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AN IRISH COUSIN.
BY
GEILLES HERRING AND MARTIN ROSS.
_IN TWO VOLUMES._
VOL. II.
[Illustration: colophon]
LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON,
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen.
1889.
(_All rights reserved._)
[Illustration]
CONTENTS.
PART II.
_THE COST OF IT._
(_Continued._)
CHAPTER II.
PAGE
SUPPER EXTRAS.....1
“All night has the casement jessamine stirred
To the dancers dancing in tune.”
“Must you go?
That cousin here again? He waits outside?”
CHAPTER III.
MR. CROLY’S STUDY.....18
“Love the gift, is love the debt.”
“Like bitter accusation, even to death,
Caught up the whole of love, and uttered it.”
CHAPTER IV.
MYROSS CHURCHYARD.....32
“O fair, large day!
The unpractised sense brings heavings from a sea of life too broad.”
“Such seemed the whisper at my side.
‘What is it thou knowest, sweet voice?’ I cried.
‘A hidden hope,’ the voice replied.”
CHAPTER V.
ENTER WILLY.....54
“Oh, the little more, and how much it is!
And the little less, and what worlds away!”
“Love with bent brows went by,
And with a flying finger swept my lips.”
CHAPTER VI.
THE HAND AT THE GATE.....74
“Which do you pity the most of us three?”
CHAPTER VII.
“THIS HIDDEN TIDE OF TEARS”.....95
“Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been.”
“Ah me! my heart, rememberest thou that hour,
When foolish hope made parting almost bright?
Hadst thou not then some warning of thy doom?”
CHAPTER VIII.
PAIN.....111
“Go from me. Yet I know that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow.”
CHAPTER IX.
GARDEN HILL.....131
“Was this to meet? Not so; we have not met.”
PART III.
_PROFIT AND LOSS._
CHAPTER I.
A THREAT.....149
“With morning wakes the will, and cries,
‘Thou shalt not be the fool of loss.’”
“A night of mystery. Strange sounds are swept
Through the dim air.”
CHAPTER II.
“BUT WHERE IS COUNTY GUY?”.....173
“What shall assuage the unforgotten pain,
And teach the unforgetful to forget?”
CHAPTER III.
“LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST”.....186
“‘Uncover ye his face,’ she said;
‘Oh, changed in little space!’”
“When Pity could no longer look on Pain.”
CHAPTER IV.
STORM.....197
“And all talk died, as in a grove all song
Beneath the shadow of some bird of prey;
Then a long silence came upon the hall,
And Modred thought, ‘The time is hard at hand.’”
“In the shaken trees the chill stars shake.
Hush! Heard you a horse tread as you spake,
Little Brother?”
CHAPTER V.
GOOD-BYE.....211
“Since there’s no help, come, let us kiss and part.”
“‘Not my pain.
My pain was nothing; oh, your poor, poor love,
Your broken love!’”
CHAPTER VI.
A RESOLVE.....223
“Sad is my fate; I must emigrate
To the wilds of Amerikee.”
“In the fresh fairness of the spring to ride,
As in the old days when he rode with her.”
CHAPTER VII.
THROUGH THE FRENCH WINDOW.....239
“Remorse she ne’er forsakes us;
A bloodhound staunch, she tracks our rapid step.”
“A thousand fantasies
Begin to throng into my memory,
Of calling shapes and beckoning shadows dire.”
CHAPTER VIII.
POUL-NA-COPPAL.....258
“The rose-winged hours that flutter in the van
Of Love’s unquestioning, unrevealèd span--
Visions of golden futures; or that last
Wild pageant of the accumulated past
That clangs and flashes for a drowning man.”
“Wenn ich in deine Augen seh
So schwindet all’ mein Leid und Weh.”
CHAPTER IX.
A HERITAGE OF WOE.....274
“Love that was dead and buried, yesterday
Out of his grave rose up before my face.”
“Not by appointment do we meet delight and joy--
They heed not our expectancy;
But, at some turning in the walks of life,
They on a sudden clasp us with a smile.”
CHAPTER X.
LEX TALIONIS.....295
“And now Love sang; but his was such a song,
So meshed with half-remembrance hard to free.”
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AN IRISH COUSIN.
PART II.
_THE COST OF IT._
(_Continued._)
CHAPTER II.
SUPPER EXTRAS.
“All night has the casement jessamine stirred
To the dancers dancing in tune.”
“Must you go?
That cousin here again? He waits outside?”
We were at supper. The chaperons had at length completed their
well-earned repast, and had returned, flushed and loquacious, to the
dancing-room, yielding their places to the hungry throng who had been
waiting outside the door.
The last waltz had been played by Miss Sissie Croly, in good time and
with considerable spirit, an act of coquettish self-abnegation which
elicited many tender reproaches from her forsaken partner. Making the
most of the temporary improvement in the music, Nugent and I had danced
without stopping, until a series of sensational flourishes announced
that the end of the waltz was at hand. After it was over, he had
suggested supper, and we had secured a small table at the end of the
supper-room, from which, in comparative quiet, we could view the doings
of the rest of the company. I was guiltily conscious of the large “W”
scrawled across the supper extras on my card; but a latent rebellion
against my cousin’s unauthorized appropriation conspired with a
distinct desire for food to harden my heart. I made up my mind to do
what seemed good to me about one at least of the extras, and dismissed
for the present all further thought of Willy and his possible
grievances.
I found myself possessed of an excellent appetite. Nugent’s invention as
a caterer soared above the usual chicken and jelly, and we both made
what, in the land of my birth, would be described as a “square meal.”
Meanwhile, the centre table was surrounded by what looked like a
convivial party of lunatics. Miss Burke and Dr. Kelly had set the
example of decorating themselves with the coloured paper caps contained
in the crackers, and the other guests had instantly adopted the idea.
Mob-caps, night-caps, fools’-caps, and sun-bonnets nodded in nightmare
array round the table, Miss Burke’s long red face showing to great
advantage beneath a pale-blue, tissue-paper tall hat.
“I feel I have been very remiss in not offering to pull a cracker with
you,” said Nugent, “but I am afraid they have all been used up by this
time!”
“Why did I not go in to supper with Dr. Kelly?” I said regretfully. “If
the worst came to the worst, I am sure he would have taken off his own
sun-bonnet and put it on my head!”
“Go in with him next time,” suggested Nugent. “He always goes in to
supper two or three times, and works his way each time down the table
like a mowing-machine, leaving nothing behind him. At the masonic ball
in Cork he was heard saying to his sisters, as they were going in to
supper, ‘Stuff, ye divils! there’s ice!’”
