THE TRAVELLERS.
It was impossible for O'Brien to tell Alfred the nature of the
telegram he had just despatched to Blake. It would not be seemly to
whisper or to write, and to leave the compartment with the proclaimed
intention of seeking a smoking carriage would be a transparent device.
There was nothing for it but to sit still and keep silent.
The three travellers settled themselves in their corners, and
pretended to go to sleep. Each had thoughts of an absorbing nature,
but none had anything exceptionally happy with which to beguile the
dreary midnight journey. It was impossible to see if Mrs. Davenport
slept or not. She had, upon settling herself after leaving Rugby,
pulled down her thick veil over her face, and remained quite
motionless. Young Paulton was not yet as strong as he imagined, and
the monotonous sound and motion soon fatigued him, and he fell asleep.
Although O'Brien kept his eyes resolutely shut he never felt more
wakeful in his life.
What on earth could this woman want with this man of most blemished
reputation and desperate fortune? She had seen him lately, and he had
told her something of the mysterious appearance near the Puffing Hole;
but it was not until after they had started from Euston that she had
made up her mind to summon him to Ireland. What could she want him
for? She was, according to her own statement, now no longer rich. She
was no longer young. The best years of her beauty had passed away. No
doubt she was still an extremely beautiful woman, but the freshness
was gone. As far as he knew, Blake was the last man in the world to
marry such a woman. And yet there was some secret bond, some concealed
link between them. He was not unjust to her. He did not believe she
would inveigle any man into a marriage, and he could not understand
why this Blake was now even tolerable to her.
However matters might go, it looked as if Alfred were certain to
suffer. It was quite plain he was madly in love with her, and that she
did not see, or was indifferent to his passion. She was not a
coquette. She showed no desire to claim indulgence because of her sex
or sorrows, and certainly exacted no privilege as a tribute to her
beauty. To him she seemed hard, mechanical, cold. She had, it is true,
broken down the day before, but that was under extreme pressure.
Usually she was as unsympathetic, self-contained as bronze.
Jerry was not a fool or a bigot, and he allowed to himself, with
perfect candour, that although he looked on Alfred's passion as
infatuation, he could understand it. He himself was no more in love
with her than with the black night through which they were speeding;
but if she, at that moment, raised her veil and stood before him and
bade him undertake something unpleasant--nay, dangerous--he would
essay it. Strength gives command to a man, beauty to a woman, love to
either.
At Chester the three got coffee, and once more took up their corners
and affected to sleep or slept.
When they reached the boat at Holyhead, Mrs. Davenport said good-night
and descended to the ladies' cabin. The two friends got on the bridge,
and as soon as the steamer had started O'Brien took Paulton to the
weather bulwark, and told him the substance of the telegram Mrs.
Davenport had sent to London.
To O'Brien's astonishment, the younger man made nothing of the matter.
It was simply a business affair, he said: nothing of any moment. From
all they had heard, Blake knew more than they had supposed of the dead
man's affairs; and now that Mrs. Davenport had resolved not to take
the fortune her husband had left her, it was almost certain Blake
could be of assistance to her.
After a little while it was agreed that the bridge was too cold for
Alfred, so both men went below and lay down. O'Brien fell asleep, and
did not awake until he was called close to Kingstown.
It was a dreary, cold, bleak morning, with thin sunlight. There had
been rain in the night, and everything looked chill and depressing.
The passage had been smooth, and none of the three had suffered by it
beyond the spiritless depression arising from imperfect rest and
fatigue.
When they alighted at Westland Row, Jerry suggested that they should
send on their luggage to the King's Bridge terminus, and seek
breakfast.
"Not my luggage," said Mrs. Davenport; "I am not going to Kilcash
to-day. Kindly get me a cab. I will stay at the 'Tourists' Hotel.' I
have telegraphed, as you know, to Mr. Blake to come over, and will
send him word to meet me there. I am extremely obliged to both of you
for all your kindnesses on the way."
Alfred started, and Jerry looked surprised.
"You are," the latter said, "quite sure you prefer staying here. Of
course I do not presume to interfere; but perhaps it might be more
convenient for you, Mrs. Davenport, if Mr. Blake followed you to
Kilcash?"
"I am quite sure," she said, decisively, "that it would be best for me
to stay in Dublin for the present."
"If you simply wanted rest, we could wait for you a day or two," said
Alfred, out of whose face all look of animation had gone.
"Thank you, I am not in the least tired; and if you will get me a cab,
and tell the man to drive me to the 'Tourists', you will greatly
oblige me."
Nothing more was to be done or said. Her luggage was put on a cab, she
again thanked the two friends, and saying she hoped to have an
opportunity of soon seeing them at Kilcash House, said goodbye to
them, and drove away.
Alfred and Jerry O'Brien got breakfast, drove to the King's Bridge
terminus, and started for the South in no very good humour.
"It's always the way," thought the latter, despondingly. "Only for the
infernal Commissioners and O'Hanlon's craze about his brain--bless the
mark!--I need not have left London last month. Only for Alfred's
infatuated impatience and his father's vicarious gallantry, I might be
there now; and here are the Commissioners gone to sleep, O'Hanlon's
head good for nothing, any number of future bills of costs, and we
deserted by the object of young love and elderly gallantry! Upon my
word, it's too bad. If O'Hanlon had only had the good sense to murder
the Commissioners while suffering from temporary or permanent
insanity, and Blake owned the good taste to run away with the
widow--why, then, things would be wholesome and comfortable. As it is,
they are simply-beastly."
