Cashelmara (5 page)

“Yes,” he said, still babbling. “Yes, of course. Whatever you wish.”

“Marguerite is not to know of our quarrel. I’ve no wish for her to be obliged to listen to you abusing me for the next nine months.”

“No. Of course not. I understand.”

“She’s to come to England with the finest wardrobe any young girl in her position could wish for, and your wife will accompany her as her chaperone. Your children may come too, if she wishes, but not your sister Blanche. And as for you yourself, don’t ever venture to show your face in any of my houses.”

“No, my lord. Very well, my lord. As you wish.”

It was over. I had what I wanted. Nothing else mattered but that, and, feeling tired but satisfied, I strolled upstairs to the Chinese room and told Marguerite how delighted Francis had been to receive our good news.

ON MY RETURN TO
London I had intended to stay for a week at my house in St. James’s Square while I wrote the first draft of my thesis on Indian corn. The city would be moribund by that time, for Parliament had long since risen, and I would have the opportunity to work without distraction before I retired to the country. I usually spent the autumn months at my estate in Warwickshire before journeying to Ireland for Christmas.

However, on arriving at St. James’s Square after my train journey from Liverpool, I found awaiting me in the library not only a large pile of letters but also my son Patrick’s latest tutor.

Of Patrick himself there was no sign.

“Where’s my son?” I said sharply to young Mr. Maynard. “Is he unwell?”

Mr. Maynard was distressed. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and looked at me with a most unhappy expression. “My lord, he … he …”

I cursed myself for hiring a tutor too young to manage the unmanageable and cursed Patrick for ignoring my kindness in engaging a congenial young man to supervise his activities.

“When did he leave?”

“Three days ago, my lord. He left a note …”

“Where is it?”

“Here, my lord.”

The note was written on my notepaper in elaborate Gothic script, and Patrick had decorated the borders with watercolors of flowers. The resemblance of the note to an illuminated manuscript was striking.

“Dear Mr. Maynard,” Patrick had written, “please do not take offense, but I am deuced bored with London and I think I shall go to Ireland to see my friend Roderick Stranahan. I will give you a good reference to my father. Assuring you of my best wishes for the future, I remain your affectionate pupil,
PATRICK EDWARD DE SALIS.
P.S. Thank you for all the lessons.”

“My lord,” Mr. Maynard was stammering, “I did not know whether or not to follow him, but as you were returning so soon I felt I should stay here until you arrived so that I could explain—”

“Quite,” I said. “You may have a month’s wages and an appropriate testimonial. Please leave my house at the earliest convenient opportunity. Good day to you, Mr. Maynard.”

After he had stumbled from the room I summoned my secretary, and he came hurrying into the room with his writing case wedged tightly beneath his arm.

“Fielding, I’ve changed my plans and will leave for Cashelmara tomorrow. You may stay here until all my correspondence has been attended to and then you may go directly to Woodhammer Hall, where I shall join you shortly. Make a note to pay Mr. Maynard a month’s wages and draw up the usual testimonial which I must sign before I leave. Now, if we can attend to as much of this correspondence as possible …”

We worked until half past eight that evening, and then I dismissed him, ate a mutton chop and told the link boy to call a hansom to the door.

I was glad to be in London again. In the cab I savored the cool night air, and as I watched the squares, houses and streets drift past I felt more than a world away from the suffocating heat of New York. I hoped Marguerite would love London as much as I did. I thought the house in St. James’s Square would please her, although no doubt she would want to try her hand at redecorating some of the rooms. Women enjoy rearranging houses. I could remember Eleanor fingering her way busily through samples of wallpaper and swatches of upholstery material.

At last the cab edged into narrower streets, and I found myself again among the prim respectable villas of Maida Vale, their front gardens little bigger than postage stamps, their privacy protected by the plane trees that lined the road. When the cab halted by one of the houses I jumped down before the driver could offer me assistance and walked quickly up the path to the front door.

My key grated in the lock. Stepping into the hall, I called her name.