“Quite right, too,” I said, beginning upon the tipsy cake which Nugent
had looted for our private consumption. “I always make a point of
stuffing when there is ice. However, I think on the whole I have had
enough of Dr. Kelly for one evening. I have danced once with him, and I
suppose it is because he is at least a foot shorter than I am that he
makes himself about half his height when he is dancing with me. But I
think all small men do that; the taller their partner, the more they
bend their knees.”
Nugent laughed. “I have been watching you dancing with all sorts and
conditions of men, and wondering what you thought of them. I also
wondered if you would find them sufficiently amusing to induce you to
stay on till No. 18?” he said, putting his elbows on the table and
looking questioningly at me.
“Oh, I hope so--at least--of course, that depends on your mother,” I
answered.
“Should you care to stay? As in that case I think I could manage to
square my mother.”
“It would be better not to bother her about it, perhaps--of course, it
might be very pleasant to stay,” I answered confusedly.
The way in which he had asked the question had given me a strange
sensation for a moment.
“I dare say it is not any argument, but I shall be very sorry if you
go.”
I went on with the buttoning of my gloves without answering.
“For one reason, I should like you to see what it gets like towards the
end.”
Nugent’s eyes were fixed on mine across the intervening woodcock and
tipsy cake with more inquiry than seemed necessary, but as he finished
speaking a little troop of men came in together for a supplementary
supper, and I forgot everything but my own guilty conscience, as among
them I saw Willy. It was, however, evident that he had not come with any
gluttonous intent, for, after a cursory look round the room over
people’s heads, he walked out.
“Did you see Willy?” I said, in a scared whisper.
“Yes, perfectly. He was probably looking for you.”
“Oh, I know he was!” I said, beginning to gather up my fan and other
belongings. “I ought to go at once. I am engaged to him for the extras.”
“Are you afraid of Willy?” returned Nugent, without taking his elbows
off the table, or making any move.
“No, of course I’m not. But I don’t like to throw him over.”
“Oh, I see!” he said, still without moving, and regarding me with an
aggravating amusement.
“Well, _I_ am going----” I began, when a hand was laid on my arm.
“I am delighted to hear it,” said Connie’s voice, “as we want this
table. Get up, Nugent, and give me your chair. Nothing would induce me
to sit at that bear-garden”--indicating the larger table. “What do you
think I heard Miss Donovan say to that little Beamish man--English
Tommy--as I was making my way up here? ‘Now, captain, if you say that
again, I’ll pelt my plate of jelly at you!’ And I haven’t the least
doubt that at this moment his shirt-front is covered with it.”
“Oh, all right,” said Nugent, slowly getting up, “you can have this
table; we were just going. Miss Sarsfield is very anxious to find Willy.
She says she is going to dance all the extras with him.”
“Then she is rather late,” replied Connie, unconcernedly. “Captain
Forster, go _at once_ and get me some game-pie. Don’t tell me there’s
none; I couldn’t bear it. Well, my dear,” she continued, “perhaps you
are not aware that the extras are all over, and No. 12 is going on now?”
“Have you seen Willy anywhere?” I asked, feeling rather than seeing the
sisterly eye of facetious insinuation that Connie directed at her
brother. “I am engaged to him for No. 12.”
“At this moment he is dancing with Miss Dennehy,” answered Connie, “but
I know he has been looking for you. He has prowled in and out of the
conservatory twenty times.”
“He was in here too,” said Nugent; “and I think he saw you,” he added,
as we walked into the hall. “What would you like to do now? Willy has
evidently thrown you over, and I expect my partner has consoled herself.
I think the safest plan is to hide somewhere till this is over, and, as
13 is ours, we can then emerge, and dance it with blameless composure.”
The doors of the conservatory at the end of the hall stood invitingly
open, and a cool, fragrant waft of perfume came through them. Without
further deliberation, we mutely accepted their invitation, and finding,
by the dim, parti-coloured light of Chinese lanterns, that two armchairs
had been placed at the further end, we immediately took possession of
them.
“Occasionally rest is vouchsafed even to the wicked,” said Nugent,
leaning back, and picking up my fan, which I had laid on the floor, and
beginning lazily to examine it. “Looking at a ball in the abstract, I
think it involves great weariness and vexation of spirit. Out of
twenty-four dances, there are at most four or five that one really looks
forward to. You _are_ going to stay for No. 18, you know,” he added
quietly. “I shall settle that with the Madam.”
“Give me my fan, please,” I said, taking no notice of this assertion. “I
can see you know just the right way to break it.”
He sat up, and, instead of returning it, began slowly to fan me. There
was a brief silence. The rain pattered down on the glass overhead. We
could just hear the music, and the measured stamping of the dancers’
feet.
“Do you know,” he said suddenly, “you are curiously different from what
I expected you to be.”
“Why? Had you formed any definite idea about me?”
“Not in the least. That was what threw me so out of my reckoning. I
thought I knew pretty well, in a general way, what you were going to be
like; but somehow you have made me reconstruct all my notions.”
“If you had only told me in time, I should have tried to be less
inconsiderate. It is so painful to have to give up one’s ideas.”
“I did not find it so,” he said seriously; “on the contrary. I
wonder”--continuing to flap my big black fan to and fro--“if you ever
had a kind of latent ideal--a sort of thing which seems so impossible
that you never try to form any very concrete theory about it? I suppose
it very seldom happens to a man to find that an idea he has only dreamt
about is a real thing after all. Can you imagine what an effect it would
have upon him when he found that he had unexpectedly met his--well, his
ideal?”
He folded up the fan, and looked down at me, waiting for an answer.
“I should imagine he would think himself very clever,” I said, feeling
rather nervous.
“No, not clever, I don’t think, so much as fortunate; that is to
say”--he drew a short breath--“of course the ideal may have ideas of
her--of its own that the man can’t live up to--independent schemes, in
fact; and then--why, then that chap gets left, you know,” he ended, with
a change of tone.
As he finished speaking, the far-off banging of the piano ceased. I did
not know how to reply to what he had said, and his way of saying it had
made me feel so shy and bewildered that I sat awkwardly silent until the
dancers came crowding into the conservatory, all in turn exhibiting the
same resentful surprise, as they found the only two chairs occupied.
