CHAPTER V

ENGLISH IDEAS AND IRISH WAYS

It was broad daylight when Norah woke next morning, and she sat up and stared about her, bewildered for a moment by finding herself in the strange, old-fashioned room, with its low ceiling crossed by heavy beams, and its dark mahogany furniture. The next instant, however, she remembered that this was Kilshane, and that they were really at home in Ireland at last. Soft regular breathing by her side made her aware that Anstace was still wrapped in soundest sleep, but Norah was fully awake now, and quite too much on fire with excitement and curiosity to yield herself to slumber again.

The room had only one lattice-paned window, opening in casement fashion, and even that was darkened and encroached on by the luxuriant growth of clematis and climbing roses which mantled the walls outside and flung their long trails across the narrow window space, so that but a comparatively small amount of cool, greenish light could find its way in.

Norah slipped down out of the lofty bed, and pattered across the floor in her bare feet. Pushing the casement open, she leant far out, regardless of the shower of dewdrops which she shook down upon herself, drinking in in one gasp of delight the freshness of the early morning, the salt sea-breeze that blew in her face, and the undreamt-of beauty of the prospect that lay outstretched before her.

Immediately below her the green lawn sloped down to the cliffs, though from the window at which she stood nothing could be seen of the dizzy precipice; the low wall that bounded their little domain stood out against the mid-sea, as though one could have stepped from it far out upon that shining blue plain which stretched away to the far misty horizon, its solitude unbroken by even a single sail. Upon the left rose the great purple mountains which had been invisible the night before, and beneath them lay a wide tract of heathery moor, of gorse-clad hills and green pasture land. Lower still was a long range of woods, and below them the bold coast line, with its lofty headlands, its sheer black cliffs and jagged rocks, over which even on that calm and sunny morning the long Atlantic surges broke in foam.

Anstace's voice behind her recalled Norah to herself.

"You will catch your death of cold, child, hanging out of the window in your night-gown. Come in and dress yourself. You will have plenty of time to look at the view afterwards."

Norah reluctantly drew her head in.

"Oh, Anstace, it's the loveliest place in the whole wide world, and we are the very luckiest people to have got it all for our own."

Anstace laughed.

"Well, that sounds more cheerful than your remark when we were driving: here last night. Do you remember how dismal you were then?"

Norah gave her shoulders an unwilling shake.

"As if one could know what anything was like, sitting in pouring rain with a shawl over one's head. And you haven't half looked at the view, only given it a sort of glance out of the corner of your eye."

"My dear, the view won't run away," said practical Anstace, "and we shall be late for breakfast if we don't hurry on. Do begin to dress yourself!"

The dressing operations partook something of the nature of the famous race between the hare and the tortoise. Norah's toilet should have occupied far less time than Anstace's, seeing that she had no long tresses of hair to brush out, to plait and coil up; but there was so much to attract her attention in the room, that she was making dives hither and thither to examine some fresh object of interest between each garment that she put on. Now she was perched on a chair peering at one of the discoloured prints in black frames which hung upon the wall, now exploring the drawers and pigeon-holes of the tall old mahogany bureau which stood in one corner, and now she was scrutinizing her face in the little clouded mirror above the chimney-piece; so that Anstace, proceeding steadily all the while with her dressing, had put in the last hair-pin, and stood faultlessly neat from her smoothly-parted hair to the tie of her shoes, in the same moment that Norah, wriggling into her frock after a fashion peculiarly her own, and dragging the buttons and button-holes together in haste, proclaimed herself ready. Just then, too, Roderick's door was heard to open, and his step and whistle sounded on the stairs, so Anstace and Norah lost no time in following him down to the little parlour where they had had supper the night before.

The window, which was embowered in green, like that of their bedroom above, stood wide open, letting in the fresh morning breeze and all the sweet spring-tide scents, but there was no appearance of breakfast, and Biddy, who came from the kitchen in a state of morning deshabille, declared "She'd niver had a thought their honours would be that early, an' they desthroyed wid cowld an' hardship the night before ".

Seeing that there was likely to be some delay before their morning meal was ready for them, the new-comers strolled out of doors and down by a moss-grown path which led to the edge of the cliffs. Viewed from without, the house was a rambling, irregular structure, two stories high in some parts, only a single story in others, but overgrown everywhere with the same luxuriant green mantle of roses, jessamine, and ivy, all matted and intertwined.

