THE YOUNG
O'BRIENS
BEING AN ACCOUNT OF
THEIR SOJOURN IN LONDON
By the author of
"ELIZABETH'S CHILDREN"
[Transcriber's note: Margaret Westrup]
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY, MDCCCCVI
Copyright, 1906
BY JOHN LANE COMPANY
The Plimpton Press Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
By the same Author
ELIZABETH'S CHILDREN
Fifth Edition
HELEN ALLISTON
THE YOUNG O'BRIENS
CHAPTER I
Inside the hired omnibus there was a dead silence. Outside the rain lashed drearily against the window panes. From the corner where Molly sat there came a dismal, despairing sniffle, drowned, before its finish, by Denis's superlatively cheerful voice.
"Sure, 'tis a rough night entirely!" he observed airily.
Nell gave a sudden quick little laugh with a queer end to it.
"So it is!" she said, and her effort after cheerfulness gave the remark a surprised tone, as if she had not noticed before that the night was rough.
Sheila Pat sat silent in her corner, her slim little body stiff and erect, a bag and a box clutched tight in her small arms. Afterwards, later that night, she found that her arms ached. There was desperation in that tight clutch of the bag and the box.
Suddenly Mr. O'Brien spoke; he recognised the futility of ignoring what was in everyone's mind.
"Well," he said, "a year soon passes, after all, and I hope we shall be back in about ten or eleven months."
"But—but not—" came a watery stammer from Molly's corner, but Nell broke in hurriedly.
"I—I wonder will you look different, dad?"
"Oh, yes," her mother laughed the pretty laugh that was just like Nell's, "I shall be a horrid, stout old woman! Even Sheila Pat won't acknowledge me then!"
Sheila Pat said nothing.
Mrs. O'Brien squeezed Nell's fingers tightly. There was another silence. There was nothing to say. Everything had been said over and over again. The wind sent the rain beating angrily against the closed windows. The omnibus jolted and jarred over the road.
A hoarse shout smote on their ears, and the driver's whip flicked one of the panes.
Denis jumped up and let down the small window in front. Then shouting began; the wind howled derisively, drowning their voices. The driver's hoarse yells, and Denis's impatient shouts, asked and answered questions over and over again. At last Denis drew in his head:
"If that's a specimen of the London driver, I don't think much of 'em! The wind didn't get at you, did it, mother?"
"No, dear, your broad shoulders kept it off."
"Does he seem to understand the way now?" Mr. O'Brien queried.
"I wouldn't like to answer for him. I've explained till I'm hoarse, but the damp seems to have got to his brain—it won't work—rusty, you know."
"Isn't his voice funny?" observed Nell, doing her duty manfully.
"Drivers often have those hoarse voices," responded her father, and for just as long as they could make it last, they used that driver as a topic of conversation. Certainly he did not seem of much use for any other purpose.
It was not long before there came another flick against the window, and on Denis putting forth his head, there ensued more shouts and yells. In a lull of the wind the driver waxed sentimentally despairing. "Never been to these 'ere East Lunnon docks afore—eh, sir? Wot? Which turning? Can't see no turning. It ain't a night as I'd turn a pore blessed cat out—much less a respectable fambly man with little children dependant on 'im! Eh, sir? Can't 'ear, sir! Wot? Poplar? Ain't nowhere's near Poplar!"
Denis drew in his head.
"Of all the old fools! I'd better go up on to the box and direct him. I know my way better than he does, anyway, though I've only been to the docks once."
"It's raining so, Denis," his mother put in.
"But we don't want the death from exposure of the respectable fambly man on our consciences, do we, mother? Not to mention the touching little children—"
It ended in his exit to the box. Nell watched him go with wide, strained eyes; she crushed down a strong impulse to clutch at his coat. Without her twin she felt feeble and deserted.
When the omnibus stopped at last outside the dock gates, no one made a movement towards getting out. Long and dreary as that drive had been, each one, looking out at those gates looming so big and grim in the dim light cast by a solitary lamp, wished it could begin all over again. The parting grew, at that jolting stop, suddenly, acutely nearer. In spite of the dread of it, perhaps no one had quite realised it. To get out of the omnibus was to give it a hideous reality. A cautious voice demanded their business. Denis appeared at the door. One by one they left the omnibus. The policeman, to whom the cautious voice belonged, let them through a wicket; then began a dreary march in the dark; the wind sent the rain beating against them in angry little gusts. Laden with bundles and packages, they stumbled along in the dense darkness, treading into puddles, splashing, slipping. There were no friendly lamps to cast a warning glimmer on the deep puddles left by the rain in the holes of the uneven ground. They could barely distinguish the form of the diminutive guide with whom the policeman had provided them. But they could hear him. He was a small, sharp-looking boy, who heeded neither rain nor wind nor dark, but trudged along, in and out the puddles, up and down the hillocks, emitting a kind of dismal whistling below his breath.
