Towards morning on March 17 Miss Kezia dreamed. She was not often troubled with dreams, but on this occasion her dream was long and peculiarly vivid. She dreamed that she was passing through a narrow roadway, on either side of which great rocks rose high and precipitous. On these rocks men were at work, cutting, chiselling, hammering, and every sound they made rolled and rumbled and echoed amongst the rocks, till, in her dream, Miss Kezia's ears sang and buzzed in agony. As they worked the men sang and talked, and the rocks took up their voices, and flung them from one to another, till the noise was deafening. On she hurried, striving to get through the roadway, but it had the interminableness of dream roads, and Miss Kezia struggled in vain.
At seven o'clock she woke, because seven o'clock was the hour at which she invariably rose. On the 17th of March she rose four minutes later than usual, taking that time to ponder her dream and feel her pulse. She looked anxiously at herself in the peculiarly unflattering mirror on the toilet-table, but it showed her the same long Scotch face as usual, and the green tinge imparted by the glass was no greener than it always was. Miss Kezia considered dreams a weakness due to illness or a diseased imagination, but halfway through her toilet a voice broke out:—
"'Oh! Paddy dear, and did you hear the news that's going round? The shamrock is forbid by law to grow on Irish ground; Saint Patrick's day no more we'll keep, his colour can't be seen. For there's a cruel law agin' the wearin' of the green....'"
Miss Kezia stood, the cold water trickling down her face, and experienced a queer sort of sensation. Where had she heard that tune—sad even to her tough senses—quite lately? Why did her dream suddenly descend upon her, the sense of it gripping her most unaccountably?
A scream of woe in Molly's most material voice, "Oh, I've hammered my thumb into the middle of next month!" and the heavy fall of a hammer roused her suddenly, sharply, to full realisation and understanding of her dream. To the accompaniment of a steady hammering she finished her ablutions with a grim and wrathful haste. She faced the unflattering mirror with a gleam in her eye, and pulled and screwed her hair into its accustomed tight knot. She finished her toilet, and then she left her room.
Green met her eye; whichever way she turned she encountered green. The balusters were draped with green muslin. The austere photograph of a long-faced ancestor hanging, a perpetual prim disdainer of the follies of youth, on the wall opposite her door, looked out now disapprovingly from beneath a coquettish green satin bow hanging over his very brows.
Sheila Pat came marching down the stairs, holding aloft the Irish flag.
"Are you all mad?" Miss Kezia queried wrathfully.
The Atom turned an eye alight with a far-away scorn upon her.
"It's St. Patrick's Day!" she said curtly, and marched on down the stairs.
Miss Kezia put up with a good deal that day. She sat at the breakfast-table and faced, with strong but silent disapproval, a green-draped window. She said no word even when Sarah wriggled shyly in, her diminutive cap adorned with a great green bow. But her eye followed the hot and abashed little hand-maiden with dire meaning. When next Sarah appeared the bow had vanished.
She watched, from beneath raised brows, Kate Kearney tumbling over her own head in pursuit of the ribbon tied about her neck, but she did not say anything. After breakfast a box came by parcel's post addressed to Nell. It was a large box, and it was filled with shamrock. Miss Kezia studied it amiably.
"I suppose it is a pretty little weed," she said with affability.
She went farther. She asked Sheila Pat for information anent St. Patrick.
Unfortunately Sheila Pat started with the little item of his having swum across the Shannon with his head in his mouth. Miss Kezia remonstrated. She pointed out the impossibility of his performing such a feat.
Sheila Pat waxed indignant. She explained scornfully that anything was possible to St. Patrick, and that, moreover, his being in Ireland at the time had a great deal to do with his wonderful cleverness.
Miss Kezia argued that it would have been nothing more or less than a miracle.
Sheila Pat retorted, "And why not?" Miss Kezia was shocked. A long and hot discussion followed, of which the Atom had the last word. She said:—
"Why, you can't know any*thing! You don't even know what Ireland's *like! You're just a hignoramus!"
Miss Kezia was angry. She was also genuinely worried. It was not the first time that her young relatives by marriage had worried her active conscience from a religious point of view. Their stories of fairies and legends and miracles seemed, to her stern narrowness, profane. In the course of her argument with Sheila Pat, the Atom had observed that she thought it must be very nice for God to have St. Patrick for a companion. The remark had left Miss Kezia gasping.
