01 The Building of Jalna (11 page)

“I had this letter.” She took it from her pocket and put it in his hand.

“Those boys ought to be flogged,” he said, when he had read the letter.

“Oh, if only they hadn’t taken Mary! Oh, how can we break the news to her mother?”

“You did wrong, Adeline, to encourage that friendship. It’s let to a pretty kettle of fish.”

She took hold of the railing and two tears rolled down her cheeks.

“I know — now that it’s too late,” she said, in a trembling voice. Then, after a moment, she broke out — “We must go back for them! I’ll pay the cost from my own pocket!”

“We cannot. It’s impossible.”

“What do a few hours more matter — in such a case?”

“Listen to reason, Adeline. If those three scallywags were waiting on the dock eager to be picked up we might do it — at a pretty cost to you. But they don’t want to come back to the ship. Doubtless, by this time, they are well on their way in quite another direction.”

“Oh, whatever shall I do?” she groaned.

“You’ll just have to go and tell Mrs. Cameron what her daughter has done. After all — it’s her fault. If the girl had been properly brought up she’d not have dreamed of doing such a thing.”

“Philip, darling, would you go and break the news to the mother?”

He looked aghast at the idea.

“I couldn’t possibly,” he said. “You’ll have to do that.”

“Well, will you stand beside me, in case —” She hesitated.

“In case what?” he asked distantly.

“She will be terribly upset. She will probably faint.”

“I shall stand at a little distance — within reach but out of sight.”

“That will do … Do you think I might write her a letter, as Sholto did me?”

“By gad, if I had my hand on those boys! Yes — write her a letter, if you prefer that way.”

“Perhaps you would write the letter. I believe she would take it better from you.”

“I am no letter writer,” he answered testily. “Your family excels at that.” He took her by the arm. “Come into the salon and I’ll get a glass of sherry for you. That will put heart into you.”

In the little room, graced by so high-flown a name, Adeline sipped the sherry and thought miserably of what she had to do. At one moment she would ejaculate — “Oh, the young villains!” And at the next — “Oh, the poor mother!” — or — “It were better the ship had gone down with all of us!” But the sherry did her good and finally she sprang up exclaiming — “I’ll do it now and have it over.”

“That’s a good girl,” he said.

She scowled. “Don’t you ‘good girl’ me! After all, you should be breaking the news to her. You’re a man and ’tis your own brother-in-law has done the mischief!”

“Adeline, I cannot.”

He followed her down to the door of Mrs. Cameron’s cabin. She rapped, trembling in every limb.

“Yes?” came the voice from within.

“Mrs. Cameron, I have something to tell you.”

“Come in.”

She found Mrs. Cameron putting things in order and still wearing a hurt air. But there was something touching about her. She was small and neat and you could see she had been through a great deal. Adeline spoke gently.

“A while ago you said you supposed Mary was off somewhere with those brothers of mine. You were right. She is.”

Mary’s mother only stared.

“She is off with them,” went on Adeline. “Right off the ship and away home!”

“Are you mad?” said Mrs. Cameron. “What nonsense are you telling me?”

“It is the truth. They left the ship — Mary and my two little brothers — but they’ve gone home. She’ll be quite safe.”

Mrs. Cameron had turned a ghostly pale. She put her hand to her throat and demanded: —

“Who told you this?”

“I had a letter from Sholto. And my husband was told by one of the sailors who saw them.”

Mrs. Cameron spoke in a hoarse whisper.

“Show me the letter.”

Adeline handed it to her. She riveted her eyes on it as though she would tear the written words from the page. At the end she reeled across the cabin but she recovered herself. She faced Adeline in a fury, her hands clenched at her sides.

“It’s your fault!” she cried. “It’s all your fault! You encouraged them. You begged me to allow Mary to go about with that
wicked boy. Oh — ” As she was struck by the possibilities of the situation her voice rose to a scream — “Oh, what has he done to her! My little ewe lamb! She was as pure as the driven snow till we came on board this accursed ship! Oh, can’t something be done? Where is the Captain?”

She pushed her way past Adeline, thrust aside Philip’s restraining hand, and bounded up the companionway. So flimsy were the partitions that a general consternation was caused by her outbreak. People came running from all directions (some thought a fresh disaster had befallen the ship) while Adeline and Philip followed after, miserably conscious of what had really happened.