Willy was not among them, nor did I see him during the ensuing dance,
and, as his late partner was in the room, I could only conclude that he
was sitting out by himself. I began to feel uncomfortable about him, and
half dreaded meeting him again. The dance seemed interminably long. I
kept my eyes fixed on the door to see if he were among the string of
black and red-coated men who wandered partnerless in and out, but could
see no sign of him. I have no doubt that under these circumstances I was
a very uninteresting companion; Nugent was also silent and preoccupied,
and I think we were both glad when the dance was over.
“It is very strange that I do not see Willy anywhere,” I said, as we
came out into the hall again.
“Who? Oh! Willy,” he said. “Are you still looking for him? Is not that
he coming out of the supper-room?”
It _was_ Willy. I dropped Nugent’s arm.
“You will excuse me, won’t you?” I said hurriedly. “I want to explain to
him----”
By this time Willy had met us, and looked as if he were going to pass me
by.
“Do you know that this is our dance?” I said, stopping him. “You are not
going to throw me over again, are you?” My heart beat rather fast as I
made this feeble endeavour to carry the war into the enemy’s country. He
was looking grey and ill, and I did not think that his pleasant, boyish
face could have taken on such an expression of gloomy coldness.
“Really? Is it? I did not know that I was to have the honour of dancing
with you again,” he responded, with a boyish attempt at frigid dignity.
“Of course it is,” I said cheerily, though I felt rather alarmed. “Look
at it in black and white.”
Willy did not look at the card which I held towards him.
“It doesn’t appear that my name being written there makes much
difference,” he answered, making a movement as if to pass on.
“Oh, Willy, that isn’t fair! You know I danced ever so often with you
before supper, and afterwards I was looking for you everywhere; was I
not, Mr. O’Neill?”--turning for corroboration to Nugent. He, however,
had left me to fight my own battles, and was at a little distance, deep
in conversation with Mr. Dennehy. I saw that, whether verified or not,
my explanations had but little effect upon Willy, and I boldly assumed
the offensive. “You know, I never said that I was going to give you all
those dances that you took.”
“Of course you were at perfect liberty to do what you liked about them,”
returned Willy, without looking at me.
“Don’t be absurd! You know quite well what I mean, and if you had wanted
to dance with me you might very easily have found me. I was only in the
supper-room.”
He said nothing, and just then we heard the first few notes of the next
waltz.
“You _will_ dance this with me, will not you?” I said, thoroughly
unhappy at the turn things were taking. “I am very sorry. I did not
think you would mind. Don’t be angry with me, Willy,” I ended
impulsively, putting my hand into his arm.
He looked at me almost wildly for a moment; and then, without a word, we
joined the stream of dancers who were returning to the ball-room.
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CHAPTER III.
MR. CROLY’S STUDY.
“Love the gift, is love the debt.”
“Like bitter accusation, even to death,
Caught up the whole of love, and uttered it.”
Mrs. Jackson-Croly’s party had reached its climax of success.
“The supper’s put great heart into them,” little Dr. Kelly remarked
confidentially to Willy, as he passed us, leading a stout elderly matron
forth to the dance. The chaperons, with but few exceptions, had
abandoned the hard chairs and narrow sofas on which they had hitherto
huddled in chilly discomfort, and were, again to quote Dr. Kelly,
“footing it with the best of them.”
Mrs. Croly herself was playing “Sweethearts,” and by way, as I suppose,
of receiving this favour with proper enthusiasm, the guests, as they
danced, sang the words of the refrain--
“Oh, lo--_ove_ for a year,
A we--_eek_, a day,”
as often as it recurred, Mrs. Croly from the piano lending her powerful
aid to swell the chorus. Madam O’Neill was sitting alone upon her sofa,
and had closed her eyes during this later development of the
entertainment, whether in real or simulated slumber I did not know; but
an expressive glance from Connie, whom, to my surprise, I saw circling
in the arms of our host, told me that the latter was more probably the
case. The O’Neill I had lately espied sitting in an armchair on the
landing of the stairs with a very pretty young lady, the instructress
of the younger Misses Jackson-Croly. He, at all events, was enjoying
himself, and as far as he was concerned I felt none of the qualms of
conscience at the lateness of the hour which assailed me at sight of my
chaperon’s tired face.
Willy had not spoken since we had begun to dance, but I thought it best
to behave as if nothing were the matter.
“This is the most amusing dance I ever was at in my life,” I said, in
the first pause that we made.
“I don’t see much difference between it and any other.”
“I do not mean to say that I have not enjoyed myself,” I said, anxious
to avoid any semblance of superiority, “but you must admit that one does
not usually meet people who are able to sing and dance a waltz at the
same time.”
At this point there came a sudden thud on the floor, followed by a
slight commotion.
“Hullo! Croly’s let Connie down!” exclaimed Willy, forgetting for an
instant his offended dignity.
I was just in time to catch between the dancers a glimpse of Connie
struggling, hot and angry, to her feet, while her partner lay prone on
his back on the floor. The catastrophe had taken place just in front of
Madam O’Neill, whose eyes, now wide open, were bent in a gaze of
petrified indignation on Mr. Jackson-Croly. Nugent had not been dancing,
and, on seeing Connie fall, had gone round to pick her up, and now made
his way towards me.
“Did you see them come down?” he said. “Croly hung on to Connie like a
drowning man to a straw, and Connie, not being exactly a straw, nearly
drove his head into the floor. She won’t speak to him now, which is
rather hard luck, considering she all but killed him. Was I not right in
advising you to stay on till the end?”
Exceeding laughter had deprived me of all power of speech, but, in any
case, Willy did not give me time to reply.
“Come out of this,” he said roughly; “I’m sick of it.” He gave me his
arm as he spoke, and elbowed his way past Nugent out of the room. He
walked without speaking through the hall towards the conservatory, but
stopped short at the door. “It’s full of people in there. Croly’s
study’s the only place where you’ve a chance of being let alone,” he
said, turning down a passage, and leading the way into a dreary little
room, lighted by a smoky paraffin-lamp, and pervaded by the odour of
whiskey. On the inky table, two or three tumblers with spoons in them,
and a bottle and decanter, were standing in shining patches of spilt
whiskey and water. A few office chairs were drawn up in front of the
remains of a smouldering turf fire. Long files of bills hung beside an
old coat on some pegs, and Mr. Croly’s cloth slippers showed modestly
from under a small horse-hair sofa. A more untempting place to sit in
could not well be imagined; but Willy did not seem to notice its
discomforts. He sat down on one of the chairs, and began aimlessly to
poke the fire; while I, gingerly drawing my skirts together, established
myself on the sofa.
“I can’t say I think this is an improvement on the conservatory,” I said
at length, seeing that Willy did not seem inclined to talk. “When did
you discover it?”
