Tipperary (30 page)

“I must thank you. I must thank you for—this.” She waved a hand to include the countryside and the house and the coat that fitted her supremely well. “Thank you, thank you again.”

These were, in all consideration, the kindest words she had yet spoken to me. I was newly lost. She removed the coat, and I bore it and the other pieces on my saddle in front of me.

Within a moment or two I was obliged to ride close alongside her, take her horse's reins, and chuck in the creature tight, to reduce the skittishness exhibited by both horses.

“Something's troubling them,” I said. “I know not what.”

I knew within a minute. We heard two loud gunshots, and the bushes nearby hissed and rattled. The horses reared at each shot; I was able to control both pairs of reins.

“Are we being shot at?” she asked, not at all perturbed. “Goodness! What a tale to tell in London.”

“Fowlers,” I said. “Every Sunday they shoot. There have always been stocks of woodcock and partridge here. From the old days.”

Animals, especially horses, always know things; our two mounts settled down after that, and I took this to mean that the fowlers and their guns had left the area. I am conditioned to expect anything in the Irish countryside, but April was not, and yet she took it like a warrior; I do not doubt that were we armed she might have returned fire!

When we returned to Ardobreen and one of Mother's very best lunches—carrot soup, mutton shank, and apple pie, all of our own farm's produce—April seemed composed and at ease. She remained thus all evening.

Her driver came on the Monday morning, and April rode away. She carried my father's letter of introduction to his solicitor in Limerick, old Mr. Henry Somerville. She had decided, upon all our urgings and for obvious reasons, to go there at once and begin the proceedings. Father warned that everything legal “takes four times as long and costs eight times as much.” She waved to us as she rode off.

I walked in our wood and fields for a long time, savoring the fact that she had been here in my house, and that she might soon be here always, and that I loved her more than ever.

MONDAY NIGHT, THE 3RD OF OCTOBER 1904.

She has gone! That felt the longest visit of any house-guest that I can recall. Not even Aunt Hutchinson troubled everyone so. No, the water's too hot. Now the water's too cold. Are these your best towels? Doesn't Mrs. O'Brien have her own towels that I could borrow? Cally asked, “Will you let me pizen her, ma'am?” Poison seems an appropriate match.

How I wish, for Charles's sake, that I could have liked her more. Bernard said tonight that he now has digestion pains. Charles has gone out to mope somewhere. Euclid says that when Miss Burke was born, there had been unusual turbulence in the spheres that week. I fear we may receive some more of her turbulence here.

3

V
igor fills the void we call melancholy. For an hour and more after April's departure, I walked slow as a stork about Ardobreen, seeking to converse with Mother or Euclid or my father; I hoped that they might offer me an opinion. Did they believe, having seen us together, that our fortunes belonged side by side? But Mother had engaged with our neighbor Mrs. Thompson (about eggs); Euclid slept late (as ever); and Father, I discovered, had gone over to Golden (in pursuit of some recommended plowman).

My mood sank lower and lower, so I made myself vigorous, prepared my bags, and embarked upon the road once again; healing others restores me. My destination, Bruree, would take until darkness to reach; I would see my patient there in the morning. On the main road, I turned to look at the towers of the castle; they are so staunch and constant. But an unexpected sight intruded—a hundred yards from the road, on a knoll in the field, sat a horseman, looking at me. I waved cordially; he did not move a muscle; I waved again.

The fellow made no response at all. Unperturbed, he sat there on his big roan mare, his gaze as glittering as a hawk's. I puzzled a moment, rode on, and then looked back. Still he stared after me; he had not moved. I stopped, turned Della, and began to ride toward him, to inquire his business, but he spurred his horse and rode away toward the castle. Many fences had fallen down over the years, and it is difficult to say whether he knew—or cared—who owned the land over which he galloped.

I needed to press onward, and though uneasy over the strange rider, I put Della into the merry clopping pace that she could keep up all day. As I rode, I set my thoughts toward my patient. A young wife with no children, she had never been “strong,” as she told me at my first visit; “delicate lungs,” she said, and complained of sometimes a cough of blood. Mr. Egan had taught me to listen for the words “not strong.” He said, “Take it as the consumption, Mr. O'Brien, no more and no less.”

