_ CHAPTER VII
Ballymoy House, save for the occasional presence of a fishing tenant, has been unoccupied for years. Two men are employed to keep the grounds tidy, and Mr. Simpkins does his best to see that the work is done. But in spite of his exertions the place is in a condition of disorder. There is long grass where there ought to be trim lawns; wild growths of brambles in nooks originally dedicated to rose gardening; and a general air of exuberance about the trees and shrubs. Miss King found all this very charming. She took a walk round the pleasure grounds on the evening of her arrival, and felt that she had happened upon the Irish demesne of her dreams--a region of spacious dilapidation, exquisite natural beauty, romantic possibilities, and an inexhaustible supply of local colour; a place very different indeed from the trim Thames-side villas in which she generally spent her summer holidays. Her maid unpacked a large box of requisites for the country life supplied by the Stores, and came, at the bottom of it, upon a very gay hammock made of green and scarlet strings. Miss King was delighted with its appearance, and the promise it gave of luxurious rest. After breakfast next morning she summoned the two gardeners to her presence, and gave orders that the hammock should be securely hung in a shady place. The men were unaccustomed to hammocks, but with the help of some advice from the maid, they tied it to two trees in a corner of what had once been a tennis court. They were so pleased with it that they stood looking at it with great appreciation until Miss King came out at about twelve o'clock. She brought with her a bundle of manuscript and a fountain pen, intending to work into her new novel a description of Ballymoy House and the demesne.
The men watched her settle herself, and then came forward cautiously and asked if there was anything they could do for her. Miss King suggested that they should go away and do their work. They went obediently, but returned in a few minutes with two scythes.
"If it's pleasing to your ladyship," said the elder of the two, "I was thinking of cutting the grass beyond, while the weather's fine, and we'd have a chance of getting the hay saved without rain."
Miss King was not very well pleased. She would have preferred to be left alone, in order that she might enjoy thoroughly the picturesque dilapidation she wished to describe. But she did not see her way to forbid the cutting of the grass. The two men sharpened their scythes noisily and mowed down several swathes of long grass. Miss King watched them, mildly interested. At the end of five minutes they stopped mowing and whetted their scythes again. Then they sat down, lit their pipes, and looked at Miss King. She busied herself with her papers, and made some corrections with the fountain pen. When their pipes were about half smoked, the men rose, whetted their scythes for the third time, and mowed again. Miss King stopped writing and watched them. The day grew hotter, and the spells of mowing became shorter. Miss King gave up the attempt to write, and lay dreamily gazing at the men, roused to active consciousness now and then by the rasp of the hones against the scythe blades. At one o'clock the men, guessing it to be dinnertime, stopped pretending to work and went away. A few minutes later Miss King, feeling the need of luncheon, disentangled herself from the hammock, bundled her papers together, and went into the house.
At two o'clock the men, carrying their scythes, returned to the tennis court, which was nearly half mowed. At half-past two Miss King joined them, and climbed as gracefully as she could into the hammock. She brought a book with her this time instead of her manuscript. The afternoon was hotter than the morning had been, and there was a very soothing sound of bees among the branches of the trees. Miss King, who had eaten her luncheon with a good appetite, went to sleep. The two gardeners, after a short consultation, sat down under a tree and smoked. At half-past three Meldon arrived.
"You seem," he said to the men, "to be taking things pretty easy. Are you supposed to be mowing that lawn, or is Mr. Simpkins paying you to cut the legs off any tiger or other wild beast that comes up with the idea of devouring Miss King in her sleep?"
The men grinned pleasantly, and put their pipes in their pockets.
"It's how we didn't like to be disturbing the young lady," said the elder of the two men, "and her lying there quiet and innocent, maybe tired out, the creature, with the way she's been travelling to and fro."
"Isn't it Callaghan your name is?" said Meldon.
"It is. Glory be to God! but it's wonderful the way you'd know me, Mr. Meldon, and you out of the place these three years."
"Send that other man away," said Meldon, "and listen to me while I speak to you."
"Mickey," said Callaghan to his fellow-labourer, "let you be off with you and get the potatoes earthed up beyond in the garden. It's wonderful, so it is, the way you'd take a delight in sitting there all day and not doing a hand's turn."
