Changeling, and Other Stories
with lightning. There are the far places of the world calling to Irish
adventurers. There are careers calling for vitality and ambition. And
what young woman dare presume to bother poets when there are great
purple mountains to enthrall them, and wooded glens and the crashing
sea? And winds like wine. The crooning of great romantic ghosts. And
an Irish poet is not a pale man to be comforted by women, but a lithe,
muscular man with a sword.
Also, in Ireland is little marriage or giving in marriage, if we except
the peasantry and the very poor. The young men spread their wings to
go abroad, and when they return it is usually with a foreign bride, so
that there are convents innumerable in that country, also many mad
women at large, as in politics. Unless a girl is very rich she has
little chance of a happy marriage. A title may help her, curates and
captains in the army having a belief that the daughters of earls will
help them to preferment; also, it sounds well, they think--the Reverend
Septimus and Lady Jones, Captain and Lady Plantagenet Murphy. There
are sadder things in Ireland than the weeping skies.
But though the right of marriage may be often denied them, young Irish
girls have always their inalienable right of dreams. Soft winds and
nodding flowers and sun going down on the western hills, and with the
twilight comes always a love. Out of the blue twilight and soft wind
they weave a magical life of love that will be always young, of a world
that will be ever kind, of little dark children and loyal friends, of
the pageantry of foreign cities, of triumphs for their own beauty and
the lover's ability. The skies are always blue in their dreams, and
tragedies there are none, nor any sordidness. And they grow old so
peacefully in their dreams, so gracefully, and death comes so gently,
so kindly--the lover always by, always young, always loving.... Out of
the blue twilight and soft wind they dream their dreams, and they never
notice that the blue of the twilight has become a threatening black,
and the soft wind has withdrawn in itself with the set sun, as a flower
does, and all of a sudden it has grown cold, damp, and lonely and cold.
The dream of Margery was around Mount Kyteler. It seemed to her that
the house, and the garden and the trees, and the old servants, and the
drowsing dogs, and the ancient steeplechaser out to grass were all part
of the French nursery, "_La Belle au Bois Dormant_," "The Beauty in the
Sleeping Wood." And one day the princely lover would come, breaking
through the hedge of Irish stillness, and Mount Kyteler would bloom
again. The backs of the gardeners would straighten and the maids
become young again. And by some strange magical process the
steeplechaser would again win races, and the old dog win ribbons, and
children would stumble under the tall trees, as she had stumbled twenty
years before. All this would happen with the coming of the prince, all
this she could see, but his features she could not plainly see. Only
she knew this, that his face would be shining with love and smiles.
V
So that when she met him she did not recognize him at first, nor for
many days afterward. On his face were puzzlement and a frown. A
clean-cut, red-headed man, he was standing in the road on a frosty
November morning, when she was out walking a brace of foxhound puppies.
The puppies seemed delighted at the sight of him, all but tearing the
leash from her hand.
"Could you tell me," he asked, "where Tallaght is?" He pulled the ears
of the foxhound puppies.
"You 're in Tallaght," she said.
He looked incredulously at the scattered houses.
"Is this--"
"Yes. Is there any place in particular you 're looking for?"
"No," he said, "just Tallaght."
"Well, you have Tallaght." She laughed a little at his rueful
expression. "You seem surprised."
"I am," he laughed. "For many years, when I was a child, I have been
hearing about Tallaght, until it had assumed tremendous proportions for
me, and now--"
"Abroad?"
"Yes."
"Australia?"
"No. America."
"What are you looking for? The old homestead?"
"No," he said; "I don't think there ever was an old homestead. There
might have been a little cabin somewhere, but it was n't here." He
laughed. "I 'll tell you. My father was an old Fenian, and he was at
Tallaght when they gathered to descend on Dublin, but for some reason
or other the battle was not fought, nor the enemy driven into the sea,
nor anything. And my father, with a lot of others, fled to America.
But I had an impression of a mountain pass and camp fires and great
guns."
"It rained all night, did n't it? Did your father say?"
"No, he never mentioned the rain."
She liked this man, she told herself directly. The big, clean look of
him, his gray eyes and red hair, his splendid teeth. Also there was
something about him so easy. He was Irish; no mistaking that. But
pleasant, fine Irish. It was not always you met them pleasant and
sincere. And this man was sincere. This man was not inimical. They
would make a nice pair, she thought simply, he big and clear-eyed and
red, herself slim and dark.
"Could I bother you again?" he asked. "How do I get to the railway
station?"
"I 'm going that way, if you care to come."
There was a nice chivalry about him; she felt that as they walked
together. Was that American? she wondered.
"May I ask you something? Are most Americans like you?"
"Yes," he said, "of course."
She was puzzled. She had an impression that all Americans were called
"Silas" and twanged, "I guess." Also, they chewed gum. There was
something wrong.
"You are n't called Silas, are you?"
"No; Richard. Did you think all Americans were called Silas?"
"Something like that," she admitted. And they looked at each other and
laughed. She had a joyous feeling that the maids at home would
disapprove of this strongly. And that the old gardeners would tremble
with rage. But the dogs approved.
"What sort of time are you having in Ireland?"
