shore, but a few perches up the road the sea comes into sight. Hannah
went first in the opposite direction--to the Cochranes’ to see if there
was anything she could do in the dairy, her successor having turned out
an inefficient person, and being spoken of by her superiors as “that
great gawk.” But Mrs Cochrane said: “Ah, no thank you, kindly, Hannah,
there’ll be nothin’ wantin’ to-night. The pans is just sittin’ and
gatherin’ paiceable, and that great gawk can’t hinder them of doin’ that
anyways, so long as she lets them alone--and I’ve got the kay of the
door safe in me pocket. The hay’s all up, and Francey’s went off
somewheres wid his gun, after the rabbits I’m thinkin’.” So Hannah said:
“It’s the worth of him;” and soon turned back seawards.
On a sun-bright day when there are many little foam-crests curling
between the swarded shores, and glistering cloudlets flit by, Clonalty
looks very blue and white and green. It was doing so when Hannah came to
the beach, for a high tide had flowed in further than usual, and ripples
were sparkling and bickering among swathes of tangled wrack that had
long lain dry and stirless. As she looked across the water she saw, just
opposite, her old home gleaming with its white back-wall, for it faces
away from the sea; and to left and right lay the silvery hollows of the
sand-hills. Ever since she had run away from her mother’s call she had
been wishing more and more eagerly to make the venture, to visit the
deserted house, and reclaim from it the long forgone bit of property,
the gold watch and chain which her father had given to her on his
deathbed, and which she believed to be still hidden in the wall-niche
where her mother had by a strange oversight left it behind at the time
of their flitting. They had come away hurriedly one still, wet July
evening, when the grey water was fretted with large drops, and the mist
trailed thick and low. Seven years were past since then, and they had
never made the same journey, nor talked nor thought of doing so, not
even in the first dismay of the discovery that the watch was missing.
But now Hannah, for more than one reason, was of a different mind.
Francis Conroy was coming to see her that evening, and she imagined a
delightful moment if she could surprise him with the gift of a watch in
place of his lost one--a gold watch and a real silver chain, whereas he
had hitherto had nothing better than a makeshift contrived out of an old
curb bit. The possibility had flashed into her mind when, on bidding him
good-night the evening before, he had remarked dejectedly that it might
be any hour at all for anything he could tell, unless he could go look
under the waves of the sea. Whereupon she had allowed herself to drop a
mysterious hint that he might be owning a better one than ever he had
yet before long. Francey, she thought, had not minded her; but the
remembrance made her all the more anxious to carry out her design. “Me
mother’s safe to be thinkin’ all the while I’m gone over, whether or
no,” she said to herself, “and if I could get hould of a boat, I’d be
there and back in no time at all.”
So thinking, she became aware that her father’s old boat was moored
close by, its black shape the one blot on the glittering blue, white and
green, with its present owner, old Micky Devlin, and his wife sunning
themselves on the little boatslip at the water’s edge. Hannah reflected
for another minute, and then ran down to them. “I wonder, ma’am,” she
said to Mrs Devlin, “would himself think bad of loanin’ me the boat for
half an hour maybe? I was wantin’ to slip over yonder.” This request was
conveyed to Micky by his wife, her familiar cracked voice alone being
easily accessible to his bothered ears. But in answer he only said, with
a many-wrinkled grin: “Ah, dear, and is it himself she’s expeckin’ to
meet over there?” Hannah gave a great start, and turned from scarlet to
white so quickly that Mrs Devlin said remonstrantly to her husband:
“Arrah, man, don’t be talkin’ ridic’lous. It’s glad enough we are to get
shut of the likes of yous now and agin, let me tell you, widout any
notion of runnin’ after yous over land and say--cock you up! Sure never
mind him, Hannah.”
“Well, for the matter of that, I’d pull her over meself, if she’s
wishful; the tide ’ill take us backwards and forrards handy,” said
Micky, waiving the point. He had two motives in making the offer. For
he was glad to grasp an excuse for getting afloat on a day when no
fishing could be pleaded, and holding decidedly antiquated views about
the capabilities of womenkind, he regarded the suggestion that a lass
should handle his boat herself with a disfavour which would have made
him loth to grant her request in its original form. “Come along wid you,
then,” he said, putting his pipe into his pocket, and scrambling away
over the clattering stones. Hannah looked after him doubtfully for a
moment, and then followed.
