CHAPTER II

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WE BRANDONS.

Within Brandon walls we are out of the world. We know nothing of the copper mines, except that sometimes we meet a shock-headed miner or two when we are on our way to the village. The sulphur-coloured washings enter Brandon river some miles away, and are carried out to sea. None of the smoke or smell of the mines is blown our way. In my heart I am glad that no copper was ever found on Brandon Mountain. I could not bear to see his beautiful blue and purple sides disfigured by the brimstone of the pit, whatever of gold it might mean to us.

We keep much within our walls, and fortunately we have no lack of room to stretch our legs. Our neighbours live at long distances from us, and though they would be kind, no doubt, because we are Brandons, we couldn't keep up with them in any way.

Why, we girls would have no clothes to wear at all if it were not for the stores laid away in oak chests and wardrobes upstairs, belonging to dead-and-gone Brandon ladies. Fortunately they made no shoddy in those days, and the things have been safe in their camphor-lined dwellings from the moth and mildew. Brocades are there, fine yellow muslins that you could draw through a ring, woollens nearly as fine; and, as pretty as any of them, chintzes in bunched-up sacques belonging to a day when it was the fashion to be Arcadian.

We have adapted them with the aid of Mary Fahy, the village dressmaker, and a deal of trouble I often have to prevent her alterations being too drastic. A newspaper sometimes comes our way, and I know that it is the fashion for ladies nowadays to dress picturesquely, so I insist, greatly to Mary's discontent, that the precious old stuffs must not be cut, or too much pulled about, but only just pinched in here, or drawn out there, to fit us.

Not that she despises the beautiful material, which I have seen her fingering with rapt enjoyment. It is only that she hankers after the fashions ever since she paid a visit to Dublin, and, having a cousin a house-maid at the Castle, was permitted a peep at various festivities, with all the fine folk taking part in them. Mary's cousin, too, occasionally sends her a lady's paper, which serves to keep her ideas modern. However, I let her have her own way, with modifications, on the print frocks we wear in summer-time, to make up for my obstinacy about the old stuffs.

I feel that I am talking as if I were the head of the family. That is because Aline and Esther leave so much to my judgment. I am supposed to have the brains of the women of the family, which, if it is true, is only fair, as the others have the beauty. I have been delicate since the fall that lamed me, pale and puny and insignificant, with light-coloured hair and washed-out blue eyes. Esther is like mother, but more beautiful--dark, with such vivid roses in her cheeks and lips, and such velvety eyes, and hair with coppery lights in it.

Brandon is a big house, four stories in the middle, with wings of three stories on each side. But the upper stories do not exist for us. They have so long let in the weather that we have given them over to the owls and bats. There is a deal of rubbish up there as well, and the children look upon it as a kind of Treasure Land, so that we have to keep the doors of communication safely locked, or we would never have our young pickles out of the rotting rooms.

I have sometimes gone there myself--of course I am to be trusted--and have leant my arms on a window-sill, and looked down at dear Aline toiling away in the corner of the rose garden, which she has kept from returning to wilderness. I have seen the twins, too, sitting there demurely under Aline's eye with their lesson-books open on their laps, two pattern little damsels; till suddenly in a moment, Aline having forgotten them over her roses, they would slip from the stone seat, and, holding each other's hands, would steal through the sweet-brier hedge, and run, run, till they were far beyond Aline's call; thus keeping tryst, naughty little girls, with Hugh and Donald, who were trout-fishing or rabbit-snaring in the woods.

Then my gaze would wander over the tree-tops to our dear Brandon, and on to Angry Mountain, fuming with clouds. I could see the towers of Castle Angry in the fissure the old bog-slide had left, there on its solid land, and the bog-holes and little rivers which surround it, so that it has to be approached by a causeway. When my eyes rested on Castle Angry, I would always shake my fist and frown, before withdrawing myself from my post of observation.

Oona is our housekeeper now, and as stiff with the Kates and Pollys of the village, who are our clumsy but willing little handmaidens, as though she had a great staff of servants under her. Oona never forgets what the Brandons were in old days, and ignores as much as possible the sad change that has come upon the family fortunes. Even if we have only a skinny chicken and a pig's cheek and greens for our dinner, they are served on silver, and the old table-linen, darned to the last extent, is always beautifully snowy and shining, as its texture deserves.