"Not so good," he admitted. "I 've been here a week, and the only
friends I 've made are cab-drivers. Also, I have a bowing acquaintance
with a head waiter."
"Cab-drivers are good fun," she ruminated.
They were at the station now.
"Look here," she said suddenly as she was leaving: "if you are having a
rotten time like that in Dublin, and know nobody, it must be lonely! I
wonder--" She looked at him fearlessly. "Look here: if you 'd care
to, come out and see me at Mount Kyteler--my name 's Kyteler. There
are dogs and horses and an old house you might like to see."
"May I? Thanks. My name's O'Conor. I 'll come, then, Miss Kyteler."
"Lady Margery Kyteler."
"Do I call you all that? Lady Margery Kyteler?"
"No. Just Lady Margery."
"Lady Margery! That's nice."
When he came, he came with a great armful of flowers, which Margery
received with a smile and courtesy, and turned over to Rose Ann. He
seemed scrubbed, so glistening was he. How like an old friend he was,
with his firm handshake and laughing eyes.
"Now," he said, "I 'd like the worst over."
"What is the worst?"
"Oh, meeting people. Your relatives. The Lady This and the Lady That,
and the countess, and the duke. Above all, the duke."
"There are none," she said. "I live here by myself."
"All by yourself, in this big house?"
"Yes."
"Might I ask, are you married?"
"No-o-o," she pondered. "Um, no."
He looked at her incredulously. He had never in his life seen any one
so beautiful, he thought. The small face, the soft and sweet and
smiling dark eyes, the hair like a perfumed dark cap on a head whose
sweet shape he could imagine. And the supple figure in the frock that
was close in the bosom and belled like a dancer's from the waist down.
"Well, that beats--" he murmured.
"Beats hell, doesn't it?" She finished for him.
"These old pictures, some of them are good." She smiled. "That's
Gilles de Kyteler--not the one who came with Strongbow but a later one.
And that's Fulke Kyteler, who rebelled with Silken Thomas, and tried to
burn the Archbishop of Cashel in his own cathedral. They were very
disappointed when they found the archbishop had slipped out. And
that--" she pointed to a polished oval of black stone, framed in
antique silver--"is Dame Alice Kyteler's magical mirror. She was the
greatest of the Irish witches."
She gave him tea and listened to him talk of America and of his work
there. He was some sort of engineer, building bridges. She got an
impression of him standing on an artifice of some kind, with plans in
his hand, directing a whole crowd of workmen. He had been in Brazil
and in China.
"You must be a good engineer," she said in her direct way.
"I 'm supposed to be a very good engineer," he laughed.
"Do you make a great deal of money?"
"A good deal. Not a great deal."
"I 'm glad," she said. He looked at her in surprise. She was dusting
her fingers daintily, but her eyes smiled. She was really glad. And
he said to himself, "My soul! we 're friends."
She took him into the garden, and he laughed.
"And I brought you flowers." There was a little shade of
disappointment in his laugh.
"Indeed and indeed--" she looked him in the eyes and lied
sweetly--"'Twas I needed them, for it's the devil and all for me to get
any flowers out of my own garden. My two old gardeners are that mean!
Darby 'd begrudge me a daisy for fear it 'd leave an unsightly gap in
the grass. There he is, watching me for fear I 'll pull a leaf.
Darby, this is Mr. O'Conor, and I 'm showing him the garden."
"If he 'd come fifteen years ago, your Ladyship, or even ten years ago,
he 'd have seen the like would have made his heart glad. But in the
latter years, with the bad weather that's in it, now too much rain and
now not enough rain at all, and the wind that nothing is a shelter
against, and the soil that's growing poor, for all the time that's
spent on it, till it's hard to rear anything, even a head o' cabbage
itself--m'lady, will you for God's sake leave off pulling at that
hedge?"
She took him to see old Fenian in the paddock, and she liked the way he
pulled the jumper's ears, ran his firm hand down the fetlocks.
"Was he a great horse?"
"Nearly the greatest of his day," she answered. "He never won a Grand
National, but was third twice and second once. He had a great heart.
No horse tried harder. The people loved him.... Kelleher, this is Mr.
O'Conor, from America."
"From America, is it, your Ladyship? Oh, sure, they 've fine horses
over there. But they 've got to come to us for the hunters. Begging
your Ladyship's pardon, but was your Honor ever in Kansas City?"
"I was."
"D' your Honor ever meet a man named Hannigan out there? Red Hannigan,
they called him, a holy terror for bloody murder, the same man was."
"I don't think so."
"He was n't as red as your Honor--begging your pardon--but sandy like.
And he carried his head on one side on account of a belt in the gob he
got in a wee argument out at the Lamb Doyle's."
"He must have gone when I got there."
"He must have, your Honor, or you 'd have met him. A genius for
horses, the same Red. 'T was he cured Colonel Nolan's charger of
biting. 'Roast a leg of lamb,' he told them, 'and take it out of the
oven mad hot, and when he offers to bite,' says he, let him bite into
that. By God! he 'll never bite again.' And he never did."
Came at last the time for leaving.
"I wonder," he ventured, "I wonder if I could get you to come in and
have dinner and go to the theater. I don't know what kind of a theater
it is, but would you?"
How like a flower she herself was, he thought--the white stalk of her