Old Mrs Devlin remained where she was, knitting away at her coarse grey
sock, her quick needles glancing in and out of it like lightning at play
about a sullen cloud. As the boat pushed off she called after it: “Don’t
be delayin’ too long, or you might stick fast comin’ home.” And her
husband replied: “Ay, bedad, the tide runs out wid itself that
treacherous, before you know where you are, you might as well be
offerin’ to row through a bit of wet bog.” But Hannah, looking back
wistfully to where the old woman sat placidly turning her heel, felt
herself little disposed to linger over that errand.
On this same afternoon, Francis Conroy, as we have heard, had gone out
shooting. The sand-hills were his hunting-grounds, and their abounding
rabbits his quarry, in the pursuit of which he had no luck. In every
case the scurry and whisk occurred so punctually that the pellets
plopped fruitlessly into the sand like over-impetuous hail. By the time
that his ammunition was running out he had come along, doubling round
the head of the estuary, till he was near the Wades’ deserted cottage.
Then it struck him that he was thirsty, and that there must have been
water somewhere about the premises. Accordingly, he sought out a badly
choked-up well in the precincts of the obliterated garden, and having
taken a brackish draught sparingly, he perched himself with dangling
legs on a ledged bank which commanded a reach of the little lane running
between the cottage door and Larry’s Horsepond.
As he sat looking idly round him in the lengthening rays, a faint cloud
of discontent was on his countenance. He was considering some
unredressed grievances, amongst which his submerged watch just then lay
uppermost, because he was at the same time considering what o’clock it
might be. Presently a sand-muffled tread sounded close by, and a shadow
came wavering round the turn of the sunken boreen. Following it came a
figure, which at once impressed Francis as somehow familiar, and which
he speedily identified only too surely. It was no other than Miles
Roche, reeling along just as he probably had reeled home on that very
road many an evening before his abrupt departure. Though Francis had not
set eyes on him for the last seven years, their acquaintance was too old
a one for any mistakes to be possible now, especially as his absence had
seemingly left him unchanged. Thick-set frame and threadbare suit,
battered hat and red, coarsened face, all had just the same aspect as
when they were last seen lounging in front of Donnelly’s. Equally
characteristic was the unsteadiness of his steps as he lurched along
between the shelving banks, till, with a stumble at the threshold, and a
resentful roar, he vanished into the dark doorway of the cottage.
Francis watched his progress with an expression of deepening disgust,
for this unexpected reappearance of his future step-father-in-law opened
a long vista of mortifying annoyance. “It’s the fine times we’ll be
havin’ wid him--he didn’t lead them the life of a dog, be all accounts.
Och, bad luck to you, you drunken baste,” he said to himself, as the
sound of a thick voice bawling came from the cottage, where Miles Roche
was apparently soliloquising in a bad temper. Being minded to postpone
the renewal of their acquaintance, Francis thought he would take himself
off before the other emerged, and he was getting up to go when another
surprising appearance stopped him. He saw Hannah Wade come through the
cottage door, which was perhaps fifty yards from him, and stand outside
it, where in a minute she was joined by her mother. And this was
astonishing indeed, since, to his certain knowledge, Mrs Roche had not
left her house once in the past twelvemonth, not even to creep as far as
Mass; and she had of late been more than usually complaining. How, then,
had she got here, and what was she doing? Taken in connection with the
return of her husband, her presence was all the stranger. Had she and
Hannah known of it beforehand? In that case, Francis thought, Hannah
“had a right to ha’ tould him, instead of to be lettin’ on they were
quit of the ould rapscallion for good and all--’twould ha’ been only
fairity. It was no sort of thing for Hannah to have done. But as for the
ould woman bein’ over there, that wasn’t better able to travel than a
jelly-fish off the shore, he didn’t know what to say to it at all.”
In the midst of his conjectures, puzzled and indignant, Hannah and her
mother withdrew into the cottage, and then he began to ask himself
whether he should not join them there. They might have come over to
fetch something, and want a helping hand; or their tipsy relation might
become troublesome and violent, though for the time being he seemed to
have fallen quiet. He was still hesitating between the promptings of
chivalry, edged with curiosity, and his reluctance to hurry on his
introduction to this undesired family connection, when Hannah and her
mother reappeared in the doorway.
