He shook his head.
'No,' he said stubbornly, 'two people who are happy, like you and Henry, don't want a third coming in to spoil the harmony.'
'Don't be foolish, Johnnie,' she said.
'It would only make us happier if we thought you were being happy too. It's lonely for you in that big house all alone, and although I am not going but and about much just at the moment, we could read together, and I would play to you, and Henry would love to have your company when he returned in the evening.'
Johnnie thought what it would mean to sit here, day after day with Katherine, in the peace and quiet of Katherine's house. Just to sit and watch her hands, folded as they were now, would be enough. Just to listen to her calm voice, and now and again to have her eyes smile at him, as she glanced up from the book she would be reading.
Presently, when Thomas had removed the tea, Katherine went to the piano and played very softly.
She seemed so remote, so detached from the world, as she sat there on her music-stool, looking away towards the window. What does she think of, Johnnie wondered. What goes through her mind?
Does she give to Henry the peace she gives to me? He closed his eyes, and as he listened to her playing, Johnnie created the illusion for himself that this was his room, his house, and his wife who was sitting there at the piano, and that when she had finished she would come and bend over him, and touch his hair, and ask him if he was content. Then the door opened, and Henry came into the room, radiant, smiling.
'Hullo, old fellow; this is a surprise,' he said, and Johnnie rose from his chair, a guest in his brother's house, the dream shattered into foolishness.
Katherine closed the piano and went at once to her husband. He kissed her, and stood talking to Johnnie with his arm about her.
'How do you think she's looking?' asked Henry proudly, and without waiting for an answer he plunged into an account of his day, telling some amusing story about the civic luncheon he had been obliged to attend, where the honorable member for the city had made a tactless speech.
'I suppose,' said Katherine, 'you smoothed the whole thing over, and invited all those who were offended back to dinner?'
'I did nothing of the sort,' said Henry. 'I wished the affair well done with, so that I could get home to my wife.'
And once again he bent his head and kissed her, and Johnnie saw her look at his brother with an expression that brought a pain to his heart.
'She loves him,' he thought, 'he makes her happy,' and as he dressed for dinner, and heard them talking to one another in the room next to his, he thought suddenly of all the women he had never loved, who had made a momentary excitement and no more.
What a dreary, worthless little procession they made through the years, ending now with Kate Donovan in the gate-house kitchen. Oh God, he thought wearily, if everything had been different, if I'd never gone into the regiment, never been through that blasted senseless war, but stayed here in the country, met Katherine and asked her to help me. Perhaps she would have married me instead of Henry. We would have lived together at Clonmere and she would have had my children, not his; and she would have looked at me in the way she looked at Henry ten minutes ago.
There was a little pot of flowers on his dressing-table-she must have arranged them there before he came up to dress for dinner- and a book beside his bed, and a fire in the grate-signs of her care, her thoughtfulness-and there was a neatness and a comfort about the room so different from his own bleak bedroom at Clonmere.
In the room next door he pictured Katherine sitting before her mirror, brushing her hair, while Henry wandered in, fastening his collar and tie, the intimacy between them a natural happy thing, making them closer to one another than before. It was something that he would never know, this sharing of life between a husband and wife. The only memories he had were sordid, grey…
Dinner at East Grove was at seven o'clock. The candles were lit on the polished table. A parlour-maid helped Thomas hand the plates. And Johnnie, seated beside Katherine, compared her ways and his brother's once more to his own, when, sprawling alone in his dining-room, he would be faced sometimes by a stained cloth and tepid food, and after cursing the servant until the man was white with fear, he would decide not to eat at all, and stretch out his hand to the decanter instead.
When Katherine had risen and left the brothers together, Henry glanced across at him, with a curious half-shy expression, and said: 'I suppose you would not care to make me your agent, would you, Johnnie?'
'Why, what's the matter with Adams?' said Johnnie.
'I don't mean you should dismiss Adams,' replied Henry, 'but allow me to act as-well, as overseer, for want of a better expression. You're letting the place go rather to pieces, you know, old boy, and it seems such a pity, when I think of all the care and trouble and expense put upon it by grandfather.
Don't be annoyed with me for saying this. I've wanted to speak to you about it for some time.'
Johnnie flushed, and stuck out his jaw.
'I don't know what you're talking about,' he said. 'The place is run in the way I like it to be run, and that's all there is to it. As a matter of fact I think very little of Adams, and I shall no doubt be my own agent in future. You would probably find it more trouble than profit.'
'All right,' said Henry swiftly. 'We'll say no more about it. I only suggested it, as I thought it might help, and take some of the business off your shoulders. Been up to the mines lately?'
'I have not,' said Johnnie, lighting his cigar.
'There is nothing to go to the mines for. The only interest to me is to see what gets paid into my account at the bank. Why do you ask?'
'No reason. Only that I believe it encourages the fellows employed there if they feel the owner takes a bit of interest, and enquires after their welfare, and the work too, now and again.'
'Any other advice?' asked Johnnie.
Henry pushed the decanter towards him.
'Only to go a bit slow on this, old fellow,' he said, 'and see rather less of the Donovan family.'
Johnnie laid down his cigar.
'Who the hell's been talking to you about the Donovans?' he said.
'You know what this country is like for gossip,' said Henry. 'What goes on in Doonhaven is all over Slane in a couple of days. Jack Donovan isn't much of a chap, you know. He has a bad record for poaching and pilfering generally. And he's been heard boasting in the public-houses here that his sister has you by the ears, though he didn't use quite such a polite expression.'
'God damn everyone,' shouted Johnnie. 'Why the hell can't people leave me alone?'
'They would leave you alone,' said Henry, 'if you would leave the whisky alone.'
Johnnie leant back in his chair and stared at his brother.
'It's damned easy for you to talk, isn't it?' he said. 'You are happy I and married to the woman you love. There's precious little for you to worry about.
You have your Katherine. Let me enjoy my Kate.'
He laughed, and poured himself another glass of port.
'I'm sick and tired of people telling me what to do,' he said. 'I suffered from it in the army, and I'm not going to stand it in civil life.'
'I'm not trying to preach at you,' said Henry quietly. 'I'm only telling you to beware of Jack Donovan. If you choose to have an affair with his sister I can't stop you. But do keep your head.'
'The Donovans are my friends,' said Johnnie.
'They're the only people in this country who have showed any friendliness to me since I came back to it.'
'Very well,' said Henry. 'I won't say any more. Let us go into the drawing-room and ask Katherine to give us some music.'
Yes, it was easy enough for him, thought Johnnie, watching his brother turn the pages for Katherine at the piano, while she looked up at him and smiled.
Tonight they will be together, she with her head on his shoulder, and tomorrow he will wake, and Katherine will be beside him. And the next day and the next. When he is irritable she will soothe him. When he is tired she will