Anstace's eyes soon wandered back from the house to Roderick's face, on which they rested anxiously. She was afraid he might have caught a chill from the exposure of the previous evening, but he laughed her fears away.

"I feel another man already," he said, drawing a deep draught, as he spoke, of the vigorous sea air; "I shall write to Dr. Trafford and tell him I have tossed all his tonics and physic bottles over the cliffs. It was that stifling city den, and the everlasting scribble, scribble from morning till night, which were doing for me."

Whilst toil had been needful, Roderick had worked on bravely and uncomplainingly, but now that those months of drudgery were laid behind him, he could not conceal how irksome his life in the lawyer's office had been to him.

Norah interposed here to ask what the dark woods were which stretched along the cliffs some two miles away.

"Those are the woods of Moyross Abbey, where our father lived when he was a boy, and Uncle Nicholas lives now," Roderick answered. "Do you see how, on beyond, just this side of the headland--Drinane Head it's called--the cliff is all scarped and cut away, and the red earth thrown out upon the hillside? That is the copper-mine which Uncle Nicholas set going, and there is an iron pier down below that he made, for ships to lie at to load the ore."

"It was a wonderful undertaking," said Anstace, following the direction in which her brother pointed.

"It was, indeed, for one man to plan and carry out. He deserves all the wealth which the mine has brought him in. See, Norah, you can just make out the chimneys of Moyross House above the trees. The ruins of the abbey where the monks used to live in old times are close to it, and behind the abbey there is a little wooded glen, with a steep path winding down through it to a little cove below, one of the very few places along the coast where a boat can find shelter in rough weather. I suppose that was one of the reasons why the monks chose that particular site for their abbey. Some of the steps going down to the sea are the very ones, I believe, that the monks put there, and the stones have deep hollows worn in them by all the feet that have gone up and down for hundreds of years."

"But Roderick, when did you see it all?" cried Norah.

A cloud came over Roderick's face.

"I walked down through the glen that one day that I was at Moyross, the day of poor old Cousin Ansey's funeral. I had heard our father talk so often of that Monks' Walk, as it is called, and I wanted to see as much as I could of his old home."

"And you'll take me to see it all some day, won't you?--the old abbey and the Monks' Walk, and all?" pleaded Norah, hanging coaxingly on his arm.

Roderick shook his head.

"Not unless Uncle Nicholas invites us there, and that, I think, is hardly likely. He has made it plain that he has not forgiven our father, even in his grave, for the wrong he did him, nor us, for being our father's children."

Roderick spoke with a bitterness very unusual to him, but, after all, it was hard that whilst almost all he could see around him--great mountains, wide sweeps of moorland, woods and farms, and rocks rich in minerals--had belonged to his ancestors, he himself should be an alien and a stranger there. Even that low creeper-covered house, with its two or three fields stretching along the edge of the cliffs, had only come to him by the bequest of a distant relative, and in all probability, if the old man who now held the great O'Brien estate in his grasp had had the power to keep it from them, not even that one small corner of the family domain would have descended to his own kith and kin.

"Uncle Nicholas is an old horror!" said Norah with energy; "and if he doesn't want to have anything to say to us, I'm sure we don't want him either."

And just then Biddy appeared in front of the house, and by vehement waving of her arms gave them to understand that the tardy breakfast was at length ready.

Their first morning repast in the quaint old-fashioned parlour was a very gay and cheerful one, though Anstace's housewifely eye detected many things that did not please her: the little heaps of dust in the corners which no intrusive broom could have disturbed for a very considerable period, and the long cobwebs that hung down from the ceiling and swayed slowly to and fro as the fresh breeze blew in at the open window. When breakfast was ended, they started to explore the old house which had come into their possession with all that it contained. Opposite the parlour was the drawing-room, a long, low-ceiled room, furnished with spindle-legged tables and chairs, with tall old cabinets, black with age, ranged against the walls. A glass door opened out into what had once been the garden but was now a wilderness, where evergreen shrubs, tall weeds, and a few hardy flowers which had survived years of neglect struggled with each other for the mastery. Ragged fuchsia hedges fenced in the little plot, and in the kitchen-garden beyond, the old fruit-trees stretched out their branches, laden with snowy blossom, over the sea of tangled vegetation that grew about their roots.