“What’s this — what’s this, madam?” asked Captain Bradley, coming to meet Mrs. Cameron.

She flung herself against his shoulder.

“Oh, save her! Save my little girl!” she cried hysterically.

“Where is she?” he asked, in his resonant voice.

“There!” She pointed landward. “She left the ship with those horrible Irish boys! I call everyone to witness that she was as pure as the driven snow! Oh, what shall I do?”

“What’s all this about?” Captain Bradley demanded on Philip.

“The girl has eloped with my young brother-in-law, a lad of eighteen,” he replied gruffly. “But from what was said in the letter they’ve gone straight to his father’s house.”

“If you’d like to go back for them, Captain dear,” put in Adeline, “I’ll pay for the cost of it.”

It was to the Captain’s shame that he looked more tenderly on Adeline than on Mrs. Cameron, whom he regarded as a complaining woman of depressing appearance.

“Do you think the young gentleman will marry her?” he asked Philip, in a low voice.

“I’m sure he intends to,” said Philip, with rather more certainty than he felt.

“Come, come, it may not be so bad as you think,” the Captain comforted Mrs. Cameron. To Adeline he said — “Look backward, Mrs. Whiteoak! The ship’s been flying away like a bird. You
must understand that it’s impossible for us to return for a young runaway couple.”

“It’s all her fault!” shrieked Mrs. Cameron. “She’s as wicked as her brothers. We don’t want their kind in our beautiful young country! They’re evil!”

Mrs. Cameron became hysterical and it was with difficulty that the Captain and the steward got her back to her cabin. For the remainder of the voyage she never left it. Fortunately there had joined the ship at Galway two new passengers with whom she made friends. They were a married couple from Newfoundland. The husband was in the fisheries business; the wife, deeply religious, was a great comfort to Mrs. Cameron.

The other passengers, and particularly those in the steerage, chose to regard the elopement as a youthful romance and poor Mrs. Cameron as a tyrannical parent. Conway Court had been a favourite on board and it was the general opinion that the plain young girl had done extremely well for herself — for it was taken for granted that he would marry her.

The winds were fair and the ship sped on. The livestock became fewer. A poor woman from Liverpool gave birth to a child with a terrible lack of privacy. In the salon Captain Whiteoak and Messrs. D’Arcy, Brent, and Wilmott played at bezique each evening, while they sipped French Brandy out of small green glasses that were filled from a wicker-clad bottle. Adeline would sit watching them, her wide skirts spread gracefully about her, her chin in her palm while her eyes moved contemplatively from one face to the other of the players.

Then one night a frightening thing happened. James Wilmott had just carried a small glass of the liqueur to Adeline’s side, for she looked pale and rather languid. There came a shuffling sound on the companionway, a growling sound of voices. Adeline half-rose in her chair. The four men turned their heads toward the door. Crowding into it they saw a mob of rough, fierce-looking men. They were carrying clubs, sticks, any weapon they could lay their hands on. The whites of their eyes glistened in the light of the swaying hanging-lamp. One of them raised a hairy arm and pointed to Wilmott.

“Yon’s him!” he exclaimed.

With a threatening growl the others moved in a body toward Wilmott, who faced them coolly.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

“You are Thomas D’Arcy, Esquire, ain’t ye?”

“No, my name is Wilmott.”

D’Arcy rose to his feet. “I am Thomas D’Arcy,” he said, smiling a little.

“Yes — that’s him — the blackguard! The bloody villain! The cold-hearted brute!”

They came forward with cursings, most of them unintelligible from the brogue.

“What’s all this about?” shouted Philip, putting his stalwart figure in opposition to the mob.

Their spokesman shouted — “Get out o’ the way, yer honour! That villain, D’Arcy, is the man we want. We’re not going to leave two whole bones in his body, and may hell-fire blast it when we’ve done with it!”

“I’ve done no harm to any of you,” said D’Arcy, pale but contemptuous.

“Haven’t ye, thin? And didn’t ye evict Tom Mulligan’s ould parents into the winter night, and the rint for the tumble-down hovel that was their home only three months behind? And didn’t his poor ould father die of the cold and the wet and his poor ould mother of a broken heart? And here’s Tom to give ye the first blow himsilf!”

