Love of Brothers Part 31

It was only the wind that was getting up. She drew her work-table to her and took out a pair of Shawn's stockings that needed darning.

Margaret McKeon's eyes had been failing of late, and Lady O'Gara had taken on joyfully the mending of her husband's things. Her darning was a thing of beauty. She had said it soothed her when Sir Shawn would have taken the stocking from her because it tired her dear eyes.

Nothing could have seemed quieter than the figure of the lady sitting mending stockings by rosy lamplight. She had put on her spectacles.

Terry had cried out in dismay when he had first seen her wear them, and she had laughed and put them away; her beautiful eyes were really rather short-sighted and she had never spared them.

But while she sat so quietly she was gripped by more terrors than one.

She was trying to keep down the thought, the question, that would return no matter how she strove to push it away--had she been told all the truth about Terence Comerford's death?

There had always been things that puzzled her, things Shawn had said under the stress of emotion, and when he talked in sleep. There had been a night when he had cried out:

"My G.o.d, he should not have laughed. If he had wanted to live he should not have laughed. When he laughed I felt I must kill him."

She had wakened him up, telling him he had had a nightmare and had thought no more about it. There were other things he had said in the stress of mental sufferings. She began to piece them together, to make a whole of them, in the light of this horrible accusation. And--Patsy had been lying, had been ready to lie more if necessary. Patsy was a truthful person. Conceivably he would not have lied unless there was a reason for it, unless there was something to conceal.

She got up at last, weary with her thoughts, and went upstairs to dress. Before doing anything else she opened her window and leant out.

It had come on to rain. She had known the beautiful strange sky was ominous of wet weather, although for a little time in the afternoon it had seemed inclined to freeze. The heavy raindrops were falling like the pattering of feet. A wind got up and shook the trees. She said to herself that she _would not_ fancy she heard the horse's hoofs in the distance. When they were coming she would have no doubt.

She dressed herself finely, or she permitted Margaret McKeon to dress her, in a golden brown dress which her husband had admired. Through the transparent stuff that draped the corsage modestly her warm white shoulders gleamed. Her arms were very beautiful. She remembered as she sat in front of the gla.s.s, while the maid dressed her hair, that her husband had said she was more beautiful than the girl he had married.

She went back to the drawing-room where Shot lay, stretched on the skin-rug before the fire, now and again lifting his head to look at her. The Poms were in their baskets either side of the fireplace. It was very quiet. Not a sound disturbed the silence of the room beyond the ticking of the clock over the mantelpiece and the purring and murmuring of the fire.

She had a book in her hand, but she did not read it. She was too concerned about real actual happenings for the book to keep her attention. She held it indeed so that she might seem to be reading if a servant came into the room. She wondered if the story of the tramp's charge against Sir Shawn had reached the kitchen. Very probably it had. The police would know of it and from them it would spread to the village and the countryside. The people were insatiable of gossip, especially where their "betters" were involved. Probably the tramp--Baker, was it?--poor Susan's husband and Georgie's father--had made the statement at every place where he had satisfied his thirst.

What a horrid thing to have happened! How would Shawn take the accusation? Of course it was absurd--nevertheless it was intolerable.

Reilly came in presently and asked if her Ladyship would have dinner at the usual hour. It still wanted a quarter of the hour--eight o'clock.

She answered in the affirmative. Shawn was always vexed if she waited for him when he was late, wishing she would remember that he might be detained by twenty things. It would be something to do and would suspend for a while the listening which made her head ache. She hated these hours of listening. Of late years she had forgotten to be nervous when Sir Shawn was not in good time. He had said that he would not give her the habit of his punctual return lest a chance unpunctuality should terrify her. To-night she had only gone back to the listening because Shawn was riding Mustapha. Besides, the news she had to give him had upset her nerves out of their usual tranquil course.

The rain beat hard against the windows. She hoped Shawn was not crossing the bog in that rainstorm. Some horses hated the wind and the rain and would not face them. It would be so terribly easy for Mustapha if he swung round or reared to topple over where the bog-pools lay dark and silent below the road, on either side.

A thought came to her with some sense of companionship that Patsy Kenny was doubtless listening round the corner of the stables for the sound of Mustapha's hoofs, coming closer and closer. She had thought she heard them so often without hearing them. Before she came down the stairs to dinner, she had turned into the private chapel to say her night-prayers, praying for her beloved ones, and for all the world; and as she knelt there in the dimness she had been almost certain she heard Mustapha come. Now, sitting by the drawing-room fire, the river of prayer went flowing through her heart, half articulate, broken into by the effort of listening that might become something tense and aching.

The dinner gong began, rising to a roar and falling away again. She smiled as she stood up, saying to herself that Reilly sounded the gong with a sense of the climax.

