Early on the morning that followed the storm, Clodagh stepped from the
hall door of Orristown. As she stood on the gravelled pathway in the
clear, strong daylight, she looked like one who has fought some
terrible battle in the watches of the night, and who has been worsted
in the encounter. She was pale and fragile, with a frightened query in
her eyes, as though she had propounded some enormous question, to which
Fate had as yet made no answer. For a time she stood in a helpless
attitude, looking toward the green hill, crowned with sparsely foliaged
trees, that fronted the house; then, seeming to take some vague
resolution, she walked slowly forward towards the avenue, pausing where
the gravelled pathway joined the fields.
There was a curious look upon the land and sea that morning, as though
both were lying exhausted by the tumult of the night. All around
beneath the avenue trees lay twigs and short splintered branches, to
which the limp leaves, whipped to untimely death by the vehemence of
the storm, still hung. Across the bay, as far as Carrigmore, the sea
lay like a sleeping tiger that has prowled and harried through the dark
hours of night, and now lies at rest. A wonderful pearly blue was upon
the waters--long, rippling lines spread from headland to headland, like
faintly pencilled shadows; but massed in a dark fringe along the curve
of yellow strand was a ridge of packed seaweed, that held within its
meshes a thousand evidences of the strife that had been, in twists of
straw, pieces of broken cork, and long black chunks of driftwood.
She stood for an indefinite space, looking at this significant dark
line standing out against the smoothness of the sand, until, half
unconsciously, her attention was attracted by a sound that made itself
audible from the direction of the gate, growing in volume as it
advanced--the swish, swish of bare feet on soft ground. She turned from
the vision of the sleeping sea, to behold a small peasant child in torn
dress and dirty apron speeding up the drive.
The child neared her; then swerved away as if in fear, and continued
her flight towards the house.
A sudden impulse seized Clodagh.
"Come here!" she called. "Where are you going?"
For an instant the child looked too frightened to speak; then her lips
parted.
"Misther Asshlin--beyant at Carrigmore!" she said inarticulately; and,
turning, she fled onward to the house.
Clodagh stood still for a moment; then she also turned, and recrossed
the gravelled pathway.
She walked forward, scarcely feeling the ground beneath her feet. Her
heart beat fast; a cold premonition ran through her, chilling her
blood. Something was about to happen! The inertia that lay upon her
mind was to be shattered! Something was about to happen!
As she reached the hall door, she saw the child vanish into the
stable-yard by the small latched door in the great wooden gate; and saw
Mick, escaped from confinement, come careering towards her. But for
once she took no heed of his manifestations. Scarcely even noticing
that he followed her, she passed into the hall, and from thence to the
dining-room. There she stood for a long time listening--listening
intently. At last the sound she instinctively waited for reached
her--the sound of a sharp, wailing cry. With a frightened gesture she
put her hands over her face; then let them drop to the back of a chair
that stood beside the centre table.
She stood holding weakly to this chair, her limbs trembling, her face
white, while the wailing sound drew nearer, growing more spasmodic as
it approached. At last the door was thrust wide open, and Hannah burst
into the room, her face blanched, tears streaming from her eyes, her
whole air demoralised.
"Miss Clodagh, Masther Larry!" she muttered inarticulately--"Masther
Larry!"
Clodagh held to the back of the chair.
"What is it?"
"Gone! Drownded!"
Clodagh swayed a little.
"Drowned!" she echoed in a faint voice.
"He nivver went home at all last night. And to-day mornin' they found
the little boat capsized beyant at the head. O God, help the poor
mother! What'll the poor woman do at all?"
"Drowned!" Clodagh said again--"drowned! Larry drowned!"
Hannah stepped forward, as though she expected her to fall; but she
motioned her away.
"How did it happen?" she asked in a vague, thin voice.
"'Twas the storm! Sure, 'twas the storm!"
"But Larry was the best sailor in Carrigmore!"
She said the words involuntarily; but as they left her lips, they
brought into being a new thought. She stood upright, and by a strange,
slow process of suggestion, her eyes travelled to the mantelpiece,
where the bundle of notes still protruded from under the clock.
What if Larry had quailed before the thought of confessing his losses
to the querulous mother, who could so ill spare the money he had
squandered? What if Larry had not fought the storm last night as it
might have been fought? She suddenly contemplated last night's play
from Larry's point of view--contemplated Larry's losses by light of the
hard monetary straits that Ireland breeds.
Her blood seemed to turn to water; she felt like one beyond the pale of
human emotion or superhuman help.
"Leave me to myself, Hannah!" she said faintly. "I want to be alone."
"Lave you? But, my darlin'----"
"I must be alone."
Hannah looked at her in agonised concern.
"Miss Clodagh----" she began. But something in Clodagh's stony quiet
daunted her. She gave a muffled sob, and moved slowly across the room.
Clodagh was conscious of the wailing sounds of grief for several
minutes after she had disappeared; then gradually they faded, as she
descended into the lower regions, to share the appalling and yet grimly
fascinating news with Burke and the farm-labourers; and silence reigned
in the lonely room.
When full consciousness that she was alone came to Clodagh, she let her
hands drop from the back of the chair; and, moving stiffly, crossed the
room to the fireplace.
She made no attempt to touch the notes that lay as Asshlin had placed
them; but she looked at them for long with a species of horror. And at
last, as though the thought of them had begotten other thoughts, she
raised her eyes to the picture hanging above them--the picture of
Anthony Asshlin in his lace ruffles and black satin coat, with his
powdered hair, his gallant bearing, and dark eager face.
The eyes of the picture seemed to look into hers with an almost human
smile of satire. Time had passed since that gay, reckless presence had
filled the old room; dice and duelling were gone out of fashion; but
human nature was unchanged--there were still Asshlins of Orristown!