He threw down the poker, and, standing up, began to examine a specimen
of ore that lay on the chimney-piece.
“If you want to know particularly,” he said, in a hard and would-be
indifferent voice, “I came and sat in here by myself while those extras
were going on.”
“That wasn’t a very cheerful thing to do.”
“Well, I didn’t feel very cheerful,” he answered, still with his back to
me, and beginning to scrape the marble mantelshelf with the piece of ore
which he held in his hand.
“Some one appears to have found a certain solace here,” I said, looking
at the whiskey and water. “I am sure poor Mr. Croly has crept in from
time to time, and put on his old coat and slippers, and tried to forget
that there was a dance going on in his house.”
No answer from Willy.
“Then perhaps it was _you_,” I continued, with ill-assumed levity. “I am
sorry to think that you have taken to such evil courses.”
He went on hammering at the chimney-piece without replying.
“It’s very rude of you not to answer; and you are ruining Mr. Croly’s
mantelpiece.”
He put down the piece of ore suddenly, and, leaving the fireplace, came
and stood over me.
“Theo!” he said, in a breathless sort of way, and stopped. I looked up
at him with quick alarm, and saw that he was trying to get mastery
enough over himself to speak. “Don’t look at me like that,” he said,
almost in a whisper. “I’m nearly mad as it is. I can’t bear it any
longer; I must say it.”
“Don’t, Willy,” I said; “please don’t. It would be better for us both if
you didn’t.”
“I don’t care,” he said, kneeling down beside me, and taking hold of
both my hands. “You’ve got to listen to me now. You needn’t think that I
don’t know I haven’t a chance. I’ve seen that plain enough to-night, if
I didn’t know it before. Oh, I know, Theo; I know very well,” he ended
brokenly.
I could find nothing to say. I liked him so much that I could not bring
myself to frame the bitter truth which he would have to hear. I suppose
my silence encouraged him, for in the same breathless, abrupt way he
went on.
“I know I’m an ignorant brute; but if you would only just try me. Oh,
Theo, if you could only know! I’m such a fool I can’t get hold of the
right words to tell you, but you might believe me all the same. Indeed I
do love you--I love you,” he repeated, with a sort of sob, gathering
both my hands into one of his and kissing them passionately.
“Willy,” I said despairingly, trying to free my hands from his grasp,
“you must stop; you make me miserable. I can’t bear to hear you talk
like that. You know how much I like you and respect you, and everything.
I am fonder of you than any one I know almost, but not in that way.”
“But if you were fond of me at all, I wouldn’t mind how little you liked
me at first, if you’d let me care for you. Maybe, it would come to you
afterwards; and you know the governor would like it awfully,” said the
poor boy, lifting his white face, and gazing at me with desperate eyes.
“It’s no use, Willy; I can’t let you say any more about it. I’m not
worth your caring for me like that,” I said unsteadily.
His hands relaxed their grasp, and, drawing mine away, I stood up. He
got up also, and stood facing me in the smoky light of the lamp. He
leaned his hand on the table beside him, and a little ringing of the
spoons and glasses told me how it trembled. When he next spoke, however,
his voice was firmer.
“That’s no answer. You’re worth more to me than everything in the world.
If it was only _that_”--with a shaky laugh--“but I know that’s not your
reason. Look here--will you tell me one thing?”--coming closer, and
staring hard at me. “Is it another fellow? Is it--is it Nugent?”
“It is nothing of the kind,” I said angrily, but at the same time
flushing hotly under his scrutiny. “You have no right to say such
things. If I had never seen him, I should feel just the same towards
you.”
I turned to take my bouquet from the sofa with the intention of leaving
the room, but before I could do so, Willy snatched it up, and, taking a
stride forward, he flung the flowers into the fire, and crushed them
with his foot into the burning embers.
“How dare you, Willy!” I said, thoroughly roused. “What right had you to
do that?”
“And what right have _you_ to say you don’t care for him, when you carry
his cursed flowers in your hand? I see how the land lies well enough.
I’ve been made a fool of all through!”
“You have not been made a fool of,” I said, with equal energy. “It is
cruel of you to say that.”
“Cruel? It comes well from you to say that! I dare say you think it
doesn’t matter much; but maybe some day, when I’ve gone to the devil,
you’ll be sorry.”
He walked to the door, as if to go.
“I _am_ sorry, Willy,” I said, the tears rushing to my eyes. “Don’t go
away like that. Oh, why did I ever come to Durrus?”
He stood irresolute for a moment, with the handle of the door in his
hand, looking at me as if in a daze. Then, with an inarticulate
exclamation, he came back to where I was standing, and, before I had
time to stop him, took me in his arms. I was too much unstrung and
exhausted by what had gone before to resist, and I stood in a kind of
horror of passive endurance while he kissed me over and over again. He
let me go at last.
“It’s no use,” he said, in a choked voice, which sounded almost like a
groan; “it’s no use. My God! I can’t bear it!” His eye fell on the bunch
of violets in my dress. “Give them to me,” he said.
I silently took out of my dress the bunch he had given me, and handed
them, all limp and faded, to him. He took them without looking at me,
and, turning his back to me, walked to the chimney-piece. He leaned both
his arms upon the narrow shelf, and laid his head upon them.
When I left the room, he was still standing motionless in the same
position.
[Illustration: text decoration]
[Illustration: text decoration]
CHAPTER IV.
MYROSS CHURCHYARD.
“O fair, large day!
The unpractised sense brings heavings from a sea of life too broad.”
“Such seemed the whisper at my side.
‘What is it thou knowest, sweet voice?’ I cried.
‘A hidden hope,’ the voice replied.”
The old graveyard on the promontory was at most times the forlornest and
least frequented spot about Durrus. The dead people who lay in crowded
slumber within the narrow limits of the grey, briar-covered walls seldom
heard any disturbing human voice to remind them of the life they had
left. Their solitude was ensured to them by the greater solitude of the
sea, which on three sides surrounded them, and by the dreary strip of
worn-out turf bog which formed their only link with the rest of the
world. There was nothing to mark for them the passing of time, except
the creeping of the shadow thrown dial-wise by the gable of the
broken-down chapel, or the ever-increasing moaning in the caves beneath,
which told of the yearly encroachments of the sea.
