The Young O'Briens: Being an Account of Their Sojourn in London — Reading Companion

to the bit of brow and head that Sheila Pat’s big coffee cup left exposed.

"I know you will, Nell," she said gently, and kissed her.

Several other passengers had arrived and sat or stood about the saloon and cabins with an air of unsettledness, of uncertainty. The last minute came suddenly at the end. There was a sort of breathless rush; injunctions, good-byes, forcedly hopeful prognostications.

"A year soon passes!" Mr. O’Brien said again.

A little later they were in the omnibus once more. There were gaps now; there was so much room to move about. Those gaps gave a poignant reality to the loneliness.

In Nell’s mind there grew up a dull wonder whether anyone could conceivably think that a year soon passes. To her the coming year stretched long and interminable; at the moment she was incapable of looking beyond it. Father and mother were gone, and home was gone too. The wonder passed, and with aching iteration there dinned in her ears—"So long as the shamrock’s growing in Ireland, will there be O’Briens in Kilbrannan." It was a prediction of an old gipsy’s. She had given it when telling Denis his fortune. That was last year, barely a year ago, and now—Nell’s lips curled with a sudden bitterness that made her young, soft face look, for the moment, older—now there were strangers in their home, and no O’Briens in Kilbrannan. She wondered tragically how it was possible to live through months such as they had lived through. Looking back, the failure of the bank in which most of her father’s money had been placed, and which had been the first misfortune to fall upon them, seemed a small calamity. She remembered the shock of it, the sorrow, with surprise now. What though they had been obliged to retrench, to pinch and try to learn the lesson of economy, they had still their home and were not separated. The grief of parting with old servants, with some of the horses, had been sharp. But they had still dear old Patsy; they had O’Leary and Gretta; and they had—Nell’s breath caught suddenly—they had Acushla, the Colleen Bawn. Her thoughts chased each other over those unhappy months. The day when her mother had so suddenly been taken ill stood out, sharp and grim. She remembered the anxious worry she had experienced when she saw that in spite of the doctor’s hopeful words, in spite of the daily improvement in the invalid, her father’s face refused to lighten. She remembered the slow growth of suspicion in her mind, so that when at last he asked her and Denis to come into the study one day, she knew they were to hear some bad news. Denis knew it too, but in their worst prognostications they had never given one thought to the possibility of having to give up their home for awhile. Even when their father had told them, they could not comprehend quite. Nell remembered how she had stood staring stupidly at the binding of one of Ruskin’s works in the book-case, where a ray of sunlight shone on it. She had found herself saying, "Sesame and Lilies." Then her eyes had followed the ray of sunshine to the windows—beyond the windows. She gave a little shudder at the memory of that moment of sudden, sharp realisation. The study faced east; its windows looked out on to great boulders of grey rock that led in a long uneven slope to the seaweed-covered rocks and the sea. The heather had been out then; the boulders were covered with it; there was a little mist in the air, so that the grey and purple mingled in a lovely haze of colour. The sea-gulls and the gannets were quarrelling over something; their voices came in at the open windows. The scent of the seaweed had come to her, too; and quite suddenly she had understood that they were to leave it all. Her father had gone on speaking; she had felt vaguely sorry for him, as she listened to his halting speech and saw the strained look on his face. But in those first minutes nothing was of moment, nothing was real, save the crushing blow that they were to leave their home; that they were to go away; that strangers were to live in it. But presently she realised that he was trying to prepare them for some further bad news. She had smiled at his thinking it necessary to prepare them; nothing mattered now. Denis had had the same feeling. He had broken into his father’s speech abruptly, roughly:—

"Tell us what it is. What does it matter, anyway?"

But Mr. O’Brien had gone on skirting the subject, preparing them.

"I have been anxious for months about those mine shares. They have gone down and down, and now they have ceased to pay any dividends at all."

He had said it before, had explained that it was because of these shares that they must let their home.

Denis said, surprised, "The Rêve d’or shares?"

"Why, yes! Oh, you mean I’ve told you that already? But I thought they were such a good investment—" he broke off, and walked quickly to the window.

"Your mother isn’t getting her strength back," he said suddenly.

