WITHIN SOUND OF THE SEA
The remainder of the school term passed quickly over. To Norah's
credit it must be recorded that she bore in mind what pleasure it
would give Roderick and Anstace if she were proved to have made good
progress during her stay at Treherne House, and notwithstanding the
intoxication of delight that she was in, she worked away assiduously
at her lessons during the time which still remained to her.
Accordingly, when the examinations were over, she was found to have
won a place very near the top of her class for herself.
The great day of the breaking up of the school arrived at length.
The hall was filled with boxes, and cabs drove away from the door
with luggage piled upon the roof and happy faces inside. From
earliest morning Norah had been the busiest of the busy, helping to
carry handbags, and rugs, and parcels of all kinds down-stairs, and
receiving the affectionate farewells of the girls as they departed.
It was quite wonderful how sorry they all seemed to say good-bye to
her, and innumerable parting tokens in the shape of pencil-cases,
purses, and such small articles were showered upon her. As for Lily
Allardyce, whose parents arrived early in a brougham to carry their
darling off to the station from which they were to start for Paris,
her joy at seeing them again was quite swallowed up by her grief at
parting from Norah. Her eyes were swelled almost past recognition,
and her little frame was shaken by sobs when she was at last induced,
most unwillingly, to quit her hold of Norah, and to follow her
parents to the carriage which waited for them.
Norah was after all to remain at Treherne House and to share Fräulein
Glock's solitude for a week, as Roderick and Anstace had been unable
to complete their preparations for leaving London any sooner. This
appeared a very trifling hardship to her now, however, and in the
evening, when she had seen the three Miss Clarksons, who had been the
last to leave, drive away in their turn, she settled herself down
quite cheerfully by the fire in the empty school-room to keep
Fräulein company till bed-time.
Fräulein Glock, for her part, seemed amply contented whilst she had
her days to herself and was not required to give her usual dreary
round of lessons in German grammar and translation. She was engaged
upon a crochet antimacassar of most intricate design, which required
an incessant counting of stitches. She had, besides, a friend, a
German teacher like herself, who was also spending her holidays in
solitude in another school a few streets away, and the two were wont
to pass many hours together, exchanging low-voiced confidences with
each other. They were very kind to the little girl, who had perforce
to make a third in their party, and strove spasmodically to entertain
and amuse her. Norah could not but feel, however, that she was more
or less an encumbrance to them, and she generally preferred to steal
away to a sunny window on the stairs, where she curled herself up on
the wide window seat, and let her imagination run riot in happy
visions of the future.
Norah had counted on her fingers the number of days that she would
have to remain at Treherne House. Beginning with the little finger
of her right hand, they reached as far as the forefinger of her left;
and each morning when she woke she dug the finger representing the
day just begun into her pillow, saying to herself, "We've got as far
as you now". And each evening when she went to bed she made another
dig with the same finger, saying triumphantly, "There, you're over".
Thus the days went by till the forefinger of her left hand was ticked
off like the rest; and in the evening Roderick, her tall,
dark-haired, dark-eyed brother, arrived to carry her off to Euston
station, where Anstace was to meet them. And so the doors of
Treherne House closed behind little Norah for good and all.
She was so wild with glee and in such boisterous spirits that Anstace
had some difficulty in keeping her within the bounds of due decorum
during the quarter of an hour that they had to wait for the departure
of their train. More than once indeed Anstace had occasion to remind
her of the ancient nursery adage, that "too much laughing ends in
crying". The saying was to prove true enough, for a few hours later
poor Norah, tossed to and fro in her berth, and enduring all the
agonies of sea-sickness, was in truth a vast deal nearer to tears
than to laughter, and both she and Anstace presented a very limp and
woebegone appearance when they landed next morning in a drizzling
rain upon the wharf in Dublin.
