"Oh, Honor, is it true?" Belle Delorme cries breathlessly, as she meets
her friend midway on the Rectory lawn. "Launce has been telling us--but
sure he laughed so we couldn't believe him--that the old abbot has
begun to walk again."
"It is quite true that people say he has," Honor answers guardedly.
She is pale to-day, and there is a weary look in her eyes that give a
pathetic expression to the whole face.
"And he has really been seen, dear?" exclaims Belle, raising her hands
in dismay. "Oh, but it is dreadful! Sure we never thought such things
could happen in our day."
"What a goose you are!" Launce says, coming up at this moment. "Such
things, as you call them, never happened and never will; it's all a
hoax--some scamps doing it for a lark; and one of these nights when
I've nothing better to do, I'll go down and ferret out the rascal."
"Oh, no, no, Launce, dear! Promise me that you'll do nothing of the
kind," Belle cries in genuine distress. "It would be madness. If the
old abbot is walking, depend upon it it is for some good reason;
trouble is coming to the family in some shape of form."
But Launce only laughs at her, and even Honor will not confess her
belief in this supernatural visitor.
"If it could tell us anything," she says in her grave way, "it would be
different--good might come of it; as it is, it does nothing but scare
away visitors and keep our servants in such a state of terror that they
can't attend to their work. It is really very disagreeable."
"Oh, Honor darling, how can you talk like that?" Belle cries with a
little shiver. "I declare you are almost as bad as Launce."
The lawn at Donaghmore rectory is covered with guests. A table has been
set under the trees, and Mrs. Delorme, in a delightfully cool-looking
dress and with delicate ribbons in her lace cap, is busy making tea.
There are pretty colors, gay voices and bursts of musical laughter on
every hand.
Some of the girls are good-looking, more than one or two are handsome;
and the men in their tennis flannels and gay caps show well by contrast.
"Your cousin is here--he is staying with the Frenches--so mamma had to
ask him," Belle whispers almost nervously; and the next moment Honor
finds herself face to face with Brian Beresford.
She has never seen him since that day he stooped and kissed her under
the cherry-trees. Honor's cheeks turn crimson as she remembers that
passionate kiss.
"Does he think of it?" she wonders as she meets his eyes.
"I thought you had gone back to England," she says. She hardly knows
what she does say, so stupid is she feeling.
"I did go home, but could not stay long; I had business in Ireland that
could not be neglected."
"Business?" she repeats wonderingly.
"Yes," he says gravely--"important business; it may keep me here for
some time yet."
She listens in surprise, but she is too proud to ask him what his
business may be. Perhaps he would not tell her if she did; but he is
nothing to her--less than nothing. Why should she trouble about his
affairs?
"What have you been doing to yourself, Honor?" They have come to the
narrow wire fence that separates the rectory lawn from the rectory
paddock. "You are as pale as a ghost. Have you been fretting?"
For an instant she looks at him coldly, almost angrily; then the tears
come into her eyes. Something in his voice, in the way he is looking
down at her, in the touch of his hand, as he lays it over hers for an
instant, has gone straight to her heart.
"I am not very happy certainly; it is an anxious time for us all just
now."
"Yes," he says, pretending not to see her tears, "and it is lonely at
Donaghmore; but you are not so unprotected as you appear to be. There
are those on the watch who would gladly die to shield you from danger."
"I used to think so," she answers sadly, "but I am not so sure of it
now."
"But you may be sure of it, Honor--I will answer for that myself."
She smiles as she listens to him. What should this Englishman know of
the feelings of the people? He means to be kind of course; but his
words carry no comfort--how should they? Looking at him as he stands
before her, she cannot but own that, if his face is proud and a trifle
cold in its repose, there is something true and winsome in it. The keen
eyes meet hers unflinchingly, the firm lips under the heavy moustache
have not a harsh curve about them; it is a face with power in it, and
some tenderness and passion too, under all its chill composure.
"He has the look of a man one might trust through everything," she says
to herself almost with a sigh; and then she turns to go back to her
friends, angry that he should have won so much thought from her.
"Don't go yet, Honor; it's cooler here than among all those chattering
women; and if you want any tea, I can bring you some."
The sunshine is beating fiercely down upon the groups scattered over
the center of the lawn; but here under the trees the grass is flecked
with cool shadows, and the two catch the breeze--such as it is--that
comes from the river.
"I don't care for any tea, thanks; but I do enjoy this shade," she says
almost reluctantly; and still indifferent to a degree that might be
called rude, she lets him find a seat on the low bough of one of the
ash-trees, well out of reach of the sunshine.
He does not offer to sit down beside her, though there is plenty of
room.
With his shoulder against a tree and his hat well pulled over his eyes
he stands and talks in his easy, half-grave, half-mocking way, that, in
spite of herself, the girl finds charming.
He does not appear to be in the least anxious to interest or amuse her;
yet he does both. Before long she is laughing as she has not laughed
for weeks--a pretty color has come into her cheeks, her eyes are
sparkling. No wonder the man looking at her feels his heart thrill!
If ever he thought that he could go away and leave this willful Irish
girl, whose very willfulness has caught and chained him, he knows now
that the thought was a vain one.
She is the one woman in the world for him, her love the one thing
needful to crown his life. Other women may be fairer, other women may
be ready to give him love where this girl gives him but a mocking
tolerance; but no other woman can ever be to him what she is.
Of love and lovers there is no thought in Honor's head this sunny
afternoon. She thinks her cousin has improved, that he has even grown
quite tolerable, and there it ends, so far as she is concerned.
