Dorothy Eden (20 page)

“My own Katie,

Tomorrow I go to Kildare and shall try to start for London Friday morning, but I cannot be sure of this as ‘something’ may turn up at the last moment. If I arrive in London Friday night I shall go to same hotel and wait for you.

Always your own Charles.”

She answered the letter hastily, begging Charles to be careful and at all costs to avoid arrest. How could she bear it if he were shut up in jail for months, perhaps years? Supposing he were there when her baby was born. Her tears dropped on the paper, and she had to tear it up and start afresh. Though a tear-blotted letter may have done more to dissuade him from his recklessness than a calm and sensible one.

His answer was very tender and loving, but didn’t she understand that the turmoil and rebellion he had brought to a head could be better served in Kilmainham Jail than out? And how could she doubt his feelings?
For good or ill I am your husband, your lover, your children, your all. I will give my life to Ireland, but to you I give my love, whether it be your heaven or your hell.
”

Suddenly, after an Indian summer, the weather had turned cold and stormy. The trees in the park bent and cracked in a rising gale. Katharine was literally blown across the garden and up the steps to Aunt Ben’s door, and when she was admitted the wind swept through the hall and up the stairs. Aunt Ben was sitting in the tapestry room wrapped in shawls.

“How can you let such a draught in?” she asked Katharine peevishly. “Now we will have to warm the house all over again. Well, what’s the matter? You’re looking pinched in the face. It surely isn’t as cold as all that.”

“Aunt Ben, what is it like in prison? You’ve visited prisons when you were helping Uncle Benjamin. I never did with Papa, although I wanted to.”

Aunt Ben retreated into her shawls.

“They’re not as draughty as this room, I can tell you that. But they’re not exactly the height of comfort either. I wouldn’t recommend them. Damp, cold, bad food. Which of your friends is a jailbird, my darling? You haven’t told me. I would find him interesting.”

“Don’t tease me, Aunt. You know very well, if Mr. Meredith has read the newspaper to you as thoroughly as he usually does, that Mr. Parnell is threatened with arrest.”

“Oh, then that would be an Irish prison. And for an Irish patriot. My dear child, what are you worrying about? He’ll be fed on the fat of the land.”

“But what about the damp and cold?”

“I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t get the warmest blankets in Ireland sent to him.”

“But his jailors will be English.”

“Tut, tut, child. And where did you get the idea that the high and mighty English are above a bribe or two? Stop worrying now and put on a more cheerful face. I don’t like you looking glum.”

“Supposing it’s for years.”

“Mr. Parnell in jail for years! Shame on you! And I thought you admired his cleverness.”

“You mean he’ll find a way to shorten his sentence. How can he? Mr. Forster and one or two others would like to see him dead.”

“You’re exaggerating,” said Aunt Ben placidly. “Being pregnant is making you fanciful. Sit down and wind some wool for me. That’s a nice calming occupation. Anyway, I thought Mr. Gladstone was your friend. Why don’t you get him to stop such a barbaric act? It won’t look well in history.”

“Oh, Aunt,” Katharine exclaimed in exasperation. “I’m not interested in history. I’m interested in now. And it’s no use going to see Mr. Gladstone or anybody. Mr. Parnell wants to be arrested.”

“Then whatever are you worrying about?”

“I won’t have him being a martyr for his wretched country!” Katharine cried.

“I agree it’s an extreme way of winning a political point,” Aunt Ben agreed. She looked over her spectacles at Katharine. “But the Irish have this tendency to melodrama and I don’t imagine Mr. Parnell is any exception. Thread my needle for me, child. I can’t see an inch in front of my nose.”

In the afternoon Katharine battled her way home against the wind. Her heart leaped as she saw the brougham drawn up outside her front door. But then she recognised the face of Partridge, their coachman. He tipped his cap to her, and shouted above the wind that he had just driven the Captain down from London.

Willie here! There could be only one reason.

She burst into the hall to find Willie doffing his greatcoat. He turned and without attempting to suppress his triumph, said, “Well, they have Parnell laid by the heels.”

“He’s arrested?”