If my patient still failed, what must I prescribe on this, my third visit? I had so far tried linseed oil, and sweetened it with honey, but she could not tolerate the taste. When I last saw her, I had advised a routine of garlic with cloves, boiled, strained, and served warm in honey; and I said that she must drink goat's milk three times a day.

Thus preoccupied, I traveled about an hour, and then took a bridle path that led me south of Tipperary town into secluded fields and tall hedges. Suddenly, from behind me, I heard loud hooves. With the path wide enough for wagons, I moved aside to let the horseman pass by. But his pace eased and his hooves quieted—now I could hear the noise of his horse snorting at being slowed, and then the sound of trotting right behind me. Next the horse's head drew alongside, and I recognized the roan mare that I had seen on the knoll near the castle. In a moment, the strange horseman clopped cheek by jowl with me.

“Good morning,” I said.

He made no answer and kept looking hard at me; he had red-rimmed eyes.

“Are you traveling my road?” I asked pleasantly.

Still no answer came, and his gaze on mine never faltered. This, I thought, promised to become an odd encounter. I surveyed him; he wore a good enough coat of brown broadcloth, with large pockets and a great belt and buckle. Since he carried no baggage of any description, I presumed him local. He lacked the middle finger of the right hand, but he had outstanding horsemanship; he seemed to meld with the leather of the saddle.

When he did not answer I looked away, but I knew that his eyes continued to watch me. I spurred a little; he kept pace. I slowed down; so did he. He showed no signs of attacking me, and as we had no highwaymen, rapparees, or other thieves at work in our country, I felt that he must want something else.

“May I help you?” I said, trying to remain pleasant.

No answer: close and cold, he continued to look at me, his hard eyes searching mine.

“Will you not speak?” I asked. “Or somehow tell me what you want?”

Not a word did he say, and I returned to looking ahead. In the distance, I could see Cullen's Ford, a place where people linger going to and from the town; trees overhang the river, which is wide, shallow, and cool there. My head had begun to sweat, and I felt ill at ease.

Suddenly, the hard-eyed rider leaned across and with his maimed hand jerked my reins from me. He rode forward a few feet, flogged my horse's face with the leather reins, and then threw them insolently back at me. Della reared; the menacing fellow wheeled, rode at me as though to attack, spat at my face but hit my shoulder—and galloped fiercely back the way we had come.

Della reared again, almost throwing me. With my hands down on her neck, and soothing her with words, I settled her, then turned in my saddle to look back. The insolent stranger rode as fast as any man I had ever seen; within a moment he had vanished around a bend. Disconcerted, bewildered, I resumed my own journey down to the ford. Ahead stood Mrs. Cullen, leaning on her gate, in her ever-present black shawl. I looked forward to meeting her again—some minutes of her good-natured conversation would restore me—but when she saw me, she went into her house and shut the door. The family with whom she had been talking headed south in their cart, leaving the ford deserted.

Shaken a little by the sinister horseman, I stopped, dismounted, wiped the spittle from my coat with some grass, and gave Della her head to drink the sweet waters of the river Ara. (The name Tipperary comes from the ancient Irish words “tobair,” meaning a well of water, and “ara,” meaning the river—“tobair-ara”; my tutor Buckley told me this, and then said that too few Irish place-names had their origins in what we drink.) When Mrs. Cullen showed no sign of emerging from her shuttered cottage, I remounted. The rest of the journey proved mild and peaceful, and I rode into Bruree on a sharp, clean trot.

A big white moon stood over the town as I looked from the window of my room. In the silence of the night, I reviewed the past few days. For the first time, April had taken my hand, had placed a trust in me, had spoken warmly to me. Was not this excellent? Yet—I felt a discomfort that I could not name. Once again, much of her behavior had too much sting in it; was that it? Or was I discommoded at my family's formality with her? I had expected them to be easier in her company.

I slept restlessly; my thoughts were as knives. Next morning I saw my young patient. She still had a pallor that we must remove, the skin on her hands like linen, but goodness! the improvement in her—I was very pleased. So was she; and she said so again and again. When I first reached their farmhouse, she had elected to remain in bed; however, her husband, with his big, shy, shiny face and curly hair, scarcely concealed his excitement. His wife, he said, had been able to get up and walk about “and even stand at the door on a fine day,” as she had been unable to do for fifteen months.

