Changeling, and Other Stories
moved with the slow dignity of a queen.
She threw her cloak off and Joe took it from her, and as it fell Grant
caught one instantaneous glimpse of her that effectually wiped the
Brooklyn girl from his mind, like a sponge passing over a chalked
slate. He saw first the great mass of black hair knotted at the back
of her head, which seemed less like hair than a splash of dim, vivid
color; and from a side view he saw the small nose, with the sensitive
nostrils, as clearly cut as the nose on an intaglio; and the line of
chin sweeping down, as it were, in one soft, firm stroke. That was all
he saw for a minute--that and the flush on her cheeks.
"How are you?" she said to his mother. "And how are you, Mr. Grant?
And Joe?" She turned to Grant, looked at him for an instant and put
out her hand. "And this is Willie John," she said. "You 've been a
long time away, Willie John."
He saw, as he looked at her, how very gray her eyes were, and how very
deep--like orifices through which light shone--and how very steady. He
noticed that her mouth was firm, and that she seemed to have lived each
instant of her twenty-seven years; and still she was a woman with the
first flush of beauty on her. She turned away to talk to his mother
and he saw for the first time that her servant-girl was with her. So
engrossed had he been with her entry, and so shocked by seeing her
beauty, that he had seen only her.
"I 'm going to have the flax pulled on the ten-acre," she was
saying--and Grant felt every syllable of her low contralto strike him
clear and compelling--"so I 'm asking the neighbors fair and early. My
father 's dead, Willie John--" she turned to Grant for a moment--"and I
've the place on my hands."
"Ay; I heard that, Eunice," he said. "I was sorry to hear it."
"You 'll be going back soon?" she asked.
"I 'll be going back very soon now," he said. "In a couple of weeks at
most."
"I 've been wanting him to stay and settle down," his father broke in;
"but there 's no use talking to him."
"Ah, there's nothing for a man here," he answered disgustedly. "It's
on the other side a man gets his chance--ay, and a woman, too, for that
matter."
"Is that so?" Eunice uttered; and she caught him with her serious gray
eyes.
"There was Joe Carragher's daughter, from Balleek," he instanced; "you
knew her well. She went over six years ago and now she 's a lady's
maid in one of the big houses on Fifth Avenue. A grand position!"
"Is that so?" she repeated; her eyes had narrowed a little and she was
studying him intently.
"Then there was Patrick Hagan, the brother of the captain in the Dublin
Fusiliers. He 's got a saloon on Third Avenue and does a grand
business."
"That's the devil's business, Willie John," his mother said quietly.
It was the first time since he came back that he had seen her without a
smile on her lips.
"It's different on the other side, I tell you," Grant commented with
asperity. "And there's Barney Doyle, that went over before me; he 's
head waiter in one of the big places on Broadway. Do you know that
fellow makes as much as seventy dollars a week in tips? Seventy
dollars! Fourteen pounds!"
"His father was a great lawyer." Old Grant shook his head. "God be
good to him! They called him the Star of the North."
"Fourteen pounds a week--in tips!"
Grant thought he could detect a chill, contemptuous tone in the Doran
girl's voice; but he put the thought out of his head, for why should
she be contemptuous? She drew her blue cloak about her.
"I think I 'll be going," she said.
"I 'll leave you a bit of the road," Grant offered.
They went out and down the loaning. Overhead a great white moon
showed, a great silver plate of a thing whose beams scintillated in
minute gossamer threads. Before them the road ran, as white as the
moon, and everything showed in a faint purple--trees, fields, the
singing river on the left of them, and the hill that rose between them
and the sea. A little breeze was stirring and they could hear a soft
soughing from the trees and a murmur from the beach. Somewhere behind
them, on the Yellow Road probably, a corn-crake was venting its
harmoniously raucous cry.
They stopped and looked about them. Beneath them the great plain of
Louth lay, which Maeve of Connaught had once raided at the head of a
hundred thousand men. And as Grant looked at it in the subtle
moonlight the memory of forgotten legends came to him in vague
uncoördinated fragments. There was Slieve Gullion behind him, where
Cuala, the great artificer, hammered on his magic anvil night and day,
and up whose slopes Finn MacCool had pursued the white deer without
horns.
And in front of him was the sea, where for thrice three hundred years
the Children of Lir had mourned in the guise of white swans. And on
the hill beside him was the fortress of Bricriu of the poisoned tongue,
whose satires killed men and withered the leaves on the green trees.
Suddenly he heard Eunice's voice addressing him.
"I suppose you 've done well for yourself, Willie John?" she asked.
"Ay; I 've done well," he told her. "I 've got a business over there
worth ten thousand dollars. And I 've built it up in twelve years."
"Ten thousand dollars!" she mused. "Two thousand pounds; that's a good
deal. That's half as much as your brother Joe made, and it's a great
deal more than I have myself."
"Brother Joe made!" he muttered in a tone of amazement.
"Yes--your brother Joe made," she answered naïvely. "He 's made as
much as four thousand pounds trading in cattle between here and
England, and buying horses for the Italian Government."
"Twenty thousand dollars!" Grant said, dumb-founded. "Brother Joe!"