On their way back to the house they pass Launce and Mrs. Dundas walking
very close together, and talking seriously.
Honor looks at her coldly. She does not like the woman. Her bold eyes,
her lithe figure, in its French-cut gown, the very grace and _chic_
that have made Kate Dundas the belle of the county jar upon Honor.
"I am very sorry Launce has gone so far in that quarter," her companion
says, when they are well out of ear-shot. "These fascinating women are
always more or less dangerous."
"Oh, Launce can take care of himself!"
"I doubt it," Brian answered dryly.
"Oh, but he can!" Honor persists, with a laugh. "We all can, for that
matter; indeed, and it's my opinion there is not a susceptible heart in
the whole family."
"Probably not. I don't believe in susceptible hearts myself."
A faint smile stirs her lips as she listens. It was not true, then,
that passionate declaration that has rung in her ears since she first
heard it:
"Heavens, child, how I love you!"
"How would it have been with me now if I had believed him?" she asks
herself. She can quite believe that the loss of this man's love--after
once believing in it--might prove a source of very keen regret to any
girl; but fortunately she had never believed in it; and now it could
never be anything--true or false, faithful or unfaithful--since she has
given her plighted word to Power Magill.
"I wish Launce would go back to Dublin," Brian says after a pause. "He
is only getting himself and other people into mischief down here. Can't
the _pater_ see that?"
"My father can see no fault in Launce--neither can I, for that matter.
I really don't see what harm the poor fellow is doing."
"He is doing harm, Honor--take my word for it! He would be best away."
"We do not think so," she says coldly; and there the matter ends.
It is getting dark as the little party--Honor, her two brothers, and
young Jack Delorme--turn in at the gates of Donaghmore. They have been
talking and laughing merrily; Honor is in good spirits to-night, or
pretends to be; but as they pass inside the gate a silence falls upon
them.
Launce is walking on the grass, well under the trees, Jack Delorme in
the very middle of the gravel path, swinging a light stick, while Honor
and Horace are a little in advance. As they reach the ruins Jack stops.
"I wonder if the old abbot is above ground to-night, Launce," he says.
"It would be only polite of us to pay him a visit if he is."
As the mocking words pass his lips, Honor turns to gaze at the gray
pile, which looks very rugged in the dusk. She stops instantly.
Is she dreaming, she asks herself with a gasp of surprise, or is that a
shape moving slowly between her and the doorless space that leads into
the old quadrangle?
Horace sees it at the same instant; and the solo he is whistling--"My
Queen"--with variations more or less ear-piercing, not to say
distracting, dies away on his lips. He is little better than a lad, and
his scorn of the supernatural is not by any means real.
"Oh, Honor," he exclaims, drawing close to her, "what can it be? Don't
you see something over there?"
"It is a shadow of some branch, dear; it can be nothing else! Wait and
see if the others notice it."
"Honor, I dare not stay!" the boy says nervously. "It is cowardly of
me, I know, but there is a terror on me, and I--oh, what is that?"
A sudden shriek--so long, so shrill, so blood-chilling that the hearers
stand aghast--breaks out upon the still air. A second later it is
followed by an imprecation and a rapid rush of feet, as Launce and Jack
Delorme spring, with one impulse, toward the ruins.
Honor neither stirs nor cries out. She holds her brother's hand tightly
in both her own, and prays in an incoherent fashion; and all the time a
strange unreal feeling is creeping over her.
"Can these things be?" she is asking herself. "Are spirits allowed to
come back and torture the living?"--for this fear is the keenest
torture her vigorous young life has ever known.
It is all over in a few minutes, though it seems to her that they have
been standing there a long time, and then her brother and Jack Delorme
come up to them.
"By George, we nearly had the fellow!" Launce says panting. "Never saw
a nearer shave than he had in my life! I could have sworn he was within
reach of my fist; yet when I struck out, the brute was gone!"
He is flushed, excited, angry; Jack is cooler and graver. His face, as
he bares his head to the light breeze, looks pale.
Honor divines instinctively that he, like herself, has seen something
supernatural in this apparition.
But Launce scoffs at any such idea.
"It is some blackguard," he says scornfully, "got up on purpose to
scare folks! He was within an ace of getting his skull broken for his
pains."
Is it their overwrought fancy, or does a low mocking laugh float back
to them?
Honor shivers.
"Let us get into the house," she says. "I feel as if I could not
breathe out here; and don't let us talk any more about it, please!"
But Launce cannot hold his tongue; he does nothing but scoff at their
credulity, and when they reach the house the first thing he does is to
go straight to the dining-room and tell the whole story to his father.
The old man looks grave as he listens; it even seems to Honor if a
little of the ruddy color dies out of his face.
"Best let these things alone, my boy," he says at last.
In his own young days such things as warnings were neither scoffed at
nor disbelieved in.
"Let us keep our powder and shot for men of bone and muscle like
ourselves, Launce, and not waste them on shadows."
If he had said, "Let us ask the old abbot up to supper, and treat him
to a jorum of whiskey-punch," Launce could not have looked more
surprised.
"Well," he says in a tone if disgust, "I did think you had more sense,
father, than to believe in a fellow walking about some hundred and
fifty years after his own funeral."
The old man smiles, but he says no more; and Honor feels that the
appearance of this phantom has cast a gloom over the house that was
scarcely needed.
"And Launce ought to have had more sense than to talk to the _pater_
about it," she says to herself, as she watches the squire's anxious
face. "He ought to have remembered that the last time that horrid old
abbot was seen about poor grandpapa was shot; and of course everybody
said the abbot had come to warn him."