It seemed to him that he had surmised their errand rightly, for they
were hauling along between them a large, unwieldy looking bundle,
wrapped in folds of some weather-beaten stuff, which might have been an
old sail. It was evidently a heavy, cumbrous burden, beyond their powers
to lift--they could only tug and pull it. But Francis observed that Mrs
Roche appeared to exert far more strength in dragging it over the
threshold than anybody would have supposed her to possess. “Faith, then,
herself’s the great little ould schemer, lyin’ there at home lettin’ on
she’s scarce able to breathe, and as limbersome as a sandhopper when she
takes the fancy. Bedad you’re well mended, ma’am,” he said to himself,
watching her activity with a certain dissatisfaction. A few paces
outside both women paused to rest, and Hannah standing up straight and
tall, twisted together her thick black locks, which had shaken loose,
and wound them round her head, just as he had seen her do the other day
in the hayfield. But she looked, he fancied, slimmer and more girlish
than usual, perhaps only by reason of the rough task she had set
herself. He was jumping up to go and help, when she said a word to her
mother, and ran back into the cottage. She came out again immediately
with something in her hand; something that flickered a fierce cold gleam
in the warm sunlight; it was a long, broad-bladed knife, such as is used
for cutting up meat. This she thrust out of sight swiftly in among the
folds of the wrapping cloth, and he heard her say: “Now come on--make
haste.”
Francis could not have accounted rationally for the feeling of helpless
horror which at this moment came over him; but it did seize him with
such paralysing effect that, if a quicksand had been making mouths all
round him, he could have stirred hand nor foot to escape from his peril.
Like one in a dream he sat watching mother and daughter toil along with
their load, whatever it might be. For a few yards the track ran straight
towards the place where he sat, and as they came nearer he could hear
the older woman panting and groaning over her efforts--“We’ll never do
it, Hannah,” she repeated again and again, “the Saints have mercy on
us--we’ll never do it.” Hannah made no answer, and was stooping so low
that he could not see her face; but she tugged desperately. The
ponderous weight furrowed the loose sand as it passed trailing on, and a
brisk breeze, which seemed to be blowing after them, sent a thin cloud
scudding by, but where Francis sat not a breath was stirring except his
own. They were in full view of him as they approached, but they did not
notice him, and when they came where the sunken boreen turned rather
sharply to the left, the high banks began to interpose, so that only
glimpses could be caught of anybody moving between them.
Then feeling a sudden impulse of rebellion against the spell which kept
him staring blankly after the figures as they receded, he turned to look
in the opposite direction, and thereupon began to utter an exclamation,
which broke off strangled as if a hand had clutched him by the throat.
For close by Hannah Wade was standing--Hannah herself--so near to him
that he could have touched her--and yet at that very moment there was
that same--that other--dark head appearing ever and anon above the
silvery banks of the boreen. His world spun round for a minute, and then
stood still again with a jerk.
Hannah and Francis looked at one another without a word. How long she
had been there, and whence she had come, he did not know, but her eyes,
dark with fear, told him that she knew what he had seen. The silence
seemed to have lasted a long while before it was broken--by neither of
them. A voice came from seaward, shouting in the sustained roar which
mariners learn to oppose to the howling-down of winds and waves. “Hi
then, Hannah, girl,” it said, “Is it stoppin’ there you’d be till every
sup of the say’s dhrained out on us to beyant the King Pharaoh’s
Islands? Come along wid you out of that, before we have th’ ould boat
crawlin’ in the black mud like a man-keeper in a ditch-bottom.”
“That’s ould Micky Devlin rowed me over,” said Hannah, with a hoarse
endeavour to speak naturally. “I mustn’t be keepin’ him any longer.” She
waited a moment, as if hoping for something, and then turned away alone;
but Francis did follow her a few steps behind. To do so seemed to him
more possible than to make his solitary way home through the sand-hills
amongst which those two forms had disappeared.
Old Micky smoking in his boat was a homely and reassuring sight. He
greeted their joint appearance with laughter loud and long, and much
jocular comment. What they responded to it they never knew, and neither
did he; but his deafness was complaisant in its conjectures, and he
subsided into chuckles of unabated satisfaction. On embarking Francis
asked eagerly to be allowed to row, but the old man thrust him back
sportively with the butt-end of an oar, and said: “Och no, boyo; sure I
wouldn’t be separatin’ yous be any manner of manes. Sit you down beside
her, and lave th’ ould paddles to meself that’s got nothin’ better to
mind.” Francis, however, took a seat as far aloof from his
fellow-passenger as the limits of the stern-benches would allow.
