No Enemy but Time by Evelyn Anthony Read Free Book Online Page B

hours on their farms, and if anything was to be fussed over, it was the old people or the children.
    It was a mild morning, with a wintry sunshine dappling the ground under the trees. The river washed down on its run through Dublin into the sea, and a solitary man with a low-slung dog at his heels walked along the opposite bank. Eileen loved the river. She didn’t fish, of course. Sports were not considered fit for girls. A race or two on prize day at the local school, modesty insisting on decent skirts and proper bloomers underneath them, was as much as the Irish girl was permitted. The others might bring up their daughters to ape men, but not the Children of Mary. She had a young brother, Kevin, who was fond of her in his quiet way. He didn’t say much, but he was always kind to her. Her eldest brother thought of nothing but the day when he’d have the farm and be able to marry his sweetheart. He was thirty-five and had a while to wait, everyone reckoned.
    The Labrador ambled beside Eileen. The terriers bounded along ahead on their short legs. Philip loved the smelly, aggressive little dogs and was always fussing in case they got stuck down the rabbit holes. Eileen couldn’t understand why he felt like that about them. But she took extra care if she was out with them alone.
    He wanted her to accept the Hamiltons’ invitation. She shivered, pulling the coat closer round herself.
    Marrying him was one thing; loving him and defying her family and Father Dowd had taken more courage and determination than she knew was in her. But the injustice of their attitude was the undoing of their arguments. Earning the obedience and respect of the women in the house, who saw her as no better than they were, was yet another obstacle. Many nights she had cried with loneliness when he was fast asleep beside her and risen smiling the next morning to continue the battle. It was all but won and she felt at peace. Even the house, with its big grand rooms and dark paintings of Arbuthnots, seemed less strange once she had altered the bedroom and rearranged the study into a cosy sitting room where she and Philip spent their evenings together.
    But meeting the neighbours who knew who she was and that her mother-in-law had moved to another county rather than come face to face with her – that really frightened her. She was native Irish. All her life she had been taught that Philip and his kind were aliens in possession of land which they had stolen from its rightful owners. Oppressors of Ireland and its people, persecutors of the Catholic Church. Alien corn, Father Dowd called them once when he was being entertained at home and he and her father were discussing politics. The alien corn had been rooted out and burnt. Everyone said that the priest had encouraged many of the burnings during the twenties. His own family had been driven by starvation to emigrate to America. The terrible wrongs of the past were stronger than the Christian commandment to forgive. Eileen knew what she had thought of the Arbuthnots and their kind, until she fell in love with Philip. She knew what they in turn thought of her and her people. It had been made very plain over the centuries. And fundamentally nothing had changed. When the old Major, so soon to die, had travelled secretly to see his son and meet her, she recognized his courtesy because he was a gentleman, but there was no welcome and no warmth in him. He came in coldness, as she thought at the time, and left in coldness, to go to his grave.
    There was a bench, fashioned out of a fallen tree trunk; the weather was mild enough to sit and watch the river. The old dog sank down by her feet; the terriers scuttled off to rootle through the brushwood. She called after them to no purpose. She remembered that terrible scene with her father, when he forbade her to see Philip again and told her she was going down to Cork till she came to her senses. He didn’t listen to her when she tried to explain