RTÉ Culture presents a series of five early short stories written by Lady Augusta Gregory (1852-1932) - these tales, Lady Gregory's only known efforts at short fiction, offer a remarkable insight into one of Ireland's most important literary figures.
Below, editor James Pethica introduces Lady Gregory's story A Philanthropist, taken from his colllection Lady Gregory's Early Irish Writings 1883-1893 (Colin Smythe publications).
A Philanthropist was likely the first of the three short fictions Lady Gregory wrote under the pseudonym "Angus Grey". In a letter of June 1890 she reported that she was "trying to write a local story, but don't think it will come to much. It is easy enough to write 'situations' or conversation, but the trivial parts are the difficulty, getting people up and down stairs, or in and out of the house gracefully." Its plot turns on the arrival in the west of Ireland of Louise Eden, a woman raised and educated in England, though "half-Irish" by birth, who finds her loyalties to class, culture and nationality strained—to varying effect—by her growing affection for the country people in the neighbourhood of "Cloon", a small town resembling Gort, close to the Gregory estate at Coole Park. Finding deep satisfaction in ministering to the poor and sick there, she decides, in a moment of "exaltation", to marry the local doctor and commit herself to a life "in the country she had learned to love." Within hours, though, her resolve weakens, as she begins to recognize that this choice would involve a real and permanent loss of social status. Her sudden misgivings show that her philanthropy, however devout, has always involved an element of condescension, and that her adoption of peasant garb has been nothing more than a theatrical self-indulgence, serving merely to emphasize own her "refinement."
That Lady Gregory was questioning the extent of her own condescension in A Philanthropist is apparent in the many autobiographical dimensions of the story. Some of Louise Eden’s good works are based directly on Gregory’s own philanthropic efforts at as a young woman, and with her "slight, childlike figure", "earnest eyes" and religious intensity, she suggests a degree of deliberate self-portraiture on Gregory’s part.
The story thus offers a cautionary estimate of the possibility of achieving real intimacy across boundaries of class, wealth and education, and enacts Gregory’s doubts about her own increasing commitment to Ireland.
A Philanthropist was published under the pseudonym "Angus Grey" in The Argosy in June 1891.
A Philanthropist (1)
I.
"And when I had your own bottle finished, Doctor, an ould man that was passing by to the fair of Kinvarra told me that there was nothin' in the world so good for a stiff armas goose’s grease or crane’s lard, rendered, rubbed in, and, says he, in a fewdays your arm will be as limber as limber. So I went to the keeper at Inchguile, and he shot a crane for me; but there wasn’t so much lard in it as I thought there’d be, because it was just after rearing a chitch." (2)
"Well, we must try and get you a better one next time," said the Doctor, nodding farewell to his loquacious patient, one of those non-paying ones who look on a "dispensary ticket" as conveying anunlimited right of discourse on the one hand and attention on the other. (3) But the Doctor was just now in a position of vantage, being seated on his car, on which he slowly jogged out of sight,leaving the victim of rheumatism who had stopped him still experimentally rubbing the joints of his arm. (4)
It was the first of June by the calendar, but the outward signs of the season were but slightly visible in that grey West Country, where stones lay as the chief crop in the fields and innumerable walls took the place of hedges, and a drizzling mist from the Atlantic hid all distant outlines.
The Doctor had been all day face to face with such cheerless surroundings, and was on his way homewards. But presently he stopped at the entrance of a little "boreen," (5) where a wrinkled, red-skirted dame was standing sentry, leaning on a stout blackthorn stick. "Is it me you’relooking out for, Mrs. Capel?" he asked. "I hope Mary is no worse to-day."
"She’s the one way always," was the reply; "and it wasn’t of you I was thinking, Doctor, but standing I was towatch that ruffian of a pig of Mr. Rourke’s that had me grand cabbages eat last night, and me in Cloon buying a pound of madder to colour a petticoat. (6) Ah, then, look at him now standing there by the wall watching me out of the corner of his eye!" and flourishing her stick the energetic old lady trotted off to the attack.
"I may as well go in and see Mary, "muttered the Doctor, tying the reins to an isolated gate-post, and walking up the narrow lane to the thatched cottage it led to.
"God save all here," he said, putting his head in over the half-door.
"God save you kindly," was the reply from an old man in corduroy knee-breeches and a tall hat, (7) who sat smoking a short pipe in the deep chimney-corner, and watching with interest the assault of various hens and geese upon the heap of potato-skins remaining in a basket-lid which had done duty as a dinner-table.
The Doctor passed through to a little room beyond, whitewashed and containing a large four-post bed. The invalid, a gentle, consumptive-looking girl, lay on the pillows and smiled a greeting to the Doctor.
His eye, however, passed her, and rested with startled curiosity on a visitor who was sitting by her side, and who rose and bowed slightly. The stranger was a lady, young and slight, with dark eyes and hair and a small, graceful head. He guessed at once she must be Miss Eden, the new Resident Magistrate’s sister, of whose ministrations to the poor he had heard much since his return from his late holiday. (8)
He stopped awkwardly, rather confused at so unexpected a meeting; but the stranger held out her hand, and looking up at him said: "I am so glad you have come back; we have wanted you so much."
