Chapter V

The three days that followed Asshlin's death resolved themselves into so many hours of gloom and confusion, that found their culmination in the funeral ceremony.

To Irishmen of every class, a funeral is invested with an almost symbolic importance, and a solemn consideration is bestowed upon its most minute details. And Milbanke, deeply imbued with the horror and suddenness of the whole disaster, was filled with a growing astonishment at the numberless preliminaries--the amount of precedence and prestige requiring consideration--before one poor human body could be hidden away. But he rose dutifully to the occasion and proved himself unfailingly patient and conscientious in every emergency, from the first repugnant interview with the undertaker to the woeful breakfast, partaken of in the early hours of the funeral morning, with the curtains drawn across the dining-room windows and the candles in the massive silver sconces shedding an unnatural light upon the table laden with eatables.

The guests who partook of this meal were men of varied and interesting types; but whatever their characteristic differences, it was remarkable that the same air of responsibility and solemnity inspired them all. It did not matter that many of them had been personal enemies of the dead man; that many, with that jealous distrust of unconventionality that reigns in Ireland, had markedly drawn away from him in the last ten years of his life; death had obliterated everything. Asshlin's eccentricities, his lawlessness, his contempt for the little world in which he lived were all forgotten. He was one of themselves--deserving, in death at least, the same consideration that the county had bestowed upon his father, his grandfather, and those who had gone before them.

The faces of these men were unfamiliar to Milbanke, though each on entering the dining-room shook him cordially and sympathetically by the hand. The meal was partaken of almost in silence; and it was with obvious relief that, one after another, the members of the party rose from table and passed into the darkened hall, and from thence to the sweep of gravelled drive that fronted the house, where the less privileged of those who had come to do Asshlin honour lounged singly or in groups.

The funeral was timed to start at nine; but the concourse of mourners--well accustomed to the delays inevitable on such an occasion--evinced no sigh of impatience when half-past nine, and then ten arrived, and no move had yet been made.

But all things come to those who understand the art of patience. At a quarter past ten a thrill galvanised the lethargic crowd; and with the recognition of the great moment for which they waited, the men began to jostle each other and push forward towards the house, while all hats were respectively removed.

A faint murmur of admiration and awe went up from the gathering as the great brass-bound coffin was borne solemnly through the door and laid upon the open bier. In silence Milbanke and young Laurence Asshlin took their places as chief mourners, and with the inevitable confusion and uncertainty of such a moment, the crowd of men and vehicles formed up behind them, the horses under the bier moved slowly forward, and the body of Denis Asshlin passed for the last time down the avenue and through the gates of Orristown.

The funeral over, Milbanke walked back from Carrigmore alone. The servants, who had followed their master to his resting-place in the old graveyard, had remained in the village to enjoy the importance that the occasion lent them; young Asshlin had disappeared at the conclusion of the burial service; while the daughters and sister-in-law of the dead man--in accordance with the custom of the country--had remained secluded in their own rooms at Orristown, appearing neither at the breakfast nor the funeral.

In a house of death, the hours that succeed the burial are, if possible, even more melancholy than those that precede it. The sensations of awe and responsibility have been dispersed, but as yet it is impossible to resume the commonplace routine of life. As Milbanke passed through the gateway and walked up the drive, ploughed into new furrows by the long procession of cars that had followed the coffin, he was deeply sensitive to this impression; and it fell upon him afresh with a chill of desolation as he entered the door, still standing open, and moved slowly across the deserted hall.

In the dining-room the curtains had been drawn back and the candles extinguished; but the daylight seemed to fall tardily and unnaturally upon the room after its three days' exclusion. He stood for a moment looking at the debris of the breakfast that had not yet been removed, at the disarray of the chairs that had been hurriedly vacated; then, with a fresh and poignant sense of loss and loneliness, he turned hastily and walked out of the room.

In the hall he attempted to pause afresh; but the sound of muffled sobbing from the upper portion of the house sent him incontinently forth into the open. With an overwhelming desire for human fellowship--for any companionship in this abode of desolation, he passed without consideration of his dignity round the corner of the house in the direction of the stable-yard.

He walked calmly, but there was a pucker of anxiety on his usually placid brow--an expression of concern, apart from actual sorrow, in his tightly set lips. To the most casual observer it would have been obvious that something weighed upon his mind.

Still moving with his habitual precision, he entered the yard by the arched gateway, picking his way between the scattered array of rubbish, food, and implements that encumbered the ground.

When he appeared, a dozen rough or glossy heads were thrust out of kennels or outhouses, as the dogs accorded him a noisy welcome; but paying only partial heed to their demonstrations, he passed on to the vast coach-house, with the vague hope that some labourer connected with the farm or stables might possibly have been left behind in the general exodus. But here again he was doomed to disappointment. The coach-house, with its walls festooned with rotting harness, its ghostly row of cumbersome antiquated vehicles, was as empty of human presence as the yard itself.