“This morning, in Morison’s Hotel. They’ve taken him to Kilmainham. They’ve got Sexton, and Dillon and O’Brien too. Well, it’s their own fault. But especially Parnell’s. Now he’ll have time to reflect on the wickedness and folly of his policy. Condoning violence, alienating the English all the time—it was madness. I tell you, if the Irish question could be left to me and a few others we’d make an infinitely better job of it. I was only discussing it with Chamberlain and Dilke this morning. I’ve more or less taken it on my shoulders to find some way out of this disastrous impasse.”

Willie’s blue eyes were shining with triumph and excitement. Nothing could have pleased him better than the present situation, his great rival laid low and his own opportunity handed to him so fortuitously. Katharine dearly wanted to slap his smug smiling face. She would have liked to have shown him the doorstep. She didn’t know how to hide her revulsion for him.

“How long will they keep him in prison?” she managed to ask.

“Oh, months, I expect.”

“Months!”

Her dismay was so apparent that Willie looked at her suspiciously.

“What’s that to you? You’re not going to be shining at dinner parties, or paying any more calls on Mr. Gladstone for the next few months. You’ll be staying decently at home preparing for our child. Mr. Parnell’s arrest isn’t going to affect your life. Or is it?”

He came close and looked at her so hard that she had to murmur that she was only distressed for Mr. Parnell. His constitution was inclined to be delicate, and the hardships of prison would scarcely help that.

“You worry about my constitution, not his. The gout’s been plaguing me again, and I’ve a cold I can’t throw off. Parnell’s fortunate, he’ll have time to get a rest, and I warrant he won’t lack for food. There’ll be a brace of grouse, or a side of pork or a fine salmon on the doorstep of Kilmainham every night.”

“Yes, the people love him.”

“They’re daft about him, you mean,” Willie said sourly. “What is it about that man that even my own wife is in a state of the vapours about him? However,” Willie began to chuckle with malicious glee, “I have one thing he hasn’t. A wife. Come and give me a kiss, my love.”

“Willie!” Her heart was pounding. “At this time of day!”

“You had no complaints about it being this time of day once. No, don’t protest about the children or the servants. If you were a loving wife you’d simply turn the key in the lock.”

“But I’m not a loving wife.”

“Damn you, you’re not. But I’m not standing any more of your ladylike nonsense. Do you hear?” He gripped her wrist, hurting severely. Then he flung it away. “Ring the bell and order tea. And tell Anna we’d like an early dinner tonight.”

“You’re staying?”

“Do I need permission?”

“Not if you stay in your own room. I’m not feeling well. The baby—”

“Forget that. The others came to no harm. Did they?”

He had had such a boyish good-looking face once, kind and merry. It was difficult to remember it when one looked at what it had become, coarse, reddened, insolent, unhappy. Yes, unhappy …

Towards midnight the gale died away and the moon came out, drifting behind flying rags of cloud. The same moon would be shining over Dublin. Could he see it from his cell? Was he in a cell, lying on a hard bench, comfortless, cold? How did his face look in sleep, pale, too thin, too hollow, with its severity that was almost monk like? Was he asleep, or was he lying wakeful thinking about the bars across the door? As she lay with the bar of Willie’s arm across her. Just as completely in prison.

“Kitty O’Shea,” she said aloud, her voice dry with contempt.

M
R. GLADSTONE, LOUDLY APPLAUDED,
made an announcement at the Guildhall, “I have been informed that towards the vindication of the law, of order, of the rights of property and the freedom of the land, of the first elements of political life and civilisation, the first step has been taken in the arrest of the man who has made himself preeminent in the attempt to destroy the authority of the law.”

And, at Wonersh Lodge, the postman delivered a letter addressed to Mrs. O’Shea.

“My own Katie,

I have just been arrested by two fine-looking detectives and write these words to tell you you must be brave and not fret. The only thing that makes me worried and unhappy is that it may hurt you and our child. You know, darling, it will be wicked for you to grieve. I can never have another wife but you, so if anything happens to you I must die childless.

Politically it is a fortunate thing for me that I have been arrested as the movement is breaking fast, and all will be quiet for a few months when I shall be released.”

Aunt Ben, too percipient, sent a note to Wonersh Lodge. “Stay home with the children today, Katharine. The weather is much too inclement for you to cross the park.” And in the schoolroom, sitting by the fire sewing while the children did their lessons, Katharine was aroused from a brown study by Carmen climbing on to her lap.