The Doctor did not answer. The sweet, low voice, with no touch of Irish accent, was a new sound to him, the little hand that she gave him was fairer and smaller and more dainty than any he had ever touched. To say the truth, his early farm-house life and his hospital training and dispensary practice had not brought him into contact with much refinement, and this girl with her slight, childlike figure and soft, earnest eyes seemed to him to have stepped from some unreal world. Then, finding he still held the little hand,he blushed and let it go.
"How are you getting on, Mary?" he asked, turning to his patient.
"Middling, sir, thank you," said the girl. "I do have the cough very bad somenights, but more nights it’s better; and the lady, may God enable her, has me well cared."
"I could not do much," said the lady,with an appealing glance, "and you must not be angry with me for meddling with your patients. But now that you have come I am sure Mary will be better."
"Don’t be troubling yourself about me,"said the sick girl, gently. "I’ll never be better till I see Laurence again."
"Oh, don’t be giving yourself up like that," said the Doctor, cheerily; "we won’t let you die yet awhile."
"I won’t die," she answered, gravely, "till the same day that Laurence died: the 13th of September. There’s no fear of me till then."
She looked tired, and her visitors left, the Doctor telling his new acquaintance as they walked down the lane what a strong, bright girl this had been till a year ago, when her brother had died of consumption. From that day her health had begun to fail, the winter had brought a cough, and Easter had found her kept to her bed. It was a hopeless case, he thought, though she might linger for a time. (9)
"Indeed, and she’s a loss to us," putin Mrs. Capel, who had now joined them, having returned from her pursuit of the predatory pig. "She was a great one for slavin’, and as strong as any girl on the estate, but she did be frettin’greatly after her brother, and then she got cold out of her little boots that let in the water, and there she’s lying now, and couldn’t get up if all Ireland was thrusting for it."
The mist had now turned to definite rain, and Louise Eden accepted "a lift" on the Doctor’s car, as he had to pass her gate in going home. His shyness soon wore off as the girl talked to him with complete ease and simplicity, first of some of his poor patients, then of herself and her interest in them.
She was half-Irish, she said, her mother having come from this very West Country, but she had lost both her parents early and been brought up at school and with English relatives. Lately her brother, or rather step-brother, having been made an R.M. and appointed to the Cloon district, had asked her to live with him, and this she was but too happy to do. She had always longed to give her life to the poor and especially the Irish poor, of whose wants she had heard so much. She had even thought of becoming a deaconess, but her friends would not hear of it, and she had been obliged to submit herself to their conventional suburban life. "But here at last," she said, "I find my hands full and my heart also. These people welcome me so warmly and need so much, the whole day is filled with work for them; and now that you have come, Dr. Quin," she added, smiling at him, "I can do so much more, for you will tell me how to work under you and to nurse your patients back to health again."
It was almost dark when they came to the gate of Inagh, the house usually tenanted by the Resident Magistrate of the day, and here Louise Eden took leave of her new acquaintance, again giving himher hand in its little wet glove. The Doctor watched her as she ran lightly towards the house. She wore a grey hat and cloak, and the rough madder-dyed skirt of the peasant women of the district. None of the "young ladies" he had hitherto met would have deigned to appear in one of these fleecy crimson garments, so becoming to its present wearer. (10) She turned and waved her hand at the corner of the drive, and the Doctor having gazed a moment longer into the grey mist that enshrouded her, went on his journey home.
His little house on the outskirts of Cloon had not many outward charms, being built in the inverted box style so usual in Ireland. A few bushes of aucuba and fuchsia scarcely claimed for the oblong space enclosed in front the name of a garden. But within he found a cheerful turf fire, and his old housekeeper soon put a substantial meal on the table.
"Any callers to-day, Mamie?" he askedas he sat down.
"Not a one, sir, only two," was the reply. "The first was a neighbouring man from Killeen that was after giving himself a great cut with a reaping-hook where he was cutting a few thorns out of the hedge for to stop a gap where the cows did be coming into his oatfield. (11) Sure I told him you wouldn’t be in this long time, and he went to Cloran to bandage him up."
"And who was the other, Mamie?"
"The second first, sir, was a decent woman, Mrs. Cloherty, from Cranagh, with a sore eye she has where she was cuttin’ potatoes and a bit flew up and hot it, and she’s after going to the Friars at Loughrea to get a rub off the blessed cross, but it did no good after." (12)
The old woman rambled on, but the Doctor gave her but a divided attention. He laughed and blushed a little presently to find himself gazing in the small round mirror that hung against the wall, his altitude of six feet just bringing his head to its level. The face that laughed and blushed back at him was a pleasant one: frank, blue eyes and a square brow surmounted by wavy fair hair were reflected, and the glad healthfulness of four-and twenty years. He had been looked on as a "well-looking" man in his small social circle of Galway and Dublin, and had laughed and joked and danced with the girls he had met at merry gatherings, but without ever having given a preference inthought to one above another. Certainly no eyes had ever followed him into his solitude as the dark ones first seen to-day were doing.
He went out presently, the rain having ceased, and sauntered down the unattractive "Main Street" of Cloon.