As they slid out into the soft mother-o-pearly water, Hannah felt
unspeakably forlorn. It seemed to her that all her hopes were slipping
away from her along with the strand she was leaving, and that her
landing on the other side would be to find a world grown desolate for
evermore. The feeling strengthened with the dwindling distance, while
old Micky pulled and poked his unappreciated fun, and Francis sat silent
and did not look at her. The good luck but now so safely in her keeping,
had turned into a thing wild and winged, that hovered on the point of
taking flight. Within a few fleeting minutes, if ever, she must grasp
and re-capture it; and yet the attempt failing would scare it from her
irretrievably. Thus it came to pass that, although her better judgment
admonished her that she was acting over-hastily and at an ill time, she
could not forbear any longer, but moving down the bench till she sat
opposite to her sweetheart, she held out to him what she had all this
while been hiding under her shawl--something that glistened in the
sun--much as the knife-blade had glittered.
“It was me poor father’s watch,” she said, “I went over of a purpose to
fetch it back for you. It’s as good and better than the one you’re after
losin’, Francey, and you’re kindly welcome to it. There it is--you’d a
right to be puttin’ it on before we’re landin’. The chain’s rael
silver--look, Francey.”
But, alas! he shrank away from her proffered gift as if it had been a
scaly serpent, and said hurriedly, with hardly veiled repugnance: “Ah
no, Hannah, I wouldn’t be takin’ it off you--I’ve no use for e’er such a
thing--keep it yourself.”
She withdrew her hand with a sinking heart, but she only half obeyed
him. For she suddenly turned from him and dropped watch and chain with
their golden gleams and silver overboard into the sea. Neither she nor
Francis felt that there was anything reckless or strange in the action.
The old man did not observe it.
But albeit sadly cast down by this repulse, Hannah would not yet face
despair. She still clung passionately to the hope that her sweetheart
was not going to fail her at this sore pinch, and leave her wandering
forsaken in a world haunted with mysterious horrors, new and old. So
presently she leaned forward to pluck him by the sleeve, and began
speaking again in an eager undertone: “Francey--Francey--I never touched
him--before God I never did--nor she either. He run agin it himself.
I’ll tell you the way it was. You see, that evenin’ after I come back
from me aunt, I was gettin’ a look at me poor father’s watch that me
mother kep’ for me, and so be chance she had it in her hand when that
awful man--Miles Roche--he come bawlin’ home wid dhrink taken, and when
he seen a sight of the watch he let a roar, and was for grabbin’ a hould
of it and wranchin’ it away from her. So to scare him off of her, I
caught up the big knife was lyin’ on the table, where we had it slicin’
the bacon for the supper--and wid that he come runnin’ at me, and reeled
up agin it--I never touched him. But down he dropped, and ne’er a word
out of him after that. It was no doin’ of ours, God knows this
minute--but we couldn’t tell what the people ’ud be sayin’ to it--we got
that afeard, and we thought maybe--But sure you seen--you seen what we
done wid it--there in Larry’s Horsepond--Francey, man, it’s the truth
I’m tellin’ you.”
“Ah, to be sure it is, Hannah, jewel,” said Francis, soothingly. Her
heart leaped up at the kind word, but when she looked into his face for
ratification of it, she saw that he was merely _frightened_--which was a
very great disappointment.
Just then old Micky, who had been looking over his shoulder as he rowed,
said: “There’s a quare clanjamfry of people waiting on the shore,
beckonin’ to us as if we was a ferry-boat, and they after bein’ left
behind. What would they be wantin’ wid us at all.”
A knot of the neighbours were, as he said, gathered on the shore,
evidently to meet the boat, and as they came within earshot, Hannah
heard her name called with rueful ejaculations. She had scarcely set
foot on the shingle when Mrs Maguire seized hold of her. “Och, Hannah,
girl dear, what took you out of it this mislucky day? And we sendin’
after you, high ways and low ways, and thinkin’ you was up at
Cochranes, but not a bit of you could we find--and now your poor
mother’s died on you, the crathur--may the Lord have mercy on her sowl.”
“Why--what ailed her?” Hannah said dully.
