Dorothy Eden (9 page)

She awoke to a state of great happiness, as if she had just realised for the first time that Charles was under the same roof as herself.

Even if she had no opportunity to see him alone, he was here, safely. She didn’t have to worry whether he was hungry, tired, cold, lonely. She had only to tap at his door and hear his voice answer, and know that, for this short space of time at least, she could look after him as well as she looked after the rest of her household. He was in her care.

But her good fortune was not limited even to this. For Willie was taking the children to Mass, and suggested that while they were gone Kate might take Mr. Parnell for a drive and show him the countryside. A breath of fresh air was what he needed. He looked as if he had been out of the sun and burning midnight oil for much too long. Aunt Ben would allow the use of her dogcart, as she often did when Katharine wanted to take the children for a picnic. How would Kate enjoy driving the King of Ireland, no less!

Katharine looked demurely at Mr. Parnell, trying to keep the amused sparkle out of her eyes.

“Will you trust yourself with me, Mr. Parnell? You will be quite safe. Prince is so sedate and elderly that Carmen could drive him.”

“You don’t need to assure me of that, Mrs. O’Shea. I am sure you would be capable of driving the most spirited horse.”

Willie waved them off with his blessing. For one moment Katharine was positively angry with him for his stupidity. Did he never realise that she might be truly unhappy and not his possession forever? Then, because he was so blind, a great wave of intoxicating freedom swept over her, and she whipped up Prince, beginning to laugh gaily as they moved briskly down the drive.

“Isn’t this wonderful? Where would you like to go?”

“Wherever you take me, my darling.”

His voice was as full of happiness as hers. She turned and their eyes met in the first full glance they had been able to exchange since he had arrived. “It’s a miracle,” she said. “Shall I make Prince gallop for joy?”

“Poor old Prince. He would probably collapse between the shafts, and I think it’s better for us to get back uninjured. You look very well, Mrs. O’Shea.”

“And so do you, Mr. Parnell.” She slowed Prince’s reluctant trot to a walk. “Charles!”

“Katharine. Katie.”

“You look better this morning, as if you had rested.”

“So I have. I thought at first it would be impossible with you just down the passage. I had only to get up and walk a few yards to be with you.”

“You mustn’t!” she breathed.

He gave the faintest shrug. “I didn’t, did I? I’m still clinging to a few vestiges of good sense.”

“At least we were under the same roof. I thought that was an immense thing to happen to us. I had never imagined it would.”

“But I wonder how wise it is.”

“Oh—wisdom! On a morning like this. It’s a forbidden word. Let’s be reckless, let’s toss our bonnets over the windmill as Lucy would say. Poor Lucy. I miss her so sadly, and yet now you’re here beside me I’m quite heartlessly happy.”

“Was it very bad, Lucy’s death?”

The morning was not quite shadowless after all. Katharine repressed a faint shiver. “Yes, it was bad. And yet—how can I confess that it wasn’t as bad as thinking of you waiting for me that day? Alone, without a message. You must have thought I had deserted you. I almost wanted to die with Lucy. It was natural and peaceful for her to go, but thinking of you coming so far just to see me, and then unable to, not knowing what had happened—I made a resolve then that I would never do this to you again, no matter whom I hurt. I’m not a ruthless person, but for you I would be. Do you believe me?”

“Yes,” he said, his face deeply troubled.

“Did you think I had deserted you?”

“No, not that. But I was immensely relieved to get your letter.” He took her hand, paused only to strip off the glove, and held it between his own. “These things will happen to us, Kate. The next time it might be me not able to get in touch with you. In that case, would you think I had deserted you?”

“Only for Ireland.”

Her words were so wry that he burst out laughing.

“At least it will never be for another woman. That I promise you.”

“Then perhaps you had better give me back my hand in case Prince decides to bolt. Neither I nor Ireland intends to lose you. What do you say to Willie’s suggestion?”

“That we use you as a messenger to Mr. Gladstone? I think you could be very valuable to us. Gladstone is sure to admire and trust you. But what are your true feelings about this?”