Conscious of the isolation that hung over the place--disproportionately aware of his own aimlessness, he stood uncertain in what direction to turn. For the moment, the household had no need of him; there were no legal formalities to succeed the funeral, Asshlin having left no will; and of personal duties he had none to claim his attention.

He stood by the coach-house door woefully undecided as to his next move, when all at once relief came to him from the most unexpected quarter of the outbuildings. One of the dairy windows was opened sharply, and a head was thrust through the aperture.

"Wisha, what is it you're doin' there, sir?" a voice demanded kindly. "Sure that ould yard is no fit place for you!"

Turning hastily, Milbanke saw the broad, plain face of Hannah; her small eyes red, her rough cheeks stained with weeping.

"Why, Hannah!" he exclaimed, "what are you doing here? I thought you were at the funeral."

Hannah passed the back of her hand across her eyes.

"Wisha, what would I be doin' at it?" she demanded huskily. "Sure I don't know what they do be seein' in funerals at all."

Milbanke glanced up with interest, recognising the originality of the remark.

"Why, you and I are of the same opinion," he said. "The Celtic delight in the obsequies of a friend has been puzzling me for the last three days----" Then he paused suddenly, conscious of Hannah's fixed regard. "That is," he substituted quickly--"that is, I have been wondering, like you, what they see in it."

Hannah's small, observant eyes did not waver in their scrutiny.

"You've been wonderin' about somethin', sure enough!" she said. "I seen it meself every time I'd be carryin' in the dinner or doin' a turn for the poor corpse. God be good to him this holy and blessed day!" Again she wiped her eyes. "But 'tisn't wonderin' alone that's at you," she added more briskly. "'Tis some other thing that's lyin' heavy on your mind. I seen it meself at every hand's turn."

Milbanke started. This sympathetic onslaught was as disconcerting as it was unexpected.

"I--I won't contradict you, Hannah," he said waveringly. "No doubt you are right."

For the space of a minute Hannah was profoundly silent; then she broached the subject that had been filling her mind for a day and a half.

"Wisha, now, is it thrue what they do be tellin' me?" she asked softly and warily--"that you're goin' to be father and mother an' all to thim two poor children?"

Again Milbanke started almost guiltily; then the personal anxiety that mingled with and almost dominated his grief for Asshlin rose irrepressibly in response to the persuasive tones, the kindly human interest and curiosity.

"Yes, Hannah," he said quickly. "Yes, it is my intention to try and fill my poor friend's place."

The tears welled suddenly into Hannah's eyes, and with an awkward movement she wiped her rough hand in her apron and held it out.

"God Almighty will give it back to you, sir!" she exclaimed, with impulsive fervour.

Strangely touched by the expression of understanding and appreciation, he responded to the gesture and took her hand.

But instantly she withdrew it.

"Don't be mindin' an ould woman like me, sir," she said deprecatingly. "'Twas the thought of the children that come over me. I couldn't help it. I had the both of thim in me arms before they could cry. Small wonder me heart would be in thim! Many's the sad day I put over me, thinkin' what would become of them, wid the poor masther goin' to the bad. God forgive me for sayin' it! And sure now 'tis all settled and done for--and the heavth of it off of our minds. Praise be to God!"

She paused to dry her tears.

"And what would you be thinkin' to do wid thim?" she asked presently in a new and more personal tone.

Milbanke did not answer at once. His eyes strayed uneasily from one object in the yard to another, while the frown of perplexity that had puckered his brow since Asshlin's death reappeared more prominently than before. At last, with a certain expression of puzzled resolution, he looked up and met Hannah's attentive gaze.

"To tell you the truth, Hannah," he said, "that is the precise question I have been asking myself ever since your poor master died."

There was a wait of some seconds while his listener digested the information; then she nodded her head with slow impressiveness.

"I seen it meself," she said again. "Sure, I seen it as plain as daylight. 'There's somethin' on his mind,' I says to meself. An' if it isn't the poor masther's death,' I says, 'thin it's nothin' more nor less than the natural feelin's of a single gentleman that finds himself wid two grown daughters.'"

It was characteristic of Milbanke that he did not smile. He recognised only one fact in the old servant's words--the fact that the state of affairs over which he had been worrying in lonely perplexity had suddenly been accurately, if roughly, voiced by some one else. He glanced up with quick relief into the round, red face framed in the dairy window.

"Hannah," he said honestly, "your surmise was perfectly correct."

For the first time a smile broke over her tear-stained face.

"I was right thin? 'Tis the children was troublin' you?"

A sharp gleam of inquiry shot from her eyes.