When we are alone Oona's manner to us is that of a nurse to her children, scolding often, petting again, and sometimes dictatorial. But before the little round-eyed servants she never forgets what is due to a Brandon, and her humility of manner towards us is no end of a jest, for we have always feared Oona so much more than she has feared us,--that is, we younger ones.

Only to-day I was sitting with Aline in the boudoir, to which we have brought our griefs and misfortunes and peccadillos, ever since our dear mother died. I was just looking into the turf fire and prodding it up with a stick to make the sparks fly out of it, while Aline sat mending a pinafore belonging to one of the twins, and now and again smiling at me without speaking.

Suddenly there broke into the silence of the little room,--where the smell of yesterday's roses blent with the sharp turf-smoke,--a loud wail. Aline sprang to her feet, but I made a signal to her to be quiet.

"It is only Oona lecturing Polly," I said; "listen, and we will hear what it is all about."

"Indeed," wailed the voice, "'tis doin' me best I am. Amn't I wearin' them ould boots to plase you when me feet does be cut to bits wid them, an' the ould gazebo of a thing you've had me put on me head enough to break me heart? Sure I didn't know there was any harm at all at all in laughin' at the young gentlemen's jokes at dinner, an' they so arch I thought I'd have to run out of the room in screeches, so I did."

"You're a bad, ungrateful little girl!" says Oona, stemming the flow of words, "or 'tis glad an' proud you'd be to have boots on them dirty feet of yours, and a cap to cover your head, that's more like a haystack than a Christian girl's. Why, when I was young, and in service in this very house, the housekeeper would have given me the quare goin' over if I let on any more than the poker that I heard anythin' was said when I was waitin' table. 'Twould be as much as my place was worth."

"O, glory be to goodness, Mr. O'Connor, dear," cried the culprit, "sure we can't all be pokers, let alone that I can see them blessed childher just play-actin' at me to make me run out o' the room wid the laughin'."

"Childher! Am I to understand you as referrin' to the young gentlemen of the house?" we hear Oona say in the loftiest tones; but at this moment a diversion occurs, for the twins come racing along the corridor with a letter for Aline, and Oona transfers her lecture and little Polly to the housekeeper's room.

I always like to sit in Aline's room, there is such an atmosphere of quietness about her. Quietness and the sun are two things I associate with her. Is it always sunny in that little octagon room, or is it only an effect of the faded yellow silk panelling, and the old chairs and sofas in the same sunny colouring? One side of Aline's lantern-shaped room is indeed all window, and the upper panes filled with little golden shields, so that the room receives all the sunlight going. Except Aline's desk, which we have been told is genuine Sheraton, and worth a handful of money, the room has little furniture other than its straight-backed couches and chairs.

I am sure there are secret cupboards behind some of those panels. Often, when Aline has been writing her long letters to Pierce or Freda, I have gone creeping round the room, touching every knob of the curious carved roses that surround the panels of yellow brocade. But I have never succeeded in making a panel slide back, as I have fondly hoped to do. Again and again I have desisted only when I discovered Aline's grave smile upon me.

You will wonder what I expect to find,--well, no treasure, certainly, that is, no money treasure, but perhaps a bundle of faded love-letters, or some such relic of a former occupant of this room, which would be real treasure-trove for me. Aline laughs at me for a romantic child, and says I shall never find anything, but still I hope.

Aline's letter is from Pierce. As she reads it I watch her face unobserved. It is lit up as though she were reading a love-letter. The love between those two is wonderful. We all understand, at least Esther and I do, how it is that Aline can refuse so heartlessly, year after year, that poor good Mr. Benson. Why, with her immense love for Pierce, and the overflowing of it for all us, unworthy, she has none left for a lover or a husband. Not but that we are devoutly grateful for Aline's celibacy, since she is happy in it, for what on earth would we do without her? Of course, she would make an exquisite parson's wife, beneficent without being meddling; but then she is more exquisite as our sister.

