The Woman Thou Gavest Me | Page 6

said and nothing heard, and then, unable to bear the suspense any longer, my father went to the foot of the staircase and shouted the doctor's name.
A moment later the doctor's footsteps were heard on the stone stairs. They were hesitating, halting, dragging footsteps. Then the doctor entered my father's room. Even in the sullen light of the peat fire his face was white, ashen white. He did not speak at first, and there was an instant of silence, dead silence. Then my father said:
"Well, what is it?"
"It is . . ."
"Speak man! . . . Do you mean it is . . . dead?"
"No! Oh no! Not that."
"What then?"
"It is a girl."
"A gir . . . Did you say a girl?"
"Yes.
"My God!" said my father, and he dropped back into the chair. His lips were parted and his eyes which had been blazing with joy, became fixed on the dying fire in a stupid stare.
Father Dan tried to console him. There were thistles in everybody's crop, and after all it was a good thing to have begotten a girl. Girls were the flowers of life, the joy and comfort of man in his earthly pilgrimage, and many a father who bemoaned his fate when a daughter had been born to him, had lived to thank the Lord for her.
All this time the joy bells had been ringing, and now the room began to be illuminated by fitful flashes of variegated light from the firework-frame on the top of Sky Hill, which (as well as it could for the rain that had soaked it) was sputtering out its mocking legend, "God Bless the Happy Heir."
In his soft Irish voice, which was like a river running over smooth stones, Father Dan went on with his comforting.
"Yes, women are the salt of the earth, God bless them, and when I think of what they suffer that the world may go on, that the generations may not fail, I feel as if I want to go down on my knees and kiss the feet of the first woman I meet in the street. What would the world be without women? Think of St. Theresa! Think of the Blessed Margaret Mary! Think of the Holy Virgin herself. . . ."
"Oh, stow this stuff," cried my father, and leaping to his feet, he began to curse and swear.
"Stop that accursed bell! Is the fool going to ring for ever? Put out those damnable lights, too. Put them out. Are the devils of hell trying to laugh at me?"
With that, and an oath at himself for his folly, my father strode out of the room.
My mother had heard him. Through the unceiled timbers of the floor between them the words of his rage had reached her. She was ashamed. She felt as if she were a guilty thing, and with a low cry of pain she turned to the wall and fainted.
The old lord died the same night. Somewhere towards the dead reaches of the dawn his wicked spirit went to its reckoning, and a month afterwards the new Lord Raa, a boy in an Eton jacket, came over to take possession of his inheritance.
But long before that my father, scoring out his disappointment like an account that was closed, had got to work with his advocates, bankers and insular councillors on his great schemes for galvanising the old island into new life.

THIRD CHAPTER
Out of the mist and veil of my own memory, as distinguished from Father Dan's, there comes first the recollection of a big room containing a big bed, a big wardrobe, a big dressing table, a big praying-stool with an image of Our Lady on the wall above it, and an open window to which a sparrow used to come in the mornings and chirp.
When I came to recognise and to classify I realised that this was my mother's room, and that the sweet somebody who used to catch me up in her arms when I went tottering on voyages of discovery round the vast place was my mother herself, and that she would comfort me when I fell, and stroke my head with her thin white hand, while she sang softly and rocked me to and fro.
As I have no recollection of ever having seen my mother in any other part of our house, or indeed in any other place except our carriage when we drove out in the sunshine, I conclude that from the time of my birth she had been an invalid.
Certainly the faces which first emerge from the islands of my memory are the cheerful and sunny ones of Doctor Conrad and Father Dan. I recall the soft voice of the one as he used to enter our room after breakfast saying, "How are we this morning ma'am?" And