Nell laughed suddenly with an overdone hilarity.
"The water's trickling down my neck!"
Denis seconded her with, "It's running a regular cascade off my hat rim!"
Then the Atom spoke; it was the first remark she had made since they had started from Miss Kezia's house in Henley Road.
"Isn't is London?" she said.
Her father was amused.
"You know, we do see rain occasionally at home," he observed.
"There's rain and rain!" the Atom declared sapiently, and relapsed again into her dour silence.
Molly, with a sudden sob, put the fear that was in everyone's mind into words.
"It's—awfully bad—for mother!"
"Oh, I shall be all right, dear," Mrs. O'Brien insisted with tired cheerfulness.
"I've a good mind to drop my bag and carry you!" her husband declared.
"Oh, Owen, what a first appearance for the wife of the ship's surgeon! Let me at least be dignified."
Beyond the small figure of their guide the Albany loomed, slowly taking shape in the dark, big, very mysterious.
"I bet we came to the wrong entrance," Denis observed.
Mr. O'Brien handed the guide a tip. "I'm afraid we did," he said.
The guide disappeared with a "thankysir"; a steward's head bobbed up from the hatchway and shouted out directions. Mr. O'Brien and Denis helped the others along a wet, slippery board, and over the ship's side.
The saloon looked more cheerful; deserted as it was, it wore quite a festive air after the wet and darkness outside.
In the cabin they hung up a few things, to give it a more homelike air, and because it was easier to do something than not. They procured coffee from the steward, but no one wanted it. Everyone pretended they did, except Sheila Pat, who never pretended. Mrs. O'Brien made her drink it.
"You are cold and wet, dear; it—I—will—"
She stopped abruptly. Nell saw and understood. She went close.
"I—I will take care of her—" she whispered.
She had promised it so often, but Mrs. O'Brien turned to her gratefully.
"Yes, dear," she said; her eyes went from Nell back again hungrily to the bit of brow and head that Sheila Pat's big coffee cup left exposed.
"I know you will, Nell," she said gently, and kissed her.
Several other passengers had arrived and sat or stood about the saloon and cabins with an air of unsettledness, of uncertainty. The last minute came suddenly at the end. There was a sort of breathless rush; injunctions, good-byes, forcedly hopeful prognostications.
"A year soon passes!" Mr. O'Brien said again.
A little later they were in the omnibus once more. There were gaps now; there was so much room to move about. Those gaps gave a poignant reality to the loneliness.
In Nell's mind there grew up a dull wonder whether anyone could conceivably think that a year soon passes. To her the coming year stretched long and interminable; at the moment she was incapable of looking beyond it. Father and mother were gone, and home was gone too. The wonder passed, and with aching iteration there dinned in her ears—"So long as the shamrock's growing in Ireland, will there be O'Briens in Kilbrannan." It was a prediction of an old gipsy's. She had given it when telling Denis his fortune. That was last year, barely a year ago, and now—Nell's lips curled with a sudden bitterness that made her young, soft face look, for the moment, older—now there were strangers in their home, and no O'Briens in Kilbrannan. She wondered tragically how it was possible to live through months such as they had lived through. Looking back, the failure of the bank in which most of her father's money had been placed, and which had been the first misfortune to fall upon them, seemed a small calamity. She remembered the shock of it, the sorrow, with surprise now. What though they had been obliged to retrench, to pinch and try to learn the lesson of economy, they had still their home and were not separated. The grief of parting with old servants, with some of the horses, had been sharp. But they had still dear old Patsy; they had O'Leary and Gretta; and they had—Nell's breath caught suddenly—they had Acushla, the Colleen Bawn. Her thoughts chased each other over those unhappy months. The day when her mother had so suddenly been taken ill stood out, sharp and grim. She remembered the anxious worry she had experienced when she saw that in spite of the doctor's hopeful words, in spite of the daily improvement in the invalid, her father's face refused to lighten. She remembered the slow growth of suspicion in her mind, so that when at last he asked her and Denis to come into the study one day, she knew they were to hear some bad news. Denis knew it too, but in their worst prognostications they had never given one thought to the possibility of having to give up their home for awhile. Even when their father had told them, they could not comprehend quite. Nell remembered how she had stood staring stupidly at the binding of one of Ruskin's works in the book-case, where a ray of sunlight shone on it. She had found herself saying, "Sesame and Lilies." Then her eyes had followed the ray of sunshine to the windows—beyond the windows. She gave a little shudder at the memory of that moment of sudden, sharp realisation. The study faced east; its windows looked out on to great boulders of grey rock that led in a long uneven slope to the seaweed-covered rocks and the sea. The heather had been out then; the boulders were covered with it; there was a little mist in the air, so that the grey and purple mingled in a lovely haze of colour. The sea-gulls and the gannets were quarrelling over something; their voices came in at the open windows. The scent of the seaweed had come to her, too; and quite suddenly she had understood that they were to leave it all. Her father had gone on speaking; she had felt vaguely sorry for him, as she listened to his halting speech and saw the strained look on his face. But in those first minutes nothing was of moment, nothing was real, save the crushing blow that they were to leave their home; that they were to go away; that strangers were to live in it. But presently she realised that he was trying to prepare them for some further bad news. She had smiled at his thinking it necessary to prepare them; nothing mattered now. Denis had had the same feeling. He had broken into his father's speech abruptly, roughly:—
"Tell us what it is. What does it matter, anyway?"
