FROM THE NIGHT AND THE STORM.
For some time Pierce's letters had been irregular, and when they came
had been the merest scraps, very unsatisfactory to Aline, one could
see, though she often said that, moving about so much as he did,
Pierce couldn't be expected to write letters like a home-keeping
woman.
Then had come a couple of months of silence, during which Aline
fretted visibly, at least during the latter portion of the time, for
of course she did not begin to worry at once, and there had been the
distraction of young De Lacy's accident and convalescence in the
house.
It was now April, and blithe, beautiful weather. The smaller trees
were all in leaf, and the bigger ones were cloudy with the coming
leafage. It was sunny every day, with a touch of east wind, which
brought the most beautiful colours on Brandon Hill, bronzes and
crimsons and golds, instead of his usual soft azures. The
kitchen-garden was a forest of white blossom, and the apple-buds were
pushing open a little rosier every day. I was getting rid of my
cold, and was out walking every day on the sheltered side of the
house, in the gardens, or on the grassy terrace overlooking the
rose-garden.
I came on Oona one day in the kitchen-garden picking spinach into her
apron.
"Why, Oona," I said, "you are going to give us an early dish. I
thought you wouldn't be putting it on the table for a fortnight yet."
"There'll be a stranger to dinner, Miss Hilda. Three nights running
I've dreamt of a man dressed in black, but the face of him I couldn't
see, coming in over the threshold stone, and this morning there was a
stranger in my tea-cup, so there's someone coming over the hill."
"And you've picked the spinach because of your dreams."
"Yes, and killed a pair of chickens. One of them was a pullet, but
as she'd learned to crow it couldn't be lucky to keep her. Chickens,
an' a bit o' bacon, an' a dish o' spinach is good feeding for
anybody, if it was Miss Freda or Master Pierce even."
"Your banshee never came to anything, Oona," I said.
"The year's not out, Miss Hilda," she answered solemnly.
But I was not to be depressed by Oona's superstitions this bright
spring morning, so I went off laughing, and left her shaking her old
head in its snowy cap-frills.
The day passed without event, and it was late afternoon. Esther was
still out, and I had thought I would go a little way to meet her, so
after Aline had wrapped me up in a soft old Indian cashmere shawl,
and enjoined on me not to go too far, I started off down the avenue.
I went farther, perhaps, than I intended, for I expected Esther to
come in sight at every turn. Anyhow all at once I felt a little
tired, and so sat down on the mossy trunk of a fallen tree to wait
for her. The evening was rosy now, and translucent yellow, and
palest green, and Brandon had flushed rosy pink, and was wearing the
evening star in his hair.
"If she doesn't come soon," said I, "I must turn back."
And just at that moment I heard, in the silence, wheels and the
trotting of a horse's hoofs on the road. The sound was coming nearer
every minute, and was sufficient of a novelty to attract my
attention, for, as I have said before, the road to Brandon led
nowhere but to Brandon, the only exit from it, after Brandon gates,
being a horrible rutty boreen, too narrow for anything but the
smallest donkey-cart.
"Hullo!" said I to myself--I have learnt slang from the boys, you
see--"Oona's stranger, for a ducat!" and I began to feel rather
excited.
With the sensitive hearing of a country-girl, I could follow the
sound of the car through its many windings and turnings, and could
even catch the murmur of voices when the turning was towards Brandon,
and not away from it, or in a hollow.
Presently there was a pause, and I knew the car had stopped at the
gate, and that the driver was leading his horse through, for our last
lodge-keeper, Larry Hefferman, had been dead two years, and we had
not filled his place. Then I heard the car coming on towards me up
the avenue.
I listened in strained expectancy, still keeping my place on the log.
It came nearer and nearer. Then it turned on to the long straight
bit at the other end of which I was sitting. There was one person on
it besides the driver--a tall man, much muffled, despite the clemency
of the April evening. As they came near me I saw him lean across and
speak to the driver. Then the car stopped and he alighted slowly and
painfully, and, taking a bag from the seat, came on to where I was
sitting, while the car turned round and drove slowly off.
The man came up to me and stopped. I could scarcely see his face,
for the muffling and the soft hat. But there was something familiar
about it, and yet unfamiliar, which made me jump up, trembling
slightly.
"Why, it is little Hilda!" said the man, and with the sound of his
voice uncertainty vanished.