The shops were shut, save those frequent ones which added the sale of liquor to that of more innocent commodities. In one a smart-looking schoolboy was reading the Weekly Freeman aloud to a group of frieze-coated hearers. (13) At the door of another a ballad-singer was plaintively piping the "Mother’s Farewell," with its practical refrain:—
"Then write to me often, and send me all you can,
And don’t forget where’er you are that you’re an Irishman." (14)
The Doctor might at another time have joined and enlivened one of the listless groups standing about, but, after a moment or two of hesitation, he turned his back to them and walked in the direction of the gate of Inagh. "There’s Mrs. Connell down there, that I ought to go and see; she’s always complaining,"he said to himself, in self-excuse. But having arrived at her cottage, he saw by a glance at the unshuttered window that his visit would be a work of supererogation, as she was busily engaged incarding wool by the fireside, the clear light of the paraffin lamp, which without any intervening stage of candles had superseded her rushlight, showingher comely face to be hale and hearty. (15)
Half unconsciously the young man passed on, crossed a stile and walked up a narrow, laurel-bordered path towards the light of another window which was drawing him, moth-like, by its gleam. It also, though in the "Removable’s" house,was unshuttered, testifying to the peaceful state of the district. He could see a cheerful sitting-room, gay with flowers and chintzes, the light of a shaded lamp falling on Louise Eden’s fair head, bent over a heavy volume on the table, an intrusive white kitten disputing her attention with it. He drewback, with a sudden sense of shame at having ventured so far, and hurried homewards to dream of the fair vision the day had brought him.
It was the beginning of an enchanted summer for the young Doctor. Day after day he met Miss Eden, at first by so-called accident; but soon their visits were pre-arranged to fall together at some poor cottage, where she told him he could bring healing or he told her she could bring help.
She had thrown herself with devotion into the tending of the poor. "I have wasted so many years at school," she would say, "just on learning accomplishments for myself alone; but now I have at last the chance of helping others I must make the most of it, especially as it is in my own dear Ireland."
"The lady" was soon well known amongst the neglected tenants of an estate in Chancery. Her self-imposed duties increased from day to day. The old dying man would take no food but from her hands. The Doctor found her at his house one evening. She had cut herself badly in trying to open a bottle for him, and was deadly pale. "I can’t bear the sight of blood," she confessed, and fainted on the earthen floor. (16) It was with gentle reverence that he carried her out and laid her on the cushions of his car, spread by the roadside; but the sweet consciousness of having for that one moment held her in his arms never left him when alone. In her presence her frank friendliness drove away all idle dreams and visions.
It was on a Sunday afternoon of September that Dr. Quin and Louise Eden met again sadly at the house where they had first seen each other, that of the Capels. They were called there by a sudden message that the poor girl Mary was dying, and before they could obey the summons she had passed away.
The little room was brighter now; a large-paned window, the gift of her ministering friend, let the light fall upon the closed eyes. At the foot of the bed hung a beautiful engraving of the Magdalen at the Saviour’s feet, (17) while a bunch of tea-roses in a glass still gave out their delicate fragrance. Neighbours were beginning to throng in, but gave place to "the lady." The old father silently greeted her and wrung her offered hand, but moved away without speaking. The mother, staying her loud weeping, was less reserved.
"It’s well you earned her indeed, miss," she said; "and she did be thinking of you always. The poor child, she was ill for near ten months, but I wouldn’t begrudge minding her if it was for seven year. Sure I got her the best I could, the drop of new milk and a bit o’ white bread and a grain o’ tea in a while, and meself and the old man eatin’ nothin’ but stirabout, (18) and on Christmas night we had but a herrin’ for our dinner, not like some of the neighbours that do be scattering. Sure we never thought she was goin’ till this morning, when she bid us send for the priest. And when she saw the old man crying, 'Father,’ says she, ‘don’t fret. I’ll soon be in Heaven praying for you with me own Laurence.’ Sure she always said she’d die on the same day as him, and she didn’t after—it was of a Saturday he died and this is a Sunday." (19)
Louise and the Doctor looked up suddenly at each other. This was indeedthe 13th of September, the day on which Laurence Capel had last year passed away.
They presently left the house of mourning, soon to become, by sad incongruity, a house of feasting, Louise leaving a little money for "the wake" in the old woman’s hands. They walked towards home together, the Doctor leading his horse.
"I hope there is nothing wrong, Miss Eden," he asked after a little, noticing how abstracted and depressed she seemed.
"Yes," she answered; "I have had news that troubles me. My brother has written to tell me that he is going to marry the lady at whose house he has been staying in Yorkshire; and that, as she has a large property there, he will give up his Irish appointment. They offer me a home, and I am sure they would be very kind. But what troubles me is the thought of leaving Cloon, where I have learned to help the people and to love them. I can never settle into a dull, selfish, luxurious life again." Her eyes filled with tears as she spoke.
The young man’s heart beat fast. Might he—might he dare to lay himself at her feet? He nervously played with the horse’s mane and said tremulously, "We can never do without you now, Miss Eden. We should all be lost without you."
He paused and looked at her. She was gazing sadly at the distant blue outline of the Clare hills, and the sun sinking behind them flashed upon her tearful eyes. She was on the other side of the horse and a little in advance, and he could not, had he dared, have touched her hand.