After my bedside visit, I waited in the kitchen while her husband helped her to rise; she came and sat by the fire, her slippers delicate as toy boats. He, so tender to her, so grateful to me, made us powerful tea, and offered some of the apple pie that his mother had made. I do not often eat apple pie so early in the morning, but this represented a celebration. A neighbor came by, an exceedingly tall, thin young man with, of all things in Bruree, a Spanish name. He bade us good morning; he had a most compelling voice, deep as a drum in the same slow, east Limerick accent. When I met him again, more than a decade later in vastly different circumstances, I recognized him at once; that is how distinctive he was. (The apple pie had cloves; he will always remind me of that taste.)

In the warmth of the sunny noon, I said good-bye to my young couple. My patient stood at the door and told me further good news: with the help of some money from an uncle in Chicago, they had begun the business of purchasing their own farm. They would soon, as she put it, “never again be anyone's tenants.”

TUESDAY NIGHT, THE 4TH OF OCTOBER.

I am a coward and I dislike myself for it. Yesterday morning I sheltered behind Mrs. Thompson and her new poultry enterprise. Charles prowled at the windows, looking in beseechingly. I know that he wanted me to give an opinion of his Miss Burke. As I cannot tell him what he wishes to hear, what can I say? That she is grasping? Almost contemptuous? Too distant for one so young? So sure of herself with that proud stride and toss of the head? In order to avoid Charles I fear that I detained Mrs. Thompson longer than she wanted.

Charles says that he has returned to his healing. He seems very rewarded by his patients. I know it sears his heart that he cannot heal Euclid. He will not even speak of it. But I know that he asks everywhere for a cure for his brother. People tell him that Euclid will continue to waste away.

Bernard has been of little help in all of this. He left the house early this morning. I saw no wish on his part, either, to converse with Charles. It cuts my heart to see how Charles depends upon his father's every word. And it cracks my heart open to know that Bernard loves Euclid more. That he thinks Charles foolish. I am glad that Bernard knows how to conceal his feelings.

Euclid cannot walk anymore for wasting. Charles cannot think anymore for excess of feeling. My two sons are not playing Life's cards with success. This is my fault. I have not educated them in the more mysterious parts of living, and they seem bound to fail. But I shall do as I have long decided. I shall go on loving them, and hope that my love keeps them alive and safe. I know no other way.

In October 1904, Edward the Seventh had been king for three years and nine months. Although his dominions still daubed much of the world map with Britain's red, the Irish Question boiled on. Little green shoots of rebelliousness had begun to raise their spikes in the top northwest corner of the British Empire.

By then, given the success of the land reforms and their new laws, Bernard and Amelia O'Brien must have known beyond doubt that their property was finally safe. No more “footwork” was needed; no more astute marrying into the establishment.

But—such an irony after all the centuries—their lineage on that land had begun to come apart. And from the inside. The natural inheritor, Charles, had shown no interest in the farm. Nor, it seems, would—or could—his brother. Nowhere in Charles's history or Amelia's journal do we find any suggestion that Euclid is likely to take over from Bernard.

By the time April Burke first visited the O'Briens, Euclid was in his thirties. Yet all we ever see of him is an eccentric, loving, often recumbent figure who has much to say, little to do. Repeatedly, a frailty is hinted at or mentioned; it's never explained, only alluded to in passing. Now, in Amelia's journal, the word “wasting” gives us the first solid clue.

Evidently it was chronic—we first learn of it on the trip to Knock, when Euclid was fourteen and Nora Buckley was delegated to care for him hand and foot. And it surfaces more than once thereafter in Charles's remarks—Euclid sleeping late, etc., although Charles never tells us what was wrong with his brother.

It could have been tuberculosis, which had been long endemic in Ireland. That would explain some of the reticence; the “consumption” had a stigma attached, of poverty and undernourishment. But if Euclid had been suffering from tuberculosis since the Knock visit or before, he would almost certainly have been dead by the time he reached thirty.