The fields about were bluish-green like the sea and the grass moved gently in the breeze. Cattle stood knee-deep in the grass. Adeline was looking beyond the fields. The roof of her home showed above the trees of a park where deer grazed. She cried:
"There is the house, Philip! Lord, to think it is nearly five years since I’ve seen it! It’s more splendid than anything I’ve set my eyes on since! Look at it! Isn’t it grand, Philip?"
"It’s fallin’ to pieces", said Patsy, over his shoulder, "and divil a one to spend a five-pound note on it".
It was indeed a fine old house, though not so fine as Philip had expected, judging by Adeline’s description of it. Though he was no judge of architecture he could see that several styles had, at different periods, been added to the original. All were now blended into a sufficiently mellow whole. But it was not the noble pile she had described and at a glance he could see signs of dilapidation. Not even its rich cloak of ivy concealed the crumbling stone-work.
Adeline craned her neck in delight to see every bit of it.
"Oh, Philip", she cried, "isn’t it a lovely house?"
"It is indeed".
"Your sister’s little house is nothing compared to it".
"Augusta’s house was built in the time of Queen Anne".
"Who cares for Queen Anne!" laughed Adeline. "Queen Anne is dead and so is that stuffy cathedral town. Oh, give me the country! Give me Ireland! Give me my old home!" Tears rained down her cheeks.
"I’ll give you a smack", said Philip, "if you don’t control yourself. No wonder you’re thin".
"Oh, why did I marry a phlegmatic Englishman!" she exclaimed. "I expected you to go into raptures over the place".
"Then you expected me to behave like a fool, which I am not".
They had now stopped before the door and a half-dozen tame deer had sauntered up to see them alight from the carriage. Adeline declared that she could recognise each one and that they remembered her.
The footman who opened the door was in handsome livery though it was rather too tight for him. He greeted Adeline enthusiastically.
"Ah, God bless you, Miss Adeline! It’s grand to see ye back. My, ’tis yourself has got thin in the body! What have they been doing to you out yonder? And is this lovely gentleman your husband? Welcome, sir, y’r honour. Come right in. Patsy, look after the luggage o’ them and be quick about it". He turned then and shouted at three dogs which had begun to bark.
Philip felt suddenly self-conscious. He did not quite know how to meet his wife’s family. All she had told him of them made them seem less, rather than more, real. He was prepared not to like them, to find them critical of him, yet the tall gentleman who now came quickly down the stairway held out his hand with a genial smile.
"How d’ye do, Captain Whiteoak", he said, taking Philip’s fingers in a thin muscular grasp. "Welcome to Ireland. I’m very glad to see you, sir. I apologise for not going to the station myself but I had a wearisome business at the Courthouse that must be attended to… And now, my girl, let’s have a look at you!"
He took Adeline in his arms and kissed her. Philip then had a good look at him.
Adeline had spoken of her father, Renny Court, as a fine figure of a man, but to Philip’s mind his back was too thin and certainly not flat enough at the shoulders, and his legs were not quite straight. It was amusing to see how Adeline’s lovely features had been modelled on this man’s bony aquiline face. And his hair must once have been auburn too, for there was a rusty tinge across the grey of his head. Certainly his eyes were hers.
Philip became conscious that others had come into the hall, a woman somewhat beyond middle-age and three youths.
"Oh, Mother, here I am!" Adeline turned from her father and flung her arms about her mother.
Philip was formally introduced. Lady Honoria Court still retained beauty of a Spanish type which had been handed down in her family since the days of the Armada when a Spanish don had remained to marry an ancestress. Lady Honoria was a daughter of the old Marquis of Killiekeggan who, with the famous Marquis of Waterford, had raised the sport of steeplechasing from a not very respectable one to its present eminence.
One of the dogs, an Irish staghound, raised itself on its hind legs against the ayah, in order to look into Gussie’s face. Both nurse and child shrieked in terror. Renny Court ran across the hall, caught the hound by its heavily studded collar and dragging it away, cuffed it.
"Did you ever see such a dog!" cried Lady Honoria. "He does so love children! What a sweet baby! We have a man in the town who takes the loveliest daguerreotypes. You must have one made of her while you are here, Adeline".
Lady Honoria laughed a good deal. Unfortunately she had lost a front tooth and each time she laughed she hastily put a forefinger across her lips to hide the gap. She had beautiful hands which Adeline had inherited, and her laughter rang out with contagious mirth. Philip, before he had been two days in the house, decided that she feared her husband’s temper but that she circumvented and thwarted him many a time. She had an air of triumph when she achieved this, and he a wary look, as though waiting his turn to retaliate. Often they did not speak to each other for days at a time but each had a keen sense of humour, each found the other an amusing person and their sulks were often broken in upon by sudden laughter from which they recovered themselves with chagrin. Lady Honoria had had eleven children, four of whom had died in early infancy, but she was still quick and graceful in her movements and looked capable of adding to her family.
Adeline was embracing each of her three young brothers in turn. She led them to Philip, her face flushed, her eyes brilliant in her excitement at being home again. Her bonnet had fallen back and her auburn hair rose in curls above her forehead.
"Here they are", she cried, "the three youngest boys! Conway, Sholto and Timothy-come and shake hands with your new brother!"
The three offered their hands to Philip, the first two sheepishly, the third with an air almost too bright. Philip decided that there was something queer about him. There was a remarkable resemblance among the three. Their hair was a pale red, their eyes greenish, their faces long and pointed, their noses remarkably well-shaped with slender supercilious nostrils. The eldest, Conway, tormented Philip by his resemblance to someone he had met, till he discovered that he was the image of the Knave of Diamonds, in his favourite pack of playing-cards.
"Look at them!" exclaimed Renny Court, with a scornful flourish of his hand toward the two elder boys. "’Tis a shameful pair they are, I can tell you. They’ve disgraced me by being sent home from their English school for attacking one of the masters. I knocked their heads together for it but here they are on my hands and God knows what I shall do with them! Put them to work in the stables-or in the fields-’tis all they’re fit for! I must tell you that I have two other sons and fine fellows, too. But my wife would have done well to halt before she had these!"
Conway and Sholto grinned with a hangdog air but young Timothy threw his arms about Adeline and hugged her again.