Dorothy Eden (4 page)

“As well as what?”

“You are not married, Mr. Parnell. Everyone says you love your country so much that you have no time for more frivolous interests such as parties and women.”

“If you hadn’t said that so seriously I would believe you were making fun of me. Am I not here this evening?”

She laughed. “But I shamed you into it.”

“No one could shame me into anything. Believe me.” His eyes glowed in his pale face. She was aware again of the quiet intensity that pervaded him. She imagined that he brought it to everything he did, every subject he discussed. He must have nerves of steel, or he would wreck his health by his ardent way of living. It had been an irrelevance to think that a man like this could give all his emotions to a country. He must be highly aware of women—as indeed she knew he was at this moment. Her skin tingled. If he were to put all his intensity into being a lover …

“I’m glad you came,” she said quickly, casually. It was better to make conversation, even provocative conversation, than to indulge in these thoughts.

He made no answer to that beyond giving her that quiet curiously intimate caressing smile.

Then he said without any preamble whatever, “I imagined myself for a while to be in love with a young lady in America. But then she gave me a verse of poetry, carefully written out, and asked me to read it, and I knew that if she expected me to live up to all it said, I would disappoint her cruelly. So we said good-bye.”

“What was the poem?”

“Shall I recite it to you?”

“Please.”

He did so, in an undertone that yet did not take the eloquence out of his voice:

“
Unless you can muse in a crowd all day

On the absent face that fixed you:

Unless you can dream that his faith is fast

Through behoving and unbehoving;

Unless you can die when the dream is past,

Oh, never call it loving.
”

“I think that’s Elizabeth Barrett Browning,” Katharine said after a moment.

“Yes, I believe so.”

“One would need to be very dedicated to the object of one’s love to do all that.” Katharine thought of Willie and her lips twisted wryly.

“It could be possible for a few people.”

“A very few.”

“You look too sceptical, Mrs. O’Shea, for a young and beautiful woman. Surely you still have illusions?”

The bell had rung and people were beginning to come back to their seats. Katharine was glad of the interruption. They had advanced dangerously far in such a short conversation. She was frightened and highly elated at the same time. What was happening couldn’t be true. And yet she was deeply irrevocably sure that it was true. A woman’s instinct in these things never failed. Perhaps a man’s didn’t either. For he had the temerity to lay his hand briefly over hers as the lights went down.

“Perhaps it’s even possible to turn illusions into realities,” he said, under cover of the orchestra beginning to tune up. “I have never believed anything impossible.” He paused a moment and then asked abruptly, “Are you ever in the House? Do you ever sit in the Ladies’ Gallery?”

“No. But now my husband is in Parliament, perhaps I will.”

“Then I will look for you. Well now, what have we in the next act?”

The next act … Aunt Ben accepted as perfectly natural and admirable Katharine’s sudden intention to take an interest in politics. She should, of course, be interested in her husband’s new profession. It might even happen that Willie surprised them both and proved himself an able politician. He had always had wit and a sharp, if lazy intelligence.

“It’s time someone did something for that tragic Ireland. It will have to be an Irishman, since no one in England will. We did begin to get a little interested during the great famine. I organised funds for soup kitchens myself. But then people said the stories of so many dying from hunger were exaggerated. The Irish always did exaggerate. So we began to forget about them again, to our undying shame. I think perhaps we English have always found them too excessive in everything, their religion, their poverty, their legends, their martyrs, even their dying. So tiresome, turning a perfectly natural event into a melodrama. Remember, Katharine, I want no fuss. No candles, no mourners. I just want to disappear, like a little melting snow. But being excessive in their ways doesn’t excuse us for neglecting them.” Although Aunt Ben seemed to ramble, flitting sharply from one subject to another, none of her remarks was idle. Katharine had learned to listen attentively. “And if they’re disorderly it’s only because they need a strong leader. Someone not disorderly. I suppose that would be too much to hope for, from that country.”

“Not too much at all, Aunt Ben. I believe they already have one.”

“I expect you mean young Mr. Parnell. But he was very rude, not coming to your dinner party.”