But Mr. O'Brien had gone on skirting the subject, preparing them.
"I have been anxious for months about those mine shares. They have gone down and down, and now they have ceased to pay any dividends at all."
He had said it before, had explained that it was because of these shares that they must let their home.
Denis said, surprised, "The Rêve d'or shares?"
"Why, yes! Oh, you mean I've told you that already? But I thought they were such a good investment—" he broke off, and walked quickly to the window.
"Your mother isn't getting her strength back," he said suddenly.
They realised at once that there were still things that mattered. He went on quickly: "You needn't be anxious. Oh, no! But Dr. O'Donovan—" he broke off, and started afresh. "You know that, as a young man, I didn't expect to come into this—" he waved his hand impatiently around. There was an air about him now of wanting to get it over as quickly as possible; an irritated impatience made his words hurried.
"Well, you know, I studied medicine. I was a qualified doctor. It's all settled. I've got the post. There's no other way. Dr. O'Donovan says your mother must have a sea voyage. We can't afford it. I've got the post of surgeon on the Albany—starts at end of October for Australia—sailing ship."
They knew it all at last. Thinking it over now, Nell was struck with the difference there had been from his usual manner of speaking. She knew now what it had cost him to tell them. Then she had been too absorbed in her horror to think much of anything beyond the news he had told them.
After that, in the weeks that followed, there had been the cruel carrying into effect of the news. There had been much wearisome talk. Amongst it Nell remembered one thing that had been clear and definite at once. That was Denis's determination to do some sort of work. Mr. O'Brien wished him to study shorthand and type-writing, with a literary future in view. But Denis refused, beyond agreeing to study them in his spare time. For the rest he intended to do work that would have remuneration attached to it. Already he was fired with hope and ambition to turn the strangers from their home. Mr. O'Brien secured him a position as a clerk in a London bank, the manager of which had been a schoolfellow of his. Nell cried miserably because she wasn't a boy. Denis shook her, and painted, in glowing colours, the great academy picture that in a few years' time was to win her fame and fortune. But two or three years seemed such an interminable time that, mostly, her mind refused to grasp the thought.
There had been much discussion as to where they should stay while their parents were away. They were singularly destitute of relations. They had some cousins in America, and an aunt by marriage in London. They had never seen the aunt; but she happened to live near the bank where Denis had found employment. She had lately lost her mother, and with her the annuity that had helped to pay the rent of the house. She wrote suggesting that they should come to her. After much worried discussion it was settled that they should live with her for the time. Mr. O'Brien paid a small sum for their maintenance in advance, and they faced the thought of a house in a street in London.
Sheila Pat, before she left Kilbrannan, laid out a burying-ground. She dug with a dogged face, and a mind black with pictures of a London where it was always foggy—where there were nothing but muddy pavements; roads crowded with poor tired horses carrying loads too heavy for them; and tall houses packed so close together that you were stifled. She refused to lighten the picture by the admittance into it of so much as one blade of grass. She chose a spot for her burying-ground close by the little stream that gurgled so softly sometimes and roared and rushed at others. The smooth piece of grass, just by the boulders that turned the stream into a little cascade, was sheltered on the other side by a hill that rose up—grey rock, purple heather, bracken, and grass—till it seemed to meet the sky. There Sheila Pat buried her treasures. She had always scorned dolls; only once had she been presented with a doll, and within the day it had been mercilessly drowned. But she had many treasures, and she buried them, in an agony of renunciation. "Here you will have the heather and the stream, and when the wind blows from the west you'll get the scent of the turf smoke from Biddy's cottage." She laid a large and grinning monkey tenderly down beside a one-legged driver. "Oh, my dears, and when the wind's in the east, you'll get the sea,"—she hid her face in a passion of woe—"and you'll be hearing the trees whisp'rin' and singin' and your Sheila Pat far away in a great, dirty London, dead with stiflin', and only streets to walk in!"