"Yes," he answered simply.

"An' why, now?" Again her tone changed, the irrepressible undercurrent of native humour, native inquisitiveness and familiarity welling out unconsciously. "Sure, they're good children."

"I do not doubt it. I do not doubt it for one moment."

"But they're troublin' you all the same?"

"Well, yes. Yes, I confess they are troubling me."

"Both of thim?" she asked innocently.

He hesitated.

"Well, no," he replied artlessly. "No, not both of them."

"Ah, I thought that same!" Hannah gave a nod of understanding. "Sure, 'twas to be tormentin' men she was brought into the world for. I said so meself the first day I took her into me arms."

"But--but I haven't said anything. How do you know that it is----?"

"How do I know that it's Miss Clodagh that's botherin' you? Sure, how do I know that you're standin' before me? Faith, by the use of me eyesight! Haven't I seen you lookin' at her and ponderin'--and lookin' at her agin?"

Milbanke's lips tightened, and he drew himself up.

"I should be sorry if any thought I have bestowed on your young mistress----" he began coldly; then suddenly the intense need of help and sympathetic counsel over-balanced dignity. "Hannah," he said abruptly, "I'm in a terribly awkward position, and that is the simple truth. My mind is quite at rest about the younger girl. She is a child--and will be a child for years. A good school is all she needs. But with the other it's different--with Clodagh it's different. Clodagh is no longer a child."

Hannah remained discreetly silent.

"If I had a sister," he went on, "or any friend to whom I could entrust her. But I have none."

Again Hannah shook her head.

"Why, thin, that's a pity!" she murmured. "Sure, 'tis lonesome for a gintleman to be by himself."

"It is a pity--a great pity. You do not know how it is weighing upon me. Of course, there is her aunt----"

Hannah made an exclamation of horror.

"Is it Mrs. Laurence?" she cried. "Is it tie her to Mrs. Laurence you would? Sure, you may as well put her in the grave and be done wid it."

Milbanke's harassed face grew more perplexed.

"No," he said hurriedly--"no; I understand that that arrangement is impossible. I was merely wondering whether there is any other--any more distant relative with whom she might be happy----"

He looked anxiously into her broad, shrewd face.

For a moment the small eyes met his seriously, then involuntarily they twinkled.

"Faith, when I was a young woman, sir," she said slowly, "men wasn't so sat on findin' relations for a girl like Miss Clodagh--unless maybe 'twas a relation of their own makin'!"

Milbanke suddenly looked away.

"What--what do you mean?" he asked confusedly.

"Why, that 'tisn't aunts and cousins that a girl like Miss Clodagh wants, but a good husband."

"A--a husband?"

"Why, thin, what else? Instid of throublin' yourself and frettin' yourself till your heart is scalded out of you, why don't you marry her? That's what _I've_ been askin' meself ever since the poor masther died. It's out now, if I'm to be killed for it!"

She eyed him almost defiantly.

But Milbanke stood stammering and confused, his gaze fixed nervously on the ground, an unaccustomed flush on his worn cheeks.

"But--but, Hannah, I--I am an old man!"

His tone was deprecating and meant to be ironic; but unconsciously it had an undernote of question; unconsciously, as he raised his eyes to his mentor's face, he straightened the shoulders that age and study had combined to bend.

"I am an old man!" he said again. "Why--why, I am five years older than her father----"

Hannah continued to search his face.

"An' sure what harm is that?" she said. "Wasn't me own poor man as ould as me grandfather?--an' no woman ever buried a finer husband--God rest him!"

Milbanke's lack of humorous imagination stood him in good stead.

"But she's a child," he stammered--"a child----"

For answer, Hannah leant out of the window until her face was close to his.

"Listen here to me!" she said softly. "Child or no child, you thought about marryin' her before ever I said it. But you'd never riz the courage to do it. You're not like the Asshlins, that would tear down the walls of hell if they wanted to be gettin' at the divil; you'd like somebody to take him be the hand and draw him out nice and aisy for you----

"There she is up in that lonesome house, frettin' her heart an' cryin' her eyes out. Why can't you go up an' take her, before somebody else does?"

As she came to the last words her rough voice dropped. Her loyalty to her dead master, her anxiety to see his child in a place of safety poured from her in crude eloquence. To her primitive mind Milbanke appeared as the ideal husband--a man of dependable years, of wealth, of good social position; and all her affections, all her energies yearned to make the marriage. She could not have framed the fear that possessed her; but her instinct, her acute native intuition warned her unanswerably that the daughter of Denis Asshlin would need protection, and would need it before long. With an impulsive gesture she stretched out her hand, and, touching Milbanke's shoulder, pushed him gently forward into the yard.

"Go on, sir!" she urged softly. "Go on up an' take her, before somebody else does!"