"There will be no lack of work there for some time to come," said Roderick cheerily.

After his months of drudgery at a desk and of close confinement in a city office, occupation of any sort in the open air was alluring, and he opened the glass doors as he spoke and stepped out upon the grass-grown walk, eager to commence the herculean task of digging and uprooting without even a moment's delay. Anstace turned down the flagged passage which led towards the back of the house, in quest of Biddy, and Norah followed her.

At the kitchen door Anstace stopped short and gave a little exclamation of dismay, involuntarily gathering her skirts about her, and undoubtedly anyone accustomed to the neatness and cleanliness of an English kitchen was likely to receive a shock at the first sight of the premises presided over by Biddy. A cavernous fireplace without a grate occupied almost the whole of one wall. The turf fire was built upon the hearthstone, and a huge three-legged pot was suspended over it by a hook and iron chain, whilst a low stone hob in front kept the burning peats from falling on to the floor. The walls had once been whitewashed, but time and turf smoke had mellowed them to a warm yellowish tint, which deepened near the hearth to a rich dark brown, and it must have been long, very long indeed, since the floor had made acquaintance with soap and water or a scrubbing-brush.

Biddy had not allowed herself to suffer from loneliness, at least in so far as dumb companionship went, for a large and motley family were lodged within the kitchen. A mongrel collie, blind of an eye, had been arrested on its way in from the yard by Anstace and Norah's sudden appearance, and stood regarding them mistrustfully out of its remaining orb. A large black cat, snugly curled up in front of the fire, was sleepily keeping watch out of one eye on the gambols of two kittens as they rolled each other over and over on the floor; and on the top rail of a chair beside her, over the back of which some articles from the wash-tub had been hung to dry, a chicken was perched, shaking out its feathers and pluming itself in evident enjoyment of the warmth. It seemed to Anstace, in a rapid survey of the kitchen furniture, that this was the only chair possessed all at once of a back, a seat, and the full complement of legs, all others being destitute of one at least of these appurtenances. An old-fashioned mahogany wine-cooler in one corner had been turned to a use for which it had not originally been intended, for at that moment a hen flew up out of it, and with loud and long repeated cackles made everyone within hearing aware that she had laid an egg. Another hen, with a dozen yellow balls of chickens running at her feet, was stalking about the floor, pecking hither and thither in hope of finding something to eat; and the door of a cupboard which stood open revealed a turkey seated in a basket within and engaged in the important business of bringing out a clutch of eggs.

Norah subsided on to the floor with a little cry of delight, divided in her ecstasy between the soft, furry kittens and the softer, downy chicks; but Anstace remained standing, her skirts still gathered up, gazing with a face of rueful disgust at the kitchen and its denizens, and at the collection of miscellaneous articles which were piled pell-mell upon each other in the corners. There were old fishing-nets and fishing-lines, chairs without seats and jugs without handles, empty bottles and broken plates--even odd boots and shoes were stored up with the other lumber.

Biddy came in just then from the yard, carrying a pail of water, which she splashed freely round her as she walked. She smiled broadly upon the girls, quite unconscious that there was anything amiss with herself and her surroundings, and with a flourish of her disengaged arm drove out the hen, which was still loudly and insistently proclaiming its feat just achieved.

"Quit out o' this, this minnit, the noisy crayther that y' are! Who wants to be hearin' ye, d' ye think?"

Anstace's feelings had been too deeply stirred to permit her to keep silence, and she broke out impatiently:

"Biddy, is there not a hen-house outside to keep the fowl in, instead of having them in the kitchen?"

"Och, yis sure, Miss Anstace, but the roof's bin off it this long start; Tom tuk the rafthers away for firin' one winther whin the turf was scarce. An' what wud ail the craythers bein' in the kitchen? 'Tis warm an' snug for them, an' handy for me to throw them a praty whin I'd be at me dinner."

"But I cannot possibly have hens sitting and laying in the kitchen," protested Anstace. "I will ask Mr. Roderick to have the hen-house put to rights, and then the fowl must go out there."

