Part 2

It was some while longer, however, before she ventured to touch upon it in conversation with old Timothy; nor did she then make any point-blank statement. She introduced the subject allusively and implicitly. “That _is_ an exceedingly safe place where you keep the plate now, Timothy, isn’t it?” she said to him one day when she was helping him to lay the table, by following him with a little sheaf of spoons as he hobbled round it. Her brown frock was hidden beneath a white cambric pinafore, and her large eyes glinted wistfully through a soft cloud of hair.

“It is so bedad, missy,” said the old man resignedly, “we’ve took good care of that.”

“How many people do _you_ think it would take to lift off the lid of the chest?” said Eileen.

“Is it the led, Miss Eily? Troth, now, they’d be bothered to do that on us at all, if they was as many as they plased, and the kay of it put away out of the raich of them—or the likes of them,” old Timothy said, arbitrarily blackening her colourless term.

“Oh, then, it’s locked?” said Eileen.

“To be sure it is, Miss Eily. Why now, if it wasn’t, you might as well be gad’rin’ the things together handy for villins to run away wid thim convanient. But ah, sure, you’re innicent yet, Miss Eily, and small blame to you, or you’d understand the raison of kays.”

“So I do, Timothy,” said Eileen. “It’s villins. But I think I don’t quite understand the reason of _them_.”

She went away pondering. This locking of the chest compelled her to modify somewhat the details of the opening scene. However, she quickly re-arranged them completely to her satisfaction, and her fondness for visiting the site of it did not diminish. About this time she began to be allowed to ramble out unattended, for old nurse went invalided home, and Eileen had acquired the character of a quiet, sensible child, not apt to get into mischief. The use she made of her liberty was a daily pilgrimage up to the big stone, where she dreamed away many pleasant hours, largely occupied with plans for the future, when she should have found that key. Sometimes she brought the _Glittering Hoard_ book up with her, and read it there to whet the edge of anticipation; but in general she was content to weave a dazzling fabric out of the material supplied her by old Timothy’s reminiscences.

Should anybody hence infer that Eileen Fitzmaurice must have been in her early youth an avaricious sort of person, he cannot be flatly contradicted; for so she was, in a way. But in a way it was. Her theories about the privileges of property were peculiar, and restrictive. For instance, in her definition “my own” meant merely “promptly transferable”; and the Paradise she supposed was a place where everybody else would like everything that she had. Here, the failure of her few possessions to please other people not infrequently caused her disappointment; and she occasionally thought scorn of herself for having only trifles to offer so scant and paltry. Sometimes, indeed, it was nothing better than a bunch or so of blackberries, perhaps wanting still several shades of their mature glossy jet, which she had torn hands as well as frock in extricating from among their barbed briers—the greediest child never plucked with a more eager recklessness. When she could meet with no friend who was imprudent or complaisant enough to accept these spoils, she would, a little crestfallen and regretful, scatter them on some walk or window-stool, in hopes that at least the small birds might condescend to benefit thereby. She was all the more dependent upon opportunities for bestowing such a tangible proof of her regard, because she seldom had any for others of the less material kind. Her mother was too drearily isolated by ill-health and despondency to be within reach of caresses, while her aunt Geraldine was mostly absent, inhabiting some remote volume, and seemed to be rather bored by the people whom she encountered in her brief visits to the outer world. The acquisition of the wonderful chest, however, would release Eileen from these straitened circumstances, as its contents would surely comprise what could not but give satisfaction to all. She could scarcely believe that anybody, not even poor mamma, who only pretended so badly to care about her presents of wild flowers and the like, could really be indifferent to the set of six little silver salt-cellars shaped like water-lilies, which old Timothy described so fondly. It might be possible also to provide Aunt Geraldine with something of which she should not say hurriedly, coming reluctantly out of her book: “Oh, thank you, my dear child, but what use would it be to _me_?” Then there were Norah Kinsella, and old nurse, and old Timothy, and after them a small crowd of neighbours, very adequately representing the population of Glendoula, so catholic being Eileen’s good will that there was hardly a dresser in the hamlet on which some brilliant object should fail to shine. And if anything remained over after the distribution, she thought to herself that she would leave it for the villins, who would no doubt be much disappointed, supposing they ever did come to look and found nothing at all. Such plans as these were commonly in her mind as she toiled up and trotted down the smooth-swarded steps, where the thread-like track of her footsteps slowly began to follow them.

* * * * *

Generally Eileen went to and fro quite alone beneath the spacious domed skies, which seemed to make no more account of her than of the rabbits, who played here and there on the side of the hill. The rabbits evidently did not think much of her either, and hid themselves when she came near without any great show of flurry or fright, rather intimating by their demeanour that they had simply no wish to make her acquaintance. But Eileen used to watch them wistfully from their prescribed distance, and think to herself that they looked enviably sociable and friendly together. Sometimes, too, she wished that her tame robin would hop along with her farther than to the end of the holly walk, but it never would; and one day the black cat ate it, all except a fluff of heart-rending feathers, no doubt to warn her that her desires were vain. For destiny had assigned her little intercourse with her fellow-creatures.

