The meetings of Ulick and Rebecca had become less and less frequent.
Sometimes she would not see him for days at a stretch, and such periods
would appear as desert spaces. She would be driven by them into the
life of the valley, where no echo of comfort ever came to her. Even
the little children created an irritation with their bright faces
continually reminding her of all the prayers they had said for her
intentions.... It was curious that she never asked them to say a prayer
for her intentions now. And their looks would seem to be beseeching
her forever. And yet she could not--she could not ask them now....
Each distinct phase of the day seemed to hold for her its own peculiar
tortures. These seemed to have reached their climax and very moment of
ecstasy on the days succeeding upon one another when Monica McKeon came
in at the recreation hour to take her luncheon in company with Mrs.
Wyse.
Monica would be certain to say with the most unfailing regularity and,
in fact, with exactly the same intonation upon all occasions: "I wonder
when that Ulick Shannon is going away?" To which Mrs. Wyse would reply
in a tone which would seem to have comprehended all knowledge: "Ah,
sure, he'll never go far!" Presently Monica would begin to let fall
from her slyly her usual string of phrases: "Wouldn't you be inclined
to say, now, that Ulick Shannon is good-looking?" Talking of some
other one, she would describe him as being "Just like Ulick Shannon,
don't you know!" And if they happened to be discussing the passage of
some small event it would invariably circle around the breathless point
of interest--"And who do you think was there only Ulick Shannon?" Then
from where she sat supping her tea out of a saucerless cup Mrs. Wyse
would give out her full opinion of Ulick Shannon.
"He's the quare sort, just like his father. I don't think I've ever
seen a son to take after his father so closely. And _he_ was what you
might call a quare character in his day. It was said that a girl as
well as lost her good name if she was seen talking twice in succession
to Henry Shannon, he was that bad. Like father, like son is surely the
case between Henry and Ulick Shannon!"
This seemed at all times the strangest talk for Rebecca to be
hearing.... It often caused her to shiver even though spring was well
on its way. And they would never let it out of their minds; they would
never let it rest. They were always talking at her about Ulick Shannon,
for they seemed to know.
But no one knew save herself. It was a grand secret. Not even Ulick
knew. She hugged the dear possession of her knowledge to herself. There
was the strangest excitement upon her to escape from school in the
evenings so that she might enjoy her secret in loneliness.
Even this joy had been dissipated by her certainty of meeting
John Brennan somewhere upon the road in the near vicinity of the
school.... Now, as she thought of it upon an evening a few days after
she had spoken to Mrs. Williams in his favor, she fancied that his
lonely admiration for her must have been growing in strength since
his return.... There had always been a sense of sudden relief in
his presence after the torture of the two women, a feeling of high
emancipation like the rushing in of some clean wind.... Only a few
words had ever passed between them on those occasions, but now they
were to her throbbing brain of blessed and sweet memory. And there had
always been the same look upon his face, making her try to puzzle out
in what possible way he could look upon her. Could it be in the way
she had looked upon him, with a full kindliness working into the most
marvelous ways of sympathy? Yet she missed him ever so much, now that
he was to be no longer seen upon the road.
It was strange enough, too, as she thought of it, that although the
reason of Mrs. Williams in taking a fancy to her was no more than the
selfish one of showing her dislike for Master Donnellan, it should
have borne good fruit after this fashion. Yet a certain loneliness, a
certain feeling of empty sadness was to be her reward because she had
done a good thing.... No one at all now to take her mind away as she
wandered from torture to torture in the afternoons.... On one of the
first evenings of the changed condition of things Mrs. McGoldrick,
noticing in her keen mind that Rebecca was a minute or so earlier than
usual, said, after the manner of one proud of being able to say it:
"Is it a fact, Miss Kerr, that John Brennan bees going as a kind of a
charity teacher or something to the college at Ballinamult?"
"Well, if it's a fact, it is a fact," said Rebecca in a tired, dull
voice and without showing any interest whatsoever. But even this
attitude did not baulk the sergeant's wife, for she hurried on:
"Ah, God help his innocent wit, but sure he'll never be a priest, he'll
never be a priest! 'Tis a pity of his mother, but sure she could hardly
expect it to be so, for she wasn't a good woman, they tell me, and she
ought to know, you know, that she could hardly expect it to be so!"
Rebecca saw at once that her landlady was in one of her fits of
garrulousness, so she concluded in consequence that there would not be
much pleasure in her dinner to-day. She passed it untasted and went
upstairs wearily. There was a certain grim comfort in thinking that
she had left Mrs. McGoldrick with her harangue unfinished and a great
longing upon her to be talking.... She flung herself upon the bed in
the still untidied room. She was weary with some great, immeasurable
weariness this blessed evening.... Her corset hurt her, and she sat
up again to take it off. She caught sight of herself reflected in
the mirror opposite.... How worn she looked! Her brows, with their
even curves, did not take from the desolation that had fallen upon
her forehead, where it was grown harder as beneath the blows of some
tyrannic thought. And it seemed as if the same thought had plowed all
the lines which were beginning to appear there now.... It must be that
she had long since entered into a mood of mourning for the things she
had lost in the valley.
She fell to remembering the first evening she had come to it, and of
how she had begun to play with her beauty on that very first evening.
