_ CHAPTER IX
The next evening she sat in the drawing-room before dinner, softly playing an accompaniment to her thoughts. Why didn't she feel anything about Robert Maper except a mild irritation at the destruction of so truly platonic a converse? In a book, of which his proposal savoured, she would have found him quite a romantic person. In the actuality she felt as frigid as if his marble forehead was chilling her, and what she remembered most acutely was his fishlike gasping. Then, too, the contradictoriness of his social attitude, his desire to make her a rich drone, his shame at his mother, his reclusive shyness--all the weaknesses of the man--came to obscure her sense of his literary idealism, if not, indeed, to reveal it as a mere coquetry with fine ideas and coarse clothes. And then for a moment the humour of being Mrs. Maper's daughter-in-law appealed to her, and she laughed to herself in soft duet with the music.
And in the middle of the duet Mrs. Maper herself burst in, with her bodice half hooked and her hair half done.
"What's this I hear, Miss Hirish Himpudence, of your goings-on with my son?"
Eileen swung round on her stool. "I beg your pardon," she said.
"Oh, you can't get out of it by beggin' my pardon, creepin' into the library like a mouse--and it's a nice sly mouse you are, too, but there's never a mouse without its cat--"
"She'd have done better to do your hair and mind her business," said Eileen, calmly.
Mrs. Maper's forefinger shot heavenwards. "It was you as ought to have minded your business. I didn't pay you like a lady and feed you like a duchess to set your cap at your betters. But I told Mr. Maper what 'ud come of it if we let you heat with us, though I didn't dream what a sly little mouse--"
The torrent went on and on. Eileen as in a daze watched the theatric forefinger--now pointed at the floor as if to the mouse-hole, now leaping ceilingwards like the cat,--and her main feeling was professional. She was watching her pupil, storing up in her memory the mispronunciations and vulgarisms for later insinuative improvement. Only a tithe of her was aware of the impertinence. But suddenly she heard herself interrupting quietly.
"I shall not sleep under your roof another night." Mrs. Maper paused so abruptly that her forefinger fell limp. She was not sure she meant to give her companion notice, and have the trouble of training another, and she certainly did not wish to be dismissed instead of dismissing.
"Silly chit!" she said in more conciliatory tones. "And where will you sleep?"
But Eileen now felt she must obey her own voice--the voice of her outraged pride, perhaps even of Brian Boru himself. "Good-by. I'll take some things in a handbag and send for my box in the morning."
Mrs. Maper's hand pointed to the ceiling. "And is that the way you treat a lady--you're no lady, I tell you that. I demand a month's notice or I shall summons you."
At this juncture it occurred to Eileen that this might have been her mother-in-law, and a smile danced into her eyes.
"Himpudent Hirish hussy! Oh, but I'll have the lore of you. Don't forget I'm the wife of a Justice of the Peace."
"Very well; you get Justice, I want Peace." And Eileen fled to her room.
She had hardly begun packing her handbag when she heard the door locked from the outside with a savage snap and a cry of, "I'll learn you who's mistress here, my lady."
Eileen smiled. She was only on the second floor, and captivity revived all her girlish prankishness. She now began to enjoy the whole episode. That she was out of place, out of character, out of lodging even, was nothing beside the humour of this incursion into real life of the melodrama she had mocked at. Was she not the innocent heroine entrapped by the villain? Fortunately, she would not need the hero to rescue her. She went on packing. When her handbag was ready she looked about for means to escape. She opened her windows and studied the drop and the odd bits of helpful rainpipe. Descent was not so easy as she had imagined. Short of tearing the sheets into strips (and that might really bring her within the J.P.'s purview) or of picking the lock (which seemed even more burglarious, not to mention more difficult) she might really remain trapped. However, there would be time to think properly when she had packed her big box. Half an hour passed cheerfully in the folding of dresses to an underplay of planned escapes, and she had just locked the box, when Mrs. Maper's voice pierced the door panel.
"Well, are you ready to come to supper?"
The governess's instinct corrected "dinner." Mrs. Maper when excited was always tripping into this betrayal of auld lang syne, but she preserved a disdainful silence.
"Eileen, why don't you hanser?"
Still silence. The key grated in the lock.
Eileen looked round desperately. The thought of meeting Mrs. Maper again was intolerable. The mirrored door of the rifled wardrobe stood ajar, revealing an enticing emptiness. Snatching up her handbag and her hat, she crept inside and closed the door noiselessly upon herself. "The wardrobe mouse," she thought, smiling.
"Well, my lady!" Mrs. Maper dashed through the door, in her dinner-gown and diamonds, her forefinger hovering, balanced, between earth and heaven. She saw nothing but an answering figure ribboned and jewelled, that dashed at her and pointed its forefinger menacingly.
The appearance of this figure as from behind the glass shut out from her mind the idea of another figure behind it. The packed box, neat and new-labelled, the absence of the handbag and of any sign of occupancy, the open windows, the silence, all told their lying tale.
"The Hirish witch!" she screamed.
She ran from one window to the other seeking for a sign of the escaped or the escapade. She was relieved to find no batter of brains and blood spoiling the green lawn. How had the trick been done? It did not even occur to her to look under the bed, so hypnotised was she by the sense of a flown bird. Eileen almost betrayed herself by giggling, as at the real stage melodrama.
When Mrs. Maper ran downstairs to interrogate the servants--eruption into the kitchen was one of her incurable habits--Eileen slipped through the wide-flung door, down the staircase, and then, seeing the butler ahead, turned sharp off to the little-used part of the corridor and so into the library. She made straight for the iron staircase to the grounds, and came face to face with Robert Maper.
Twilight was not his hour for the library--she saw even through her perturbation that he was pacing it in fond memory. His face lighted up with amazement, as though the dead had come up through a tombstone.
"Good-by!" she said, shifting her handbag to her left hand and holding out her right. Her self-possession pleased her.
"What!" he cried. And again he had the gasp of a fish out of water.
"Yes, I came to say good-by."
"You are leaving us?"
"Yes."
"Oh, and it is I that have driven you away!"
"No, no, don't reproach yourself, please don't. Good-by."
He gasped in silence. She gave a little laugh. "Now that I offer you my hand, it is you who won't take it."
He seized it. "Oh, Eil--Miss O'Keeffe--let me keep it."
"Please! we settled that."
"It will never be settled till you are my wife."
"Listen!" said Eileen, dramatically. "In a few minutes your mother and father will be seated at dinner. Your mother will have told your father I've left the house in disgrace. Don't interrupt. Would you be prepared to walk in upon them with me on your arm and to say, 'Mother, father, Miss O'Keeffe has done me the honour of consenting to be my wife'?"
With her warm hand still in his, how could he hesitate? "Oh, Eileen, if you'd only let me!"
The imagination of the tableau was only less tempting to Eileen. It was procurable--she had only to move her little finger, or rather not to move it. But the very facility of production lessened the tableau's temptingness. The triumph was complete without the vulgar actuality.
"I can't," she said, withdrawing her hand. "But you are a good fellow. Good-by." She moved towards the garden steps. He was incredulous of the utter end. "I shall write to you," he said.
"This is a short cut," she murmured, descending. As her feet touched the grass she smiled. How they had both tried to stop her, mother and son! She hurried through the shrubbery, and by a side gate was out on the old wagon road. More slowly, but still at a good pace, she descended towards the Black Hole, now beginning to twinkle and glimmer with lights, and far less grimy and prosaic than in the crude day. _