“I would enjoy it. I wouldn’t feel so left out. I’m constantly being told that politics are not for women, but I’m sure women could have far more influence than anyone suspects.”

He was looking at her with his gentle ironic glance.

“Would you like to be a woman of influence, Kate?”

“I believe I would.”

“Then be careful. I may come to depend on you entirely.”

“That’s impossible. You’re much too strong and self-sufficient.”

“Am I Kate? Is that as much as you know me?”

“But you’ve been alone so much. It must have made you strong.”

“Then I wonder I’ve never stopped thinking about you since I met you. What am I to do about that?”

“How can I tell you since I have the same problem? And anyway—I would like you to depend on me. For everything! I’m beginning to hate people who keep us apart. I can safely hate all your troublesome peasants in Ireland, but Willie, dear Aunt Ben—even poor Lucy dying—” her voice was low with shame, “I almost hated her. I know that you can be ruthless in your work. Are you ruthless in loving? As I am beginning to be. One of us must keep sane, Charles.”

He stopped her deeply troubled monologue by saying lightly: “We shall take it in turns to keep sane. Today it is my turn, tomorrow yours. The day we both are mad together—”, he smiled a little, “—that will come, too. At the right time. Now, what about this plan of your husband’s that I use your house as my headquarters. Providing he is home, of course.”

“Would it serve a good purpose?”

“Oh, it would do that. It would be a great help. I could have all my mail directed here, I would have a permanent address at last. And an escape from London when I need to get away. Besides, I’m beginning to think that Captain O’Shea could make a very useful contribution to our campaign. That is, if he is genuinely for us and not for his English friends.”

“Oh, he has useful connections,” Katharine said, not wanting to say that Willie was, first and foremost, for himself. But Charles was too intelligent to be taken in by any show of patriotism on Willie’s part. He himself admitted to using men—and women, herself, too, as it suited him. Politics were not for the sentimental or the unduly scrupulous.

“But what do you think of it, Kate? My being here?”

“It frightens me. It seems as if fate is forcing us to be together. How can it end?”

“Why should we talk of endings?” he lifted her hand, and kissed her fingers, each one separately. “Why not beginnings? I’m in an optimistic mood. And you were talking a moment ago of tossing bonnets over windmills.”

“So I was.”

“I shall be content to see you with the children—look at you across the table—watch you coming in from the garden—hear your voice from another room.”

She looked intensely into his eyes.

“Will you, Charles?”

“Well, not entirely content. But content.”

She sighed and smiled.

“Then it’s settled. Do you think we should turn back now?”

“Go just another mile, if Prince is equal to it.”

“Prince has no say in the matter.”

Katharine flicked the lazy horse with the tip of the whip, and he jogged on peacefully, stirring a small dust. The road led through hop country, and all at once a boy on the roadside stared intently at them, then sped barefoot across a field shouting. Almost at once, from nowhere, the dogcart was surrounded by excited ragged sun-burned people. They surged forward crying, “The Chief! The Chief!” Some tried to clamber into the dogcart. A child fell, almost under Prince’s hoofs.

“Who are they? What are they doing?” Katharine asked, dragging on the reins. Her heart was beating rapidly in fright. She thought they were about to be mobbed.

But Charles leaned forward lifting his hat and giving his grave smile. A woman snatched at his hand to kiss it. Someone shouted, “God keep your honour!”

“Thank you,” he said to the uplifted faces. “Thank you. I’ll talk to you when I’m back in Ireland. Now if you will be good enough to let us go by.”

Their farewells rang out. “God bless you! God bless the Chief.”

“Some of my people over for the hop-picking. Did they alarm you?”

Katharine didn’t answer.

“I’m afraid their love is almost as dangerous as their hate. Kate?”

She whipped up Prince, keeping her face averted.

“Kate, you’re not crying! You
were
frightened. But that was nothing to what they can do. Last week they carried me on their shoulders for half a mile through Dublin and I was never so scared in my life. I thought I would fall down among their loving arms and have their loving feet trample me to death. All with the best intentions.”

“Must I share you with them?” she asked passionately.

“Ah, Kate! So that’s what it is. But what you have is entirely separate from what they have.”