Once, however, she had a companion for a while. It was during her seventh summer, when her cousin Pierce Wilmot spent his holidays at Glendoula House. Just at first Eileen found this an experience as alarming as it was novel. Breakfast and luncheon became such serious ordeals when she had to confront a great-sized stranger—Pierce was about double her age and much more than twice as big—concerning whom the furtive glances she ventured upon gave her an impression of a very black head, and eyebrows as dark and straight as if they had been ruled with pen and ink. She thought he looked ferocious, and privately inquired of Norah whether holidays were _many_ days.

But on the second morning, after breakfast, this forbidding person suddenly said to her: “Come along, little Bright-Eyes, and show me everything.” At which address her terror culminated, and then, as terrors sometimes do, toppled over into nothing at all. A few minutes later they were going about together quite amicably out of doors. Pierce was so immeasurably Eileen’s superior in age and all its privileges that he had no need to assert his dignity by keeping her at a distance—as the rabbits did—and they fraternised apace. The July morning was still freshly fair, with a twinkling trail of dew shifting along from blade to leaf up the sun-lit sward, as the moon’s silver-spun wake shifts over a rippled water, and with gossamer threads, that might have been ravelled out of a rainbow, woven between furze and broom bushes, when Eileen and Pierce began to ascend Slieve Ardgreine. For one of the first things she had to show him was her stone chest. She took an especial pleasure in doing so, because she very seldom had an opportunity of even talking about it to anybody, the matter being, she felt, a family affair, which she could not with propriety enter upon except to old confidential Timothy, whose distaste for the subject she was bound to respect.

“Why, _you’ll_ never get up there,” Pierce said with some incredulity, when, in answer to his inquiry whither he was being taken, Eileen pointed to the ridge above their heads, “_Were_ you ever up so high?” he asked, doubtfully.

Eileen would have been very sorry to let him perceive how absurd she thought this curious misconception, and she only replied: “Every fine day, if they don’t say the grass is too boggy altogether. And old Murtagh says I skyte up as fast as his Cruiskeen going after a rabbit.”

On the way up, Eileen gave her companion, whose life seemed to have been spent chiefly in towns, a good deal of information about common natural objects. Some of this she had excogitated for herself during her solitary rambles, and it appeared to surprise and amuse him rather unaccountably. Her explanation, for instance, of how the hedgehogs came and stuck themselves over with the withered spines of the furze-bushes, that had dropped off mottled and grey. Among other things she showed him two or three rabbit-holes; but here it was Pierce who had new facts to impart. “So that’s where they sleep, is it?” he said, “I always thought they hung themselves up like bats, head downwards against a wall; at any rate, that’s how they manage in Dublin.”

“That _is_ funny,” said Eileen; “I don’t think they ever do here. And I suppose they drop down when they awake?”

“Oh, I rather fancy they never do awake,” said Pierce.

“Never at all? Are you quite sure, now, that they’re not _dormouses_, Pierce?” said Eileen wisely.

“Am I sure that you’re not an elephant, Miss Eileen?” he said, mimicking her. “But I can tell you that if I can borrow a gun, I’ll soon teach your rabbits the same trick. Why, haven’t you ever been in a poulterer’s shop”—Eileen never had—“and seen them hanging up?”

“Oh,” said Eileen. She disliked guns and shooting, and moreover became suddenly aware that she must have displayed a ridiculous stupidity about Pierce’s joke. This made her turn disconcertedly pink, so that Pierce was afraid he must have hurt her feelings, which he had not meant to do. Therefore he was glad to find, when a few minutes afterwards they reached the big stone, that she had evidently quite forgotten any little vexation in the excitement of relating its wonderful romance. He was careful to listen with such interest, and seemingly so fully share all her sentiments, that she very soon ventured upon confiding to him a particular anxiety which had of late grown up in her mind. “Do you see what a small keyhole it has?” she said, pointing to a little round orifice which occurred high up on one side of the block, and the discovery of which had been to her a source both of hopes and fears. “Only a tiny little _pinny_ key would fit into it. Wouldn’t you think it would take a bigger one to open a box like this?” As the hole barely admitted the tip of her forefinger, it could not be considered roomy, but Pierce replied with decision: “The largest box in the world might be opened with the smallest key that ever was made”; and one of her haunting fears being thus dispelled, she produced another, which took this form: “Well, but supposing the people somehow _lost_ the key, then I suppose the box couldn’t ever be opened again, even if the person that the things in it were belonging to did live to be as much as twenty—old enough to be let have them, you know?” And again Pierce could re-assure her. “Why, there’d be nothing easier than to get another key made. One takes an impression of the lock with cobbler’s wax; _I_ could do it myself. So if they lose it on you, little Bright-Eyes, just send word to me, and I’ll come and settle it for you.” Eileen looked grateful and relieved. “It won’t be for a long while, but I’ll not forget,” she said.