Between the verge of the cliff and the wall of the graveyard was only a
little space, along which the sheep had worn themselves a track among
the thickly lying shells and _débris_, flung up by the waves during
autumn storms. I had wandered round this narrow path, holding with a
careful hand to the wall as I went; and now had clambered on to it, and,
with Pat seated in my lap and Jinny on the tail of my gown, I was
watching the quick dives and casual reappearances of the slim black
cormorants in the sunlit water beneath me. The murmur of the sea,
lightly lipping the rocks, and an occasional bleat from the sheep in the
graveyard behind me, were the only definite sounds I heard, and the soft
wind that rustled in my ears in little gusts seemed the expression of
the pervading stillness.
This delicate breezy morning was the first of the new year. Yesterday’s
sunset had been a wild one; it had gleamed angrily and fitfully before
me through packs of jagged cloud while I drove home from Clashmore, and
my heart had sunk low as I watched the outlines of Durrus growing darker
against it. But that was already a thing of last year. The long
uneventful darkness had made everything new, and on this first of
January the sunshine was lying purely and dreamily on sea and bog, and
was even giving something like warmth to the head-stones, whose worn
“Anno Dominis” were since yesterday more remote by a year.
It was a desire for this freedom and freshness which had driven me out
of the house on this, the second morning after the dance at Mount
Prospect. When I came back to Durrus the evening before, I had found the
house empty and desolate. Willy was not there; he had gone to Cork,
Uncle Dominick had told me, looking at me, as he spoke, with a
questioning glance that showed me his anxiety to know if I could account
for this unexpected move.
All the morning at Clashmore, the thought of the inevitable meeting with
Willy had hung over me. It had made me absent during a lesson at
billiards, and stupid in a violin accompaniment; and, combining with
the guilt which I felt at enjoying myself, as, in spite of what had
happened, I could not help doing, it had made me unnecessarily and
awkwardly determined in refusing several invitations to stay on. As I
sat beside Nugent in the dog-cart on the way home, and felt that every
step of the horse was bringing me nearer to Willy, I had become silent
in the attempt to nerve myself for the dreaded first few minutes. If I
could struggle through them creditably, things might not afterwards be
so bad. I think Nugent must have seen that something was troubling me.
Having told me that he was afraid I was very much done up by the dance,
he had considerately left me to myself, and scarcely spoke until we were
at the Durrus hall door--an act of thoughtfulness for which I could
almost have thanked him. He refused my invitation to come in to tea--an
invitation so faintly given that he could hardly have accepted it--but
asked if he might come over some other afternoon, perhaps the day after
to-morrow, and with an excuse for not coming in, which he had obviously
fabricated to help me out of the difficulty, he had driven away.
My first question to Roche as the hall door closed behind me, was to
know where Willy was. He was away; he had gone to Cork the day after the
dance, and it was uncertain when he would be at home. Then, I might have
stayed at Clashmore after all--that, I am afraid, was my first thought;
and then came the feeling of blank collapse, the blending of relief and
disappointment, which is the usual result of needless mental strain. I
had for an instant an insane desire to run down the avenue after the
dog-cart, and say that I would go back to Clashmore; that there was no
reason now---- I laughed drearily to myself as I took off my wraps. What
would Nugent have said when I had overtaken him with such an excuse? It
amused me to think of it; but yet, I thought, I should have liked to
have known.
The restlessness of over-fatigue and excitement was upon me. I did not
know how to endure the long dull dinner, and the solitary evening which
followed it. I tried to play the piano, but the tunes of the waltzes of
the night before still rang in my ears, and the unresponsive silence of
the room as I ceased was too daunting to be faced a second time. Between
my eyes and the columns of the newspaper came a vision of Mr. Croly’s
dark little room, and my tired brain kept continually framing sentences
which might have averted all that had taken place there. I could not
even think connectedly, and finally went to bed, as lonely and miserable
as I have ever felt in my life.
In the morning my thoughts had confusedly shaped themselves into one
problem. Would it be possible to go on staying at Durrus? Half the
morning had slipped away, and I had still found no answer to the
question. My head ached, and I felt I could come to no decision until I
was, for the present at least, out of the depressing atmosphere of the
house.
I put the perplexing subject away from me in my half-hour’s walk across
the bog, and thought of the dogs, the seagulls, the patches of white
cloud and blue sky that seemed so out of place reflected in the black
pools by the side of the road--of anything, in fact, rather than the
difficulty which was troubling me. I thought that when I got to the
edge of the cliffs, with nothing but the open sea before me, I should be
able to take a steadier view of the whole position.
But I had been sitting in perfect tranquillity for half an hour, and yet
no inspiration had been brought to me on the breath of the west wind
that was coming softly over the sea from America. “I suppose I ought to
go back to Aunt Jane,” was my last, as it had been my first, thought;
“but it will be very hard to have to leave Ireland. Besides, if I go
away now, Willy will think that I am going out of kindness to him, and I
could not bear that.”
Here Pat, who had found the distant observation of the cormorants a very
tantalizing amusement, looked up in my face with a whimpering sigh, and
curled himself up with his head on my arm and his back to the sea. As I
stooped over and kissed his little white and tan head, a crowd of
insistent memories rushed into my mind. In every one Willy’s was the
leading figure; his look, his laugh, his voice pervaded them all, but
with a new meaning that made pathos of the pleasantest of them. I
wondered, with perhaps a little insincerity, why I had not liked him as
well as he liked me. He had said that, if I were to try, I might some
day; but though I should have been glad for his sake to believe it,
every feeling in me rose in sudden revolt at the idea with a violence
that astonished myself. “We shall never have any good times again,” I
thought. “I suppose he is miserable now, and it is all my fault. Oh,
Willy! I never meant to be unkind to you.” I ended, almost aloud, and
the bright reaches of sea quivered and dazzled in my eyes as the
painful tears gathered and fell.
I have always found that tears rather intensify a trouble than lessen
it, and they now gave such keen reality to what I was feeling that I
could bear the pressure of my thoughts no longer. I got up quickly to go
home, and as I turned I saw a string of three or four boats heading for
the little strand at the foot of the cliff, just below where I was
standing. They were the cumbrous rowing-boats generally used for
carrying turf, and came heavily on through the bright restless water,
loaded, as well as I could see, with men and women.
The pounding and creaking of the clumsy oars in the rowlocks grew
louder; I was soon able to make out that the long dark object, round
which several figures were clustered in the leading boat, was a coffin,
and I now remembered Willy’s having told me that this little cove was
called “Tra-na-morruf,” the strand of the dead, from the fact that it
was the landing-place for such funerals as came by boat to the old
burying-place. The people were quite silent as the boats slowly advanced
to the shore; but directly the keel of the first touched on the shingle,
the women in the others raised a sustained, penetrating wail, which
vibrated in the sunny air, and made me shiver in involuntary sympathy.