They realised at once that there were still things that mattered. He went on quickly: "You needn’t be anxious. Oh, no! But Dr. O’Donovan—" he broke off, and started afresh. "You know that, as a young man, I didn’t expect to come into this—" he waved his hand impatiently around. There was an air about him now of wanting to get it over as quickly as possible; an irritated impatience made his words hurried.

"Well, you know, I studied medicine. I was a qualified doctor. It’s all settled. I’ve got the post. There’s no other way. Dr. O’Donovan says your mother must have a sea voyage. We can’t afford it. I’ve got the post of surgeon on the _Albany_—starts at end of October for Australia—sailing ship."

They knew it all at last. Thinking it over now, Nell was struck with the difference there had been from his usual manner of speaking. She knew now what it had cost him to tell them. Then she had been too absorbed in her horror to think much of anything beyond the news he had told them.

After that, in the weeks that followed, there had been the cruel carrying into effect of the news. There had been much wearisome talk. Amongst it Nell remembered one thing that had been clear and definite at once. That was Denis’s determination to do some sort of work. Mr. O’Brien wished him to study shorthand and type-writing, with a literary future in view. But Denis refused, beyond agreeing to study them in his spare time. For the rest he intended to do work that would have remuneration attached to it. Already he was fired with hope and ambition to turn the strangers from their home. Mr. O’Brien secured him a position as a clerk in a London bank, the manager of which had been a schoolfellow of his. Nell cried miserably because she wasn’t a boy. Denis shook her, and painted, in glowing colours, the great academy picture that in a few years’ time was to win her fame and fortune. But two or three years seemed such an interminable time that, mostly, her mind refused to grasp the thought.

There had been much discussion as to where they should stay while their parents were away. They were singularly destitute of relations. They had some cousins in America, and an aunt by marriage in London. They had never seen the aunt; but she happened to live near the bank where Denis had found employment. She had lately lost her mother, and with her the annuity that had helped to pay the rent of the house. She wrote suggesting that they should come to her. After much worried discussion it was settled that they should live with her for the time. Mr. O’Brien paid a small sum for their maintenance in advance, and they faced the thought of a house in a street in London.

Sheila Pat, before she left Kilbrannan, laid out a burying-ground. She dug with a dogged face, and a mind black with pictures of a London where it was always foggy—where there were nothing but muddy pavements; roads crowded with poor tired horses carrying loads too heavy for them; and tall houses packed so close together that you were stifled. She refused to lighten the picture by the admittance into it of so much as one blade of grass. She chose a spot for her burying-ground close by the little stream that gurgled so softly sometimes and roared and rushed at others. The smooth piece of grass, just by the boulders that turned the stream into a little cascade, was sheltered on the other side by a hill that rose up—grey rock, purple heather, bracken, and grass—till it seemed to meet the sky. There Sheila Pat buried her treasures. She had always scorned dolls; only once had she been presented with a doll, and within the day it had been mercilessly drowned. But she had many treasures, and she buried them, in an agony of renunciation. "Here you will have the heather and the stream, and when the wind blows from the west you’ll get the scent of the turf smoke from Biddy’s cottage." She laid a large and grinning monkey tenderly down beside a one-legged driver. "Oh, my dears, and when the wind’s in the east, you’ll get the sea,"—she hid her face in a passion of woe—"and you’ll be hearing the trees whisp’rin’ and singin’ and your Sheila Pat far away in a great, dirty London, dead with stiflin’, and only streets to walk in!"

She hugged up to her bosom a jaunty jockey, who had lost an eye and a nose.

"I’ll put you on Mavourneen—your own Mavourneen—who won the Dalgerry race for you." She seized up Mavourneen and hugged her too. "You won’t mind waitin’ for me, under the earth; for isn’t it Irish earth, Mavourneen? And weren’t you born and bred on it? But I was, too! Oh, I was, too!"

The old grey rock and the heather looked down upon a prone Atom—prone and shaking in a storm of bitter weeping—midst dogs and horses, jockeys, monkeys, and jaunting-car drivers.

No one intruded on her there. Sheila Pat had not been known to cry since her babyhood. She scorned tears; no physical hurt could break down her sturdy self-control. In those last days she was often a ludicrous Atom. Grave, self-contained, her pig-tail immaculate, she would emerge from the burying-ground, facing the world with a brave little countenance and all unaware that it was adorned with patches and streaks of dirt.

