Love of Brothers Part 25

"Everything is in order," said Stella, a light of hope coming to her face. "I have been in her bedroom. The lamp is burning on her altar.

There is a purse lying on her bed with money in it."

"She will come back," said Lady O'Gara.

There was a sound of carriage wheels which made two pairs of eyes turn towards the window.

"It is Granny," said Stella, drawing back into the shade of the window curtains. "And she is very angry. She is sitting up so straight and tall. When she is like that I am afraid of her. Is she coming here?"

"Do not be afraid; I will stay with you," said Lady O'Gara.

The carriage re-pa.s.sed the window, going slowly and without its occupant. Almost immediately came the sound of the knocker on the little hall-door.

CHAPTER XIX

ANGER CRUEL AS DEATH

Lady O'Gara met Mrs. Comerford in the hall. Despite the shadows of all the greenery outside flung through the fanlight across the White Horse of Hanover, which stands in so many Irish fanlights, she could see that the lady was in one of the towering rages she remembered and had dreaded in her youth. Looking at her, with a stammering apology on her lips, she had a wandering memory of the day at Inch long ago when Terry had broken a reproduction of the Portland Vase. He had been a big boy of sixteen then and he had flatly refused to meet his mother, going away and laying _perdu_ in a stable loft for two or three days till she had forgotten her anger in her fear for him.

"Stella is here, I suppose," said the icy voice. That suggestion of holding herself in check, which accompanied Mrs. Comerford's worst anger, had been a terrifying thing in Mary Creagh's experience of her.

"I believe it is you I have to thank for introducing her to her mother.

What a fool I was to have come back. I thought that shame was covered up long ago. What a mother for Stella!"

She spoke with a fierce scorn. She had not troubled to lower her voice.

Lady O'Gara lifted her hand in a warning gesture, glancing fearfully back over her shoulder. But the angry woman did not heed her.

"Have you told her what her mother is, what _she_ is?" she demanded furiously. "Did you understand what you were doing, Mary O'Gara? It was your husband who told me Bride Sweeney had come back, who urged me to get Stella away. I was mad ever to have come home."

"Hush, hush!" said Lady O'Gara, wringing her hands and whispering.

"Stella is in there; she will hear you..."

"Perhaps I mean her to hear me. She shall know what sort of woman it is who has crept back here to disgrace her and me and to ruin her life."

There came out into the hall a little figure gliding like a ghost, Stella, her eyes wide and piteous, her pretty colour blanched.

"My mother is a good woman," she said, facing Mrs. Comerford. "You must never say a word against her. I would follow her through the world. I have had more happiness with her in those stolen meetings than you could ever give me."

A pale shaft of Winter sunshine stole through the low hall window, filtered through red dead leaves that gave it the colour of a dying sunset. It fell on Stella's hair, bringing out its bronzes. She had the warm bronze hair of her father's people. It came to Lady O'Gara suddenly that she and Stella had much the same colouring. In Terence Comerford it had been ruddier. Why, any one might have known that Stella was a Comerford by that colour; not the child of some dark Frenchman.

"You stand up to me better than your father ever did," said Mrs.

Comerford in white and gasping fury. Had she no pity, Mary O'Gara asked herself; and remembered that Grace Comerford's anger was sheer madness while it lasted. She had always known it. She had a memory of how she and Terence had tried to screen each other when they were children together.

"You dare to tell me that your shameful mother is more to you than I am!" the enraged woman went on. "It shows the cla.s.s you have sprung from. I took you out of the gutter. I should have left you there."

"Oh, hush! hush!" cried Lady O'Gara in deep distress. "You do not know what you are saying, Grace. For Heaven's sake, be silent."

Mrs. Comerford pushed her away with a force that hurt. A terrible thing about her anger was that while she said appalling things her voice had hardly lifted.

Stella looked at her in a bewildered way. "I do not understand," she said. "You always told me my father was a gentleman. You said little about my mother. What have you against my mother except that she was a poor governess?"

"All that was fiction," said Grace Comerford, with a terrible laugh.

"Very poor fiction. I often wondered that any one believed it. Your father was my son, Terence Comerford. He disgraced himself." She was as white as a sheet by this time. "Your mother was the granddaughter of the woman who kept the public-house in Killesky."

"Then I am your granddaughter?"

"In nature, not in law. My son did not marry your mother."