The words came out suddenly:
"We can never do without you here: I can never do without you. Will you stay with me? I haven’t much to offer you: two hundred pounds a year is all I am earning now, and I may soon get the hospital. I can’t give you what you are used to; but if I had the whole world and its riches, it’s to you I would bring them."
She had stopped now and listened to him, startled. Then she turned again, looked at the tranquil hills and the far-stretching woods of Inchguile, and the smoke curling from many a poor hearthstone. A vision flashed across her mind of a life spent here in the country she had learned to love, amongst the people she longed to succour, with for a helper the strong, skilful man who had stood with her by so many beds of sickness. Then she thought of what her future would be in a luxurious English household. She could see the well-regulated property, the tidy cottage, where squire and parson would permit her help, but not need it. An old woman looked from her doorway as they passed and said: "God speed ye! God bring ye safe home and to heaven!"
They had come to the high road now, and as they stopped to let a drove of cattle pass, she turned and met the Doctor’s wistful eyes with a flash of enthusiasm in hers.
"I will stay," she said. "I will give my life to Cloon and its poor!"
Then, as they reached the stile which led into Inagh, she crossed it lightly and walked up the narrow path, scarcely remembering to look back before she was out of sight and wave her hand in farewell to her happy lover.
Happy was not, perhaps, the word to describe him by. A sudden rapture had swept over him, blinding his vision, when she had said, "I will stay." Yet now that she was out of sight without having deigned him one touch of her hand, one soft word, he felt as if all had been a dream; and was also conscious of a feeling, too subtle to be formed into a thought, that there was something wanting in this supreme moment which surely is not wanting when two hearts for the first time know themselves to be beating for each other. But she had always been such an object of worship to him, as one beyond his sphere, that he remembered how far away she had been from him but yesterday, and that doubtless the ordinary rules of love must be put aside when one so high stooped to crown the life of so unworthy a worshipper.
II.
Colonel Eden returned that evening, and for some days Louise was constantly occupied with his affairs, driving and walking with him and listening to his plans and projects, and thus giving up her own solitary expeditions and visits.
She was glad of the excuse to do this. The moment of exaltation in which she had resolved to devote her life to these poor Galway peasants had passed away, and though she kept pictures before her mind of a redeemed district, and children brought up in health and cleanliness instead of disease and dirt, and home industries taking the place of the idleness that followed spasmodic labour, misgivings entered with them as she saw herself no longer "the lady"who stooped from a high level, but a mere doctor’s wife (she would not admit even to her thoughts the undesirable title of "Mrs. Quin"), living in that small staring house at the entrance of the town. Of one thing she was certain, she could not possibly suggest such an idea to her brother. She could imagine too well his raised eyebrows and sarcastic words. She must wait until he had broken all ties with the neighbourhood, and then she could come back without consulting him. Her affianced husband’s personality she kept as much as possible in the background. He was to be her fellow in good works, her superior in the skill and knowledge of a healer. She had only seen him during her ministrations to the poor, only talked with him of their needs and his own aspirations, had hardly looked on him as a being in whom she could take a personal interest, until that moment in the sunset when she had in the impulse of a moment linked her life to his.
A dread began to creep over her of seeing him again. How should she meet him? Could she still keep him at a fitting distance? Would he not feel that he had some claim upon her even now?
One morning, hearing wheels, she looked up from her half-hearted study of an Irish grammar and saw the well-known car and the bony grey horse appearing. To fly out by the back door, catching up her hat on the way was the work of a second. She ran down the laurel walk,crossed the stile, and was soon safely on her way to the Inchguile woods.
She was overtaken presently by a frieze-coated man, Martin Regan, who, though an Inchguile tenant and out of her usual beat, she had met once or twice, his bedridden father having sent to beg a visit from her. Their holding was a poor one enough, but by constant hard work the son had managed to keep things going. She knew the old woman who ruled in the house was his stepmother, but had not noticed any want of harmony in the family. Rumours, however, had reached her lately that the old man had been making a will, by which he left the farm and all his possessions to his wife, who had already written to recall her own son from America to share the expected legacy with her.
These rumours came back to the mind of Louise Eden as she noticed the trouble in Martin Regan’s face.
"I was just going up to speak to your honour, miss," he said, "when I seen you going through the gate, so I followed you to tell of the trouble I’m in."
"Is what I have heard true, then?" asked Louise. "Surely your father could not be so unjust as to leave the farm you have worked on so hard away from you?"
"It’s true indeed, miss," said Martin. "And I’m after going to the agent about it, for Sir Richard is away, and if he could hear of it—he’s a good landlord and would never see me wronged. But he says all the power is gone from the landlord now, and that if the old man was to leave the land to Parnell or another and away from all his own blood the law couldn’t stop him. So God help us! I dunno at all what’ll I do."
"Had you any quarrel with your father that led to this?" asked Louise, with sympathy that won the confidence of her companion, who had walked on with her to the woods, where their path was brilliantly bordered by the opaque red berries of the mountain ash, and the transparent hues of the guelder-rose.
"None at all," was the answer. "They made the will unknownst to me, and they have the little farm and the little stock, and all there is left to themselves, and for me nothing but the outside of the door and the workhouse."
"Do you think they threatened him or used force?" suggested the girl.