As she stood up the Poms bristled and Shot suddenly barked and listened. He sat up on his haunches and threw back his head and howled. The dogs knew the master was out and that something vexed the mistress, and were uneasy.

As she pa.s.sed across the hall, her golden-brown dress catching the light of the lamps, suddenly the hall door opened. There came in the wind and the rain. The lamps flared. Patsy Kenny stood in the doorway. He was very wet. As he took off his hat mechanically the rain dripped from it. His hair was plastered down on his face and the rain was in his eyes. He was panting as though he had run very hard.

"The master's comin'," he said with a sound like a sob. "He's not kilt, though he's hurted. I'm telling you the truth, jewel. It was well there was a pig-fair in Meelick to-morrow or he might have lain out all night. An' wasn't it the Mercy o' G.o.d the cart didn't drive over him?"

"Where is he?" she asked, going to the door and peering out into the darkness. "Where is he?"

"He's comin'. They're carryin' him on the tail-board o' the cart.

He's not kilt. Did ye ever know your poor Patsy to decave you yet? I ran ahead lest ye'd die wid the fright. Here, hould a light, you."

He spoke to Reilly, who had never been spoken to so unceremoniously in the whole course of his professional career. The hall was full of the servants by this time, peering and pushing from the inner hall with curious or disturbed faces.

Reilly brought a lamp, more quickly than might have been expected of him. There was the measured tramp of men's feet and something came in sight as the lamplight streamed out on the wet ground.

"Stand back!" Lady O'Gara said, pushing away the crowding servants with a gesture. "Can they see, Patsy?"

"They can see," said Patsy. "G.o.d help you! But mind ye he's not kilt.

I'm goin' for the doctor. I won't be many minutes."

Into the hall came Tim Murphy, the road-contractor and small farmer, who lived up a boreen from the bog. He was under the tailboard of the cart. Behind was his son Larry. There was a crowd of wet faces and tousled heads crowding in the dark looking into the hall.

The men were carrying the silent figure of Sir Shawn O'Gara, hatless, his scarlet coat sodden and mud-stained, his eyes closed and his head fallen to one side.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE SICK WATCHERS

Patsy had told the truth. Sir Shawn was not dead. Whether he was going to live was another matter.

Patsy had brought back Dr. Costello with unhoped for speed. The doctor had just come in from a case and had only to get what he thought he might need and come as fast as his motor-bicycle would carry him. He was a kind, competent doctor who might have had a wider field for his ambition than this lonely bog country. One of the big Dublin doctors had said to a patient: "Haven't you got Costello at Killesky? I don't know why he wastes himself there. It is very lucky for you since you need not trouble to be coming up to me."

It was a comfort to the poor woman's desolation to see the pitying capable face.

"Patsy has told me all about it as we came along," he said in the slow even voice that had quieted many a terrified heart. "I got him to leave his bicycle at my place and come back with me in the side car.

The horse broke his back in the bog, I believe. Better the horse than the man. Is there any one here who will help me to undress him?"

"The butler valets my husband," Lady O'Gara replied. "He was with an invalid before he came to us, and he was highly recommended for his skill and gentleness in nursing. I did not think then that we should have need of these qualifications."

"The very man I want. Can you send him?"

As she turned away he put his hand on her arm. The pale smile with which she had spoken touched the man who was accustomed to but not hardened by human suffering.

"It is not as bad as it seems," he said. "I think he will recover consciousness presently. He must have been thrown rather violently."

She went away somewhat comforted. Outside the door she found Patsy seated on a chair, his head fallen in his hands. Shot was sitting by him, his nose on Patsy's knee. They looked companions in suffering.

"The doctor is hopeful," she said, with a hand on Patsy's shoulder.

"Go down and tell Reilly to come. The doctor wants him."

The flat-faced, soft-footed Reilly was to prove indeed in those sad days and nights an untold help and comfort. Patsy watched him curiously and enviously, going and coming, as he would, in and out the sick-room.

Absorbed as she was Lady O'Gara noticed that sick look of jealousy on Patsy's face. She herself was content to sit by her husband's bed and let others do the useful serviceable things, unless when by the doctor's orders she went out of doors for a while.

"We don't want him to open his eyes on a white face he doesn't know.

The better you look, my Lady, the better it will be for him," said Dr.

Costello.

The afternoon after the accident a watery sun had come out in fitful gleams. It had been raining and blowing for some hours. There was still no sign of returning consciousness in the sick man. Sir Shawn's face looked heavy and dull on the pillow, where he lay as motionless as though he were already dead.

"Concussion, not fracture," said the doctor, lifting an eyelid to look at the unseeing eye. "He will come to himself presently."