Rusk had known, however, who would bear the tidings, had known it from
the moment when, on emerging into the clearing before the stream, he had
laid his burden gently on the grass; and the impression of that
miserable hour, of the wan, stricken faces of the two women, was
destined to be one of the deepest he should ever receive. Above all, the
face of May had come back to him again and again, suggesting strange
trains of thought, which, taken with her letters, with all they had
revealed to him of her love for her brother, had tended more and more to
occupy his mind and to fill him with a sense of dissatisfaction and
doubt. This feeling of doubt was with him more than ever as he sat
gazing out at the blackness of sea and sky, in the murky stillness of
the autumn night, listening to the throbbing of the steamer’s engine,
and to the footfalls of those more energetic, more wakeful, passengers
who continued monotonously to pace the deck.
The lights of the Liverpool docks had long since disappeared, but to
Rusk, well wrapped in a heavy overcoat and with his cap pulled down over
his eyes, it had not occurred to seek his cabin. That he was returning
after a year and a half--a year and nine months, really--to the scenes
of a chapter in his life he had at the time believed closed, gave him
plenty to consider. It was as if he were taking a plunge back into the
past, and already the intervening period, which marked his absence, was
receding, while the atmosphere of what he had quitted, of what he was
again approaching, seemed to reach out to him mysteriously through the
night, like some occult spiritual influence, like a far clear summons
from an invisible power. He told himself that if he were returning to
Ireland it was because something definite had happened, because it was a
case of either now or not at all. He was about to embark on a new career
which would take him to the other side of the world, and he had no idea
when, if ever, he should be home again. An old and close companion of
his father’s youth had come back from Australia after an absence of
twenty-five years, and, finding the threads of other relations
impossibly lost or broken, had, in the end, sought out and called on his
friend’s widow; had called a second and a third time, and, at last, in a
kind of odd helplessness, had come to stay for the remainder of his
visit.
He had taken a fancy to Rusk and had offered him an opening, a position
on his farm, if he cared to accept it, the main condition being that he
must make up his mind at once. This condition, fortunately, had been
easy to comply with. For Rusk, weary of his present occupation, a more
active, more open-air, life had many attractions, and he was still young
enough to strike out on a fresh path. The matter had been settled with
the head of the preparatory school where he was teaching, and in a
fortnight now he was to sail. It had been only then, he told himself,
after all arrangements were made, that certain oft-repeated promptings
and echoes had found clearer voice, and that he had written to Miss Anna
Birch, saying he would like to come over for a day or two. Miss Anna’s
prompt reply had expressed the pleasure his proposal gave them, together
with a hope that he would stay as long as possible. Rusk, however, could
not stay long. His mother, he more than suspected, was a little hurt at
his wanting to go at all; and he himself was sure that his letter to the
Miss Birches had occasioned quite as much surprise as anything else. But
he could not help it. He was surprised himself, perhaps, as he looked
over the bulwark into the damp, cloudy night. The sea was
extraordinarily calm, and the steamer cut through its oily blackness
with a low continuous swish as the water parted in two lines of white
foam before the sharp bow.