“Sure the sorra a one of us knows till the doctor comes. But not so long
ago I called in at your house to borry a pint-mug, and there she was
lyin’ asleep on the bed, and lookin’ none too well, I thought, nor wake
her I couldn’t. So I bid Mrs Tuohy come in and see her, and she was of
the opinion the crathur was as bad as could be, and we ought to be
gettin’ his Reverence to her and Dr Hamilton. And the two of us stopped
wid her while the lads was runnin’ wid the messages; but there was never
a sign of her wakin’. Dhramin’ somethin’ she was, that’s sure, for
whiles she’d be moanin’ and sayin’: ‘She’s goin’ to desthroy
us--desthroyin’ us she’ll be’--and other whiles she’d keep on sayin’:
‘We’ll never do it, Hannah, we’ll never do it.’ But after a bit she got
aisy and quite, and then, before we rightly knew anythin’, she was
gone--och, the crathur, God be good to her. Sure it was the Lord’s will,
Hannah, and nobody could ha’ tould it ’ud happen.”
The neighbours thought it natural enough that Hannah should run off
home “in a great distraction entirely.” But they were surprised to see
that Francis Conroy did not accompany her, and made no offers of
consolation or assistance. However, greater marvels awaited them. For
Hannah’s conduct that night was extraordinary indeed. Not a soul would
she have to sit up with her, or let inside the door. And on the morrow
she was no longer there. She must have slipped away during the brief
darkness of the summer night, and nobody at Clonalty ever heard of her
again. Of course the affair became warp and woof for a web of strange
stories, some of them so uncanny that when, after much delay, the Wades’
household effects were auctioned off for the benefit of Hannah’s old
aunt, who eventually claimed them, many of the neighbours averred that
they would be long sorry to have anything coming out of that house
inside theirs.
All this happened many years back, and Francis Conroy, who probably knew
more than anybody else, and yet not a great deal, about the matter, went
off soon afterwards to the States, without having given any full account
of his experiences on that sunny summer afternoon among the sand-hills
at the Wades’ old home. But he may have let a word fall here and there,
and rumours, all the more portentous for their vagueness, got about. To
this day they hover darkly round the lonely sand-pit; and in all
Clonalty--which numbers, perhaps, not much less than three score of
souls--you would not, I believe, find a man or woman, hardly even a
child, who would venture to linger towards dusk anywhere within sight of
Larry’s Horsepond.
[Illustration]
A CASE OF CONSCIENCE
To Dick O’Neill, sauntering about his neglected gardens, came a message
that “the sergint from the polis was above at the house, and would be
obligated if he might throuble his Honour for a minute,” a summons which
he reluctantly obeyed, apprehensive of hated magisterial business.
During his short residence at Portrosna Castle, two or three experiences
of it had befallen him, and on these occasions he had shown a strong
tendency to pay everybody’s fines himself, and to apologise impartially
all round, which could not but speedily establish his reputation as the
most popular J.P. on the commission. In fact, the local constabulary had
already agreed among themselves that young Mr O’Neill was too easy-going
altogether, and they’d do better in future to bring cases before Captain
Marsh, or Mr Digby-Johnstone at Crossmaclone, who’d a righter notion how
to deal with them lads. Sergeant McEvoy at the same time expressed some
wonder that “a gentleman who, it was understood, had travelled as much
abroad as any regiment on foreign service, shouldn’t have got more
world-learning like than to be took aback by every slieveen might come
blathering at him.” This morning, however, they had departed from their
rule, under stress of an urgent case and the absence or illness of the
more competent authorities; so that when Mr O’Neill entered the library,
he saw his forebodings fully justified. For the room seemed to be
crammed with people from the village, though in reality the throng was
thickened by the fact that all the domestic staff were lighting the fire
ostentatiously, in their anxiety to witness the official investigation
of a crime which had scandalised Portrosna.
It was nothing less enormous than that one Mattie M’Niffe, an elderly
woman of doubtful character, had been caught almost in the act of
purloining an article from the wash which Mrs Duffy had put out to
bleach in “the little grass slip alongside of the road forenint the
Widdy Quinn’s.” Almost, but unluckily not quite. For though Mattie had
been seen to scramble through a gap in the dyke at the one end of the
field, and to “lep like an ould froghopper on wires” down the bank at
the other, just before Mrs Duffy came out and noticed the theft, no
testimony was producible with respect to Mattie’s proceedings exactly in
the corner where the clothes were sunning themselves. And the stolen
shirt, which was picked up immediately afterwards on the roadside, had
been artfully dropped close to Mad Bell, as she sat under the lee of the
bank, “sortin’ through the bits of things she had in her ould basket,
the crathur.” This attempt to shift suspicion was in Portrosna’s eyes
the blackest feature of the affair.