“Coming!” She hurried out of the sitting room, a candlestick in her hand, and said she had been expecting me every night for the past week because she remembered I was due to arrive back at the end of August. She said that she hoped I was well and that I had not been working too hard and what a wonderful doctor I had sent her to in Harley Street; her health was quite recovered and she felt a new woman. She was sorry her health had inconvenienced us both before I left. Would I care to come into the parlor for a few minutes, or …

“Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”

In the parlor she offered me refreshment, but I declined and sat down on the sofa. The room was small but crammed with little tables, bric-a-brac, trivial pictures and overstuffed chairs.

“How did you find America?” she asked politely. “I do hope the weather wasn’t as warm as you feared it might be.”

“It was very hot.” I let her ask several more polite questions, but when at last she realized I had some important matter to discuss with her she fell silent and sat looking at me, her hands clasped tightly together in her lap.

I knew she was frightened, and I felt sorry for her. She was no longer young. Forty-five is a harsh age at which to begin again in the world, and she depended on me for every penny of her income. I had no idea how well she liked me. She was a widow who had once been Eleanor’s dressmaker, a childless woman, pleasant, undemanding and accommodating. I had wanted no more than that, and she had wanted no more than a little home of her own and a modest income that enabled her to dress tastefully, employ a servant girl and donate a suitable little sum to charity each Sunday at church. Our relationship had existed for some years, and I supposed it had suited her as well as it had always suited me.

She listened calmly while I told her that I intended to marry Eleanor’s distant cousin. When I had finished she said with care, “I suppose she’s quite young.”

“Yes.”

“You’re a lucky man. Not that you don’t deserve it. Why shouldn’t you marry someone young? You look no older than a man of forty-five, and if you ask me the luck’s not all on your side either. She ought to consider herself lucky too. Well, we can’t all be so lucky, I suppose, although heaven knows I’ve considered myself fortunate enough during these last few years.”

“I’ve no wish to destroy any good fortune I may have brought you,” I said. “That would be a poor token of gratitude on my part. You must keep the house, of course, and I’ll arrange for you to have an annuity.”

Her relief was almost palpable. She gave me a quick warm smile and leaned further back against the sofa’s plump upholstery. “That’s very good of you,” she said sincerely. “More than good, in fact. It’s hard to make two words like ‘thank you’ seem grateful enough.” She leaned forward again. “I wonder … in the circumstances … might I be bold enough to offer you some advice?”

I smiled. “You’ve been very sparing in offering me advice in the past. If you want to offer advice now the least I can do is listen.”

“It’s rather personal.” She hesitated. “You mustn’t take offense, but I’ve noticed with gentlemen who seem younger than their years … What I mean to say is, I think you keep so young because you’ve always led an … active life. But once a man of your age leads a less active life, even for a little while … well, for the sake of the young lady to whom you are affianced … I mean, you don’t want to find on your honeymoon next spring …” She stopped. Fallen women are popularly supposed to be shameless, but by this time she was pink with embarrassment. “I wouldn’t ever have dared say all that to you,” she said in a rush, “if I weren’t so grateful to you for your kindness and so anxious for you to be happy with your new wife next year.”

“I understand,” I said wryly. “Thank you.”

“If I’ve made you angry …”

“No.”

“Oh.” She sighed with relief.

There was a pause.

“May I make you some tea?” she said hesitantly at last.

“Afterward.”

She nodded. I was again conscious of her relief. Since there seemed little to say after that, we rose to our feet and, without speaking yet comfortable in the familiarity of our silence, moved from the parlor to her room upstairs.

