'It's not extraordinary at all,' said Johnnie; 'it only means that they liked coming to see Henry and Herbert, and they don't care about coming to see me. For God Almighty's sake stop asking them. I can invite my own friends.'
And he would wander around with the keeper, and one or two of the tenants with whom he had struck up a queer familiarity, because there was no one else.
It was on one of these occasions that he came across Jack Donovan, whom he had barely set eyes on since he was a boy, and who brought back vividly the long-forgotten episode in the public-house in Slane. The fellow was little changed, still carroty-haired and impudent, and he stuck out his hand at once to Johnnie and asked after his health, although the gun under his other arm showed only too plainly that he had been poaching.
'Ah, now you've come back to us again, Captain, we shall see some sport,' said Donovan. 'That's what I was saying down in Doonhaven to the boys; there'll be lively times ahead. Here's the gentleman that will give some entertainment to the countryside.'
Johnnie laughed, although at first he had felt like hitting the fellow.
'You'd better join us, Jack,' he said, 'and find the hares for us.'
'I'll find you hares,' said the other, with a wink.
'I know the ground like the back of my hand, but I've been obliged to come here quietly, Captain, while you've been from home. It was Doctor Armstrong had the shooting here, and he's no friend to me or my family.'
'Never mind Doctor Armstrong,' said Johnnie; 'you can come and shoot as my guest for a change.'
The thought that his godfather disapproved of Jack Donovan was enough to make Johnnie claim the man as a friend at once. Uncle Willie had already made one or two brief appearances at Clonmere, each time adding another pin-prick to Johnnie's mounting irritation. Did Johnnie propose to do this, did he intend to follow his grandfather's example in that, and had he asked his brother Henry's advice about the other? The truth of the matter was his godfather presumed too much on old times' sake. He was over sixty, and past his job, thought his godson, and if he was not very careful Johnnie would have him thrown out of the place and the practice given to a younger man.
'What are you doing for yourself these days, Jack?' he asked, and the man shrugged his shoulders.
'You might well ask me that, Captain, with my elbows coming out of my coat, as you can see for yourself.
There's no trade left in the place at all, and my father's old shop that I have there on the quayside falling about my head. We're thinking of going to America, me and my sister Kate. There's nothing doing here at all.'
'You don't have to do that,' said Johnnie. 'I'll find something for you at Clonmere. Now I come to think of it I want someone to live in the gate-house at the top of the drive. I sacked the people only last week for being uncivil. You and your sister had better move in.'
Jack Donovan looked up at him, his light blue eyes suspicious.
'Ah, you're making a game of me, Captain.'
'I am not. Why shouldn't you live in the gate-house?'
'Sure, it's for you to say. The place belongs to you, Captain, and you can have what tenants you like, now old Mr. Brodrick is dead. He would never have had one of us Donovans in his gate-house, I can tell you that.'
'All the more reason to have one now,' said Johnnie, 'and if anyone dares say anything against it, you can refer them to me.'
He thought very little more about the matter, until in a few days' time the agent came to him in a state of great indignation, and said that Jack Donovan from Doonhaven, and his sister, had had the impudence to move their things into the gate-house, which he, the agent, had promised to one of the Captain's tenants from Kileen, and would the Captain please give orders for them to leave immediately?
'Certainly not,' said Johnnie, delighted to make the agent lose face. 'I have given permission to the Donovans to take over the gatehouse.'
'It is not at all customary…' began Mr.
Adams, but Johnnie told him to go to the devil and went out of the room. That evening at dinner his mother brought up the subject again.
'What is all this nonsense about those dreadful Donovans trying to seize the gate-house?' she said. 'The servants are full of it. You're going to turn them out, of course.'
'I shall do nothing of the sort,' said Johnnie.
'Jack Donovan is a very good fellow, and happens to be one of the few people on the estate who appear to like me. They shall live in the gate-house as long as they want to.'
'But, Johnnie,' protested his mother, 'the Brodricks have never had any sort of truck with the Donovans, you must know that. They are a horrible family. Your father caught his death from visiting one of them. For that alone I can never forgive them.'
'Because my father had the misfortune to catch diphtheria from one of the Donovans is no reason for me to dislike this generation,' said Johnnie. 'I should have thought you would have had more sense. The most reasonable thing to do would be for you to go and see Kate Donovan, and ask if she is comfortable.'
'My darling boy, I've never spoken to any of the family yet, and I'm certainly not going to begin now. If she's the sly-looking creature with flaxen hair I saw walking down the drive this morning, I don't think much of her. You ought to have had the Mahoneys at the gatehouse. I like Mrs.
Mahoney. Why didn't you ask my advice in the first place?'
'Because I prefer to use my own judgement,' said Johnnie shortly, reaching out for the decanter.
'It's a great mistake,' said Fanny-Rosa, watching the amount that went into the glass, 'to bring people up from the village who are nothing to do with the estate. I tried it with servants, and it never worked. After all, I ran this place at first, more or less on my own and later with Henry's help, all the time you were with the regiment, and I do know something about it by now. Why don't you finish the decanter while you're about it?'
Johnnie put down his glass and faced his mother across the table.
'I think it is time,' he said, 'that you and I came to some sort of understanding. For years we used to talk about living here together when my grandfather died, didn't we? And now it has happened, and here we are. And you know, and I know, that it's a failure.
It does not work. What do you propose to do about it?'
'What do you mean?' said Fanny-Rosa.
'Only that would it not be rather better for both of us if you went and lived somewhere else?' said Johnnie.
For a moment Fanny-Rosa did not answer. She played with the table-cloth in front of her, and there were two vivid spots of colour high on both cheeks. Johnnie watched her moodily, hating himself for what he had done, but knowing that he would never now take back his words.
'I see,' said Fanny-Rosa. 'I've been getting on your nerves. It was a good thing you told me. Mothers are so blind.'
She got up, and walked over to the fireplace, and stood for a while with her hands to the blaze.
Johnnie suddenly remembered her as she had been twenty years ago, with that same cloud of hair, now dyed and patchy, falling about her face, and how, when he was a little boy, she had swept him up in her arms and held him close. He could remember the scent she used then, and the lovely cool smell of her skin. Now her chin sagged a little, and the powder, so carelessly applied, had sprinkled upon her dress, so that there were spots of it on the satin. His heart ached, and savagely, in his mind, he cursed the years that had come between them, that could never now be bridged; years that had changed her from a laughing, careless girl to this rather ridiculous figure of middle-age, that touched him only because of the past, not through the present.
'Well, don't let's make a tragedy of it,' she said lightly. 'If you would rather be alone, thank heaven you said so in time.'
Johnnie wheeled round his chair, and stared with her into the fire.
'You don't understand,' he said. 'It is a tragedy. For years I used to think about this, and you being here with me, and what we would do together. And now that we are here, it's a God-damn awful failure.
Isn't that the greatest tragedy that can happen to anyone?'
They gazed into the fire, he with his glass in his hands, she with one hand upon his shoulder.
'I wonder,' she said suddenly, 'what would have happened if your father had not died.'
And there was something in her voice that caught at his heart and made him look up at her swiftly and take