She hugged up to her bosom a jaunty jockey, who had lost an eye and a nose.
"I'll put you on Mavourneen—your own Mavourneen—who won the Dalgerry race for you." She seized up Mavourneen and hugged her too. "You won't mind waitin' for me, under the earth; for isn't it Irish earth, Mavourneen? And weren't you born and bred on it? But I was, too! Oh, I was, too!"
The old grey rock and the heather looked down upon a prone Atom—prone and shaking in a storm of bitter weeping—midst dogs and horses, jockeys, monkeys, and jaunting-car drivers.
No one intruded on her there. Sheila Pat had not been known to cry since her babyhood. She scorned tears; no physical hurt could break down her sturdy self-control. In those last days she was often a ludicrous Atom. Grave, self-contained, her pig-tail immaculate, she would emerge from the burying-ground, facing the world with a brave little countenance and all unaware that it was adorned with patches and streaks of dirt.
The pig-tail was generally crooked, but that was merely because Sheila Pat invariably plaited it herself. No one would do it for her; they did not approve of her mode of dressing her hair, but the Atom clung obstinately to her pig-tail, and serenely wore it over her left shoulder.
Nell, in the omnibus, glanced across at the small, still figure opposite her; a great ache seized her throat.
Suddenly Denis made a valiant effort. He broke the silence with a jocose—
"This rivals Dinny O'Sullivan's donkey barrow! My teeth are fairly rattling in my boots!"
Nell said "yes" with weary dutifulness.
The silence fell again. He rubbed his brow, and recognised the uselessness of worrying them with such palpably unreal cheerfulness. All his castles in Spain were, for the time being, razed to the ground. With the O'Briens there was no possibility of a story or two tumbling; the whole edifice had to tower to the skies or fall flat to the ground. The omnibus drew up outside No. 35, Henley Road. They got out, and stood a moment—a forlorn little group—looking at the tall, narrow house, with, to their eyes, such an unhappy air of being wedged in too tightly between the two neighbouring houses.
"Run in and knock, while I pay up," Denis admonished them.
They trailed slowly up the flight of steps. Nell knocked. There was a pause; then they heard a step approaching the door. With a sudden spasmodic burst of awakened conscience and courage Nell drew herself erect and tried to achieve a smile.
The rattle of bars and chains that heralded the opening of the door was hideous to their unaccustomed ears; it shocked them with its clang of inhospitality—its suggestion of suspicion.
Miss Kezia opened the door a cautious inch or two and peered out. Her face appeared to them, against the light, very long and very black.
"It's you," she said; "come in."
Nell faltered, calling together all her stock of politeness, "I'm sorry that you had to sit up for us."
Miss Kezia waved it aside with a curt response that a little loss of sleep would not hurt her.
There was porridge waiting for them in the dining room. Too wretched, too apathetic to make the necessary stand against it, they sat down to the table and tried to eat.
The dining room was furnished strictly for use and not for ornament. Heavy chairs and a heavier sideboard constituted all the furniture, save the table. The floor was covered with a cold linoleum. There was no flower in the room. Only one gas-burner was alight, and it left gloomy corners. There was a stiff look about it all, a poverty and bareness that was bewilderingly new to them. A beautiful little cocker spaniel, who pressed close to them with plaintive whimpers when they entered the room, looked quite out of place there. Miss Kezia eyed her with disfavour. She demanded, "Where will that dog sleep?"
The want of due respect in the designation roused Sheila Pat.
She said coldly, "Her name is Kate Kearney."
"What a ridiculous name!" Miss Kezia ejaculated.
The Atom was indignant.
"Is it rickelous? And how about Kezia, then?"
There was a pause.
Denis interposed amusedly: "Perhaps you don't know the song, Aunt Kezia? It's like this—" Gaily his voice sang out:—
"'Oh, did you not hear of Kate Kearney?