A thickset man waving long arms and a club detached himself from the rest and, with a black scowl, shrieked: —

“Take that, ye black-sowled murderer!” D’Arcy’s skull would have been opened by the blow if he had not snatched up his chair and defended himself with it.

In an instant Adeline found herself the spectator of a terrifying scene. Philip, Brent, and Wilmott also snatched up their chairs and met the attackers shoulder to shoulder with D’Arcy.

Philip shouted to her — “Run, Adeline! Out through the other door!”

Instead, she ran forward and flung herself on the raised arm of the spokesman, who brandished a hammer. She uttered a shriek that was heard even above the tumult. And at the same instant Captain Bradley and the mate appeared from the companionway carrying pistols.

“Now, men, do ye want a bullet in you?” shouted Captain Bradley. “Lay down those cudgels!”

Like a sudden squall, the fury of the peasants passed. They stood quiet, relaxed, like the sails from which the gale has receded. They stared in silence at the Captain.

“These men,” explained D’Arcy, “seem to think I evicted the parents of one of them and caused their death, but I did nothing of the sort.”

“It was yer agent done it!” retorted the spokesman. “It was that twister, McClarty — the murderer — and yoursilf off to the races at Dublin or Liverpool and niver knowing how yer tenantry is trated! Ye didn’t care, if you could lay hands on the rints.”

“Aye, that’s true,” added Mulligan. “And my poor ould parents getting their death out of it!”

“It’s a shame to him!” cried Adeline. “And if I had known it I should have been fighting on your side, Mulligan, instead of against you!” She was beside herself with excitement and exhilaration. She could hear the whistle of the wind, the clash of the waves. The wild scene had stirred something savage in her. The peasants crowded about her.

“Thank you, me lady! God save you.”

“May the Saints bless you! May yer children grow up to comfort you.”

D’Arcy spoke calmly to the men. “Why did you attack me,” he asked, “after all these weeks?”

“Sure, we’d just found out who you are, divil take you!”

A movement passed through them and it seemed for a moment that Adeline might be put to the test. But Captain Bradley’s authoritative voice ordered them below and like a troubled wave they receded, though with mutterings.

Philip had been embarrassed by Adeline’s outbreak against D’Arcy. He foresaw that their relations would not be so pleasant for the rest of the voyage. D’Arcy was watching her sulkily as she paced up and down the salon declaiming against the cruelties of absentee landlords, telling of how her own father never left his estate and knew the personal history of every man, woman, and child on it.

“Your father may be a paragon, in all truth, Mrs. Whiteoak,” returned D’Arcy, “but you cannot blame me for all the wrongs of Ireland.”

“You’ve no love for the people nor for the land,” she answered. “Your heart is not there! So what can you bring to the place but misfortune?”

“Well,” put in Brent, “I’ve sold every acre I owned in Ireland, and I’m glad of it!”

“I’d be better off if I had done the same,” declared D’Arcy.

Adeline flashed a look of scorn on them both. “And have ye no pity in your hearts,” she cried, “for the suffering of those poor people?”

“Come, come, Adeline,” interrupted Philip. “It’s late. You should go to your bed.” He turned to D’Arcy. “She is overwrought and tired.”

“I’ll lay my head on no pillow tonight. I’ve seen too much. I’ll stay here with Mr. D’Arcy and Mr. Brent and argue the matter out with them till sunrise.”

“I’m sorry,” said D’Arcy, “but I think I shall have to rest for a bit.” He put his hand to his forehead and she saw a discoloured swelling near his temple.

She went close to look at it. “Ah, well and did a blow really land on you!” she exclaimed. “Ah, I am sorry for that!”

Her anger was gone. She had a basin of hot water brought and herself bathed his head. Their friendship was restored.

But the next day she was not well. She could not leave the cabin. The weather became stormy. She suffered from nausea. Philip, coming into the cabin, found her sitting on the side of her
berth, very pale, her eyes wet with tears. But there was nothing tearful in her voice as she turned its vibrant tones on him.

“Well,” she demanded, “and what do ye think has happened to me?”

“Are you worse?”

“Aye, I’m worse.” She stared moodily for a space at the heaving floor of the cabin, then raised her eyes accusingly to his. She said: —

“Aye, I’m worse and shall be worse still before. I’m finished with it. I’m going to have a baby!”

“My God!” The glass of sherry he had brought her dropped from his hand.