Their surroundings were not calculated to raise their spirits. A raw
wind blew cheerlessly in their faces, and the tall dark buildings
that lined the quays, the forest of masts on either hand, and the
air, all seemed dripping with moisture. Roderick alone maintained a
cheerful demeanour; the rough crossing appeared to have had rather an
exhilarating effect upon him. He had been on deck since daylight,
pacing up and down with his cap drawn over his eyes and the skirts of
his ulster flapping about his legs, quite regardless how the steamer
lurched and rolled under him, whilst he watched the Irish coast
coming gradually into view. He exerted himself to the utmost for his
sisters' comfort, and carried them off to an hotel, where, however,
neither Anstace nor Norah was able to taste the breakfast set before
them. Then came long hours of railway travelling, diversified by
wearisome delays at junction stations, and at last, in the dusk, they
alighted at Ballyfin, the terminus of the railway, and its nearest
approach to the wild coast region where their future home was
situated.
The drizzle of the morning had developed by this time into a heavy
and continuous downpour, and poor Norah, cold, hungry, and tired out,
felt more wretched than she had ever done in all her life before, and
in her secret soul, I believe, would have been rejoiced could she
have found herself back in the deserted school-room of Treherne
House, where Fräulein Glock counted her interminable crochet
patterns. At any other time she would have been in transports of
delight at the novel sights and sounds which greeted her on every
side--at the strange, guttural utterances of a group of frieze-coated
men and blue-cloaked women, who, regardless of the rain, were talking
volubly in Irish; at the scent of peat-smoke, which hung in the air;
above all, at the outside-car which, on issuing from the station,
they found waiting to carry them the twelve Irish miles which had
still to be traversed. Now, however, Norah could only rouse herself
to a very faint interest in all these things, and in silence she
allowed Roderick to lift her on to the seat beside Anstace.
The little town of Ballyfin, with its market-place and its one long,
straggling street, was soon left behind, and they emerged upon a
level tract of dreary bog-land, the monotony of which was only broken
here and there by a squalid cabin streaked green with damp, or by a
few fields fenced in from the road and from each other by walls of
loosely-piled gray stones. The leaden sky hung low above their
heads, and the mountains were wrapped in mist down to their very
base. It was impossible to hold up an umbrella, so fierce and wild
were the gusts that swept across the bog. Anstace and Norah sat
close to each other, a shawl drawn over their heads and held together
in front, while Roderick, on the other side of the car, with the
collar of his ulster turned up about his ears and a travelling-rug
wrapped round his knees, shielded himself from the weather as best he
could. On and on the car sped through the seemingly interminable
waste, till at last Norah, who had hardly spoken since they had
started on their drive, said, with something that sounded
suspiciously like a sob:
"Anstace, I didn't think Ireland was one bit like this. I thought it
was the nicest place to live in in the whole world; and ugh! it is so
ugly and so miserable."
"You could not expect any place to look well on such a night as this,
dear. If it were a beautiful sunny evening it would all have seemed
quite different to us," Anstace returned as cheerfully as she could,
though her own heart sank within her as she looked out from under the
fringe of the shawl at the sodden, treeless plain stretching away
till it was lost in the fast-gathering twilight, and wondered if it
was indeed in this desolate region that their future home was to be
made.
Nine miles were laid behind them thus, and it had become wholly dark,
when the car made a sudden bend, branching off apparently upon a
cross-road, and a sound which hitherto had mingled indistinctly with
the wind and rain--a hoarse, deep murmur, now falling, now swelling
out louder--seemed of a sudden to fill all the air. Even Norah
roused herself to ask what it was.
"You'll never have that noise out of your ears, little one, while you
live here," Roderick answered good-naturedly from the other side of
the car. "That's the Atlantic, Norah, two hundred feet below us,
singing a song to itself. If it were daylight you would see that the
road comes out here just above the cliffs. Another mile will bring
us home now."
"Troth, an' if 'twasn't that the wind is off ov the shore, it's not
sing-songin' that fashion the say wud be, 'twud be thundher and fury
wid it, and dashin' agin the racks as if 'twud swape the whole
mortial airth away," the driver struck in. "Whin yer honours has
been a winter at Kilshane ye'll have no need to be axin' what sort
the roar of th' Atlantic is."