"And you 've more than I have," she continued mercilessly. "The Cliff
Farm is worth only eighteen hundred pounds. That's only nine thousand
of your dollars."
He answered nothing, for a quick sense of shame suddenly suffused him
when he remembered how much he had talked, and the others keeping so
dumb. Something began tumbling very fast about him. They went up the
hill and suddenly the sea stretched before them, sheer through to
England, a vast surface of shimmering ripples, where the moon touched,
and here and there white curling waves. And beneath them it murmured
on the beach in a steady crooning. The breeze blew landward and
pressed about them firmly in a cool, even motion. To the right the
Cliff Farm lay, softly white, and a faint scent came down from its
orchard. The servant-girl passed through the gate and up toward the
house.
"America 's a great country!" Grant said aloud.
He did not know why he said it. Perhaps it was because he could find
nothing else to say, and perhaps it was a sort of incantation,
conjuring away the doubts that were rising in his mind.
Eunice made no answer. And as he looked at her, standing there in the
moonlight and the breeze, the old affection he had for her a dozen
years ago rose within him, and he wondered whether he should n't put
his arm about her and kiss her for old times' sake. But the idea left
him as soon as it came, for the thought of trifling with her seemed a
desecration.
"It's a great place!" he said again lamely.
She swung around upon him suddenly, savagely, her head tilted, her eyes
flashing. The cloak behind her stood backward with the breeze; and as
he watched her, amazed, petrified almost, the thought of dead ancient
Irish women flashed through his brain--Maeve, the fighting queen of
Connaught; and Deirdre, who dashed herself dead against a rock; and
Grainne, the king's daughter, who fled to follow Diarmuid of the Spears.
"Then why don't you stay there?" she uttered passionately.
"Why don't I stay there?" he repeated blankly.
"Why don't you stay there?" she said again. "You come back here--you
and your like--with a smile on your mouth and a sneer in your eye. You
come back here in your fine clothes, that you 've sweated day and night
for, and taken charity to get--ay, charity! What's tips but
charity?--And you lord it round for a while and tell us what fools we
are--and patronize us. Patronize us!"
She swung round and fronted the low-lying land with the faint blue heat
haze of summer over it, touched into silver in the June moon. The
muscles of her throat were throbbing. She was poised on her feet like
a bird ready for flight.
"Look down there at your father's farm," she told him. Her hand
stretched toward it and her gray eyes blazed in his face. "Look at it
well! Look at the corn that's green, and the rye ripening, and the
stacked haggard. Look at the trees in the orchard and the fruit
hanging from them, and the river alive with trout, and the mountain
with its grouse and hares. And then go back to your grand business and
fumble the halfpence in your greasy till!"
He said nothing. Mechanically his eyes followed her hand where it
pointed, and every word ate its meaning into his brain as if etched by
strong acid.
"Ay!" he said dully.
"Have you eyes to see, man?" She bent toward him with her hands
outstretched and her face aflame with anger. "Or have you ears to
hear? Or has groping for coppers made you blind like a mole? Or the
tinkle of tuppences deafened you the like of a bat?"
"I 've got eyes," he answered sullenly.
"Use them, then!" she snapped. "And when you go back to your grand
business, stop making a poor mouth about Ireland. Don't whine the like
of a beggar in the street. Stop your talk about poverty-stricken
Ireland, and oppressed Ireland and lazy Ireland. We 've got money here
as well as you, for all your grand business; and we've got pride; and
we 've got strength. And we don't want anybody talking about our
sorrows, and the nations pitying us in the four corners of the earth."
He said nothing, but his face had gone white; and every now and then he
winced, as though he had been caught by a whip. He wished to Heaven
she would stop; and still, back in him, something had awakened that
yearned to be lashed into life.
"I heard you wanted your father and mother to go back to America with
you and partake of the grand business. Look at that farm-house again.
Your grandfather built that with granite hewn from his own quarry. And
you want them to leave that and to go off with you and grub in a
huckster's booth! God's glory and the blue sky over us!"
There was the rapid flapping of wings and they saw a wedge of birds in
the moonlight. Suddenly they caught the shrill clamor of the barnacle
goose.
"Even the birds," she uttered with scorn, "even the birds have sense.
They 're happy when they get back from roving. Not like you and your
like, Willie John. If you want to go, go! And God go with you! If
you want to stay, stay--and you're welcome. But don't come back for a
while, croaking like a magpie chattering over a ruined hearth."
She turned to him, and the agitation and passion seemed to leave her by
a great effort of will. Her hands unclenched and her voice grew calm,
with even a queer crooning melody in it; but her bosom heaved
tumultuously.
"I liked you once, Willie John," she said. "I thought there was the
makings of a big man in you. I mind the time at the football, and you
running down the field like a hare, and no one to catch or trip you.
And at the fairs I mind you putting the horses through their paces like
a jockey born. And at throwing the weight there was no one of your
size or years that could best you. Ay! I mind you, and your dogs
following you, and your head high up in the air. I thought well of you
that time, Willie John. I thought there was no one like you." She
raised herself to her full height and looked at him squarely. "But
now," she said, "I 'd rather have a stray tinker that does be traveling
the roads."