"Did they force him to do it, is it? They did not. But it’s too much whisky and raisin cakes they had, and me coming into the house after selling a sick pig. I never heard a word or sound about it till a neighbouring man told me they were gathered in the house with the priest, and looking for a witness, and I went in, and Peter Kane was in the house preparing to sign his name, and I took him by the neck and threw him out of the door, and the stepmother she took me by the skin of the shirt, and gave me a slap across the face with the flat of her hand, and I called Peter Kane to witness that she struck me, and he said he never saw it. And why? Because he had a cup of whisky given him before, and believe me, when he turned about, it smelled good! After that, no decent man could be found to sign his name, till they got two paid men. Sure there’s schemers about that ’ud hang you up for half a glass of whisky."
"And who drew up the will?" inquired Miss Eden.
"The curate, Father Sheehy that didit. Sure our own priest would never have done it, but it was a strange curate from the County Mayo. And I asked him did he know there was such a one as me in the world, and he said he never did. Then yourself’ll need forgiveness in heaven, Father, says I, as well as that silly old man."
"Could you not speak quietly to your father about it?" suggested Louise.
"Sure I never see the old man but when I go into the room in the morning to wipe my face with the little towel after washing it, and he don’t speak to me himself, but to himself he do bespeaking. And the old woman says to me, ‘Go down now to your landlord and see what he can do for you;’ and I said I will go, for if he was at home, there was never a bishop or a priest or a friar spoke better and honester words to me than his honour’s self."
Martin Regan paused to take breath and wipe his mouth with his coat sleeve, and after a moment’s abstracted gaze at the vista of tall fir trees before him, burst out again:
"And now it’s whisky and tea for the old woman, and trimmings at two shillings the yard for the sister’s dress, and what for Martin? What for the boy that worked for them the twelve monthslong? Me that used to go a mile beyond Cloon every morning to break stones, and to deal for two stone o’ meal every Saturday to feed the childer when there was nothing in the field. And it’s trying to drive me from the house now they are, and me to wet my own tea and to dress my own bed, and me after wringing my shirt twice, with respects to ye, after working all the day in the potato ridges."
"Could no one influence your stepmother; has she no friends here?" asked Louise, much moved.
Martin Regan laughed bitterly. "Sure she never belonged to the estate at all," he said, "but came in the middle of the night on me and the little sister sitting by the little fire of bushes, and me with a little white coat on me. And we never knew where she came from, and never brought a penny nor a blanket nor a stitch of clothes with her, and our own mother brought seventy pounds and two feather beds. And now the old man’s like to die, and maybe he won’t pass the night, and where’ll I be? Sure if he would keep him living a little longer he might get repentance."
"Had you not better ask the Doctor to see him?" said Louise. "He might bring him round for a time, and then we must do our best for you."
"I was thinking that myself," said Regan; "and I believe I’d best go look for him now; I might chance to find him at home. I heard the old woman had the priest sent for; but, sure, he’s wore out anointing him—he threatened to die so often. But he’s worse now than ever I saw him." And taking off his hat withmany expressions of gratitude, he left Louise to finish her walk alone.
An hour or two later she returned, her hands full of sprays and berries as an excuse for her wanderings. The Colonel was smoking contentedly on the bench outside the door.
"Ah, Louise," he said, "you have missed your friend the Doctor you were so full of when you wrote to me. He seemed to want to see you—I suppose to have a crack about some of your patients; so I asked him to come and dine this evening."
No escape now! Louise bit her lip, and proceeded to arrangeher berries.
"He seems an intelligent young man, "the Colonel went on; "rather good-looking, if he had a drill-sergeant to teach him to hold himself up; and I hear he doesn’t drink, which can’t often be said of these dispensary doctors."
The red deepened in the girl’s face. How could she ever say, "This is the man I have promised to marry?" With much uneasiness she looked forward to dinner-time. Dr. Quin sent no apology; nay, was worse than punctual. He came in rather shyly, looking awkward in a new and ill-fitting evening suit, for which he had put aside his usual rough homespun. Louise,furious with herself for having blushed as he appeared, gave him a cold and formal reception.
Dinner began uncomfortably for all three, as the Colonel, who had trusted to his sister to entertain their guest, found himself obliged to exert his own powers of conversation. The Doctor’s discomfort was intensified by what seemed to one of his simple habits the unusual variety of courses and dishes. His fish-knife embarrassed him; he waited to use fork or spoon until he had watched to see which implement was preferred by his host. He chose "sherry wine" as a beverage; and left a portion of each viand on his plate, in the groundless fear that if he finished it he would be pressed to take a further supply. When dessert was at last on the table, he felt more at ease; his host’s genial manner gave him confidence; and he was led on to talk of his work and prospects at Cloon, of the long drives over the "mountainy roads," and the often imaginary ailments of the patients who demanded his attendance, and their proneness when really ill to take the advice of priest or passer-by on sanitary matters rather than his own. "But I’ll get out of it, I hope, some day,"he said, looking at Louise; "when I get a few more paying patients and the infirmary, I can give up the dispensary."
Louise listened, dismayed. It was the thought of succouring the poor and destitute that had led her to make the resolve of marrying their physician; and he now dreamed of giving up his mission amongst them! He, poor lad, only thought for the moment of how he might best secure a home for his fair bride not too much out of harmony with her present surroundings.