“Is it?”

“My darling, how can you even ask?”

She faced him sombrely, her tears dried on her cheeks.

“Whatever we separately have, it’s all housed in the same body. And I’m afraid.”

He didn’t, as she expected, remonstrate with her. He just said, in a low voice, “I know, Kate. I understand.”

The tears filled her eyes again.

“It isn’t that I’m not proud of you. Seeing the way they reverenced you, I was so proud I couldn’t bear it. When I read your speech at Ennis I cried. I know what you have to do, and I’ll try never to stop you. But I can’t promise always to be calm and sensible.”

“Nor can I,” he said. “Nor can I.”

“I’m so afraid one day you’ll hate me.”

“For what?” he asked in amazement.

“For tearing you in half.”

He made no answer to that. Instead he said, “But you’re with me, Katharine?”

He only called her Katharine when he was most deeply serious.

“Yes,” she said reluctantly. “I have to be.”

T
HE LAMPLIGHT SHONE ON
her hair and her face as she bent over the letter she was writing.

“Dear Charles,

I have received your letters (both of them). The second was so much more precious than the first …”

She paused to re-read the two letters that had arrived that morning.

“Dear Mrs. O’Shea,

I must thank you again for all your kindness which made my stay at Eltham so happy and pleasant. I enclose keys which I took away by mistake. Will you kindly hand enclosed letter to the proper person and oblige,

Yours very truly, C.S.P.”

She smiled faintly and tenderly as she read the second letter, the one that was to have been handed to some hypothetical person had Willie been home when the post arrived, and insisted on seeing what Mr. Parnell had written.

“My dearest love,

I have made all arrangements to be in London on Saturday morning, and shall call at Keppel Street for a letter from you. It is quite impossible for me to tell you just how very much you have changed my life, and how I detest everything which has happened during the last few days to keep me away from you. I think of you always …”

They had made this arrangement about the letters when he had stayed at Eltham. It had been a sensible precaution, for, with many separations ahead of them, neither of them had been content to receive the kind of letter that said nothing loving or personal.

Willie, who did happen to be home, read the one intended for his consumption, and said carelessly:

“The arrangement seems to be working out very well, Kate. I’ll let you know when he intends to come again.”

As if she would not know herself! She repressed a smile, and made a comment that Mr. Parnell had not seemed to mind the shabbiness of the house.

“Good heavens, no! If you were to see some of the places he spent nights in. He has no pride about that. He’ll happily stretch himself out on a straw pallet in a peasant’s cabin. I’m damned if I would. But that, I suppose, is how he gets his popularity.”

“And yet they call him cold in England. They just don’t know him. The servants worshipped him. Cook is wearing a locket with his likeness round her neck. But she comes from Tipperary, so I suppose it’s understandable.”

For a moment Willie was looking at her a little too fixedly.

“You seem taken with him yourself.”

“I think him a charming and thoughtful guest.” She thought her voice sounded too defensive, so she went on enthusiastically, “I’m becoming very sympathetic with his cause. I would like to help it, if I could, apart from carrying messages to Gladstone.”

“You’ll help sufficiently by seeing that Parnell is made comfortable when he stays here.”

“Certainly I will do that,” she replied with deceptive meekness.

But she could do more than that, for now that Charles’s mail was directed to Eltham, she had taken it on herself to attend to it. His dislike of opening letters and answering them was now well-known. After a week or two of reading them herself she was not surprised. They included everything from adulation to virulent hatred. There were begging letters, invitations to every manner of function, gifts of money, or more personal gifts. Every week a box of eggs arrived. It gave no clue as to the sender.

On the first occasion Charles was in the house, and instantly told her to have the eggs buried in the garden. She looked at him in surprise.

“They may be eggs or they may not be,” he said cryptically. “We won’t bother to find out. Don’t let your dog be poisoned.” A cold shaft of fear struck through her. For the first time she realised the danger that he walked in daily.

“Charles, how terrible!”

“Terrible? Not at all. I told you that politics are war. You can’t have a war without shots being fired. Besides, that would be exceedingly dull.”