Mickey went off, still grinning. He had no intention of earthing up the potatoes. Digging is hard work, not to be lightly undertaken on a hot afternoon. Meldon watched him out of sight, and then turned to Callaghan.
"I'm speaking confidentially to you," he said, "and I hope that nothing I say will--"
"Take care," said Callaghan, "that you wouldn't wake herself, talking so loud and all."
Meldon looked at Miss King.
"She seems pretty sound," he said, speaking more softly.
"It's tired she is, the creature,", said Callaghan. "It would be a shame to wake her, though I wouldn't care myself for the notion of sleeping in one of them new-fashioned beds."
"What I want to say to you is this," said Meldon. "You know Mr. Simpkins, of course?"
"I do."
"Is he a particular friend of yours?"
"He is not," said Callaghan. "The Lord forgive me for saying the like! but I hate him worse than I do the devil."
"I thought you probably would," said Meldon, "and I don't wonder at it. Any man who works the sort of way you were working when I arrived would be pretty sure to hate Simpkins."
"Since ever he come to the place," said Callaghan, "there's been neither peace nor quiet in it. There doesn't a day pass but he's up here asking why this isn't done, and what's the matter with the other thing, and whether I couldn't manage to settle up some contraption or other. Many's the time I've said to myself it would be better for me to starve out on the bog beyond than to have the life plagued out of me listening to the way he does be talking."
"I expect," said Meldon, "that he's simply trying to make you do your work, and a hard job he has of it."
"Any way, it's what I'm not accustomed to; and what's more, won't stand."
"You'll have to stand it for a while more, any way. That's what I want to impress on your mind. I can't have a word said against Mr. Simpkins, in the presence of Miss King."
"The young lady there?"
"Yes, that exact young lady. She's a stranger in these parts, and you're more or less responsible for the opinions she forms of the people she comes across. It's to you she'll be looking for guidance when she's in a difficulty and wants information about any one."
"She will, of course. Why wouldn't she? Amn't I old enough to be her father and the father of a dozen more like her?"
"Exactly," said Meldon. "So when she consults you about Mr. Simpkins you'll say all the good you can of him, and you'll praise him up to the servants in the house in such a way that they'll repeat what you've said to her."
"Would you have me tell what isn't true?"
"I would."
"Well, then, I'll not do it. I've more respect for myself, let alone the young lady, than to do the like."
"Don't take that tone with me," said Meldon, "for I'll not stand it. There isn't a man in Ireland this minute that has a greater respect for the truth than I have. It's a good thing--one of the best things there is--in its proper place. But there's no bigger mistake than to suppose that because a thing is good in one place at one time, it must necessarily be good everywhere and always. Take the case of bottled porter. You're not a teetotaller, are you?"
"I was one time," said Callaghan, "after the mission there did be going round the country last spring. They had me pledged before I rightly understood what it was they were doing; but, thanks be to God, I'm through with it now, and can take a drop of drink as well as another."
"Very well. Then you'll appreciate what I say about bottled porter. It's a good thing when you have it in a tumbler, and the tumbler in your hand, and you thirsty."
"It is." Callaghan spoke with conviction. He was thirsty at the moment, and he had some hope that Meldon might possibly have the bottle of which he spoke in his pocket. He was disappointed when Meldon went on with his speech.
"But it's not a good thing when somebody jogs your elbow and spills the whole of it over the legs of your trousers. Now it's exactly the same with truth. It's all right under certain circumstances. It's one of the worst things going when it's told to the wrong man at the wrong time. You follow me so far, I hope. Very well. Now I want to make it plain to you that the truth about Mr. Simpkins must not be told to Miss King. I expect he'll be up to call on her tomorrow or next day, and it's most important that she should not be prejudiced against him."
"Have you a match made up between them?" asked Callaghan.
"I have."
"And why couldn't you have said so before? If that's the way of it, it isn't likely I'd be saying a word that would turn her against the man that's laid down for her to marry. There was a friend of my own one time that had a match made up for his son with a girl that had a good fortune. But there was only one leg on her, and he was terrible feared that the boy'd never take her if he found it out. There wasn't one in the place, only myself, that knew the way the girl was on account of her father living away beyond the bog. Do you think I said the word? I did not. And the boy was well enough pleased at the latter end."