I thought I had never heard so terrible a cry. I had often been told of
the Irish custom of “keening” at funerals, but I was not prepared for
anything so barbaric and so despairing. It broke out with increasing
volume and intensity while the coffin was being lifted from the boat and
was toilfully carried up the steep path in the cliff, the women clapping
their hands and beating their breasts, their chant rising and swelling
like the howl of the wind on a wild night. The small procession halted
at the top of the cliff, and another set of bearers took the coffin, and
carried it with staggering steps across the irregular mounds of the
graveyard, to where, behind the ruined chapel, I now noticed, for the
first time, an open grave. The dark crowd closed in round it, and, after
a few stifled sobs and exclamations, I heard nothing but the shovelling
of the earth upon the coffin.
It was soon over. The throng of heavily cloaked women and frieze-coated
men opened out, and I saw the long mound of brown earth, with a couple
of women and a man kneeling beside it. The rest, for the most part, made
their way down the cliff to the strand, from which a clatter of
conversation soon ascended. About half a dozen of the women, however,
remained behind; each sought out some special grave, and, kneeling
there, began to tell her beads and pray with seemingly deep devotion.
I moved away from where I had been standing, with the intention of going
home, but stopped at the gateway to look again at the effect of the
black figures dotted about among the grey stones, with their background
of pale blue sky. Near the gate was the ugly squat mausoleum in which
lay many generations of Sarsfields, and as I passed through the gate I
saw, kneeling at the farther side of it, a mourner dressed like the
others in a hooded blue cloak. She was clapping her hands and beating
her breast as if keening, but she made no sound. A country woman at this
moment passed me, curtseying as she did so, and, feeling a natural
curiosity to know who had taken upon herself the office of bewailing my
ancestors, I said--
“Can you tell me who that woman at the Sarsfield tomb is?”
“Faith, then, I can, your honour, miss! But sure yourself should know
her as well as me. ’Tis Moll Hourihane, that lives below at the lodge of
the big house.”
“Oh yes, of course, so it is,” I said, recognizing her as I spoke; “but
what has she come here for?”
“Throth, I dunno, miss. But there’s never a buryin’ here that she’s not
at it, and that’s the spot where she’ll always post herself. Sure she’s
idiotty-like; she thinks she’s keening there, and the divil a screech
out of her, good or bad, all the time.”
My informant gave a short laugh. She was a tall, handsome woman, with a
strong Spanish type of face and daring black eyes, and she had a grimly
humorous manner which interested and amused me.
“Why does she pick out the Durrus tomb?” I asked, as much to continue
the conversation as for any other reason.
“Glory be to God, miss! How would I know?”--darting at me, however, a
look of extreme intelligence, combined with speculation as to the extent
of my ignorance. “‘Twas she laid out the owld masther afther he dying,
whativer--yis, an’ young Mrs. Dominick too. Though, fegs! the sayin’ is,
she cried more for her whin she was alive than whin she was dead.”
We were walking slowly along the uneven bog road towards Durrus, my
companion trudging sociably beside me, with her hood thrown back from
her coarse black hair.
“What do you mean?” I said, hoping to hear at last something of the
origin of Moll’s madness.
“There’s many a wan would cry if they got the turn out,” she responded
oracularly.
“Why, what was she turned out of?” I asked.
“Out of the big house, sure! ’Twas there she was till the young
misthriss came.”
“I suppose she was a servant there?”
She gave a loud laugh. “Och! ’twasn’t thrusting to being a servant at
all she was! Mr. Dominick got her wan time to tend the owld masther that
was sick three years before he died, and the like o’ that; and ’twas
there she stayed till Mr. Dominick got marri’d, and then, faith, she had
to quit.”
I was rather puzzled.
“I suppose Mrs. Sarsfield liked to choose her servants for herself.”
The woman gave a derisive snort. “It ’ud be a quare thing if she’d
choose _her_ whatever!” she said. “Annyway, she never came next or nigh
the house till after Mrs. Dominick dyin’, and thin she was took back to
mind the owld masther and Masther Willy.”
“But I thought she was weak in her head?”
“Och! the divil a fear! She was as cute as a pet fox till the winther
the owld masther died; but whativer came agin her thin I don’t rightly
know. ’Twas about the time she marri’d owld Michael Brian it began with
her. She looked cliver enough; but the spaych mostly wint from her, and
she was a year that way.” Here she looked behind her, and crossed
herself with a start. “The saints be about us!” she exclaimed, in a
whisper; “look at herself follying us!”
I also turned, and saw Moll Hourihane close behind. She was walking on
the strip of grass by the side of the road, and, without looking at us,
she passed by, moving with a sliding shuffle, which I can only compare
to the rolling action of an elephant. She shambled along in front of us
until she came near the gate in the Durrus avenue, when, turning aside
into the bog, she made her way across it to a large black pit filled
with water, apparently one of the many deep holes from which turf had
once been dug. Having wandered once or twice round its shelving, ragged
edges--perilously near them, it seemed to me--she knelt down at its
verge, and, folding her hands on her breast, as she had done on the
first night I had seen her, she remained there without moving.
“Look at her now,” said my companion, superstitiously, “saying her
prayers there down by Poul-na-coppal, as if ’twas before the althar she
was. Faith, whin she had her sinses she wasn’t so great at her
prayers!”
“I don’t think it is very safe to let her go to a place like that,” I
said. “I suppose that hole is deep enough to drown her.”
“Is it Poul-na-coppal? Shure, it’s the greatest shwallow-hole in the
country! Shure, wasn’t it there a fine young horse fell down in it wan
time, and they niver seen the sight of him agin? There’s no bottom in
it, only mud. Throth, if she got in there, she’d be bound to stay there;
and ’twould be a good job too--God forgive me for sayin’ such a thing!”
“Don’t you think we ought to try and get her away from there?” I said,
still watching Moll with a kind of fascination, as she rocked herself to
and fro close to the edge.
“Wisha, thin, I’d be in dhread to near her at all. Shure, there’s times
when she wouldn’t be said nor led by her own daughther.”
“It was after Anstey was born that she went completely out of her mind,
was it not?” I said, as we walked on.
“Well, ’twas thin the sinse left her entirely, miss; but she wasn’t all
out right in her head, as I’m tellin’ ye, for a year before that. There
was a big snow came afther the little gerr’l was born, and they say,
whin she seen that she let one bawl out of her, and niver spoke a word
afther.”
We had by this time come to the little gate that led out of the bog.