The pig-tail was generally crooked, but that was merely because Sheila Pat invariably plaited it herself. No one would do it for her; they did not approve of her mode of dressing her hair, but the Atom clung obstinately to her pig-tail, and serenely wore it over her left shoulder.

Nell, in the omnibus, glanced across at the small, still figure opposite her; a great ache seized her throat.

Suddenly Denis made a valiant effort. He broke the silence with a jocose—

"This rivals Dinny O’Sullivan’s donkey barrow! My teeth are fairly rattling in my boots!"

Nell said "yes" with weary dutifulness.

The silence fell again. He rubbed his brow, and recognised the uselessness of worrying them with such palpably unreal cheerfulness. All his castles in Spain were, for the time being, razed to the ground. With the O’Briens there was no possibility of a story or two tumbling; the whole edifice had to tower to the skies or fall flat to the ground. The omnibus drew up outside No. 35, Henley Road. They got out, and stood a moment—a forlorn little group—looking at the tall, narrow house, with, to their eyes, such an unhappy air of being wedged in too tightly between the two neighbouring houses.

"Run in and knock, while I pay up," Denis admonished them.

They trailed slowly up the flight of steps. Nell knocked. There was a pause; then they heard a step approaching the door. With a sudden spasmodic burst of awakened conscience and courage Nell drew herself erect and tried to achieve a smile.

The rattle of bars and chains that heralded the opening of the door was hideous to their unaccustomed ears; it shocked them with its clang of inhospitality—its suggestion of suspicion.

Miss Kezia opened the door a cautious inch or two and peered out. Her face appeared to them, against the light, very long and very black.

"It’s you," she said; "come in."

Nell faltered, calling together all her stock of politeness, "I’m sorry that you had to sit up for us."

Miss Kezia waved it aside with a curt response that a little loss of sleep would not hurt her.

There was porridge waiting for them in the dining room. Too wretched, too apathetic to make the necessary stand against it, they sat down to the table and tried to eat.

The dining room was furnished strictly for use and not for ornament. Heavy chairs and a heavier sideboard constituted all the furniture, save the table. The floor was covered with a cold linoleum. There was no flower in the room. Only one gas-burner was alight, and it left gloomy corners. There was a stiff look about it all, a poverty and bareness that was bewilderingly new to them. A beautiful little cocker spaniel, who pressed close to them with plaintive whimpers when they entered the room, looked quite out of place there. Miss Kezia eyed her with disfavour. She demanded, "Where will that dog sleep?"

The want of due respect in the designation roused Sheila Pat.

She said coldly, "Her name is Kate Kearney."

"What a ridiculous name!" Miss Kezia ejaculated.

The Atom was indignant.

"Is it rickelous? And how about Kezia, then?"

Denis interposed amusedly: "Perhaps you don’t know the song, Aunt Kezia? It’s like this—" Gaily his voice sang out:—

"’Oh, did you not hear of Kate Kearney? She lives on the banks of Killarney—’

"Eh? Noise? _Noise_?" he murmured surprisedly. "Allow me just to whisper the lines that fit K.K. so beautifully:—

"’For that eye is so modestly beaming You ne’er think of mischief she’s dreaming—’"

Grim and portentous came an interruption.

"Er—" said Denis, and his eye twinkled, "she was when she was a puppy, you see."

"Um," observed Miss Kezia. "If it works any mischief here, it will have to be chained up in the garden."

"Sure, then," burst wildly from the Atom, "’tis myself’ll be chained beside her!"

"Sheila, do not be absurd!"

"And she isn’t ’it’! If you call her ’it’ again, I’ll be callin’ you a Scotch bannock!"

Nell roused to a perfunctory—

Miss Kezia said coldly, "You are a very rude little girl." She turned to Denis. "Will you tell me where that dog is to sleep?"

"On the mat outside Nell’s door."

"I will not have a dog rampaging over my house to work what mischief it likes while we sleep."

"She shall sleep on my bed," put in a very disdainful Atom.

"Certainly she shall not! Disgusting! Unhealthy! Spoiling my counterpanes!"

Nell looked at Miss Kezia, a weary wonder in her face. "She can sleep on the floor beside my bed," she said.