"In this particular case," said Meldon, "you'll have to do rather more than keep your mouth shut. Simpkins' legs are all right, of course, but--"
"He has the divil of a long tongue."
"Well, don't dwell on his tongue when you're talking about him to Miss King."
"Beyond saying an odd time that he's a pleasant-spoken gentleman, I will not."
"That's right," said Meldon. "I shall rely absolutely on you. And you are to let me know from time to time how they get on together when he comes up here to visit her."
"If there's any impropriety of conduct between them," said Callaghan, "I'll speak to your reverence."
"Don't misunderstand me," said Meldon. "I don't want to interfere with their love-making. The more of that they do, the better I'll be pleased. Even if they run rather into extremes--"
"It's what I won't be a party to," said Callaghan; "I don't hold with them ways, and the clergy is against them, all but yourself; and you ought to be ashamed to be encouraging the like."
"You don't in the least understand the situation," said Meldon. "Mr. Simpkins and Miss King are both English, and in England they manage these things quite differently from the way we do here."
"Well, it's yourself ought to know about that, seeing that you're a Protestant."
"It's not so much a question of religion," said Meldon. "It's temperament. I don't suppose you understand what that means; but the fact is, that an Englishwoman wouldn't marry a man who hadn't been making love to her off and on for at least a week. If he hadn't got her thoroughly accustomed to his occasionally squeezing her hand, and offering to pick flowers for her, and picking up anything she dropped about, and-- But I needn't go into details. The fact is, that if he hadn't made love to her pretty violently, she wouldn't consider it decent to marry him. That's the sort of people the English are."
"They're queer," said Callaghan, "and that's a fact."
"They are," said Meldon. "But we've simply got to take them as we find them. There's no use our trying to teach them better ways, for they wouldn't listen to us. I'm telling you all this so that you won't be shocked if you happen to see Simpkins kissing Miss King. It's no affair of yours, to start with; and, in the second place, there's no point in comparative ethnology so firmly established as the fact that morality is quite a different thing among different peoples. What would be wrong for you and me may be, and is, perfectly right for Miss King and Simpkins. I needn't go into that more fully. All you have to do is to crack up Simpkins as a first-rate sort of man that any girl would be lucky if she married; and then let me know how they hit it off together when they meet."
"I'll do it. I'd do more than that to oblige your reverence in the matter of making a match for any boy about the place; for I'm not one to spoil his chances on a boy, not if I hated him worse than I do Simpkins."
"Very well. Now I want to speak a few words to Miss King, but it won't do for me to wake her up. She wouldn't like it; and what's more, she might suspect that we'd been talking together about her. I'll go back to the house and walk over here across the lawn. I'll signal to you as soon as I'm ready to start, and then you go over and wake Miss King."
"I wouldn't like to do it. I'd be ashamed, for fear she might think I was taking a liberty."
"I don't want you to go and shake her," said Meldon, "or pour cold water over her, or anything of that sort. Just take your scythe over close to where she is, and as soon as ever I give the signal, you begin to scrape the blade of it with your stone and whistle a tune at the same time as loud as you can."
"'The Wearing of the Green,' or the like?"
"Not 'The Wearing of the Green.' It's a melancholy, soothing sort of tune which would probably only make her sleep sounder. Whistle a good lively jig."
"I will," said Callaghan.
Meldon walked away. When he reached the house he stood on the top step of the flight which leads to the hall door and waved his pocket handkerchief. Callaghan picked up his scythe cautiously, and went on tip-toe across to Miss King's hammock. He did not wish to disturb her prematurely. Then, his hone in one hand and his scythe in the other, he stood and watched Meldon, The handkerchief waved again, and Meldon started walking briskly across the lawn. The hone rasped harshly against the scythe blade, and "The Irish Washerwoman" rang out shrilly. Miss King woke with a start. Callaghan turned away from her, and still whistling vigorously, began to mow. Meldon hurried forward.
"How do you do, Miss King?" he said. "I happened to be passing the gate and I just called in to see how you are getting on, and to see whether there is anything I can do for you."
Miss King blinked, got her feet out of the hammock, sat up, and shook hands with Meldon.
"It's very kind of you. Won't you come inside and have some tea, or shall I get them to bring it out here?"
"No, thanks. No tea for me. I haven't time to stay; and besides, I've had luncheon with Mr. Doyle. You know what that means."