“Good evening to your honour, miss. May the Lord comfort your honour
long, and that I may niver die till I see you well married; for you’re a
fine young lady, God bless you!”--with which comprehensive benediction,
Mary Minnahane, as I afterwards found was her name, tramped off down
the avenue.
I felt lonelier for the cessation of her rough, vigorous voice; and,
turning, I leaned on the gate, and looked back over the sunshiny
bleakness of the bog. It looked now very much as it had looked on the
day when I had gone out to see Willy put Alaska through her paces, and
as the fragrant wind brought the sea murmurs to me, I almost cheated
myself into the belief that this was still that brilliant October
afternoon, and that Willy was now riding down to meet me at the lodge.
My eyes fell on the solitary figure at the bog hole. It recalled in a
moment the funeral, the graveyard, my futile tears, and all that had led
to them. I turned towards home with the same feeling of uncertainty and
dejection with which I had set out.
[Illustration: text decoration]
CHAPTER V.
ENTER WILLY.
“Oh, the little more, and how much it is!
And the little less, and what worlds away!”
“Love with bent brows went by,
And with a flying finger swept my lips.”
“No news from Willy? I thought _you_ would have been sure to have heard
from him.”
“No, Uncle Dominick; he never even told me he was going,” I replied,
with a full consciousness of the emphasis laid on the “you.”
“Really! How very strange! I thought Master Willy seldom did anything
nowadays without consulting a certain young lady.”
I went on with my lunch without speaking. These pleasantries on my
uncle’s part were not uncommon, and, as there was no mistaking whither
they all tended, I hated and dreaded them more every day. In this
particular instance, I believed I saw very plainly a real anxiety to
find out the state of affairs between Willy and me, and I thought it
best to hold my tongue. My silence did not discourage Uncle Dominick.
“I forgot to tell you last night that I met Miss Burke yesterday,” he
said. “She gave me a great deal of news about the ball, and told me that
every one said that you and Willy were ‘the handsomest couple in the
room.’ I told her that as far as one of you was concerned I could well
believe it; and, indeed, Willy is not such a bad-looking fellow, after
all, eh?”
“I think Miss Burke herself and Willy were a much more striking pair,” I
answered, evading the question, and anxious to show him that I disliked
the way in which I was for ever bracketed with Willy. “Oh, by the way,
Uncle Dominick,” I went on, regardless of a conviction that I was saying
the wrong thing, “I heard from Mr. O’Neill this morning. He says that he
is coming over here this afternoon, to fetch some music which he left
here the other day.”
Uncle Dominick gave me a sharp look from under his bushy eyebrows. It
was one of those unguarded glances which, for the moment, strip the face
of all conventional disguises, and lay bare all that is hidden of
suspicion and surmise. I noticed suddenly how bloodshot his eyes were,
and how very pale he was looking. There was dead silence. By way of
appearing unconscious and indifferent, I took out of my pocket Nugent’s
letter, and began to read it; but I felt in every fibre that my uncle
was watching me, and a maddening blush slowly mounted to my forehead,
and spread itself even to the tips of my ears. Uncle Dominick cleared
his throat with ominous severity, and pushed back his chair from the
table.
“At what hour do you expect Mr. O’Neill?”
If he had asked me at what time in the afternoon I contemplated
committing a burglary, he could not have spoken with a more concentrated
disapproval.
“I have not the least idea,” I said, getting up with as much dignity as
I could muster. “I suppose about the time people usually come.”
“H’m! I suppose one cannot expect young ladies to be very lucid in
their statements about such matters,” he replied, with a singularly
unpleasant smile.
“I suppose not,” I retorted obstinately.
“Well, I suppose one must only expect him when he comes,” said my uncle,
with a return of suavity, as distasteful to me as his former manner. I
called the dogs away from their assiduous polishing of the plates on
which they had had their dinners, and left him to finish his wine alone.
“How detestable he can be when he likes!” I thought, seating myself
before the drawing-room fire. “I wonder why he dislikes Nugent so much?
I don’t suppose it can be on account of Willy; after all, there is
really no reason for that.” My cheeks were still hot, and I put my hands
over them, looking through my fingers into the fire. “If Uncle Dominick
is going to make himself unpleasant in this kind of way, I shall have to
go back to America, no matter what Willy thinks about it.”
My ideas as to leaving Durrus were still as hazy as they had been
yesterday morning at the old graveyard, and this was a fresh
complication. I had, however, made up my mind on one point--until I saw
Willy again, I would settle nothing. That was at least definite; and so
was the fact which at this moment occurred to me--that I should break
down in one of the more difficult of the violin accompaniments if I did
not practise it before Nugent came. I gave the fire an impatient poke,
and, mentally throwing my reflections into it, went over to the piano.
I had said to my uncle that I supposed Nugent would come at the usual
time, but I was forced to the conclusion that his views on the subject
differed from those of most people. Teatime came, and, after waiting
till the tea was becoming bitter, and the buttered toast half congealed,
I partook of it in solitude. I began to wonder if it were possible that
he could have made a mistake about the day, and again taking out his
letter, I read it over. The clear, forcible handwriting was not that of
a person who made mistakes, and it set forth plainly the fact that on
this afternoon the writer intended to come and see me, and would come as
early as he could. The sprawling minute-hand of the ormolu clock was now
well on its way towards half-past five; something must have happened to
prevent him from coming, unless, indeed, he had forgotten all about it.
I did not think it likely that he would forget, but the possibility was
not a pleasant one. I sat in the cheery light of the fire until the
minute-hand had passed the illegibly ornamental figure which marked the
half-hour, and, feeling a good deal more disappointed and put out than I
cared to own to myself, I was going to ring for the lamp and settle down
to a book, when I heard the sound of quick trotting, and the light run
of a dog-cart’s wheels on the avenue.
“I know I’m very late,” said Nugent, as he shook hands with me, “and I
meant to be very early, but it wasn’t my fault. I am sure you are going
to tell me that the tea is cold, but I don’t care; I prefer it with the
chill just off.”
“Then you will be gratified,” I said, pouring it out. “I began to think
you were not coming, and was repenting that I had wasted half an hour in
practising that awful accompaniment of Braham’s.”
“Did you really do that? It was very good of you. I did my best to get
away early, but I had to stay and see Captain Forster off. I can’t say
that he seemed to appreciate the attention, as he was playing billiards
with Connie up to the last minute. I was very sorry afterwards that I
had been such a fool as to lose the whole afternoon on his account.”
“I think you might have left him in Connie’s hands,” I said, sociably
beginning upon a second edition of tea.