"Oh, Pierce," I cried, "Pierce! How glad Aline will be!" And then I
added, nearly in the same breath:
"But what have you been doing to yourself? You are not the Pierce
that went away. Have you been ill, Pierce?"
He stooped and kissed me and laughed.
"Five years make a difference in a man's looks, little woman;" and
then he coughed a hard dry cough, which seemed to be tearing through
flesh and bone.
"And how are they all? How is Aline? And you and Essie, and the
twins, and the boys, and Freda?"
He pushed the soft hat off his head, drew a long breath, and looked
all around him. Five years! Ah! it might have been twenty-five, so
great was the difference. This was not our Pierce, this hollow-eyed,
gaunt-cheeked, white-lipped stranger. He looked taller too by a
head, but that might have been because he was very thin.
"Dear Heaven!" he said, "how sweet it is to be at home! How often I
have longed for a sight of old Brandon there, and to smell these
delicious woods!"
He patted my hand, which he still held, softly.
"Come along, little girl, let us get home. I've been ill, and am
ordered to be out only in the sun. How fortunate that you should
have been mooning down here! I didn't want to go in on Aline
suddenly, with this sick man's face."
So he did know that he was looking very ill. What matter? Home air
and tender nursing and good feeding would soon make him the old
Pierce again.
He would have taken up his bag, but I pushed away his hand from it.
"One of the boys will run down for it," said I. "It is as safe till
they fetch it as the Bank of Ireland."
There was still no sign of Esther, and we walked on towards the
house. We met no one to be surprised at my return with a stranger's
arm about me. Poor Pierce! Being so near me, I could hear the
painful catching of his breath as he walked, and now and again he had
to pause to recover himself.
The hall-door stood open as usual, and I brought him into the
drawing-room, which was unoccupied, and to a comfortable chair. He
sank into it without a word, but a quivering sigh told me how
delicious its restfulness was. "Now rest," said I, "and I will fetch
Aline."
"You will tell her, little Hilda?"
"Yes; I will tell her that you have been ill, and have come home to
be made well."
But all the way upstairs Oona's story of the banshee would haunt me,
though I put out two hands to drive it away.
I found Aline writing labels for the rhubarb and parsnip wine Oona
was making. She looked up at me with a questioning smile, and I
noticed that she was not looking well. I sat down on the arm of the
chair and kissed her ear.
"What is it?" she said. "Have you had a nice walk, and found Essie
as you expected?"
"I didn't wait for her. I--I found news."
Her eyes opened wide and startled.
"News!" she repeated after me. "Of Pierce? It could only be of
Pierce. What news, Hilda? Not bad news?"
"Good news, darling."
"Oh, Hilda, he is coming home! I know by your face. Tell me. Oh
... he is come!"
"He is come," said I; "but wait, don't rush away like that. He has
been ill, and has come home to get well. I was to tell you he was
looking ill. You mustn't be startled at the change in him, nor
startle him."
But Aline was already on her way to the door, and I followed her as
fast as I could. After all, she would have time to get over the
shock of his appearance gradually, for now the kindly twilight would
soften it down.
She went straight to the drawing-room, and I followed her, with an
irrational fear lest she might want me. I saw Pierce stand up and
lean on a near table, as if he felt faint. Then Aline put her arms
round him with a sharp cry of love and pity, and I went out and
closed the door.
Half an hour later Pierce came into the dining-room, and was
installed in a big chair by the brisk little wood-fire, which had
been lit because the nights turned chilly. He had had a wash and a
brush-up, and looked better than when I had seen him first, and
because he had been ill there was a little table set beside him, to
which we carried the dainty bits of the chicken and the delicacies
which Oona had hastily served up.
The young ones, of course, could not see how woefully Pierce was
changed, which was a relief to us. Now that the lamp was lit I could
mark the changes in his face. He had left us a sunny-hearted,
sunny-faced boy. Now some immense trouble had drawn a myriad fine
lines on the skin that had been so smooth. When, for a moment, it
relaxed into quietness, it wore a curiously tragic expression. More
than illness had been at work on that face. I, in my dim corner,
wondered and wondered what the years had held for him to change him
so greatly.
Aline had taken the shock of his changed looks well. I think her
secret fear for him out in the briers and thorns of the world had
been so great, that to have him at home was for the time being joy
enough. He himself seemed to think that all he needed to get well
was Brandon, and she was only too glad to believe him.