It is now five years since Pierce left us; he will be twenty-seven the 3rd of next June. Freda was twenty-five in February, and Aline has actually entered the thirties. Pierce was a tall, slim, active fellow when he went away, with Aline's golden hair and blue eyes, and Aline's sudden radiant smile in a serious face. Those two always rather held aloof from us, much as a very devoted husband and wife might hold aloof from their grown-up children.

They used to walk together a good deal in the woods, and when Pierce would go fishing Aline would accompany him with her basket of mending or her book, and sit by him through the long hours of the day, while we young barbarians held our revels unchecked.

[Illustration: "THEY USED TO WALK TOGETHER A GOOD DEAL IN THE WOODS."]

It must have been a great blow to Aline when Pierce went so far away. She has always had an air of loneliness since, as of one who has lost her mate. We have a way of going in couples in our family. Aline and Pierce, Esther and I, the twins of course, and those two dear boys who are always together. I don't know where Freda came in, but of course it mattered less, as she married so young, and was so absorbed in her Jim.

Pierce's going came about through Mr. Desmond's visiting the old country. Mr. Desmond is one of our personalities, and we are immensely proud of him, especially as he was born on Brandon estate. He is the son of a small tenant-farmer, and came into the world, one would say, with a very hard iron spoon in his mouth, and the same spoon quite ignorant of even wholesome stirabout. However, despite his humble origin, he has become a great man, a pioneer in dark continents, a letter-in of light on the hidden places of the earth. He is very wealthy and powerful, yet he is very simple, and as plain-living almost and plain-spoken as the peasants he sprang from. All his people are long dead, and the little house where he was born levelled to the ground; so it must have been a lonely home-coming for him when he arrived that May day now more than five years ago, and, walking into the wretched little "Brandon Arms", asked if he could have a bed and board for a few days.

I believe the people round about would have made a great fuss over him, if he had not quietly and shyly slipped through their fingers. He made nothing like a public appearance, but spent his time walking about by himself revisiting the places he had known in childhood. When he left, in about ten days after he had arrived, the only tangible signs that he had ever come were the magnificent cheques he sent the Rector and Father O'Sullivan, to be used as they thought well among the poor people.

But he carried off our Pierce. He had come upon him fishing, and had sat and talked with him the length of an afternoon, while the May-flies danced above the water, and Pierce filled his basket with beautiful silver trout.

The next day Mr. Desmond called, and sent in his card to Aline. The first we heard of him was that Aline had invited him to lunch, which consisted of Pierce's trout, cooked as only Oona knows how. He came two or three times afterwards, and then we heard that Pierce was to go to Africa with him. Pierce seemed fascinated by the man. So indeed did Hugh and Donald, whose noses at that time were not much more than above the table-cloth, but their scent was as keen all the time for danger and adventure as if they stood six feet in their stockings.

Aline said to us over and over during those days that it was a great thing for Pierce to have found such a friend as Mr. Desmond, and that he couldn't always be at home doing nothing, and that maybe he would become a great man himself, and build up the Brandon fortunes again; to all of which we gave a cheerful assent, though the tears were big in Aline's eyes. We had great food for speculation then about what would be the extent of Pierce's fortune when he came home, and how much it would take to put Brandon on its legs again.

However, all that proved quite futile. Mr. Desmond and Pierce had been together only a couple of years when, for some reason, they quarrelled and separated.

Meanwhile Aline has long worn that look of expectation, which means, we know, that she hopes any day may bring Pierce, or news that he is coming. Every month his room, the upper room of the octagon, is turned out, and afterwards Aline herself puts it to rights, setting all the things tidily just as Pierce left them, in the old untidy fashion. His rod and fishing-tackle, his pipes, his gun, his cricketing things, and all his old rubbish she dusts and sets back in their places. If Pierce walked in any day he would find the room ready for him. Every night, long after I am in bed, I know that Aline's light is burning, for our rooms communicate, and a long shaft of gold comes in under the door after my candle has been extinguished. I do not hear her moving about, and then I know that she is praying for Pierce.

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