As they returned down the hill she said: “I wonder whether there is that very fine sort of sword in this chest too. I hope so, and perhaps there may be, only old Timothy never told me. I must ask him about it, and if there is one, Pierce, I’ll give it to you.”

“And then I’d maybe kill you with it,” Pierce said, absently joking, for just at that time he was speculating upon his chances of getting a shot at the rabbits. But Eileen replied quite solemnly: “I don’t believe you’d ever like to do that on purpose—at any rate, not unless I growed up very detestfully nasty; and you’re too big to do anything by accident.” And she proceeded home, much cheered by the event of their walk.

* * * * *

Less satisfactory was the result of an interview which she had shortly afterwards with old Timothy. For, in the first place, she regretted to hear that “he couldn’t be sure, but he thought it noways likely there would be a sword, or any such description of an ould skiverin’ conthrivance, put up along with the good plate; at all events, he never remimbered any talk of e’er a one—not to his knowledge.” And still more mortifying than this, she quickly perceived that the old butler had no liking for her cousin. What Timothy said on the subject was exactly as follows:—“Goin’ out wid Master Pierce, missy jewel? Och well, to be sure, he’s a fine young gentleman, considherin’. If the night’s black enough, the baste’s white enough, as Andy Goligher said, and he misdhrivin’ home the wrong Kerry bullock.” An aphorism the application of which may seem rather obscure to the undiscerning, but which Eileen quite clearly understood as an intimation that of Master Pierce Timothy thought poorly, and she was sorry for this, as she would have liked her old and her new acquaintance to be friends.

The grounds of Timothy’s prejudice, however, she did not guess. The fact was that he had a few days before scowlingly from his pantry window espied Master Pierce “discoorsin’ as plisant as anythin’” with young Larry M‘Farlane, “that was sister’s son to ould Pather Doran, and bad luck to _him_.” Now, maybe as many as a dozen years ago, Timothy and Pather had differed in a discussion about the proper season for sowing asparagus, and one of Pather’s arguments had been: “That it was no great thanks to Timothy if he _had_ sted a goodish while wid the Family, and he, you might say, tied to thim be the leg like a strayin’ jackass.” Pather’s allusion was to the effects of an accident, which, met with by Timothy on the cellar-stairs at Drumlough Castle in his youth, had left him a hobbler for life; and since the controversy Pather and he “weren’t spakin’.” Therefore, now, if Master Pierce chose “to be great wid a one of that pack, and to go sthreelin’ up the hill wid him after the rabbits,” it was only natural that old Timothy should entertain no high opinion of so indiscriminating a person.

But his veiled disparagement did not check the progress of a real friendship between the cousins, and when the end of Pierce’s holidays came, Eileen thought they had not been nearly many enough. On the regretful evening before he went, they paid a farewell visit to the big boulder, and, standing by it, Eileen said forlornly: “Next time I’ll only be myself.”

“Perhaps I may be here again next summer,” Pierce said encouragingly. He had already learned by experience that even twelve months are not interminable.

“I wish it would be next year always,” said Eileen. “For that’s the time when people come back. The Widow Shanahan’s son’s coming home from the States next year, please goodness; but she says she’ll not be in this world then, so he might as well stop where he’s gettin’ the fine wages. Norah says that she means that she’ll be dead. I wonder who told her, or how she knows. _You_ don’t know how soon you are going to die, Pierce, do you?”

“Not I, nor anybody else,” said Pierce.

“I wanted to give her her little silver jug,” said Eileen; “she’s to have the little fat one that’s gilt inside and has two spouts, because it’s the nicest, and she’s to be pitied, the dear knows, Norah says, with one thing and the other. But if she goes and dies first, I never can. Do you think she’d wait a while, if I told her about it as a secret?”

“She mightn’t be able,” said Pierce.

“Ah, and then it would only tantinglise her,” said Eileen, “so I’d better not. But I’m sorry.”

“Don’t forget that you must send me word, if they lose the key, and you want another,” Pierce said to change the subject.

“I’ll remember,” said Eileen. “But I’ll have to keep on living for ever so much longer before they’ll let me want it. You see, I’ll not be twenty-one even next year, I should think.”

“I should think not indeed, Miss Eileen,” said Pierce; “you’re no age worth speaking of at all.”

They were now descending the hill, and for some way Eileen mused vainly about possible remedies for this deplorable state of affairs. “I wish,” she said at length, “that a great many days would happen all together sometimes—in bunches like the black and white currants, instead of one by one and one by one: ever so long they last, when there’s nobody here but me. One might get old pretty quick then. Wouldn’t you like it better, Pierce?”

