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The lamp was sufficient to show him the executive side of the big front door that had been nearly battered in in the time of the Fenians and still possessed the ponderous locks and bars of a past day when the tenants of Kilgobbin had fought the pikemen of Arranakilty and Rupert Berknowles had hung seventeen rebels, no less, on the branches of the big oak "be the gates."
"But why on earth didn't Berknowles make your aunt guardian to the girl?" asked Hennessey. "There'd have been some sense in that a middle-aged woman " "I beg your pardon," said Pinckney, "my aunt is not a middle-aged woman, she's not fifteen." "Not what?" said Hennessey. "Not fifteen in years of discretion, though she's over seventy as time goes.
About a week later, coming down to breakfast one morning, she found a letter on her plate. A letter with American stamps on it and the address, Miss Phylice Berknowles, Merrion Square, Dublin, Ireland, written in a firm, bold hand. Mrs. Hennessey was not down and Mr. Hennessey had departed for the office, so Phyl had the breakfast table to herself and the letter.
"Not only am I to be her guardian," said Pinckney with a twinkle in his eyes, "but she's to come and live under my roof at Charleston. I promised Berknowles that He was dying, you see, and one can refuse nothing to a dying man." Hennessey rose up in an abstracted sort of way, went to the sideboard, poured himself out a whisky and soda, took a sip, and sat down again.
He was aware that Sir Nicholas Berknowles was looking down at him with the terrible patient gaze of a portrait, and he returned the gaze, trying to imagine what manner of man this might have been and how he had lived and what he had done in those old days that were once real sunlit days filled with people with real voices, hearts, and minds.
Here was another destiny suddenly thrust into his charge and another person's property to be conserved and dealt with. Never, never, did he dream when acceding to Berknowles' request, of the troubles, little difficulties and causes of indecision that were preparing to meet him. Up till now, one side of his character had been almost unknown to him.
It was a warm, grey, moist evening, typical Irish weather, and Miss Berknowles was curled up in a window-seat of the library reading a book. Kilgobbin Park lay outside with the rooks cawing in the trees, miles of park land across which the dusk was coming, blotting out all things from Arranakilty to the Slieve Bloom Mountains.
If only Philip Berknowles had been a man to make fast friends amongst his own class, some of those friends might have come to his daughter's rescue now. But Berknowles had lived his own life since the death of his wife, an easy-going country gentleman in a county mostly inhabited by squireens and cottage folk, caring little for the convenances and with no taste for women's society.
She recognised that once having taken her place amongst the Hennessey set, her position for life was fixed, as far as Ireland was concerned. She was branded. The Berknowles were an old family, but she was the last of them.
Philip Berknowles had put up with a lot from Rafferty simply because Rafferty was an invaluable person in his way when not crossed. Everything went smoothly when the factotum was not interfered with. Cross him and there were immediate results ranging from ill-groomed horses to general unrest.
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