She lives on the banks of Killarney—'
"Eh? Noise? Noise?" he murmured surprisedly. "Allow me just to whisper the lines that fit K.K. so beautifully:—
"'For that eye is so modestly beaming
You ne'er think of mischief she's dreaming—'"
Grim and portentous came an interruption.
"Is it mischievous?"
"Er—" said Denis, and his eye twinkled, "she was when she was a puppy, you see."
"Um," observed Miss Kezia. "If it works any mischief here, it will have to be chained up in the garden."
"Sure, then," burst wildly from the Atom, "'tis myself'll be chained beside her!"
"Sheila, do not be absurd!"
"And she isn't 'it'! If you call her 'it' again, I'll be callin' you a Scotch bannock!"
Nell roused to a perfunctory—
"Oh, Sheila Pat!"
Miss Kezia said coldly, "You are a very rude little girl." She turned to Denis. "Will you tell me where that dog is to sleep?"
"On the mat outside Nell's door."
"I will not have a dog rampaging over my house to work what mischief it likes while we sleep."
"She shall sleep on my bed," put in a very disdainful Atom.
"Certainly she shall not! Disgusting! Unhealthy! Spoiling my counterpanes!"
Nell looked at Miss Kezia, a weary wonder in her face. "She can sleep on the floor beside my bed," she said.
Miss Kezia hesitated; her eyes met those of the Atom—wide, defiant, indomitable in her small, obstinate face. In her ears echoed some words of Mrs. O'Brien's that Miss Kezia had privately labelled foolish. "Sheila Pat is delicate. Perhaps we have spoilt her a little. She is very strong-willed. She cannot be driven, but she can be led. Her feelings use her up—exhaust her." There had been a little sudden hopeless pause there; then—"I hope you will understand her."
Miss Kezia had not noticed the pause or the pleading note—a note vibrating with the struggle against the speaker's own conviction. She would not have understood, had she noticed, any more than she would ever understand the Atom of humanity who was defying her now.
"Very well," she said, with a glance of dislike at poor K.K.
Denis broke in with a solicitous air, and a tone reminiscent of the Blarney Stone:—
"I do wish you would go to bed, Aunt Kezia! You do look so tired."
Nell smiled suddenly.
"Yes, do, Aunt Kezia," she urged demurely.
Miss Kezia, after somewhat lengthy directions as to turning off the gas, shutting, locking, and hanging a huge burglar bell on the dining-room door, turned to leave the room.
Sheila Pat, stiff, erect, followed her with warlike gaze.
Miss Kezia paused and said:—
"See that that baby goes to bed the minute she has finished her porridge. She ought not to have gone to the docks at all—"
Nell flashed out a shaky interruption—
"Others—thought she ought!"
The Atom observed calmly:—
"I am not a baby. At home, gerrels of six will not be babies. I'm not wantin' the stirabout at all, thank you."
"Sheila, you are speaking with an atrocious accent!"
For the first time that night the Atom's sombre eyes lit with a gleam of satisfaction.
"Accent, is it? Sure and 'tisn't me own native accent I'd be ashamed of then!" she retorted.
"It isn't the accent of ladies and gentlemen, Sheila! You are a rude and foolish little girl!"
Calm and unabashed, the Atom responded with fervour.
"'Tis the way many of my best friends spake at home—always—wakin' and sleepin' they spake like that, and I'll be spakin' like it, too."
With her black little head well up, and her absurd pig-tail at an acute angle, she waited for Miss Kezia's response.
But Denis interposed from the doorway with a judicious appeal to her sense of economy.
"I say, Aunt Kezia, I've lit your candle, and it's spluttering like a dumb man asking for a tip!"
Miss Kezia turned and hurriedly left the room.
Molly suddenly pushed her bowl away with an angry clatter. She flung her arms out over the table and hid her face in them.
"Oh, I can't—help it!" she cried out wildly. "Everything's so—awful!" and she burst into tears.
Nell caught her underlip between her teeth and rose.
"Shan't we go to bed, Denis?" she said wearily.
"Yes, come along. K.K. may as well have the porridge. We've been neglecting you, old lady, haven't we, then?"
The Atom sat rigid, her shocked gaze bent stiffly on Molly's prone head.
"Oh," sobbed Molly, "I shall die—in a week—here—I—hate Aunt Kezia—I hate this house—I hate—everything! Oh, I want mother—and dad—"
The Atom got down stiffly from her chair, her gaze never leaving Molly.
Nell, in pity of the little white face, tried to put Kate Kearney into her arms, but she drew back. "I don't want her," she said.
They crept upstairs and bade each other good night.