The two friends arrived late that night at the "Strand Hotel,"
Kilcash, and went to bed almost immediately. Neither rose early next
morning, but when they did get up, they found the weather magically
improved. A few high silver clouds floated against the deep blue
screen of sky, beyond which one knew the stars lay; for the grass and
bare branches of trees flashed and blazed, not with the yellow light
of the gaudy sun, but with rays that seemed glorious memories of
midnight stars. The sea in the bay was calm as a lake, and joined upon
the level margin of the sand smoothly, like a steady white flame
spreading out from a dull-red lake of fire. The doors of the cottages
were open, and people were abroad. Thin wreaths of smoke went up from
hushed hearths. Hundreds of gulls sailed slowly up and down across the
mouth of the bay. Now a dog barked, now a cock crew, now a wild bird
whistled.
Opposite Alfred, as he stood at his window, drinking in the peace of
the scene, rose the sloping sides of the bay. On them were sheep
grazing. Here the salt blasts from the Atlantic would let no wheat or
oats, or grain of any other kind, prosper. Nothing would grow but
short, poor grass, on which sheep picked up an humble livelihood. The
harvest fields of Kilcash were beyond the bay, out there on the blue
depths of the ocean, that great cosmopolitan common of the races of
man.
Little labour was ever to be done in Kilcash. Its farms, its
workshops, its mines were in the sea. No child, until he himself went
to sea, ever saw his father work. The men came home not merely to
their houses, but to the village to rest. When they had hauled up
their boats, and carried away the nets and sails and oars and masts,
their labours were at an end. The women bore the fish up to the Storm
Wall, whence it was thrown into carts and creels, and driven off to
Kilbarry. The visitors who came to the place in summer did not work.
They came avowedly to do nothing--to idle through the sunny weather,
to play at fishing, play at boating, play at swimming, to make grave
business of doing nothing.
"I feel it doing me good already," said Alfred, as he threw up the
window and spread his chest broad to take a full inspiration of the
invigorating, balsamic air.
After a late breakfast the two friends strolled out.
"What shall we do to-day?" said Jerry, lighting a cigar.
"What is there to be done?" asked Alfred, by way of reply.
"Nothing," answered Jerry, throwing away the match--"absolutely
nothing. It is because there is nothing to be done here I thought the
place would do you good."
"Not by way of change?" said Alfred, with a smile.
"Well, doing nothing at Kilcash is very different from doing nothing
in London. There you get up, eat breakfast, look at the morning
papers, yawn over a book; write three notes to say you have no time to
write a letter; wonder what the earlier portion of the day was
intended for; resolve to go to bed early that night so as to find out
the secret; dress; go out nowhere, anywhere; make a call on a person
whom you don't want to see, and who doesn't want to see you; curse
yourself for being so stupid as to look him up, and him for being so
stupid as not to amuse you; buy a hairbrush you don't want; wonder
where people can be going in hansoms at such an hour, and can't find
out for the life of you where you could go in a hansom at that time,
except to the British Museum, or Tower, or National Gallery, or some
other place no respectable person ever yet went to; drop into a club
for luncheon, and find that no one you ever saw before lunches at the
club, and that those who do are intensely disagreeable; stroll into
the park; pick up two dear old boys, who have been looking for you
everywhere to tell you about something or other that makes you swear;
back to the club to dinner, where you meet every man you care for, and
dine; after dinner go somewhere or other--to Brown's, for instance, or
to the theatre, or to see the performing Mastodon; afterwards cards or
billiards, and bed at half-past two or three."
"That's rather a full and exhausting programme for an idle day. It
isn't much good here. What do you do here a day you do nothing?"
"Nothing. Whether it's a busy or an idle day with you here, you can't
do anything, except you get books and go in for the exact sciences.
You couldn't buy a morning paper here for a sovereign, or a pack of
cards for a hundred pounds. The hotel does not take in a paper at this
time of the year, and only three come to the village--one each to the
clergymen, and one to the police barracks. The garrison of the
barracks is six men and a bull-terrier. There's no one to look at
here, and no one to call on, except the echoes, which at this time of
the year are uncommonly surly, not to say scurrilous. There is no
fish, as the fish have all gone away on business; they come here only
to stare at the summer visitors. The only thing one can do here is
smoke--provided you don't buy the tobacco in the village."
"And walk?" asked Alfred. "Cannot one walk here?"
"Yes, mostly. Not always, though; for when it rains here you have to
swim, and when it blows here, you have to fly."
"But to-day, for instance, we can walk."
O'Brien looked aloft, looked down in the light wind, and then out to
sea.
"Yes, I think it will keep fine."
"Well, then, let us walk."
"But I forgot to tell you there is no place to walk to."
"Oh, yes, there is. I know more of the neighbourhood than you, short a
time as I have been here."
"Where?"
"Kilcash House. Jerry, don't laugh or don't abuse me. I can't help it.
Let me see where she lived--where she will live again."