"Well, plaze yerself, alannah," said Biddy resignedly, "but 'tis kilt they'll be wid the cowld an' the lonesomeness."

"And Biddy," went on Anstace, with all the zeal of a young reformer, not understanding that it is sometimes well to introduce reforms gradually, and one at a time, "there is surely no need to have all this litter piled up here. Why, one can hardly turn round with the quantity of things collected in the kitchen."

"Och, darlin' dear, 'tis just for convaniency, that they'd be there for me to put me hand on whin I'd be in a throng of a hurry."

"But there are some things here which you could never want to put your hand on, whether you were in a hurry or not."

And Anstace, still holding up her dress to keep it from any possible contact with the grimy floor, stepped daintily across the kitchen and lifted the battered remnant of a basket without bottom or handle out of the rubbish heap.

"Now what use could that ever be to anyone?"

"Trath, yis, Miss Anstace, 'twill be jist iligant for lightin' the fires some marnin' whin the shticks is wantin'."

"Well then, Biddy, this won't light fires, and I don't know what else it could be good for;" and Anstace's next dive into the accumulated rubbish produced a rusty, lidless kettle, which she held up to view.

"Well, maybe no, Miss Anstace," admitted Biddy, "unless 'twud be for givin' the hens a dhrink out ov, for 'tis treminjous the crockery thim fowl does break. 'Twas but yisterday, whin I was runnin' twinty ways at a time to git the clanin' done an' all set to rights afore yous 'ud come, that I put their mate for them in the vegetable dish that was ould Miss Ansey's, an' I declare to ye, Miss Anstace, I hadn't it but jist set down out ov me hand than thim divils had it broke wid their fightin' an' their carryin' on, an' it more years in the house nor ye could count."

And with a tragic gesture Biddy pointed to some broken fragments lying amongst the ashes on the hearth, the rich colouring and quaint design upon them proclaiming that they were of rare old china. Before Anstace could attempt any further remonstrance, however, or suggest that in future the fowl should be given their food in less costly feeding-vessels, there was a shrill cry from Norah, who all this while had been goading the kittens into frenzy by trailing her handkerchief slowly before them, and flicking it suddenly high out of their reach just as they were in the very act of pouncing upon it.

"The dog! the dog!" she cried, with a shriek of laughter. "Look at the dog!"

The one-eyed collie, finding that no one was paying him any attention, had crept across the kitchen and in under the table, and was engaged in licking up the tempting sediment of grease which remained in the frying-pan in which the breakfast bacon had been cooked.

"Ye tory! ye thief o' the world!" screamed Biddy, turning round quickly and hurling the first missile which came to her hand--a battered tin candlestick as it chanced--at the offender, with so true an aim that he fled with a yelp of pain and terror, his tail between his legs, and was seen no more.

The speckled hen, startled by the sudden clatter, flew shrieking across the kitchen, her yellow brood scuttling after her; the chicken which had been pluming itself before the fire sought refuge upon the chimney-piece; the two kittens bounded into the recesses of the piled-up lumber, whence they peeped out in much alarm; the old cat alone refused to allow her sleepy dignity to be discomposed, and merely opened her other eye for a moment to see what the disturbance was about. Norah sat back on the floor and laughed till the tears ran down her face, and even Anstace, vexed though she was, could not help joining in her merriment. Judging, however, that no further remonstrances were likely to prove of much effect just then, she drew the reluctant Norah on to her feet and out of the kitchen, declaring that it was time they should get their boxes unpacked and the contents put away in their bedroom upstairs.

Anstace was a good deal disconcerted by the laughter with which Roderick received her account of her first visit to Biddy's domain. It was when they met again at their early dinner that she gave it to him, and it was chiefly the horror-stricken air with which she told of the discoveries she had made, and the condition of things which prevailed there, which diverted Roderick, but Anstace was provoked none the less. And when Norah, looking up from her mutton chop, said: "I suppose all Irish people keep their kitchens like that, Anstace, and the best we can do is to get used to Irish ways as fast as we can, then it will seem quite natural to us too;" she answered, with a sharpness very unusual to her: "My dear, you and Roderick can do as you please, but I must remind you that our mother was an Englishwoman, and we are as much English as Irish. For my own part I trust I shall always remain sufficiently English in my ideas not to find it natural that hens should lay in wine-coolers, and dogs lick the frying-pans clean."