"No," said Miss King. "I don't."
"Well, I needn't go into details," said Meldon; "but as a matter of fact when you've lunched with Mr. Doyle you don't want anything more to drink for a long time. By the way, you're not looking out for a cook just at present, are you?"
"No, I'm not. What made you think I was?"
"People generally are," said Meldon. "In fact, I've hardly ever met any one who wasn't. I happen just now to know of a really excellent girl, called Sabina. With a little training she'd make a first-rate cook. She's first cousin to the red-haired girl who's with Mr. Simpkins. That's a recommendation in itself."
"Is it? Who is Mr. Simpkins? Oh, of course, he's the man from whom I took the house."
"A capital fellow," said Meldon; "young, strong, and vigorous. The sort of man," he sank his voice impressively, "that it would take a lot to kill."
Miss King seemed moderately interested.
"But why do you think," she said, "that his servant's first cousin--"
"Sabina is her name," said Meldon. "It's a very attractive name, isn't it?"
"Yes. But why do you think it likely that Mr. Simpkins' servant's first cousin can cook?"
"He's a most particular man," said Meldon; "fidgety to a degree about having everything quite right, always worrying the life out of his servants, which is excellent for them, of course; but, well, if he was married"--he sank his voice again--"I expect his wife would consider herself quite justified in killing him. I daresay he'll be up to call on you this afternoon."
"If he's as bad as that," said Miss King, "I had better go in and tidy my hair before he comes."
"Perhaps you had," said Meldon.
"You're very rude," said Miss King.
She smiled as she spoke, blushed slightly, and then looking at Meldon from under her eyelashes, said,--
"Come now, tell me the truth. Am I an absolute fright?"
Most men would have attempted a pretty speech of some sort. Many men would have responded to Miss King's eyes with a glance of admiration. She had very fine eyes, and a singularly attractive way of looking out of the corners of them. Miss King was, in fact, a little tired of her own company, and would have liked to hear Meldon say something pleasant about her appearance. She would have enjoyed herself very well if he had attempted some slight flirtation with her. But he snubbed her severely.
"I told you yesterday," he said, "that I'm a married man. I have a daughter two years old, and I'm a clergyman. I really can't allow you--"
The soft look vanished in an instant from Miss King's eyes. They flashed fiercely. Her face became suddenly crimson.
"You are outrageous," she said. "How dare you suggest--? How dare you even think--?"
She sprang to her feet and started at a rapid pace towards the house. Her head was poised defiantly. Meldon, though he could only see her back, felt certain that her chin was in the air. Callaghan, who had retired with his scythe to the middle of the lawn, stopped mowing and stared after Miss King. Then he laid down his scythe and approached Meldon.
"Were you telling her," he asked, "of the match you had laid out for her?"
"No," said Meldon, with a broad smile, "I wasn't."
"From the look of her," said Callaghan, "I thought maybe you might."
"Well, I wasn't. All I was trying to make plain to her was that she couldn't marry me."
"I'd say," said Callaghan, "that she seen that plain enough, however it was that you put it to her."
"I thought it better to make it quite clear at once," said Meldon. "She was looking at me in a kind of way you'd hardly understand."
"I might, then," said Callaghan, still grinning.
"You would not," said Meldon. "You told me a moment ago that the priests wouldn't let you!"
"There's many a thing," said Callaghan, "that the clergy might not approve of, but--"
"Any how," said Meldon, "it was that kind of way she looked at me, and I thought it better to put a stop to it at once."
"You're right there; and it's no more than what I'd expect of you."
"I don't think you quite grasp my point yet," said Meldon. "In a general way I shouldn't mind her looking at me any way she liked. I might have enjoyed it, if she'd done it well, as I expect she could. But under the existing circumstances I had to stop her; because, if she took to looking at me like that, she'd look quite another way at Mr. Simpkins, and then he wouldn't be inclined to marry her."
"You're dead set on that match," said Callaghan.
"I am. It's most important that it should come off."
"She's a fine girl," said Callaghan. "She's too good for the like of Simpkins. He'll be tormenting her the way he does be tormenting everybody about the place."
"Believe you me," said Meldon, "she'll know how to manage him."
"She might," said Callaghan. "By the looks of her, when she left you this minute, I wouldn't say but she might." _