A few minutes more, as Roderick had said, and they turned in at a
gate left open in evident anticipation of their coming. With a
"Hurroo! stir yerself now!" and a cracking of his whip, the driver
urged his steed on to its utmost pace, and they tore up the avenue at
such a frantic gallop that Norah, desirous though she was to prove
herself a true Irishwoman, and therefore able to sit upon an
outside-car as to the manner born, could not refrain from clutching
the iron rail beside her with all her might. The trees and shrubs on
either hand flitted past like shapeless black phantoms. One long
straggling branch which stretched itself out into the roadway struck
Anstace and Norah a sudden stinging blow in their faces, sending a
shower of cold spray over them from its rain-laden leaves. Before
they had recovered themselves and had had time to dash the water out
of their eyes, the car rounded a corner and pulled up with a jerk
before the house, of which only a vague outline could be
distinguished in the darkness.
At the same instant the hall-door was flung wide open, letting a
flood of light stream out into the night, and two black figures came
hurrying out. One held a sod of blazing turf aloft in a pair of
tongs, to light the travellers, and waved it in wild whirls of
welcome, regardless how the primitive torch hissed and sputtered as
the rain-drops fell on it, while the other, springing forward with an
uncouth yell, caught Norah in his arms and bore her in triumph into
the hall, exclaiming as he set her down:
"Begorra, an' it's meself that'll carry one of the O'Briens in over
the thrashel of their own dure. 'Tis the great day that sees the
ould shtock back in Kilshane, an' God an' His saints give them luck
an' prosperity, an' blessin's airly an' late--"
"Arrah, whisht wid ye, Tom," commanded the torch-bearer, whom Norah
now perceived to be an elderly woman clad in the rough red skirt and
cotton bodice common to the country, with a wisp of gray hair coiled
up closely at the back of her head; "there's no ind to ye, so there
isn't, an' it's frightenin' the little darlint ye'll be wid yer
goin's on."
"Not a bit of him, Biddy; only delighting her heart with such a right
Irish welcome," said Roderick, as he came into the hall and shook
Biddy and Tom heartily by the hand. "And here's a new Miss Anstace
for you," he added, drawing forward his sister, who had been so
encumbered with wraps and mufflings, and so stiff with cold and the
long drive, that she had found some difficulty in descending from the
car.
"An' wudn't I have known it widout the tellin'," declared Biddy, as
she caught the hand which Anstace held out to her and kissed it
fervently. "Sure 'tis the very moral of ould Miss Ansey she is, the
darlin' jool. An' who wud she take after, if twasn't her own
godmother that she's called for?"
"I'm glad Miss Anstace was so alive to her duties as to have a proper
resemblance to her namesake," said Roderick merrily. "And now,
Biddy, I hope you're prepared to give us something to eat, for I'm
pretty ready for it after travelling all the way from London, and
I've no doubt the others are too."
"Yis sure, Masther Roderick, an' I've a fire in the parlour anyway
that'll do yer heart good to see. If yer honours'll warm yerselves a
weeny minute I'll have the tay wet an' all ready. Musha, go long wid
ye, Tom, an' help to carry the luggidge upstairs, i'stead o' stannin'
there, not able to take yer eyes out of Miss Norah!"
And with this last authoritative utterance Biddy flung the parlour
door open, revealing a cozy interior, heavy curtains closely drawn, a
snowy-covered table laid for supper, and at the end of the room the
blazing turf fire of which she had spoken. Biddy herself disappeared
down the passage leading to the kitchen, where a vigorous hissing and
spluttering was presently heard, betokening that preparations for the
meal were being pushed forward with all possible speed.
Norah retained but a very confused recollection of the after-events
of that evening. The warmth of the parlour made her drowsy; there
was a buzzing in her head as if she were still in the train, and at
times the floor seemed to heave and stagger under her feet as the
steamer had done. She roused herself in some degree when Biddy
reappeared with tea and a smoking dish of eggs and bacon, but even
during supper her head was nodding forward, and it was with
difficulty that she kept her eyes from closing. She was only too
glad, as soon as the meal was over, to let Anstace lead her upstairs
and help her to undress. And almost before she had stretched her
weary little limbs out in the huge four-post bedstead, with faded
chintz curtains, which filled half the room, she had sunk into the
oblivion of a deep and dreamless sleep.