It had appeared then as the only toy in her possession in this place
of dreary immensity. And now it seemed to have run through many and
sudden vicissitudes. She had allowed Ulick Shannon to play with it
too.... But his language had been so sweet when he had praised her in
the silent woods.... And in the lonely cottage in Donegal, where he
had gone to see her after Christmas, there had been abiding joy, while
outside the night swept wild and dark upon the cold, gray sea.... Here
there came sudden qualms as to whether she had helped to ruin him by
taking him away from preparation for his final exam. But there was such
an urge of dear remembrance upon her that her mind sprang quickly back
again to all the thoughts they had had between them then.... Back into
her mind too were thronging the exact words he had used upon that night
they had spent together in the cottage.
And by the side of all this, was it not queer that he came so seldom to
see her now although he lived distant from her by only a few fields?
Even when he came their partings were so abrupt, after a little period
of strained conversation, when he always went with a slight excuse in
his mouth to Garradrimna. Yet all the time she longed for his presence
by her side with an even greater longing than that she had experienced
in Donegal.... It was also painfully notable how he gave shifty answers
to her every question. And had she not a good right to be asking him
questions now?... And surely he must guess by this time.
She threw her head back upon the pillow once more, and once more she
was weeping. She thought, through the mist of her tears, of how she
had so bitterly wept upon the first evening of her coming to this
room. But on that evening also she had prayed, and she could not pray
now. Nor could she sleep. She remained there upon the bed, inert in
every sense save for her empty stare up at the discolored ceiling. It
was broken only by the queer smile she would take to herself ever and
again.... At last she began to count upon her fingers. She was simply
counting the number of times she had seen Ulick since his return to his
uncle's house.
"Oh, dear, dear, and what have I done to him?" she muttered
incessantly, biting her lips occasionally between her words as if in a
very ecstasy of desire for the pain he was causing her.... There came
moments, winged and clean like shining angels, to bring her comfort,
when she wildly fancied it was the very loveliest thing to endure great
pain for his sake.
But the powers of her mind for any wild gladness were being gradually
annihilated by dark thoughts coming down to defeat her thoughts of
beauty. She turned from contemplation of the ceiling and began to
glance around the room in search of some distraction. In one corner
she saw an old novelette thrown aside in its gaudy covers. The reading
of rubbish was Mrs. McGoldrick's recreation when she was not sewing or
nursing the baby.
She had called the girls after heroines of passionate love-stories,
just as her husband, the sergeant, had seen that the boys were called
after famous men in the world of the police. Thus the girls bore names
like Euphemia McGoldrick and Clementina McGoldrick, while the boys bore
names like John Ross McGoldrick and Neville Chamberlain McGoldrick.
The girls, although they were ugly and ill-mannered, had already been
invested with the golden lure of Romance, and the boys were already
policemen although they were still far distant from the age when they
could put on a belt or a baton.
Rebecca began to snatch at paragraphs here and there through the story,
which was entitled _The Desecration of the Hearth_. There was one
passage which seemed to hold an unaccountable fascination as her eyes
lingered over it:
"_Then suddenly, and without a minute's warning, Lord Archibald
Molyneux dashed the poor, ruined girl from him, and soon she was
struggling for life in the swirling stream._
"_'Ah-a-ha!' he said once more, hissing out his every word
between his thin, cruel lips. 'That will may be put an end to
your scandalous allegations against a scion of the noble house of
Molyneux.'_
"_'Mercy! Pity! Oh, God! The Child!' she wailed piteously as she
felt herself being caught in the maelstrom of the current._
"_But Lord Archibald Molyneux merely twirled his dark, handsome
mustache with his white hands, after the fashion that was peculiar
to him, and waited until his unfortunate victim had disappeared
completely beneath the surface of the water._"
Rebecca's eyes had closed over the passage, and she was dozing now,
but only fitfully.... To occupy small instants would come the most
terrifying dreams in long waves of horror which would seem to take
great spaces of time for their final passage from her mind. Then there
would flow in a brief space of respite, but only as a prelude to the
dread recurrence of her dreams again. And all jumbled together, bits
of wild reality which were and were not parts of her experience would
cause her to start up ever and anon.
There fell a knock upon the door, and a little girl came in with some
tea-things on a tray. She called: "Miss Kerr, your tea!" and when
Rebecca woke up with a terrible start it appeared as if she had not
slumbered at all.
"Oh, is that yourself, Euphemia? I declare to goodness the dusk is
falling outside. I must have been sleeping."
"Yes, miss!"
"You are late in coming this evening?"
"Well, wait till I tell you, miss. I went into the village for some
things for my mother, and what d'ye think but when I was coming home I
thought I saw a strange man just outside the ditch opposite the door,
and I was afraid for to pass, so I was."
"A strange man! Is that a fact?"
"Well, sure then I thought, miss, it might be Ulick Shannon, but I may
tell you I got the surprise of my life when I found it was only John
Brennan, and he standing there alone by himself looking up at your
window."
Long before she had got through it, with many lisps and lapses, Rebecca
was wearied by the triteness of the little one's statement, so well
copied was it from the model of her mother's gossipy communication of
the simplest fact.
But what could John Brennan be doing there so near her again? This was
the thought that held Rebecca as she went on with an attempt to take
her tea.