And now Oona came to our help with all the knowledge and love that is
in her faithful old heart. After a night's rest, Pierce, who seemed
overjoyed to be back again, was for all sorts of exertions and
expeditions, as if he were a strong man. But Oona put down her foot.
"Breakfast in bed, Miss Aline," she said, "and if the day's fine an'
warm you can get down the little sofa Miss Hilda had when her foot
was bad, an' when Mr. Pierce is dressed he can lie on it in the
verandy. He'll have to be stronger before he goes racketin' an'
tearin' round the place like them young colts o' boys."
Aline acquiesced silently, but when she was telling Pierce the
arrangements that had been made for him, she added:
"You must rest well, you see, after the fatigue of the voyage, and be
patient, and do as Oona bids you."
He laughed with some of his old merriment.
"I have always done as Oona bid me. And though I feel as strong as a
horse this morning, she is probably right. I used to think, on the
way home, that I should never be able to get rest enough."
After that the days passed, and Pierce seemed to have accepted the
invalid's part even gratefully. I would have said he was quite
content, except that once or twice he reproached himself for being an
expense to us.
"I am a useless beggar, little Hilda," he said to me one day when I
was alone with him, "and I am bitterly ashamed to have come home
empty-handed. I fought against that as long as I could,--so long
that it was near being a case of never coming home at all."
"Oh, Pierce, that would have been the real cruelty and the real
wrong!" I cried out.
"I felt that, Hilda. I thought it would be the cruellest wrong of
all if I were to die out there, and leave Aline the heritage of that
eternal sorrow. I kept hoping that things would be better. Indeed,
Hilda, I endured much before I made up my mind to come. Yet I always
knew that, in a certain contingency, I would come, and for that I
kept my passage-money inviolate, even when I was starving."
"Starving, Pierce?"
"Yes, child, starving,--like many a better man. Privation paved the
way for sickness with me. But you will not tell Aline, nor anyone
else. I don't want to squirm under my punishment, which I richly
deserved. And I would not have Aline's tender heart wrung afterwards
to think upon such things."
"She need never know," I said. "We will make you well, Pierce, and
Aline will be happy."
Then I saw a light of exaltation break over his face.
"Life and death are in God's hands, little one," he said, "and if it
is death for me, I shall not repine. It may happen to a man to save
his soul alive in the very gates of death."
I said nothing. With that light on his face I could not talk of
death as if it were the last evil.
"I have known worse than death," he went on dreamily, "but the
knowledge shall die with me. God knows it is no merit of mine that I
did not give my immortal soul for the asking. I have been snatched
out of the gates of hell, little Hilda, and shall I be afraid of the
Valley of the Shadow? Ah! there are terrible things in the world out
there, crueller than wolves, deadlier than serpents."
We were silent for a time. Pierce had turned his face away, and when
he looked at me again I could have thought there were tears in his
eyes, but perhaps it was because I was crying myself.
"You see, there is nothing to be sad about," he said softly, "even if
I am very ill. There is more joy in heaven,--ah, yes! and if there
is joy in heaven, is there not cause for joy on earth? Believe me,
child, there is no real sadness, no real sorrow on earth, except sin.
All else that seems sad to us is because we see as in a glass,
darkly."
I never found Pierce in this mood again. And I believe I was the
only one to whom he said so much, for he had the tender compassion
for Aline that would not leave her the memory of great sorrow.
Only once afterwards did he touch upon those years.
"Desmond would have saved me, Hilda," he said suddenly one day,--"and
I would not be saved. When I am gone I want you to write to Desmond,
and tell him that I knew at last he was right, and that I died loving
and thanking him. You will do that for me, Hilda?"
I said I would do it, and he was satisfied. It was curious that he
should have chosen me for his confidant about such things. I know he
did not talk to Aline, close as the bond was between them, as if he
did not expect to live.
Good old Oona surpassed herself in those days after Pierce came home.
I had rather feared her superstitions, the superstitions the peasants
love; but if she felt them she did not impart them to me. She was
indefatigable in compounding dainty dishes to tempt Pierce's weak
appetite, and she brought out of her stores of knowledge wonderful
recipes for healing and strengthening.
But as the days turned round to summer, Pierce did not grow stronger.