"And are you pretty sure of the infirmary?" asked the Colonel with an appearance of warm interest.
"Well, I’m not rightly sure," was the answer. "I have a good deal of promises and everybody knows me, and the other man, Cloran, is no doctor at all—only took to it lately. Sure his shop in Cloon isn’t for medicine at all, but for carrot-seed and turnip-seed and every description of article. But there’s bribery begun already; and yesterday, Mr. Stratton asked one of the Guardians to keep his vote for me, and says he, ‘how can I when I have the other man’s money in my pocket?’" (20)
"And where did you learn doctoring?" asked the Colonel.
"Well, I walked St. James’ Hospital in Dublin three years; and before that I was in the Queen’s College, Galway, where I went after leaving the National School in Killymer." (21)
"Were you well taught there?" inquired his host.
"I was indeed. I learned a great deal of geography and arithmetic. There’s no history taught at all though, nor grammar. But you’d wonder how good the master was at mathematics, and he nothing to look at all. His name was Shee," went on the Doctor, now quite over his shyness; "and he was terrible fond of roast potatoes. I remember he used to put them in the grate to roast and take them out with two sticks, for in those days there were no tongs; and one day I brought four round stones in my pocket and put them in the grate as if they were potatoes to roast for myself. By-and-by, he went over and took the stick and raked out one of them, and took it up in his hand and rubbed it on his trousers (so) to clean it, and not a tint of skin was left on his hand. And I out of the door and he after me, and I never dared go to the school again till my grandfather went before me to make peace."
The Colonel laughed heartily and was proceeding further to draw out his ingenuous guest, but Louise, visibly impatient, rose to leave the room. She was chaffing with shame and mortification. Had she ever thought of becoming the wife of that man with his awkward manners and Connaught brogue? Certainly she had never realised what it meant. She could never look her brother in the face again if the idea of the engagement should dawn on him. How could she escape it? Carry it out she could not. All her enthusiastic wish to spend her life in making this poor district better was now overshadowed by the unendurable thought of what her promise entailed.
Presently the Doctor came in alone, Colonel Eden having gone to write a letter he wished to send by late post. He came forward at first gladly, then timidly, repelled by the girl’s cold expression as she stood by the fire in her long white dress. She felt that her only chance of avoiding dangerous topics was in plunging into the subject of their mutual patients.
"Did Regan find you in time to bring you to his father?" she asked.
"He found me," said the Doctor; "but I told him I couldn’t come before to-morrow as I was to dine here. I though there was no occasion for hurry."
"But did he tell you how much depends on his father’s life?" said Louise, unconsciously glad to find something definite at which she might show displeasure. "Do you not know of the unjust will he has made, and that if he dies now his son will be disinherited?"
"He was telling me about it, but there’s no danger of his dying yet awhile," answered the Doctor, unaware of the gathering storm. "That old man has a habit of dying; he was often like that before."
"I thought it was your duty to go at once when you are told there is urgent necessity," said Louise, with heightened colour; "and until now I thought it was your pleasure also."
"I’d have gone quick enough, Miss Eden, if I’d known you were so anxious about it," was the rather unfortunate reply; "and I’ll go now this minute if you wish me to."
"My wishes are not in question," said the girl, yielding to the irritation she felt against herself and against him; "but if you neglect the call of the dying man on such a trivial plea as a dinner invitation, I do not think you are justified in holding the position you do."
Colonel Eden at this moment came in, and the Doctor, feeling he had given offence, but rather puzzled as to the cause, asked at once that his car might be ordered, as he had to go and see a patient some way off.
"So late, and on such a dark night!" said the Colonel, good-naturedly; "surely he could wait till to-morrow. Don’t you think so, Louise?"
"I have no opinion to give on the matter," said his sister, coldly.
She was now really vexed by the young man’s quick obedience to what he interpreted to be her wish. He had no sooner taken leave than she went to her room and burst into sobs of mortified pride and real perplexity.
A day or two passed by during which she stayed in the house and garden. The Colonel was away, doing duty for some fellow "Removable" absent on leave. On his return he told his sister that he had found a letter awaiting him calling for his immediate return to Yorkshire on business connected with settlements.
"I must go the day after to-morrow," hesaid; "and would it not be a good plan, Louise, for you to come with me andmake friends with Agnes?"
A light flashed in the girl’s eyes. Was not this a way of escape for her? Oh, that she might leave Cloon while no one knew of the momentary folly that now she blushed to remember!
She quickly assented, and next morning began to make her preparations. She knew, though she would not confess to the knowledge, that she was saying good-bye for ever to Inagh, the bright little home where she had been so happy; but a thought of changing her resolution never crossed her mind. She still nervously dreaded a visit from the man she was conscious she was about to wound cruelly, and in the afternoon, hearing wheels, was relieved to see only her brother driving up. He had called for a cup of tea, having to drive on and wind up some business at another village in his jurisdiction.
"I was sorry to hear of Dr. Quin’s accident," he said as he waited. "I hope it is not so serious as they say."
"What accident?" asked Louise,startled.