"I—I'm sure I'll be dead when I wake up in the morning!" Molly quavered wretchedly. "I—can't breathe—in this place—there isn't room to move—I shall suffocate."
Sheila Pat was to share Nell's room. She followed her in in silence. They undressed quickly. The Atom said her prayers and got into bed. Nell knelt down, but no prayers would come. She knelt and cried into the counterpane.
After a while an austere voice smote upon her ear.
"Nell O'Brien, I'm thinkin' you're keepin' God up very late!"
Nell said a prayer—a somewhat incoherent one—and scrambled into bed.
An hour later she sat up and turned her pillow. She looked across at the little white bed that glimmered over by the window; then she burrowed her head despairingly down into the dry side of her pillow. The sight of it, as she had lifted it to turn it over, had brought to her mind the stout old rector at home. She remembered how Sheila Pat had once earnestly declared he was so nice to lean against—"just like a pillow." She quoted him beneath her breath, a humorous dimple denting her wet cheek.
"'Let us now consider our blessings—never mind the bad things. Let them go. Consider the good things. The bad things will have more than their share of our thoughts, you may be very sure!'" So Nell got her hands into position to tick off her blessings. "First, there's Denis." She paused; her slim body grew tense with sudden horror, as the thought gripped her: "Suppose Denis had gone, too!"
With an impulsiveness that was characteristic she slipped from the bed to the floor, seized up her dressing-gown, ran out on to the landing and upstairs to his room.
"Come in!"
She opened the door and was nearly blown backward down the stairs by the gale that met her.
Denis was sitting up in bed.
"You, old girl? Anything up?"
She stood in the doorway, her dressing-gown streaming out around her, her hair blowing across her face. She laughed uncertainly.
"Come out of that! Shut the door, you goose. And why on earth don't you furl your sails? Anything wrong with the Atom?"
She shut the door with slow care.
"No," she said; "she's pretending to be asleep."
There was a little pause. She buttoned up her dressing-gown slowly.
"You're not walking in your sleep, are you?" he suggested, with a little laugh. He swung himself off the bed and came towards her; he put his hands on her shoulders. "Now, twin, out with it! What did you come for, eh?"
She gave a little childish struggle under his warm hands; she looked up into his face.
"I had to, Denis! A dreadful conviction has come upon me that she'll give us soft-boiled eggs for breakfast!"
He swung her softly to and fro.
"Well, you needn't have come to give me nightmare just because you're going to have it! Was it the action of a twin, I ask?"
She laughed softly, irresistibly.
"Oh, oh, Denis, your floor's swamped! What will Aunt Kezia say?"
He turned his head lazily and surveyed the floor over by the window.
"It'll dry," he observed with equanimity.
She eyed the window, flung as wide as it would go.
"You mustn't have it so wide, Denis! You really mustn't!"
"D'you want to murder your twin? Why, I'd be dying of suffocation! There're roofs all round, Nell! Beastly houses stuck all on top of us—almost in our back yard! I can't get a breath of air even now!"
The toilet cover was wildly fluttering its corners; a towel had been blown from the towel horse and danced merrily in a corner; one curtain was streaming, a wet limp rag, out into the night, the other was whirling in graceful curves across the room; Denis's tie had twined itself round the leg of a chair.
She gave a little laugh.
"If you won't shut the window, I will! And," glancing down at her bare toes, "I don't feel the least bit inclined to paddle just now."
"Then don't."
"But you will shut it—"
"But I won't!"
She looked out into the darkness where the curtain waved forlornly.
"Seriously, Denis—"
"Seriously, Nell, it's in bed you ought to be, not to mention your poor twin!"
"You see, I've got a conscience."
"More noodle you! Go and sleep it off."
"Sure now, asthore, you'll not be refusin' your own twin?" she cooed.
"You're a beastly little humbug!"
He went across to the window and banged it down. The bang echoed startlingly in the night.
"Oh, Denis, you've shut the curtain out!"
"Eh? Oh, well, it can stay out."
A loud whisper hissed with disconcerting suddenness through the keyhole.
"Denis O'Brien, are you asleep?"
Nell turned to him with a little gasp.
"Denis, I—I can't stand any more of her to-night!" Her small fingers caught his arm with sudden desperation.
"Here, in you go!" He picked her up and deposited her in the bed. "Keep quiet," he said peremptorily.
He emitted a loud and very realistic yawn.
"Denis O'Brien!"
"Is it dreaming I am?" he observed in a sleepy voice.
"Apparently you are!" came the sharp retort through the keyhole.
"Is that you, Aunt Kezia?" he queried in a surprised voice. "Isn't it time you were in bed?"