“What’s this? A big girl of eight wanting to sit on Mamma’s lap?”

Carmen said nothing, but laid her head against Katharine’s breast.

“She thinks you’re sad. Mamma,” Norah said. “You’re not, are you?”

Katharine rested her chin on Carmen’s head. The little warm body pressed against her was comforting and poignant. Her throat hurt, and she had the greatest difficulty in speaking normally.

“I’m just thinking. I have a secret.”

Carmen lifted her head, and Norah flung herself at Katharine.

“What’s the secret? Tell us, Mamma. Do tell us.”

“Shall I?” She smiled at the two pairs of inquisitive blue eyes. “Well, then, I’ve decided that we’ll have another baby in the house.”

“Of our own! Really and truly our own!”

Katharine nodded.

“Don’t you remember telling me you wanted a baby?”

Carmen began to smile and nod. Norah squealed, “Oh Mamma, you are kind to us. When will it come? Soon?”

“Not immediately. You mustn’t be impatient. In the spring.”

“Oh, what a long time to wait. Does Papa know? Have you written and told Gerard?”

“Papa knows, and you may write and tell Gerard yourselves. Supposing we go up to the attics, and get out the cradle and the perambulator.”

“And the baby clothes!” shouted Norah.

“No, a new baby must have new clothes. But there’s your old high-chair and your rocking horse.”

So somehow that long sad day passed. When the children had gone to bed that night she was able to write a long almost composed letter. She had never thought she would address a letter to a prison. Kilmainham Jail, Dublin, she wrote on the envelope, and then put on her bonnet and cloak and walked out in the tearing wind to post the letter herself.

The moon was shining again, and one day of her torture had passed. If she had known the number of days ahead she thought she could have faced them with more courage. But political prisoners had been known to rot in jails for years. Could the British Government dare to do this to someone so famous and so revered as Mr. Parnell? She didn’t doubt that they could. She had seen the hard cruel glint in Mr. Gladstone’s slate-coloured eyes. She knew the Queen’s stubborn irrational dislike for Irish rebels. The great might of Britain turned against one of her detractors could be annihilating.

That was her biggest fear. Her smallest, but also an agonising one, was that no letters would be allowed to come out of Kilmainham, or if they did that they would be censored.

She was ashamed of herself for this fear when Charles’ next letter came. She should have trusted his ingenuity.

“My own darling,

Now after we have been all locked up safely for the night and everything is quiet I am going to send you some news. First I must tell you that I sleep exceedingly well and am allowed to read the newspapers in bed in the morning, and breakfast there also, if I wish.

“I want, however, to give you a little history from the commencement of my stay here.

“When I heard that the detectives were asking for me a terror fell upon me, for I remembered that you had told me you feared it would kill you. I kept the men out of the room while I was writing you a few hasty words of comfort and hope, for I knew the shock would be terrible to my sweet love.

“I feared that I could not post it, but they stopped the cab just before reaching the prison, and allowed me to drop the letter into a pillar-box. My only torture during those first days was your unhappiness. Finally your first letter came and I knew that you were safe.

“You must not mind my being in the infirmary. I am only there because it is more comfortable than being in a cell and you have longer hours of association, from eight a.m. to eight p.m. instead of being locked up at six and obliged to eat by yourself. The infirmary is a collection of rooms, and each has a room to himself. Dillon is in a cell, but he is allowed as a special privilege to come over and associate with us during the daytime. I am obliged to invent little maladies for myself from day to day in order to give Dr. Kenny an excuse for keeping me in the infirmary, but I have never felt better in my life. Have quite forgotten that I am in prison and should miss the rattle of keys and slam of doors.

“The only thing I don’t like is that the Government insist upon sending a lot of police into the jail every night, two of whom sleep against my door and two more under my window. A very strict watch is kept and I have been obliged to exert my ingenuity to get letters out to you and to get yours in return. They have let us off very easily. I fully expected that we should have been scattered in different jails through the country as a punishment, but they evidently think no other place safe enough for me. Indeed, this place is not safe, and I can get out whenever I like, but it is probably the best policy to wait to be released. And now goodnight, my dear. Promise to sleep well and look as beautiful when we meet again as the last time I kissed your sweet lips …”