Left alone with the rude epithet of hignoramus hovering scornfully in the air, Miss Kezia sought to arrange the chaos in her mind. She was still forming sound arguments to be used with effect on a future occasion, when she heard the O'Briens going out. She went to the window and received several further shocks. In the first place Denis was with the others, when he should have been at the bank. In the second, third, and fourth places, their costumes were most unseemly. To Miss Kezia they appeared to be composed chiefly of shamrock and green ribbon. In the fifth place Kate Kearney, all unchidden, was dividing her energies in a vain attempt to rid herself of her bow, between the mud heap at the side of the road and Miss Kezia's spotless door-steps.
Miss Kezia flung open the window, and called out:—
"Ridiculous! I won't have it! Denis, why aren't you at the bank? My steps!"
Denis waved an airy farewell with his shillelagh.
"Bank?" His voice was amazed. "It's a holiday, of course! Told them I shouldn't be there!"
"You are not to—"
Miss Kezia's voice died away. She recognised the uselessness of calling injunctions after fast-disappearing and obviously obstinate backs.
She returned to her dusting. Her amiability had been sorely tried; it was little more than a memory now. She approached the window to dust a chair, and became aware of the fact that her house was an object of interest and mirth to passers-by. She sighed angrily. She had a genuine wish to make allowances. She understood dimly that the day meant a great deal to them. She could not discover from the windows the cause of the interest her house seemed to possess for the passers-by. She donned her bonnet and coat and went out. From the pavement she discovered only too quickly the cause of that interest and mirth. Her respectable house wore a festive, even a rakish, air. The dingy bricks seemed to shrink back apologetically beneath their gay adornments. Green—green—green—Miss Kezia took a violent dislike to the colour that day which never left her. The Irish flag held a prominent position; green bunting was festooned across from window to window; a basket of shamrock was slung by green ribbons from a water-pipe; there were garlands and harps. From one window there hung a long, limp object, professedly a dead serpent. Miss Kezia's eyesight was good; it was better than her imagination. She saw at once that a thing composed of some rolled-up strips of carpet that were her property hung from a window. But she did not see that the thing was a serpent. The realistic touches given by Nell's brush were, to her, merely so many insults added to the injury.
The O'Briens did not come home to lunch. Miss Kezia lunched alone. She also said to Sarah, "You are not to keep anything hot, Sarah!"
Sarah dragged the beef from the oven in such a temper that it fell into the fender.
Soon after lunch Miss Kezia went out. She glanced from the gate with approval at the decorous, unadorned bricks of her house. When she returned a few hours later, she glanced again at it approvingly. But as she put her key into the lock of the door, the more amiable expression of her countenance faded, and a look of disapproving horror took its place. She entered the hall and was greeted with several disconcerting things. Her ears were offended by the loud singing of many voices, accompanied by a concertina and combs. Her nose was offended with the unmistakable scent of tobacco. Her eyes—well, her eyes were offended with the smoke and with many signs of untidiness, of riot, and of fun.
Miss Kezia went upstairs. As she reached the door of the Stronghold the voices and music were in full swing:—
"'You may take the Shamrock from your hat and cast it on the sod, But, never fear, 'twill take root there, tho' under foot 'tis trod. When laws can stop the blades of grass from growing as they grow, And when the leaves in summer time their verdure dare not show, Then I will change the colour I wear in my caubeen; But till that day, please God, I'll stick to wearin' of the green.'"
Miss Kezia stood, unseen, unheard, within the door of the Stronghold, and gazed.
Round the table sat several men, women, and children. On the table were the remains of a feast. Miss Kezia caught sight of a beef bone and gasped; she saw poultry bones, remains of pies, tarts, and cakes. The windows were flung wide, but the atmosphere of the room, thick with smoke, offended her nostrils.
A pair of bare little legs gave a sudden spasmodic leap to a sheltering lap, and a shrill little voice exclaimed:—
"Lady!"
There was a sudden lull. Denis turned to his aunt.
"Hulloa, Aunt Kezia! These are a few friends we came across to-day."
"In—deed!" said Miss Kezia.
An old woman was heard to exclaim with deep sentiment:
"Sure 'tis his honour's a rale gintleman entirely!"
Miss Kezia, looking back afterwards, on the minutes that followed, marvelled angrily at her strange and quite unsuitable behaviour. She concluded, and rightly, that she was dazed with bewilderment at the welcome she received. To her cold and austere nature it was inexplicable. She found herself surrounded, called by terms of endearment, her hands held and shaken, compliments paid to herself and her nation. One old woman, half weeping over the joy that had been hers that day, actually kissed her hand. She was not a particularly clean old woman, and Miss Kezia wished that she wouldn't do it. But she did not draw her hand roughly away. "Ten years," wailed the old woman, "have I stood the whole day through beside me barrow, and me not able to put me foot to the ground with the rheumatics!"
