THE SECOND DINNER WITH THE EARL.
He went as before, conducted by the butler, and formally announced. To
his surprise, with the earl was lady Arctura. His lordship made him
give her his arm, and followed.
This was to Donal a very different dinner from that of the evening
before. Whether the presence of his niece made the earl rouse himself
to be agreeable, or he had grown better since the morning and his
spirits had risen, certainly he was not like the same man. He talked in
a rather forced-playful way, but told two or three good stories;
described with vivacity some of the adventures of his youth; spoke of
several great men he had met; and in short was all that could be
desired in a host. Donal took no wine during dinner, the earl as before
took very little, and lady Arctura none. She listened respectfully to
her uncle’s talk, and was attentive when Donal spoke; he thought she
looked even sympathetic two or three times; and once he caught the
expression as of anxiety he had seen on her face that same day twice
before. It was strange, too, he thought, that, not seeing her sometimes
for a week together, he should thus meet her three times in one day.
When the last of the dinner was removed and the wine placed on the
table, Donal thought his lordship looked as if he expected his niece to
go; but she kept her place. He asked her which wine she would have, but
she declined any. He filled his glass, and pushed the decanter to
Donal. He too filled his glass, and drank slowly.
The talk revived. But Donal could not help fancying that the eyes of
the lady now and then sought his with a sort of question in
them--almost as if she feared something was going to happen to him. He
attributed this to her having heard that he took too much wine the
night before. The situation was unpleasant. He must, however, brave it
out! When he refused a second glass, which the earl by no means
pressed, he thought he saw her look relieved; but more than once
thereafter he saw, or fancied he saw her glance at him with that
expression of slight anxiety.
In its course the talk fell upon sheep, and Donal was relating some of
his experiences with them and their dogs, greatly interested in the
subject; when all at once, just as before, something seemed to burst in
his head, and immediately, although he knew he was sitting at table
with the earl and lady Arctura, he was uncertain whether he was not at
the same time upon the side of a lonely hill, closed in a magic night
of high summer, his woolly and hairy friends lying all about him, and a
light glimmering faintly on the heather a little way off, which he knew
for the flame that marks for a moment the footstep of an angel, when he
touches ever so lightly the solid earth. He seemed to be reading the
thoughts of his sheep around him, yet all the time went on talking, and
knew he was talking, with the earl and the lady.
After a while, everything was changed. He was no longer either with his
sheep or his company. He was alone, and walking swiftly through and
beyond the park, in a fierce wind from the north-east, battling with
it, and ruling it like a fiery horse. By and by came a hoarse, terrible
music, which he knew for the thunderous beat of the waves on the low
shore, yet imagined issuing from an indescribable instrument, gigantic
and grotesque. He felt it first--through his feet, as one feels without
hearing the tones of an organ for which the building is too small to
allow scope to their vibration: the waves made the ground beat against
the soles of his feet as he walked; but soon he heard it like the
infinitely prolonged roaring of a sky-built organ. It was drawing him
to the sea, whether in the body or out of the body he knew not: he was
but conscious of forms of existence: whether those forms had relation
to things outside him, or whether they belonged only to the world
within him, he was unaware. The roaring of the great water-organ grew
louder and louder. He knew every step of the way to the shore--across
the fields and over fences and stiles. He turned this way and that, to
avoid here a ditch, there a deep sandy patch. And still the music grew
louder and louder--and at length came in his face the driving spray: it
was the flying touch of the wings on which the tones went hurrying past
into the depths of awful distance! His feet were now wading through the
bent-tufted sand, with the hard, bare, wave-beaten sand in front of
him. Through the dark he could see the white fierceness of the hurrying
waves as they rushed to the shore, then leaning, toppling, curling,
self-undermined, hurled forth at once all the sound that was in them in
a falling roar of defeat. Every wave was a complex chord, with winnowed
tones feathering it round. He paced up and down the sand--it seemed for
ages. Why he paced there he did not know--why always he turned and went
back instead of going on.
Suddenly he thought he saw something dark in the hollow of a wave that
swept to its fall. The moon came out as it broke, and the something was
rolled in the surf up the shore. Donal stood watching it. Why should he
move? What was it to him? The next wave would reclaim it for the ocean!
It looked like the body of a man, but what did it matter! Many such
were tossed in the hollows of that music!
But something came back to him out of the ancient years: in the ages
gone by men did what they could! There was a word they used then: they
said men ought to do this or that! This body might not be dead--or
dead, some one might like to have it! He rushed into the water, and
caught it--ere the next wave broke, though hours of cogitation,
ratiocination, recollection, seemed to have intervened. The breaking
wave drenched him from head to foot: he clung to his prize and dragged
it out. A moment’s bewilderment, and he came to himself lying on the
sand, his arms round a great lump of net, lost from some fishing boat.
His illusions were gone. He was sitting in a cold wind, wet to the
skin, on the border of a wild sea. A poor, shivering, altogether
ordinary and uncomfortable mortal, he sat on the shore of the German
Ocean, from which he had rescued a tangled mass of net and seaweed! He
dragged it beyond the reach of the waves, and set out for home.
By the time he reached the castle he was quite warm. His door at the
foot of the tower was open, he crept up, and was soon fast asleep.