“Well, no,” said Pierce. “If the days were used up that way, there’d be so little time for doing anything. Mostly they’re short enough; and there’s no hurry about getting old, as you call it—an old woman of twenty—you’re a queer young person, Eileen.”

“I was only thinking,” said Eileen, “that perhaps I mightn’t be able to wait a great while, any more than the Widow Shanahan. And it would be a pity if I wasn’t in this world when the chest is opened”; and although Pierce replied: “Oh, nonsense; where else should you be?” she continued to contemplate this contingency in sad silence as they trotted down after their perch-long shadows over the sunny turf with its jewelled embroideries of golden trefoil and pearly eyebright, and dim amethystine thyme. But when they had just come to the gap in the dyke, where you step across two flat stones into the highest field, a somewhat consolatory thought struck her. It was: “Perhaps, then, they’d give all those things to you, Pierce, and I’ve told you what everybody’s to have, so mind you don’t forget.”

She was so engrossed by the idea that she nearly tripped over the unheeded stones, and her heir and executor, preventing her tumble, said: “Oh, it will be all right, never fear; but meanwhile, little Bright-Eyes, you’d better not break your neck. We’ll both of us have grand times when I come with the key.”

* * * * *

Eileen had many of her long years, almost nine, in fact, during which she might have forgotten Pierce and his promises, but she never did. Only once in all that time did anything happen to remind her of them, and that was on the Christmas after his visit, when Tom Roe, the postman, brought the first letter that had ever been addressed to Miss Eileen Fitzmaurice. Being opened hastily, it was found to contain a little white cardboard box, within which lay among rosy cloudlets of marvellous pink cotton-wool a tiny silver key, sent to Eileen by her cousin Pierce—her affectionate cousin, Pierce’s mother, who put up the packet for him, had written him down without consulting him, as a matter of form. The gift filled Eileen with gratitude and delight. Yet, in the course of the morning, her Aunt Geraldine came upon her when she sat in the book-room window, eyeing her new possession with a somewhat doubtful countenance. “I’m almost afraid,” she said half-aloud, “that it isn’t quite long enough. And I never did see a key with a pin in it before.”

“Long enough for what?” said her Aunt Geraldine. “It seems to me to be a very pretty little brooch, and it was exceedingly good-natured of your cousin to think of sending you one.”

“Oh yes, indeed, and it is very pretty, as pretty as can be,” Eileen protested. She flushed distressfully at the implication of ingratitude partly, and partly at this new view of the trinket, which would involve the vanishing of its peculiar charm. “I was only thinking,” she said, “that I have poked my finger farther down the hole than this would reach; but, of course, if it’s a brooch”—Aunt Geraldine had not stayed to hear her explanation; and Eileen presently put away the little box in her drawer, feeling that something had blunted the fine edge of her pleasure.

Those nine long years passed by uneventfully. It seemed, indeed, as if fewer things and fewer happened at Glendoula. In the Big House life went on somewhat in the manner of a machine gradually slowing down. Lady Fitzmaurice grew from season to season a little more invalided and melancholy, her sister-in-law more abstracted and apathetic, old Timothy stiffer and lamer in his gait. Even the ancient grey parrot on his pole in the parlour sank deeplier into his dotage, and only grimaced silently at Eileen when she tried to start a conversation with him. Eileen herself was an exception, though perhaps potentially rather than actually, the fresh spirit of youth making less resistance than is commonly imagined for it against the coercion of dreary external circumstances. Still her disposition was naturally blithe and hopeful, and she would have been ready enough with her: O brave new world! if any fair wind had borne the good ship into her ken. But instead of that she was destined to see a woeful wreck come drifting by.

* * * * *

It was gradually, by an aggregation of rumours, faint and vague at first, that warnings of the black time impending stole into Glendoula valley, much as the wan mists creep thither from seaward, a mere smoke-wreath falling away down the purple-rifted shoulders of Slieverossan, with the murk of a sky-enfolding cloud gathered up opaquely behind them. Felix O’Riordan, returning from Clonmorragh fair one July day, first brought authentic news of how “the quare ugly blackness on the pitaties, the same that done destruction last year on the crops away down in different parts of the counthry, was desthroyin’ all before it now no farther off than Kilfintragh, just at the back of the hills.” And through the rainy harvest weather ensuing, reports of the like became as frequent as the unkindly and chilly showers that drip-dripped unseasonably over the little fields. Then fell a heavy thunderous night, with flickerings of sheet-lightning fitfully casting an evil eye through the dark, and on the morrow, when its pall lifted, there was grief and fear among the neighbours at Glendoula, for the sober green ridges looked as if a scorching breath had passed over them, and from their drooping haulms and leaves came wafted the ill-auguring odour.