"Oh, did you not hear that the night he dined here he went on up that narrow road to Ranahasey to see some old man, and in the dark he was thrown off his car and the wheel went over him? (22) They brought him back to Cloon on the car; which was a mistake, and must have caused him agony. Dr. Cloran, his rival, is looking after him,and seems rather puzzled about the case, and says if he is not better tomorrow he will send to Limerick for further advice. I am very sorry, for he seemed an intelligent, good-hearted young fellow."
Louise remained alone, sick at heart. What had she done? Had she brought upon this poor lad, in return for his worship of her, actual bodily injury even before the keener pain that was to follow?
The dignified letter of dismissal and farewell she had been meditating all day became suddenly inadequate. She must ask his pardon and break to him very gently the hard sentence of renunciation and separation. Keen remorse took hold of her as she remembered his gentle ways with the sick and suffering, his strength and wisdom, when fighting against disease and death. Oh, that she had never come across his path, or that she had had a mother or friend to warn her of the dangerous precipiceto which she was unconsciously leading him. What could she do now? She could not write to him, not knowing into what hands the letter might fall. She could not leave him to hear by chance next day of her departure. It was growing dark, and there was no time to lose. She would go to his house, and at all events leave a message for him. It was hardly a mile away, and she was not likely to meet anyone on the road.
The low terraced hills looked bleak and dreary, a watery sky above them. The pale sunset gleams were reflected in the pools of water on the roadside, not yet absorbed into the light limestone soil. The straggling one-sided street forming the entrance to Cloon looked more squalid than usual, the houses more wretched under their grass-grown thatch, the gleam and ring from the smithy the only touch of light and sound that relieved their gloom. (23)
Louise Eden walked up the little path to the Doctor’s house, and, knocking at the door, asked the old woman who appeared for news of her master.
"Indeed, he’s the one way always," was the reply; "no better and no worse since they brought him and laid him on the bed. You’d pity him to see him lying there, me fine boy."
"Will you give him a message from me?" asked Louise. "Will you say I have come to ask how he is, and to say good-bye, as I am going back to England?"
"He’ll be sorry for that, indeed," said the old woman. "Sure, you’d best go up and see him yourself."
"Oh, no," said Louise, shrinking back, "unless—his life is not in danger I hope?"
"Danger, is it," echoed old Mamie, indignantly, though not without a momentary glance of uneasiness. "Why would he be in danger? Sure he wasn’t so much hurted as that. He bled hardly at all only for a little cut on the head, and sure he has all he wants, and a nurse coming from Dublin and one of the nuns sitting with him now. (24) It’d be a bad job if he was in danger, only twenty-four year old, and having such a nice way of living, and, indeed, he has the prayers of the poor. Go up the stairs and see him—here’s his reverence coming, and might want me," she continued, as a car stopped at the gate.
Reluctantly, yet not knowing how to draw back, and unwilling to meet the priest, whom she knew slightly, Louise went up the narrow staircase. She knocked at a door standing ajar, and hearing a low "come in," entered. It was a small bare room enough, no carpet save one narrow strip, whitened walls, and a great fire smouldering under the chimney-board of black painted wood. Even at that first glance she noticed that the only attempt at ornament was a vase containing a bunch of the red-seeded wild iris; she remembered having gathered and given it to the Doctor a little time before as a "yerb" sometimes in request amongst his patients.
The fading light fell on the low iron bed upon which the young man lay, propped up with pillows. His face was much altered by these two or three days of suffering. The fair hair was covered by a bandage and the blue eyes looked larger for the black shades beneath them. But as he saw who his visitor was, a smile, very sweet and radiant, lighted them up, and a little colour came into the pallid cheeks. Anun, dressed in black and with a heavily-veiled bonnet half concealing her face, sat by his bedside, and looked with curiosity at the girl as she came in and gave her hand to the patient.
"I have come to ask how you are," she said, "and to tell you how very sorry I am—we are—for your accident. I am doubly grieved because—" and she stopped, embarrassed at having to speak before a third person. The Doctor’s eyes were fixed on her face with the same glad smile.
"I wanted to see you," he said gently, "but I never thought you would come to this poor place. I wanted to tell you I had seen old Regan before I was hurt, and I did my best for him, and I think he won’t die yet awhile."
"I am sorry," began Louise again, and then hesitated. How could she explain for how much she was sorry? How could she at this moment make any explanation at all? "I am going away," she went on—"I am going to England with my brother to-morrow. I have come to say good-bye."
The eyes that rested on her lost none of their glad look of content; she was not sure if her words had been understood, and went on talking rather hurriedly of her brother’s arrangements, and who was to take his place, and of the long journey to Yorkshire.
"And now I must go," she concluded,"for I have a good deal to do at home."
The hand which lay on the counterpane sought a little packet beside the pillow.
"This was for you," he said, handing it to her.
She said good-bye again, and went slowly away; but, turning at the door, she was filled once more with keen remorse at the sight of the strong frame laid low, and the glance that followed her was so full of wistfulness that she felt that she would have stooped and, in asking forgiveness, have kissed the white-bandaged brow, if it had not been for the nun’s silent presence.
