound in the hall underneath them; a sound of strange people talking in a loud voice and calling out orders to each other; orders that were incomprehensible to Lily.

“Mind! Mind! Watch out there!” said one voice,

“Gently. Gently,” she heard another say. “Leave him down there till we see what arrangements have been made.”

“Father?” she screamed.

“Hush! Hush!” said Theodore.

“It’s Cornelius!” she screamed. “Let me go to him. What happened to him?”

But Theodore held her fast.

“Not now,” he said. “Not now. You can do nothing. Later. Later! You can see him later.” His voice was urgent and strong, but as he felt her relaxing in his arms his voice sank again. “My poor child,” he said, and his tone tilled her with terror. For another minute she stared at him as if she did not comprehend. Then as there was another sound in the hall she started back and put her fingers in her ears.

“Go upstairs. I’ll be up after you,” said Theodore. “I must go down now.” He turned rapidly and went down the stairs, but at the foot of the staircase he turned around again and looked back, and when he saw her still standing where he had left her, directing his voice beyond her, he called up the stairs.

“Theresa! Mary Ellen!” he called, and then he had to turn and attend to the men in the hall.

Upstairs the three women had begun to be restless and curious, but until Theodore called, neither Sara nor Theresa dared to stir. Immediately upon hearing their father’s voice, however, both sisters ran out on the landing.

“What is the matter, Lily?” cried Sara, even before she reached her young sister, but when she tried to put her arms around Lily, Lily drew back.

Sara stood helpless.

“Hurry up, Theresa,” she cried. “Hurry up, for goodness’ sake. I think she’s going to faint.”

But after the first glimpse she got of Lily when she came out on the landing Theresa did not need to be told to hurry. With a rush she was beside her.

“What on earth is the matter?” she cried, and then, regretting but. never doubting her own suspicions, she took Lily’s arm and shook it. “Don’t take on this way,” she cried. “It’s not the end of the world, you know.”

“The end of the world?” Lily’s face lit for a moment with the light of some secret thought within her. “Yes, that is it,” she said. “The end of the world.” And she gave such a strange moan that it could not be distinguished as either laughter or sobbing.

Theresa got thoroughly frightened. Like Sara, but more awkwardly, she tried to put her arm around Lily. She had been unkind to her. She sought eagerly for some way to make up; to compensate for the way she had treated her. She would undo it. After all, it was Cornelius Galloway who was the stranger. She would draw Lily back from him into the Coniffe bosom.

“Never mind, Lily,” she said, and forcibly she put her arms around her. “Nevermind. Men are all alike. How dare he do this to you? To all of us, if it comes to that. How dare he?” And as a sound of voices, now muffled, came from below, she raised her own voice in a shrill threat to be heard by all. “Why! I’d think nothing of going downstairs this minute and telling him to his face just what I think of him.”

Something told Sara that Theresa had made an error. She did not know what it was, but she put her hands across her own lips and stared down over the banisters in dismay. Lily looked down too, but with a different expression. She looked back slowly at Theresa, measuring something in her heart, for her gaze was distant and secretive. Then all at once she gathered herself together, and summoning all the poor ragged scraps of courage that she had, she shook off Theresa’s arm.

“Is that so?” she cried, and she pointed suddenly down the staircase with an imperative gesture. “ Why don’t you do it, then? ” she cried. “ Go down and tell him. Go on! ” Her voice near the end broke into a scream. “Go down and tell him!” she screamed; and before Theresa, or the others behind her, had realized what was happening, Lily had put out her small, cold hand and slapped her oldest sister across the side of the face. The next moment it seemed as if night had descended with a rush, for she tottered, put out her hand to grope a way, and, if it had not been for Mary Ellen, would have fallen on the stairs.

The radiance that shone over Lily was gone. Indeed, it had shone about her but so short a time, it was almost as if it had never been. In the obscure days that were to make up the rest of her life, the short hours spent with Cornelius had been but as the summer lightning that flutters for an instant in the sky, now come, now gone.

As the long day passed, after the accident, it seemed that everywhere Theodore looked there were evidences of the failure of his son-in-law. There was the new coach in the coach house. There was the furniture for the new house. There was the foundation for the new house. And then, too, there was the Wilful Filly stamping her foot in the stable.

(To be continued)

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