"I wish to speak to you at once!"
"I'm here, close to the keyhole."
"Open the door!"
"Oh! Er—you know—my costume—rather primitive, you know—" His absurd air of coyness brought an irrepressible giggle from the bed.
"Please don't try to be funny! Unlock your door at once!"
"It's never locked at all." He opened it so suddenly that Miss Kezia nearly fell headlong into the room. He caught her in his arms. "Are you hurt? Sure? Well, what is it now? A mouse? Let me go and kill him!"
Miss Kezia had righted herself; she stood, candle in hand, glaring at him angrily. The light flickered over her gaunt face and weird night-cap, over the severe and scanty folds of her sombre dressing-gown.
"I heard a window closed," she began.
"Window? I say, Aunt Kezia, don't be nervous, but—er—don't London burglars generally open windows? Let's find a poker. I," quoth he, bravely, "will protect you."
"It—wasn't you?" Miss Kezia hesitated.
Apparently he did not hear. He was gently but firmly ejecting her from his room. Together they searched the house, but found no suggestion of a burglar. Miss Kezia went back reluctantly to her bed.
"Let us trust she'll be visited with a plague of nightmare burglars!" Denis sent after her cheerfully.
Nell, creeping back to her room, heard through the half-open door a murmur. She looked in, and saw a small pig-tailed figure sitting up in bed clasping something black to its bosom.
"Oh, my own K.K.—did I say I wasn't wantin' you, asthore? 'Twas only because I was frightened I'd cry, like that silly Molly. I didn't mean it, K.K. Oh, I didn't! 'Twas cruel of me to say it, dear—" The murmur was broken, full of tears.
Nell went back softly up a few stairs; then came down again, with a little stumble and an "Oh!"
She could not help an apprehensive thought of Miss Kezia and burglars. When she entered the bedroom Sheila Pat lay still, apparently fast asleep.
Trotting across the floor, back to the petticoat she had purloined from a chair, went a sedate little Kate Kearney.
CHAPTER II
"Four and threepence," said Denis, with his head up the chimney.
"Sure?" said Nell, doubtfully. "I've added it up three times, and it hasn't come to that once."
"Then there's no doubt about it; four and threepence 'tis, my dear!"
A pause. A scream.
"Oh, Denis, rescue them!"
A horrible smell of burning ensued. Denis eyed the smoking stockings with equanimity.
"O dear," sighed Nell, "and there was only one tiny hole in them. It's all your fault, Denis. You shouldn't be rude to me, when your head's such a beautiful target."
But Denis had emerged from the chimney, and was quietly smoking his cigarette in the open room.
"Jolly good idea, old girl. Twig? Every time I want to do a smoke, we'll burn a pair of stockings—they'd out-smell Patsy O'Driscoll's cigars!"
"Denis," Nell spoke with a puckered brow, "how much is five cakes when they're four for threepence halfpenny?"
"Nell, your grammar! It makes me feel faint!"
"'Are,' then. You're only trying to gain time. Oh, Atom, don't move! Kate Kearney's splendid like that. I must get her."
Denis looked over her shoulder as she dashed in a rapid pencil sketch. He glanced across at Molly and winked. It was a family joke that everything Nell began—accounts, sewing, tidying-up—ended, on the slightest possible pretext, in a sketch.
"Oh, Denis," Molly besought nervously, "I know Aunt Kezia will smell your cigarette!"
He struck an attitude.
"I defy her! Shall an O'Brien be cowed by a Scotch woman, and in his stronghold, too? Shall a young man who is also a bank clerk be frightened of a mere ignoramusess—oh, Lor', Molly, hide me—hide me—here she comes!"
Molly flung down the stocking she was darning.
"Oh, Denis!" she gasped, jumping up and knocking over her chair. "Oh—"
But Denis had subsided on to the old lounge, with his head buried in the cushion, and Molly realised she had been "had." She made a wild rush at him, K.K. joined in the fray, and Nell's model was gone.
"Pommel me as much as you like," cried he, weakly. "That's the third time to-day you've swallowed Aunt Kezia!"
"I should think she would be rather indigestible," opined Nell, putting in a few finishing touches. "Denis, what do you think of the way these chrysanthemums have faded? Only two days, and they cost half a crown!"
"I'll get you some more."
Nell looked thoughtful; she stubbed her paper viciously.
"I begin to fancy paupers oughtn't to indulge in flowers."
"Oh, Irish paupers ought," he declared airily.
The Atom arose, shook out her skirts, and proceeded to the door.
"Where are you going, Sheila Pat?"