It was not until late at night that she remembered and opened the little packet. It contained a massive marriage ring, such as were used by the fisher-folk on the Galway coast. She was troubled at seeing it. The strong-clasped hands and golden heart were an emblem that vexed her. (25) She felt that while she kept it she could not be free from the promise she had given, and that her farewell could not have been understood as a final one. She determined to leave it at the Doctor’s house as she passed tomorrow, and wrote, to enclose with it, a letter, penitent, humble, begging forgiveness for the wrong she had thoughtlessly done to so good and loyal a friend. She did not care now if others read it; she must confess her desertion and implore pardon. The letter was blotted with tears as she folded it round the heavy ring.
But that ring of betrothal was never returned. In the morning, as Colonel Eden and his sister drove for the last time into Cloon, they saw groups of frieze-coated men and blue-cloaked women whispering together with sad faces, and a shutter being closed over each little shop window.
And when they came to the Doctor’s house they saw that the blinds were all drawn down.
NOTES
(1) "A Philanthropist" was published in the London journal The Argosy (June 1891, pp.468-483); and also in the American journal Littell’s Living Age (August 1891, pp.270-279), in which some American spellings were adopted. The text given here follows the Argosy printing, with silent correction of a printing flaw and two other minor regularizations of punctuation.
(2) Kinvarra is a small town on the coast about six miles north-west of Lady Gregory's Coole Park home; Inchguile is fictional (but perhaps inspired by"Inchy" Wood, one of the seven woods of Coole). Goose grease was a traditional remedy for arm soreness and arthritis or rheumatism.
(3) Public or "provident" dispensaries, common in England and Ireland in the second half of the nineteenth century, offered free treatment to those unable to pay (as here)—with funding coming from philanthropists. They also gave care to members who paid a small sum weekly.
(4) The doctor’s "car" is a "jaunting car"—a small two-wheeled carriage drawn by a single horse—the most common kind of conveyance in nineteenth-century Ireland.
(5) Irish for a narrow country lane.
(6) Cloonbeg, a townland in the barony of Kiltartan, close to Gort, would in due course become the "Cloon" of Gregory’s plays; the Angus Grey stories are her first works to use this as a placename. "Mrs Capel" is wearing the traditional garb of a Connemara or Galway countrywoman.
(7) See 000.
(8) In regions under British rule, Resident Magistrates were brought in from outside a given jurisdiction to serve as judge in local courts. An "RM" was thus either British or a representative of British interests.
(9) Mary Capel is based on a young woman Gregory had ministered to prior to her marriage, and of whom she had given an account in her 1883 memoir "An Emigrant’s Note Book."
(10) Louise Eden has deliberately adopted the traditional garb of aGalway countrywoman.
(11) Killeen is just south of Gort, Co. Galway, and about seven miles from Coole Park.
(12) Lisheen Cranagh is on the opposite side of Coole Lake from Coole Park. The Carmelite Abbey at Loughrea,about ten miles north-east of Coole, was destroyed during the Cromwellian period and rebuilt around 1660. Writing to Grant Duff in 1892, AG reported the mix of pagan and religious beliefs she had encountered locally: "here fairies dance in the raths — & lay their spell on all who come within their magic circle — And here water from the Holy Well must be drunk from a skull to be efficacious — And yet we are in the next parish to progressive America and the New York tramways.
(13) From the mid-1870s, TheFreeman’s Journal was the unofficial newspaper of the Irish Parliamentary party.
(14) From the ballad "Goodbye Johnny Dear"—a mother’s lament about a son leaving Ireland to seek his fortune—written by Johnny Patterson, who had achieved national and international fame as the "Rambler from Clare" for his routine of ballads and late-Victorian stereotypical "Irish" repartee. Born a dozen miles from Coole, he had died in 1889, a year before Gregory wrote this story.
(15) Rushlights—small torches made by soaking the pith of rush plants in fat or grease—were for centuries the usual source of domestic light for the poor in the British Isles. As with hernotice in these stories of the differing modes of dress adopted by the countrypeople, Gregory is attending here to the modernizing changes occurring in the Galway of her time.
(16) In a diary entry in August1886, Gregory recounted having "fainted on the earthen floor" in a tenant's cottage when told of a child that died in the Gort fever hospital had had its legs broken so as to fit into a too-small coffin.
(17) In her memoir "An Emigrant’s Note Book" Gregory had recalled giving just such an engraving to the sick girl who would be the model for Mary Capel.
(18) A porridge made of oatmeal or cornmeal.
(19) Drawn from an experience Gregory had recorded in her diary in August1886.
(20) Boards of Guardians administered workhouses; by the late nineteenth century in Ireland workhouses were increasingly a last resort for the sick or elderly rather than the able-bodied poor, and they typically had an official infirmary. The Gort Workhouse opened in1841 just off the current George’s Street, and some of the buildings, including the former infirmary, survive in use as a council storage depot.
(21) Possibly Killimer, on the banks of the Shannon, in southern Co.Clare.
(22) Likely based on Rahasane, near Craughwell, some eight miles north-east of Coole Park.
(23) Based on the forge in George’s Street, Gort. The current forge building dates from 1912, but a smithy had operated on the site from some decades prior to this. Yeats would later order the ironwork for Thoor Ballylee from the Gort forge.
(24) The Convent of Mercy, Gort, is located on George’s Street, not far from the forge building.
(25) "Claddagh" rings, originated in the fishing village of Claddagh (now part of Galway City), first began to become known, and marketed, beyond Galway, and in England, in the late nineteenth century.