Miss Kezia hesitated; her eyes met those of the Atom—wide, defiant, indomitable in her small, obstinate face. In her ears echoed some words of Mrs. O’Brien’s that Miss Kezia had privately labelled foolish. "Sheila Pat is delicate. Perhaps we have spoilt her a little. She is very strong-willed. She cannot be driven, but she can be led. Her feelings use her up—exhaust her." There had been a little sudden hopeless pause there; then—"I hope you will understand her."

Miss Kezia had not noticed the pause or the pleading note—a note vibrating with the struggle against the speaker’s own conviction. She would not have understood, had she noticed, any more than she would ever understand the Atom of humanity who was defying her now.

"Very well," she said, with a glance of dislike at poor K.K.

Denis broke in with a solicitous air, and a tone reminiscent of the Blarney Stone:—

"I do wish you would go to bed, Aunt Kezia! You do look so tired."

Nell smiled suddenly.

"Yes, do, Aunt Kezia," she urged demurely.

Miss Kezia, after somewhat lengthy directions as to turning off the gas, shutting, locking, and hanging a huge burglar bell on the dining-room door, turned to leave the room.

Sheila Pat, stiff, erect, followed her with warlike gaze.

Miss Kezia paused and said:—

"See that that baby goes to bed the minute she has finished her porridge. She ought not to have gone to the docks at all—"

Nell flashed out a shaky interruption—

"Others—thought she ought!"

The Atom observed calmly:—

"I am not a baby. At home, gerrels of six will not be babies. I’m not wantin’ the stirabout at all, thank you."

"Sheila, you are speaking with an atrocious accent!"

For the first time that night the Atom’s sombre eyes lit with a gleam of satisfaction.

"Accent, is it? Sure and ’tisn’t me own native accent I’d be ashamed of then!" she retorted.

"It isn’t the accent of ladies and gentlemen, Sheila! You are a rude and foolish little girl!"

Calm and unabashed, the Atom responded with fervour.

"’Tis the way many of my best friends spake at home—always—wakin’ and sleepin’ they spake like that, and I’ll be spakin’ like it, too."

With her black little head well up, and her absurd pig-tail at an acute angle, she waited for Miss Kezia’s response.

But Denis interposed from the doorway with a judicious appeal to her sense of economy.

"I say, Aunt Kezia, I’ve lit your candle, and it’s spluttering like a dumb man asking for a tip!"

Miss Kezia turned and hurriedly left the room.

Molly suddenly pushed her bowl away with an angry clatter. She flung her arms out over the table and hid her face in them.

"Oh, I can’t—help it!" she cried out wildly. "Everything’s so—awful!" and she burst into tears.

Nell caught her underlip between her teeth and rose.

"Shan’t we go to bed, Denis?" she said wearily.

"Yes, come along. K.K. may as well have the porridge. We’ve been neglecting you, old lady, haven’t we, then?"

The Atom sat rigid, her shocked gaze bent stiffly on Molly’s prone head.

"Oh," sobbed Molly, "I shall die—in a week—here—I—hate Aunt Kezia—I hate this house—I hate—everything! Oh, I want mother—and dad—"

The Atom got down stiffly from her chair, her gaze never leaving Molly.

Nell, in pity of the little white face, tried to put Kate Kearney into her arms, but she drew back. "I don’t want her," she said.

They crept upstairs and bade each other good night.

"I—I’m sure I’ll be dead when I wake up in the morning!" Molly quavered wretchedly. "I—can’t breathe—in this place—there isn’t room to move—I shall suffocate."

Sheila Pat was to share Nell’s room. She followed her in in silence. They undressed quickly. The Atom said her prayers and got into bed. Nell knelt down, but no prayers would come. She knelt and cried into the counterpane.

After a while an austere voice smote upon her ear.

"Nell O’Brien, I’m thinkin’ you’re keepin’ God up very late!"

Nell said a prayer—a somewhat incoherent one—and scrambled into bed.

An hour later she sat up and turned her pillow. She looked across at the little white bed that glimmered over by the window; then she burrowed her head despairingly down into the dry side of her pillow. The sight of it, as she had lifted it to turn it over, had brought to her mind the stout old rector at home. She remembered how Sheila Pat had once earnestly declared he was so nice to lean against—"just like a pillow." She quoted him beneath her breath, a humorous dimple denting her wet cheek.