“He hadn’t opened my letter. I told you that. And he did come the next time.”

Aunt Ben gave her her bland gaze. “Ah, yes, I see you have forgiven him. Mr. Meredith was reading to me about him yesterday. He’s being very provoking in the House. How splendid. Willie must take some lessons from him. Perhaps you ought to encourage him, Katharine.”

Katharine said quietly, “That’s exactly what I intend to do, Aunt Ben. One day I’ll bring him to visit you.”

“Yes, do that, dear. I always remember Daniel O’Connell’s fine presence. Has Mr. Parnell a presence, or is he still too young?”

“I think he has an exceptional presence.”

“How very interesting. Do you think he has the ability to get the better of Mr. Gladstone? I confess I would enjoy that. Mr. Gladstone, in my opinion, is too conceited by far. I am glad the Queen sets him back occasionally. Katharine dear, are you going?”

“I must, Aunt Ben, if I’m to see the children before they begin their afternoon lessons. And then I thought I might slip into town to listen to the debate on the new Land Act. I believe you may realise your hopes, Mr. Parnell may well get the better of Mr. Gladstone. If not this year, certainly the next.”

“How nice, dear child. It’s plain whose side you are on. I expect it’s simply that you don’t care for poor Mr. Gladstone’s white hairs. Run along then, and tell me about it tomorrow.”

On her first visit, looking down from the Ladies’ Gallery, she thought she would have to search for him on the Irish benches. But by some uncanny instinct her eyes went directly to him and at the same moment his unmistakably met hers, for he half-raised his hand in greeting. She gave a small non-committal nod, then realised that her hand was pressed to her suddenly accelerated heart, which must have completely given away her emotions if anyone had been observing her closely.

Fortunately the speaker at that moment was the Prime Minister himself. With his famous presence, his crest of white hair, his fierce eyes and his boldly jutting nose, he held the attention of everyone except, apparently, the Irish member who had been more interested in the movement in the Ladies’ Gallery.

Katharine wondered how many glances he had cast in that direction before she had come. She felt her cheeks glowing, and was glad there was no one here to recognise her. The only visitor she herself recognised was Mr. Gladstone’s daughter Mary who was deeply devoted to her father, and often came to listen to him.

She tried to pay attention to the matter being discussed. It was about the dangerously primitive condition of the Welsh coal mines, and the employment of children who were no better treated than pit ponies. It was a distressing subject and Katharine should have been moved by it. She should also have been interested in recognising other prominent figures, Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, tall, sallow-faced, with his bland but acute glance, the Honourable Charles Dilke who had a gleaming roving eye, young Lord Randolph Churchill fixing a glassy gaze on the speaker, Mr. Disraeli, now Lord Beaconsfield, putting a hand to his black carefully-arranged ringlets.

But she only noticed that in the middle of the Prime Minister’s speech Mr. Parnell had unfolded his long legs, stood up, and unobtrusively left the chamber. Presently there was a muffled disturbance behind her. Someone said, “S’sh!” A tall form slid into the seat beside her. Under cover of some scattered applause which Mr. Gladstone had earned for himself, the already familiar voice said, “I just came up to say good-day to you, Mrs. O’Shea. It’s nice to see you here.”

She noticed that he was wearing a white rose in his buttonhole. If it meant what she suspected she was deeply pleased.

“Is anything interesting happening this afternoon?”

“No. The Prime Minister will go on about coal mines for the next hour or more.”

“You won’t be speaking?”

“Not today. Unless something comes up later this evening.”

Someone said, “Hush!” and they had to be silent while Mr. Gladstone’s eloquent voice rang through the House. Mr. Parnell stood up.

“I shall look for you here again,” he whispered.

Then he was gone, and she spent the next half-hour convincing herself that such an exchange of words had been completely without significance. They could have been shouted to the whole house.

What was not so insignificant was the way her cheeks burned and her heart raced so that the lace on her bodice fluttered. It was absurd to feel like that simply because he had taken the trouble to come up and speak to her. If she were going to behave like this she would have to give up this absorbing new interest in politics.

