Dane had been very ill after finding a tin of treacle in Mrs. Smith's pantry and eating the lot. He admitted the thrust, but countered. "I'm still here, so it can't be all that poisonous."
"That's only because you vomited. If you hadn't vomited, you'd be dead." This was inarguable. He and his sister were much of a height, so he tucked his arm companionably through hers and they sauntered away across the lawn toward their cubbyhouse, which their uncles had erected as instructed amid the down-drooping branches of a pepper tree. Danger from bees had led to much adult opposition to this site, but the children were proven right. The bees dwelled with them amicably. For, said the children, pepper trees were the nicest of all trees, very private. They had such a dry, fragrant smell, and thegrapelike clusters of tiny pink globules they bore crumbled into crisp, pungent pink flakes when crushed in the hand.
"They're so different from each other, Dane and Justine, yet they get along so well together," said Meggie. "It never ceases to amaze me. I don't think I've ever seen them quarrel, though how Dane avoids quarreling with some one as determined and stubborn as Justine, I don't understand."
But Fee had something else on her mind. "Lord, he's the living image of his father," she said, watching Dane duck under the lowest fronds of the pepper tree and disappear from sight.
Meggie felt herself go cold, a reflex response which years of hearing people say this had not scotched. It was just her own guilt, of course. People always meant Luke. Why not? There were basic similarities between Luke O'neill and Ralph de Bricassart. But try as she would, she could never be quite natural when Dane's likeness to his father was commented upon. She drew a carefully casual breath. "Do you think so, Mum?" she asked, nonchalantly swinging her foot. "I can never see it myself. Dane is nothing like Luke in nature or attitude to life."
Fee laughed. It came out as a snort, but it was a genuine laugh. Grown pallid with age and encroaching cataracts, her eyes rested on Meggie's startled face, grim and ironic. "Do you take me for a fool, Meggie? I don't mean Luke O'neill. I mean Dane is the living image of Ralph de Bricassart." Lead. Her foot was made of lead. It dropped to the Spanish tiles, her leaden body sagged, the lead heart within her breast struggled against its vast weight to beat. Beat, damn you, beat! You've got to go on beating for my son!
"Why, Mum!" Her voice was leaden, too. "Why, Mum, what an extraordinary thing to say! Father Ralph de Bricassart?"
"How many people of that name do you know? Luke O'neill never bred that boy; he's Ralph de Bricassart's son. I knew it the minute I took him out of you at his birth."
"Then-why haven't you said something? Why wait until he's seven years old to make such an insane and unfounded accusation?" Fee stretched her legs out, crossed them daintily at the ankles. "I'm getting old at last, Meggie. And things don't hurt as much anymore. What a blessing old age can be! It's so good to see Drogheda coming back, I feel better within myself because of it. For the first time in years I feel like talking."
"Well, I must say when you decide to talk you really know how to pick your subject! Mum, you have absolutely no right to say such a thing: It isn't true!" said Meggie desperately, not sure if her mother was bent on torture or commiseration.
Suddenly Fee's hand came out, rested on Meggie's knee, and she was smiling-not bitterly or contemptuously, but with a curious sympathy. "Don't lie to me, Meggie. Lie to anyone else under the sun, but don't lie to me. Nothing will ever convince me Luke O'neill fathered that boy. I'm not a fool, I have eyes. There's no Luke in him, there never was because there couldn't be. He's the image of the priest. Look at his hands, the way his hair grows in a widow's peak, the shape of his face, the eyebrows, the mouth. Even how he moves. Ralph de Bricassart, Meggie, Ralph de Bricassart."