Radway stayed at Roscarna for three days. Irish ways are easy, and
Jocelyn did not appear surprised to see his daughter's correspondent at
the breakfast-table. He measured Radway shrewdly with his screwed-up
eyes and decided that he was a sportsman, which, together with the
Halbertons' introduction, was good enough for him. He only regretted
that he could not do the sporting honours of the place for their
visitor. There was a certain giddiness, he said, that troubled him at
unexpected moments and made him disinclined to go too far afield; but
he placed his rods and the contents of the gun-room at Radway's
disposal and pressed him to stay as long as the place amused him.
Jocelyn, as host, was very much the country gentleman, picking up the
thread of courtly hospitality at the point where it had been broken so
many years ago, almost without any effort. It is probable that he had
begun to realise that things were not well with him, and that since
Gabrielle might soon be left alone in the world, it would be wiser to
welcome a possible husband for her. Certainly he did his best for
Radway, and Radway, no doubt, found him delightful, for Jocelyn had
grown milder as he aged and had never been without a good deal of
personal charm. On the other hand, it is not unlikely that Radway told
him of his intentions with regard to Gabrielle, even though nothing so
definite as an engagement was announced. At any rate, the guest
settled down happily at Roscarna, and the morning after his arrival the
luggage cart was sent in to his hotel at Oughterard to bring back his
traps and gun-case.
Of course Gabrielle took possession of him. The terms of their new
relation had been fixed miraculously and finally by the character of
their moonlit meeting at Clonderriff. No formal words were spoken, but
they knew that they were lovers, having arrived at this heavenly state
after a whole year of waste. On Gabrielle's side there were never any
doubts or questionings. She was his altogether. She wanted him to
know all that could be known of her, and since she felt that so much of
her was the product of Roscarna, it was necessary that he should know
Roscarna first.
With the spells of moonshine withdrawn he knew it for the wan,
neglected ruin that it was, but her romantic passion for its stones
helped to maintain the first atmosphere of illusion. She showed him,
with a beautiful emotion, the room in which she had been born, the
lofts in which she had played with the stableboys in her childhood, her
alder-screened bathing place by the lake, the library where her
romantic education had been begun.
Here, by the most likely chance, they encountered Considine. He had
walked up, as usual, in the morning to read Dante with her. He came
through the house unannounced and entered the library where the lovers
were bending with their heads close together over the map on which
Gabrielle had followed the course of Radway's West Indian voyages, and,
being engrossed in these tender reminiscences, they did not see him.
He stood in the doorway, gazing, uncertain as to what he should say or
do. In his seventeen years at Clonderriff he had got out of the way of
dealing with social problems.
At last Gabrielle looked up, saw him, and blushed. She hastened to
introduce Radway: "The friend I met in Dublin" ... as if there had been
only one.
By this time Considine had recovered himself. He shook hands with
Radway heartily and talked to him about the shooting. In those few
moments it was the man and not the parson who appeared, and Radway,
frankly, took him at his own valuation and liked him.
"Quite a good sort, your padre," he said to Gabrielle afterwards, and
she was glad that he was pleased. For herself it had never occurred to
her to consider whether he was good or bad. To her he had never been
anything more than a figure: Mr. Considine: but it pleased her that
anything associated with her should give her lover pleasure. Considine
was sufficiently tactful not to mention Dante, and Gabrielle solved his
difficulty by asking him for a short holiday during Radway's stay. He
coughed and said he would be delighted, and since he did not offer to
go they left him in the library.
From the first he must have seen how things were. At the best he was a
lonely man, and this must have seemed the last aggravation of his
loneliness. I do not suppose he considered that he was in love with
Gabrielle, but he was undoubtedly attached to her, for he was not an
old man nor vowed to celibacy, and it had been his leisurely delight to
watch her beauty unfolding. Leisurely ... because he was slow in
everything, slow in his speech, slow to anger, and slow to love--which
does not imply that he was without intelligence or feeling or sex. It
would not be fair to dismiss the feelings of Considine as unimportant;
but it would be even less fair to sentimentalize them, for the least
thing that can be said of him is that he was not sentimental himself.
When they left him he tried to persuade himself that he was not jealous
by settling down to the composition of his weekly sermon; but he did
not risk any further disturbance of mind by seeing them together again.
The sunny season held. The river water was so low as to be unfishable,
but in the string of lakelets below Loughannilaun Radway landed half a
dozen sea-trout with Gabrielle, who knew the stones in every pool, as
ghillie. In the divine relaxation of their love-making they were not
inclined for strenuous exercise; but when evening fell, and the sky
cooled, they would wander abroad together by the lake and through the
woodlands or lie dreaming, side by side, in the deep heather.