Stella groped in the air with her hands. They were taken and pressed against Mary O'Gara's heart. Mary O'Gara's arms drew the stricken child close to her.

"Go," she said to the pale, evil-looking woman, in whom she hardly recognized Mrs. Comerford--"Go!--and ask G.o.d to forgive you and deliver you from your wicked temper. It has blighted your own life as well as your son's and your granddaughter's. Go!"

Mrs. Comerford put her hand to her throat. Her face darkened. She seemed as if she were going to fall. Then she controlled herself as by a mighty effort, turned and went out of the house. The bang of the hall-door as she went shook the little house. A second or two later her carriage pa.s.sed the window, she sitting upright in it, her curious stateliness of demeanour unaltered.

Mary O'Gara did not look through the window to see her go. Her eyes were blind with tears as she bent over the child who was the innocent victim of others.

All her life afterwards she could never forget the anguish of poor Stella, who was like a thing demented. She could remember the objects that met her eyes as she held the two hot trembling hands to her with one hand while the other stroked Stella's ruffled hair. She felt as though she were holding the girl back by main force from the borderland beyond which lay total darkness. She could remember afterwards just the look of things--the Autumn leaves and berries in the blue jars on the chimney-piece; the convex gla.s.s leaning forward with its outspread eagle, mirroring her and Stella; Shot lying on his side on the hearthrug, now and again heaving a deep sigh. How pretty the room was, she kept thinking! What a quiet background for this human tragedy.

She knew that her heart was gabbling prayers for help, eagerly, insistently, while her lips only said over and over: "Hush, Stella! Be still, darling child!" and such tender foolish phrases.

At last the heart-broken crying was over. The girl was exhausted. Now and again a quiver pa.s.sed through her where she sat with her face turned away from Lady O'Gara--but the terrible weeping was done.

"Come," Lady O'Gara said, at last. "We must find some water to bathe your face, you poor child. You are coming back with me to Castle Talbot. You are mine now. I shall not give you up again."

Stella shook her head; she stooped and kissed Lady O'Gara's hand as though she asked pardon. The swift dipping gesture like a bird's was too painful, recalling as it did the bright Stella of yesterday. Her hair was roughened like the feathers of a sick bird. Lady O'Gara, her hand pa.s.sing softly over it, had felt the roughness with a pang.

"I am not yours, dear Lady O'Gara," she said. "I am no one's but my mother's. I am not going to Castle Talbot. I shall stay here for the present. If she does not come back I will go to look for her. All that other life is done with."

With a gesture of her little hands she put away all that had been hers till to-day, including Terry. His mother's heart began to ache anew with the thought of Terry. What would he say when he knew that Stella knew? Poor boy, he had a very gentle and faithful heart. Oh, what a tangle it all was, what a coil of things!

"But you can't stay here, darling child," she said tenderly. "How can you stay in this lonely little house by yourself? I will take you away somewhere where you do not know people, if you think that would be better. There are griefs that are more easily borne under the eyes of strangers. Let me see! There is a convent I know where you could be quiet for a little time, and I could trust the Reverend Mother--Mary Benedicta is her name; she is a cousin of mine and a dear friend--to be as loving to you as myself."

"She would be my ... father's cousin," said Stella; and a shudder ran through her. Then she said piteously:

"I never thought of my father as wicked."

Oh, poor Terence! How was she going to explain to the child to whom he had done this hideous wrong? Was it any use saying that Terence had always been good-natured? She remembered oddly after many years a day when he had turned away from the glazing eyes of a wood-pigeon he had shot. What use to tell such things to his daughter, whose life was laid in ruins by that sin of his youth? Those tragical eyes would confute her in the midst of her excuses. She could not yet make any plea for forgiveness for the dead man.

"Mother Mary Benedicta would be gentle with you," she said, "if you will not come to Castle Talbot. But, dear, no one need know. You shall take Eileen's place with me. You shall be my little daughter."

Her loving heart was running away with her. Shawn would never forgive her if she brought Stella to Castle Talbot, to which Terry might return at any time. Mary Benedicta would know how to tend the wounded spirit, if poor little Stella would but consent.

"It is getting late," said Stella, breaking in on the confusion of her thoughts. Her voice, which seemed drained of tears, was suddenly composed. "You will be late for lunch."

"And you, Stella, what about _your_ lunch?"