It takes at least three days to reach Cashelmara from London, although communications are improving and Irish roads, owing to the proliferation of relief work during the famine years, are surprisingly respectable. There is a fast train from London to Holyhead, where one takes the steamer to Kingstown, and from Dublin one can take another train across the country to Galway. Either an “outside car” or a hired carriage will take the traveler north toward Leenane, where the well-known coaching inn stands on the shores of Killary Harbour, and eight miles short of Leenane lies a wild road which twists through the mountains to Lough Nafooey and the front door of my house.
CASHELMARA,
the stone tower by the sea—a descriptive name, no doubt, but since I am writing of Ireland, no one should be surprised to learn that the house is miles from the coast and boasts no stone tower of any description. However, the original Cashelmara was indeed a stone tower by the sea. My ancestor, a Norman knight called Roger de Salis who fought with de Burgh in the conquest of Connaught, began to carve out a small kingdom for himself in the country north of Galway by building a fort at the mouth of Killary Harbour. Predictably the Irish did not approve of this ambitious stranger in their midst, and when the fort was sacked its lord only narrowly missed being mutilated by long knives. After this discouraging incident the land lay unclaimed for a time, but the de Salis heirs never forgot their shadowy inheritance in Ireland, and later when a de Salis found favor with Queen Elizabeth he obtained a royal grant of the Cashelmara lands along with his barony and spent one horrified year in Ireland before retiring to Warwickshire to build Woodhammer Hall.

For several centuries no de Salis was either sufficiently bold or intrigued to set foot on Irish soil. It took a man such as my father, a naïve and childlike eccentric, to journey to Ireland as a young man, fall hopelessly in love with Ireland and all things Irish and resolve to build a new family mansion for himself and his bride in the most beautiful part of all those thousands of acres he owned in the wilderness of County Galway.

My father was a man of great charm, little brain and no ambition whatsoever. Building the new family mansion was the most ambitious project he ever attempted, and I doubt that the project would have been completed if my mother had not kept his nose remorselessly to the grindstone. My mother did not like her mother-in-law, who was then residing at Woodhammer Hall (my father being, of course, much too softhearted to tell his mother she must move from the hall to the dower house). She saw Cashelmara as a means of escape, a place where she could be her own mistress at last. My mother was a practical woman, full of energy and determination. Her one unfortunate trait, the inability to see anyone’s point of view but her own, often created difficulties, however, and later when this trait manifested itself in the form of religious fanaticism she spent her old age enjoying herself hugely by trying to convert the Irish to her narrow interpretation of the Anglican faith.

No one ever understood how my parents managed to produce a son of my tastes and inclinations, but my father was very pleased and spent much time with me when I was young. I can still remember riding on his back across the nursery floor. As for my mother, she regarded me as nothing less than a reward from God after she had been forced to endure a tiresome mother-in-law, my father’s rapturous love affair with Ireland and three childless years of marriage. I grew up basking in the warmth of their love and admiration and thought myself a very fine fellow indeed.

It was not until I was eight that I was taken by my father on a visit to his younger brother, who resided at Woodhammer Hall.

“Zounds!” cried my uncle Richard, who was a typical Regency gentleman and a great rip in his day. “What a spoiled young pup! Trust you, Henry, to bring up a boy who thinks himself the devil of a macaroni just because he can stick a pin down the gullet of some defenseless fish!” And he set to work to teach me to ride to hounds and shoot straight and put up a fight when my cousins, both pugilistic young toughs, decided to use me as a punch bag for their games of fisticuffs.

I realized later when I was growing up that I was much more like my uncle than I was like my father. My uncle, of course, had realized this as soon as he had set eyes on me, and once his sons were dead (the elder was killed at Waterloo and the other died later in some Indian skirmish) he wasted no time in naming me his heir.

My mother thought this was unfair; my brother David, landless and penniless, needed Woodhammer Hall far more than I did. In vain David told her he did not want Woodhammer Hall. Once my mother had formed an opinion, nothing except a command from the Almighty Himself could ever have changed her mind. Besides, her opposition to my uncle’s decision was also her way of disapproving of my uncle’s influence on my life. She told me I had become boisterous, rowdy “and immoral too, I shouldn’t be surprised,” she said darkly, and added to my poor father, “Henry, you should speak to the boy.”

My father had no idea what he was supposed to say to me, but he never argued with my mother. We spent a pleasant half hour drinking port together while he told me what a wonderful wife my mother was and how happy he had always been with her.