It would never do for there to be a scandal involving the leader of the Irish party.

Yet, on her next visit, when Mr. Parnell made his greeting, this time casually touching the rose in his buttonhole, but did not come up to speak to her, she was acutely disappointed. It was no use telling herself that Mr. Biggar was in the midst of one of his interminable rambling speeches that was making the House yawn and fidget, and that no doubt Mr. Parnell was anticipating going to his assistance if the flow of words failed him. The Irish party was engaged in one of its celebrated obstructive measures that would probably keep the House sitting until midnight. She was selfish enough to think Ireland as tiresome as everyone else did, and wondered only when Mr. Parnell would be free to come up and exchange a few words with her.

For two days after that she was unable to come to town. Carmen had a feverish cold which Norah caught, and the little girls wanted their Mamma. Neither Lucy nor Miss Glennister sufficed at a time like this. Then Lucy went down with the cold which settled on her chest. No one knew exactly what Lucy’s age was, but suddenly she looked very old, almost as old as Aunt Ben. Katharine made her stay in bed and was impatient with her when she rebelled, the silly independent creature.

Aunt Ben, too, was particularly demanding. Reluctant to begin the long dull afternoon of the old and enfeebled, she delayed her dear Katharine as long as possible, wanting last minute things done or some small problem discussed at length. It only needed Willie to come home with one of his attacks of gout, Katharine thought, and she would be virtually a prisoner. She was restless, frustrated, irritable with the servants, unable to eat or sleep.

She was crazy. She was developing an obsession. It surely was not normal to see nothing but that pale face with the compelling eyes, to hear nothing but one voice.

She must forget him. She must not see him again. She must tell Willie that Mr. Parnell was all the things people said of him, unmannerly, unsociable, ruthless, cold, and she preferred not to entertain him again.

But the little girls recovered. Aunt Ben decided to detain poor Mr. Meredith instead of herself, and she was driving to London on a cool sunny afternoon.

She had scarcely taken her seat in the Ladies’ Gallery before he was beside her. There was going to be a long dull debate which didn’t require his presence, he whispered. Would she care to come for a drive? He needed some fresh air before getting back for the more important business of the first reading of a Compensation for Disturbance Bill which was being introduced by Mr. Forster, the Chief Secretary for Ireland.

She rose without a word. Her frustration was over. She had so much wanted to be alone with him and at last he had created the opportunity. She might have known that he would.

Mr. Parnell told the cab driver to drive down the Embankment in the direction of Kew. At first he was full of the new Bill being proposed later that day. Forster, he said, was hated in Ireland as much as he hated the Irish. No good would come out of any Bill he proposed.

“I abhor violence,” he said. “We must find more effective and more subtle ways to get what we want.”

“What causes the violence?” Katharine asked.

“Evictions, evictions, always evictions,” he said passionately. “You won’t travel down a road in any county without meeting a pathetic little group of outcasts, the baby in its mother’s arms, the older ones, and never a shoe among the lot, walking weary miles, their bits of belongings in the handcart. Nowhere to sleep that night, no bit of land of their own. They’re hungry for land, Mrs. O’Shea, just an acre, just ten square yards. But they’ve no rights to anything they till, and if the potato crop fails and they don’t pay their rent, out they go.”

“If they refuse?”

His profile was hard, pure, dedicated.

“Their wretched cabin is burned down—over their heads if they’re too stubborn to move out. I’ve seen a woman begging English soldiers to wait just an hour until her dying husband breathed his last. I’ve seen a mother thrown out to give birth to her baby in a wet field. I’ve seen—” he paused, wrenching himself back from his bitterness. “Forgive me, Mrs. O’Shea. I didn’t intend to harrow your feelings. I only meant to explain that I don’t have much faith in a Compensation Bill made by the English. Who has ever compensated my people for their children who have died from exposure or plain starvation? But I hate violence. Burning down the landlord’s property only leads to prison or the gallows. We’ll find a better way to win. And we will win, don’t you doubt it.”

“I don’t doubt it,” said Katharine. “But look! It’s a lovely day. You’re not prejudicing your cause by enjoying it.”