"Downstairs," was the staid reply.
Once outside, she stopped to smooth her hair; then she stood considering, with a thoughtful brow. She went into her bedroom, dragged a chair to the toilet table, scrambled on to it, and anxiously examined the pair of slim legs displayed in the glass. What she saw displeased her; she stamped angrily, and toppled off the chair with a crash.
"What's up?" came a musical shout from the direction of the "Stronghold."
"Nothin' at all!" responded the Atom, with unabated dignity, though she was obliged for the moment to stand on one leg. She waited a minute, then lifting her loose frock, wiggled round and round in her efforts to unfasten her petticoat. She managed it at last, shook it down to her ankles, and mounted the chair again to view the effect. Her anxious face fell; she sighed heavily, and slowly climbed to the floor. She fumbled at the fastening of her petticoat, pulling it well up, then left the room. She went down the stairs till she reached the last flight that faced the front door. She sat down on the top stair and waited. The dusk deepened; the clock ticked on and on down in the hall, but the little pale face glimmered patiently at the top of the stairs. Presently a key grated in the lock of the door; Sheila Pat rose. The door opened, and a big broad man in a huge ulster came heavily in. Sheila Pat took a dignified step forward, missed, in the dusk, the stair, and rolled down and down to the big man's feet.
"Ach!" exclaimed the big man, and then he made noises that interested Sheila Pat, because they made her think of the hens in Biddy O'Regan's cottage. She rose; her cheeks were scarlet with shame.
"Are you hurrt?" exclaimed the big man.
"Not at all. Please," said the Atom, with a dignity a good deal bigger than herself, "please don't mention it. 'Tis a visit I've come to pay you," she added.
"Ach!" said the big man again.
Over a large and very fierce mustache, all grey bristles, his eyes were twinkling down at her.
"Pray come in," he said, and opened the door of the room opposite the dining room. The Atom's face kindled triumphantly as she looked round. Miss Kezia's grim voice seemed to hover alluringly round the solid mahogany chairs and table.
"You are not to enter this room. Remember, I have forbidden you."
Sheila Pat climbed on to one of the big chairs and sat down with a complacent smile.
Herr Schmidt eyed her anxiously.
"You are quite sure you are not hurt, meine liebe? It was a bad fall, a very bad fall."
Sheila Pat looked surprised. As a matter of fact her left elbow was smarting badly, and her left ankle bone, too, but in the O'Brien phraseology, this did not signify a "hurt." Moreover she objected to his alluding again to her undignified entrance into the hall. She gave her skirts a pull, and turned the conversation.
"How-d'you-do?" she said.
He came forward and gravely shook hands.
"It is ze fine day, hein?" he observed, with a curious elephantine anxiety to be properly polite to his very polite visitor.
The Atom's eyes turned to the window and studied the brilliant pink sky beyond it.
"The fine day, is it? It's not so bad for London," she observed in a disparaging voice.
"You come from Ireland?"
"Yes."
He peered into the rigid little face and understood.
"I come from Shermany," he said gently. "Little one, you will return some day."
The Atom said nothing.
"You haf ze nice little dog." Herr Schmidt changed the conversation cheerfully. "What do you call him?"
"She isn't a him at all," the Atom said scornfully; "'tis herself's a lady! An' her name's Kate Kearney."
"Ach!" said Herr Schmidt.
Sheila Pat looked at him gravely.
"I am very small for my age," she began in an anxious voice. "I'm not very young really. I'm more than six. I'm quite nine weeks more."
"Quite very old," he agreed heartily. "And now you will eat and drink with me, hein?" He was opening a cupboard. "It is a very goot cake. I am what you call an old sweet-teeth. And the drink will not harm you; it is sweet and hot—it is made by my old mother." He poured out two glasses and handed her one.
"We will drink and be friends, eh?"
She hesitated.
"'Tis wondhring I am just what a lodger is," she explained. "I've never met one before, you see. Nell turned up her nose at you and said she'd never be dhramin' Aunt Kezia was so bad as to have a lodger."
"Your aunt is a very kind laty; she allows me to live here, while I am far from Shermany," he said gravely.
The Atom looked interested; after a pause of wonder she dismissed the question of her aunt's being a kind lady, and observed:—
"Is that all? We'll drink then and be friends. I hope you won't mind if I don't love you very much, because you're not Irish, you see."
He declared he would be satisfied with what degree of affection she thought fit to bestow on him. She lifted her glass.
"'Tis Sheila Patricia Kathleen O'Brien I'm called, but you must be callin' me Miss O'Brien."