During the days of Radway's visit, Jocelyn felt an obligation to appear
presentable, and every evening, when dinner was over, Radway would
smoke a cigar in his company, listening to his stories of old Galway
days and sportsmen long since dead. As Jocelyn's memory for immediate
things had faded he seemed to remember his early days more clearly,
and, like many Irishmen, he was an amusing talker. Gabrielle would sit
on a low stool between them in the white dress that Radway loved. It
made the solitude for which they were both waiting seem more precious
to see her thus at a distance, pale and fragile and miraculous against
the sombre background of the Roscarna oak. Then Jocelyn would begin to
yawn, and fidget for the nightcap of hot whiskey that Biddy prepared
for him, and at last discreetly vanish. And so the most precious of
their moments began.
Of these one can say nothing. Naturally enough, in later years, when
she made Mrs. Payne her confidante, Gabrielle did not speak of them.
And even if she had done so Mrs. Payne was too surely a woman of
feeling ever to have betrayed her confidence. Under that wasting moon
they loved, and I know nothing, but that it must have been strange for
the empty shell of Roscarna, that tragic theatre, to reawaken to such a
vivid and youthful passion. The world was theirs, and nobody heeded
them, unless it were Biddy Joyce, a creature whose whole life was
coloured by shadowy premonitions.
Gabrielle could not bear that he should leave her, but Radway's plans
for the immediate future had been made without reckoning for anything
as momentous as this love-affair. He was pledged, in four days, to
visit an aunt in North Wales, and though he could not undertake to
disappoint the old lady, he consoled Gabrielle by showing her how short
and how convenient the passage to Holyhead was. To her, England seemed
a country as remote as Canada, but he promised her that he would return
within a week, and suggested that this would be a good opportunity of
speaking of their engagement to Jocelyn. "But I wish you were not
going," she said. "I feel as if I shall lose you."
They had determined to devote the last day of his stay to visiting the
top of Slieveannilaun, where there were plenty of grouse. The plan
gave them an excuse for a day of the most absolute solitude and the
shooting that she had promised him long ago in Dublin. Biddy would cut
sandwiches for them and Gabrielle would carry them in a game-bag slung
over her shoulders.
At dawn a mist of sea-fog overspread the country-side, and Radway,
gazing through the open window, saw the fine stuff driven down the
valley in sheets against the darkness of the woods; but by the time
that they had finished breakfast the sun had broken through, soaring
magnificently in the moist air and promising a greater heat than ever.
Jocelyn, on the stone terrace, watched them depart. "I wish I were
going with you," he said with a twinkle, "but it's a job for young
people. Collar-work all the way, and you'll find the grass on the
mountain as slippery as ice." They left him, laughing. He liked
Radway. Gabrielle might easily do worse. At the edge of the wood she
turned and waved her handkerchief; but Jocelyn was tossing biscuits to
his favourite spaniel Moira and did not see.
They climbed Slieveannilaun happily, for they were young and full of
vigour. Gabrielle was quieter and more serious than usual, under the
shadow of his going. He killed two and a half brace of grouse. It
pleased her to see the ease and precision with which his gun came up.
Near the place where they lunched they saw three fox cubs running with
their mother, a sight that filled Gabrielle with delight. On a stone
near by them a small mouse-coloured bird, a meadow pipit, made a noise,
_tick-tick_, like the ferrule of a walking-stick on stone. From this
exalted station they could no longer see Roscarna, for the house and
the woods were lost in the immense trough beneath them. They only saw
the Corrib and the lakes of Iar Connaught and, beyond, an immense bow
of sea.
"I hate the sea," she said. "It will take you away from me."
"You can't hate it more than I do," he said laughing. "All sailors
hate the sea. But somehow, I don't think I was ever born to be
drowned."
The sunshine made them sleepy and they lay down in the heather. He lay
there with his head on her breast and slept. But Gabrielle did not
sleep. She watched him lazily and with a strange content.
When he woke the sun was beginning to sink. They walked back along the
ridge in a state that was curiously light-hearted. She seemed to be
able to forget for the first time the fact that he was to leave her
next day. The evening was cool and fresh and the air of the mountain
as clear as spring water. When they came to the descent he insisted on
carrying the bag that held the game. There was a little quarrel and a
reconciliation of kisses. They set off together once more hand in
hand. Halfway down the mountain, on a patch of shining grass, he
slipped, and the weight of the game-bag overbalanced him. Gabrielle
laughed as he fell, but her laugh was lost in the report of the gun.
How the accident happened no one can say, but Radway had blown his
brains out.