And in her own mind the young mistress of Kilshane determined that her first act after taking over the reins of government should be to institute such a cleaning-down and clearing-out of the old house as it had probably never known since it was built.

In the afternoon the two girls started to make further explorations, and went through the long unused rooms upstairs, where the furniture was still standing exactly as it had stood in the days when the elder Anstace O'Brien had dwelt in the little lonely house upon the cliffs. The family lawyer had furnished Roderick with a huge bunch of rusty keys, and Norah and Anstace went about fitting them to the doors of cupboards and presses. The locks and hinges that had grown stiff with years of disuse creaked dismally as they yielded and disclosed to view long-hidden services of quaint old china, old-fashioned silver that bore the O'Brien crest and was worn by the handling of generations of dead and gone O'Briens, antiquated jewels in faded velvet-lined cases,--all covered thickly with dust that had filtered slowly in on them through cracks and crevices. There were filmy laces too, and embroideries, and richly-coloured Indian shawls, all carefully laid away in the bedroom that had been old Miss Anstace's, and smelling still of the lavender and sandal-wood that had been put amongst them to preserve them. It seemed almost like sacrilege to the two girls to be going about thus letting in the light of day on these hoards, the cherished possessions of the poor old woman whose life had been a living death for twelve years before she died.

Biddy had invited herself to assist in the researches, and each fresh store-place that was opened produced a torrent of exclamations and recollections from her.

"Troth, I mind them well, ivery fork and ivery spoon that's in it. Many's the time I've seen all the quality in the county sittin' down-stairs aitin' their dinner wid that silver an' off that chaney, an' Miss Ansey herself sittin' at the top of the table in her silks an' her lace, as grand as ye plaze, while me an' the other girls wud be peepin' in at the door to get a sight of the ladies' fine dresses. 'Twas always Miss Ansey we called her, for all that she'd the right to be Miss O'Brien, an' carriage an' demanour she had enough to fit a duchess. To see her sweepin' along wid her head in the air an' her silk gown a yard on the ground behind her! 'I must keep up my poseetion, Biddy,' says she to me times an' agin; 'sure any wan as marries an O'Brien looks to marry into wan o' the first families o' Clare, nor they'll not be disappinted by me,' says she. An' all the while her heart was aitin' itself oot wid sorra an' lonesomeness, an' miny's the hour I've seen her stannin' where ye're stannin' this minnit, Miss Anstace, starin' oot over the say as if that 'ud dhraw the man she was waitin' for back to her. But he niver come for all her watchin', an' at the last she tuk to goin' bansheein' about the cliffs, ballyowrin' and wringin' her hands till we was feared 'twud be throwin' herself over she'd be."

"Poor Cousin Ansey!" sighed Anstace; "and so they had to take her away from here and shut her up where she would be safe?"

"Yis indade, Miss Anstace. 'Twas yer own uncle, Mr. O'Brien of Moyross beyant, that fetched a gran' gintleman a' the way from Dublin to see her; an' between them they tuk an' carried her away, an' sure that was the last that any of us here iver seed of her. Thin yer uncle he come down, an' locked all up, an' give me the charge, an' not a key's bin turned nor a ha'porth stirred till this blessed day that yer own hands has done it--an' who'd have the betther right?"

"And have you and your husband lived here in Kilshane ever since old Cousin Ansey went mad and was taken away to Dublin?" asked Norah.

Biddy turned to regard her with amazement.

"Musha, what's come to the child? Husband, says she! Sorra wan o' me iver was married, Miss Norah, or iver will be nayther."

"But the man who lifted me off the car and carried me into the house last night, I thought he must be your husband. Who was he, then?"

"Och, that's jist Tom, me brither Tom, that was coachman to Miss Ansey, an' dhruv her in her own carriage--more be token the carriage is in the coach-house yit, only the mice--bad scran to thim!--has th' inside of it ate out an' desthroyed. He's livin' noo in his own house, that yez passed upon the road, if there'd been light to ha' seen it, an' his sivin orphins wid him--herself's been dead this twal'month past. Sorra tak ye, Lanty! What d'ye come stalin' into people's hooses, an' frightenin' the sinses out o' them, an' me spakin' about ye this very minnit?"