Miss Kezia felt a passing inclination to point out that the two facts were not compatible. Oh, these people were awful! And one had a monkey, a horrible little monkey, sitting on his shoulder! And they were dirty!
"Sure 'tis herself's the kind lady, givin' the poor Irish immigrants the welcome!"
Welcome!
Miss Kezia began to beat an ignominious retreat. She had to confess herself unequal to the occasion. Her inclination set strongly toward turning these undesirable guests from her house. But their gratitude was so exuberant; they were so sure of her welcome, so childishly hilarious.
"'Tis herself's giving us the grand time entirely!"
"Won't ye be sittin' down wid us, me dear?" The old woman who had kissed her hand dragged a chair forward invitingly.
"'Tisn't much we've left ye," she pursued, "but ye'll be havin' a piece of cheese now?"
Miss Kezia heard, amazedly, her own voice making excuses, as she edged back into the doorway. A grimy little hand was thrust up in front of her; a beguiling little voice suggestively besought God to bless her.
Miss Kezia looked down into a smutty imp's face with eyes as blue and innocent as Heaven.
"God bless ye, lady! God bless ye, lady!"
Slowly Miss Kezia opened her purse, slowly she took from it a halfpenny, and dropped it into the little hand.
"God send ye a good husband, lady!" rang out jubilantly. "God guard every shtep of your way!"
Miss Kezia found herself surrounded suddenly by bare legs, blue eyes, outstretched hands, entreating voices.
"God bless ye, lady! God bless ye, lady!"
There were five halfpennies and two farthings in her purse. She dispensed them automatically.
"God send ye a good husband! God send ye a good husband!"
Even the smallest imp, a scrap of a thing, about a foot and a half high, shrilly called on Heaven to provide her with a suitable partner.
Miss Kezia looked uncomfortable. She shut her purse with a snap and retreated on to the landing. But they followed her, all talking at once. Her hands were taken again. Disconcerting questions as to her family, her parents, were asked. The old woman who had stood beside her barrow for ten years without once putting her foot to the ground broke out wailingly into an account of her trials, her sorrows, and pains. A black-bearded man gave her a picturesque presentment of his life as a father of eight children. His was the shoulder on which the objectionable monkey sat. He came close, emphasising, with dramatic gestures, his story. The monkey stretched out a thin little arm towards Miss Kezia's bonnet. Miss Kezia backed precipitately. Why did her bonnet possess a fascination for monkeys, she wondered shudderingly. She hated monkeys.
"Sure, thin, isn't he welcoming one of his own people?" the man with the black beard observed.
Miss Kezia thought the remark impertinent, and concluded that it was intended to be funny. It wasn't.
It gave her disapproval the necessary fillip, and she managed to beat a retreat. Once in her bedroom, she shut the door, and, with a hurried air not usual to her, turned the key in the lock.
Miss Kezia possessed an uncompromising conscience. She never allowed it to veil or excuse her motives. Yet, as she stood untying the strings of the bonnet that possessed such a weird attraction for the monkey tribe, she said to herself that she really must turn out and tidy a certain drawer at once. To an outsider the drawer would have seemed tidy enough, but Miss Kezia, sitting before it, the door still locked, methodically sorted out and refolded every article it contained. As she was refolding, for the third time, a certain scarf that was the last article to be tidied, the noise that had been surging, high and low, exuberant and sad, in her ears, as a never ceasing accompaniment to her tidying, suddenly swelled into sharper sounds, and she understood that the door of the Stronghold had been opened. She sat, rigid, a queer dread on her face. The dread gave place presently to absolute astonishment at the noise they managed to make. The rapid talk, the laughter, the jokes, bewildered her. The great affection that evidently existed between them and her young relatives surprised her.
"Old tenants," she surmised. "How very fond they are of their landlord's children!"
She experienced a distinct feeling of gratitude towards the Albert Hall, and the Irish concert that was to be held there that evening, and for which her relatives had taken tickets.
For a quarter of an hour by Miss Kezia's watch, the "tenants" bade their landlord's children good-bye. Three times the door was shut, three times there came bangs and thumps on it, and it was re-opened. And each time all the noise and talk began again.
Later on Miss Kezia ventured forth. On meeting the O'Briens, she observed with forbearance that she trusted they would make things tidy now that their father's tenants had gone. She went on to remark that it was strange so many of them should be in London. They were a good deal amused. They pointed out airily that they were no tenants of their father's; that they had never seen them till that day; that they had just come across them. It was the last shock poor Miss Kezia received on that 17th of March. She was very angry, and very genuinely bewildered. She watched them go off to their concert with a sense of relief. She felt a newly developed fondness for the Albert Hall.