"O God----" she said aloud; then she stopped. "There is no God!" she
added wildly--"there is no God!"
At the sudden sound of her voice, Mick rose from the corner where he
had been crouching. The sight of him calmed her; she passed her hand
once or twice across her eyes, then walked quite steadily across the
room.
The dog followed her closely; but at the door she stopped and looked at
him.
"No, Mick! You cannot come!"
By some extraordinary sagacity the animal whimpered, and pressed closer
to her skirt.
With an almost fierce impulse she stooped, kissed him once; then,
holding him back, slipped through the door and closed it.
He gave a frantic bark of misery, but she did not pause, she did not
even look back. Walking rapidly, she passed across the hall and out
into the open.
Turning to the right, she skirted the stable-yard and the orchard, and,
hurrying past the spot where years ago Milbanke had asked her to be his
wife, took the path to the Orristown cliffs.
Her thoughts trooped up like living things as she stumbled forward
along the uneven track. She was conscious of no fear, only of a
desolating loneliness--an enormous sense of futility, of finality. Last
night she had looked into the eyes of Fate, propounding the question of
how she was to carry on her life, and to-day she had read the answer in
the face of the portrait.
She hurried on unseeingly, covering the same track that her father had
covered on the night he had ridden out and met death on the dark
headland.
From time to time she stopped and looked at the sea--looked at the long
curve of shining beach with its margin of dark wreckage--looked at the
clustering cottages of Carrigmore, and marvelled in a dumb way at the
tragedy that could underlie so calm a scene.
She had none of the nervous panic that had assailed her the night
before. She was conscious of nothing but a black despair--a despair
such as Denis Asshlin had been wont to drown in drink and cards. She
had lived her life; she had had her chance; and the end was failure.
She had tangled the thread of her existence; and the one hand that
could have unravelled the tangle was closed against her.
One thought alone she rigorously refused to harbour--the thought of
Nance. Nance would have her husband--Nance would have her home, she
assured herself. Nance would forget. In vain the remembrance of her
faithful loyalty rose to make the assurance doubtful. As she had closed
the door upon Mick, so she closed her heart to the knowledge.
There were certain hours in every life, she told herself, when the soul
judged the body--judged and forgave, or judged and condemned! Her shaken
mind drove her feet faster along the rugged track--faster--faster, as
though Nemesis pursued her. Terrible visions rose from the sea, creeping
over the cliff's edge--visions of Larry, stiff and dead, as she had seen
her father, as she had seen Milbanke--visions of the cottage at
Carrigmore, of her aunt's dark room, filled with the sound of
lamentation.
Before she was aware of it, she turned a bend in the path, and came
full upon the scene of her father's accident. She paused, gave a faint
gasp, and involuntarily put her hand to her throat. Her destination was
nearer than she had thought.
In a vague, startled way her eyes scanned the place, roving from the
chasm in the cliff to the sweep of short grass, with its tufting of
hardy flowers that throve in the strong, salt air. It was also
still--so extraordinarily still! Fifty yards away a goat browsed on the
cliff, and the quiet, cropping sound of its eating came to her
distinctly; overhead in the pale blue sky a hawk was poised, seemingly
motionless; down below her, three hundred feet away, the sea made a
curious sucking noise, as it filled and receded from some invisible
fissure in the rocks.
Still with her hand to her throat, she tip-toed forward to the edge of
the chasm. Then suddenly she drew back, trembling and giddy. Beneath
her, at what looked an incredible distance, the clear green waters
formed a narrow estuary, shadowed by the towering rocks. They were like
a grave, those waters--so secret, so full of mystery! Again she forced
herself to look, compelling her unwilling eyes to travel up and down
the great sweep of red sandstone, from the grass at the edge of the
abyss to the dark water, from the water back again to the grass.
She could not be a coward in this last moment! She had never been a
physical coward!
She stepped back; she took one dazed look at the world that, until
yesterday, had been so very fair; she drew one long, tense, shuddering
breath, closed her eyes, and went forward.
But at her first step something or some one came rushing down the cliff
behind her. She gave a terrified cry, opened her eyes, and recoiled
from the chasm. A moment later she had turned, trembling, crying,
utterly unnerved, to find Mick leaping round her.
"Mick!" she said tremulously--"Mick!" Then a voice called to her; and,
looking up, she saw Hannah, her hair dishevelled, her eyes still
streaming, the yellow envelope of a telegram held in the corner of her
apron.
"The fright you gave me, Miss Clodagh!" she began. "Sure, I'd nivver
find you at all, only for the dog!"
Then she stopped, looking sharply at her mistress.
"Miss Clodagh, what is it all? Come home!--come home, my lamb!" Her
voice, husky from tears, dropped suddenly.
But Clodagh still stood white and shaking. She had been too near the
verge to be easily recalled.
"Sure, God's ways are quare, but 'tisn't for us to be judgin'; maybe
He's saved worse, Miss Clodagh! Keep thinkin' that! Maybe He's saved
worse!"
Clodagh covered her eyes.
"But here's somethin' for you. God help us! I was forgettin'! Will you
be seein' what is in it?" She came slowly forward, extending her arm.
Clodagh took the telegram. Without thought or interest she tore it
open, and her eyes passed mechanically over the written words. Then
suddenly it slipped from between her fingers, blew a little way across
the close grass, and fluttered down over the edge of the chasm.
As it disappeared, she turned. Her face was entirely without colour;
her eyes had the dazed look of one who is confronted with a great
light.
"Hannah!" she cried--"Hannah! there is a God after all!--there is a
God!" She swayed suddenly; and the old servant, rushing forward, caught
her in her arms.
THE END