They had descended by this time from the upper regions to the pantry beside the kitchen, and Anstace had been opening the presses in the wall and bringing to view dusty hoards of glasses and decanters of the fashion of fifty years before. A slight noise behind them had made them turn to behold a red-headed, loutish-looking lad standing in the doorway, a string of fine rock-codling in his hand. With an awkward bow to the young ladies, he muttered something about having been at the fishing with his father, and thinking their honours might like a few fresh fish; and having deposited the codling on the flagstone at his feet, he lost no time in making off, without awaiting Anstace's thanks.

"Yis, that's Lanty, that's the ouldest of the sivin, an' not his ekal in the counthry for divvlement an' mischeeviousness," said Biddy, looking dispassionately after her nephew's retreating form. "He's for iver sthreelin' an' sthravagin' aboot i'stead o' doin' an honest day's work. Theer, if it's not foive o'clock as I'm a livin' woman, an' the hins, the craythers, niver fed yit!"

And away Biddy hurried.

Two or three days passed over very busily and very happily. Anstace was hard at work within doors and Roderick no less hard at work without, digging, pruning, clearing away the tangled overgrowth in the neglected garden, or else walking about the two or three fields which comprised the little domain of Kilshane, deep in consultation on farming matters with Tom Hogan, Biddy's brother, who, since those bygone days of state when he had driven Miss Ansey in her own carriage, had acted as steward, gardener, shepherd, and farm-labourer all in one to the little property.

They were halcyon days for Norah. No one had much leisure to attend to her, there were no lessons, no irksome school-room restraints; she was free to wander where she pleased, Roderick's prohibition against going near the cliffs being the only restriction laid upon her. From time to time she proffered her valuable services to her elder brother or sister, but her efforts to assist them in their labours were somewhat spasmodic, and in general she proved fully as much a hindrance as a help, so that Roderick and Anstace were generally glad to dismiss her to amuse herself as she could.

She had speedily made acquaintance with most of the dwellers in the cabins near at hand, welcomed wherever she went with Irish heartiness and good-will. She was on a specially friendly footing, however, with the Hogan family, and had soon come to know all the seven "orphins", from red-haired Lanty down to Kat, the two-year-old bare-legged baby, which spent its time for the most part seated on the door-step scooping water in a broken cup from the stagnant pool in front of the door. A very few days had demonstrated the impossibility of retaining Biddy as servant, indeed she herself had no wish to remain, declaring "she'd be kilt wid the clanin'" which Miss Anstace seemed to consider indispensable. She had departed, therefore, to the family residence of the Hogans, to keep house for her brother, carrying her cats, her hens, and her other belongings with her, and the orphan next in age to Lanty, a bashful, rosy-cheeked girl of whom Anstace hoped in time to make a neat little hand-maiden, had come to Kilshane in her stead.

It was quite wonderful, even by the end of the first week, how much had been effected towards making the little house upon the cliffs more home-like. Open windows and well-polished window-panes, fresh air and light let in everywhere, had done much; Anstace's taste and skill even more. Heavy and dusty hangings had been taken down and fresh muslin curtains put up in their place, bright chintz covers fashioned by Anstace's deft fingers concealed the faded upholstery of the chairs and couches in the little drawing-room. Some rare old china jars and bowls which had been discovered amongst Miss Ansey's belongings had been brought down from the hiding-places where they had been stowed away so long, and were disposed upon the old-fashioned cabinets and whatnots; and such books and photographs and other knick-knacks as they had brought from London were scattered here and there. Norah had borne her part in the decoration of the drawing-room, for it was she who had brought in all the spring-tide spoils--the purple violets and pale primroses, the delicate wood anemones, the silvery catkins and branches of larch just breaking into their first vivid green--which were set everywhere, on the tables, the chimney-piece, the window-sills, and gave grace and beauty to the little room.

It was perhaps no wonder that Anstace, lying back in her chair when Saturday evening came, said in a voice that was tired but triumphant:

"Well, I do think we may feel proud of our little home."