“I want to know if you are all right again,” said Nugent, looking at me
scrutinizingly. “I thought you seemed awfully played out the day before
yesterday.”
“Did I?” I said. “I wasn’t in the least--I mean I was very tired, but
that was all.”
“You scarcely spoke to me all the way over here. I don’t know if you
generally treat people like that when you are very tired.”
“No,” I said; “when I know people well enough, I am simply cross.”
“That means that you don’t know me very well.”
“No, I don’t think I do,” I said, with unpremeditated truthfulness. “By
the way, is it true that you are all going away from Clashmore soon? You
said something about it in your letter.”
“Yes; I believe they are all off next week,” he replied; “but I think I
shall stay on here for a bit. I don’t want to go away just now.”
I was on the point of saying that I was very glad to hear he was going
to stay, but stopped myself, and said instead that I should have thought
he would find it rather dreary by himself.
“I don’t expect I shall,” he answered. “I shall ask you to let me come
over here very often. You know, we agreed at Clashmore that you were to
take my music in hand, and teach me to count.”
“If I try to do that, we shall certainly have plenty of occupation,” I
said, laughing at the prospect with a foolish enjoyment.
“All right, so much the better”--looking at me and laughing too. “By the
way, Connie wants to know if you will ride over to Mount Prospect with
her and me the day after to-morrow, to pay our respects after the
dance.”
“I shall be very glad,” I answered; “I have not had a ride for a long
time. Should you mind ringing the bell? We shall want the lamps for the
piano.”
“I should mind very much,” he said, without moving from the substantial
armchair in which he was sitting. “I think it would be a much better
scheme to sit over the fire instead. You were in such an extraordinary
hurry to get away from Clashmore the day before yesterday, that you did
not give me time for more than half the smart things I had prepared to
say about the Jackson-Crolys’ dance.”
“Very well,” I said, dragging out a little old-fashioned, glass-beaded
footstool, and settling myself comfortably with my feet on it in front
of the fire. “You can begin now, and say them all one after the other,
and by the time you have got through I shall have got my smile ready.”
“You are very hard upon me. You should remember that my _bon-mots_ are
exceedingly fragile flowers--kind of hothouse exotics--and they require
the most sympathetic attention. You ought to try to encourage native
talent, even if it does not come up to your American standard of
humour.”
“I don’t know exactly what that is,” I replied; “but I assure you that
that dance does not require any embellishments. The only thing needful
in describing it is the solid truth.”
“You must not fancy that all our county Cork entertainments are on the
Mount Prospect pattern,” he said, a little anxiously. “I dare say you
think we are all savages, but we don’t often have a war-dance like
that.”
“Well,” I said, checking an inclination to sigh as the thought crossed
my mind, “I shall always be glad that I saw at least one before I went
back to America.”
He got up and put down his cup; then, drawing his unwieldy chair closer
to me before sitting down, “But you are not thinking of going back to
America?” he said slowly.
“Oh! well, of course I shall have to go back sooner or later,” I
replied, as airily as I could. “I do not mean to spend my whole life
here.”
“Don’t you?” he said, in a low voice, leaning forward and trying to
intercept my eyes, as I looked straight before me into the fire. “I wish
you would tell me if you really mean that.”
“I certainly do mean it,” I answered, with decision. “And, after all, I
do not see that it much matters whether I do or not.”
“Why do you say it doesn’t matter?” he said slowly.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I answered idiotically.
“But I think you ought to know before you make assertions of that kind,”
he persisted. “I dare say there are several people who would think it
mattered a good deal.”
He spoke with an intention in his voice that I had never heard before.
My heart gave a startled beat. Did he mean Willy?
“That does not sound at all like what you once said to me. You told me
that I was ‘a distinct failure in these parts.’ I should like to know
who all these people are who have changed their minds about me,” I said,
impelled by a reckless impulse to find out what he had meant.
“Don’t you remember my telling you the other night of one person who had
changed his mind? Have you quite forgotten what I said to you then?”
He was very near to me, so near that he must almost have felt my breath
as it quickly came and went. My heart was beating fast enough
now--hurrying along at such speed that I could not be sure enough of my
voice to speak.
“Can you not think of any one to whom it would make a good deal of
difference if you went back to America? Couldn’t you?” He hesitated.
“Don’t you know it would make all the difference in the world to--to
me?”
His hand found mine, and, as it closed upon it, I felt in one magical
moment that there was but one hand in the world whose touch could send
that strange pang of delight to my heart. His eyes lifted mine to them
in spite of me. I do not know what he read in them, but in his I thought
I saw something quite new--something that made me giddy, and took away
my power of speaking.
“Don’t you know it?” he whispered. “Theo!”
With a feeling that I must say something, I answered, scarcely conscious
of what I was saying--
“I do not know. I do not see how it could. We see so little of you.
Perhaps some people might care. I dare say my uncle and Willy would.”
Nugent got up abruptly, treading inadvertently on Jinny, who was
sleeping peacefully on the rug. He took no notice of her resentful
shriek, and said, with a sudden change of voice and manner--
“Yes, of course--I forgot; naturally they are the people it would make
most difference to.” He stooped and patted Jinny, who was ostentatiously
tending her injured paw. “Did I hurt you, Jinny? Poor little dog!” he
said, as if becoming aware for the first time of his offence. Then,
after a time, “By-the-by, I heard from Barrett that Willy is in Cork.
When do you expect him back?”
Even before he had spoken, I had realized the impression which my
blundering mention of Willy must have given; but, in the shock of the
discovery which I had just made, I hardly cared. Nothing could penetrate
to my brain except one thought that mastered it with bewildering
force--Is it possible that he cares for me? Perhaps he fancied, from
what I said, that the general gossip about Willy and me was true. I
could almost have laughed for pleasure that he should mind so much. I
looked up at him as he stood by the fire, with its light flickering on
his gloomy face, and my self-possession returned to me a little.
“I know absolutely nothing about Willy,” I said, with decision. “I have
not seen him since the night of the ball, and I have no idea when he is
coming home.”
He came a step nearer, and looked at me dubiously; but there was new
purpose in his voice as he said--
“Then, it is not----”
He stopped at the sound of a footstep outside the door. I recognized it
in an instant.
“Here is Willy!” I gasped, in tones from which I vainly tried to banish
the sudden inward despair which possessed me. The door opened, letting
in a blaze of light, and Willy, followed by Roche with a lamp, came into
the room.
The necessity of the moment gave me a fictitious courage. Pushing back
my chair, I jumped up to meet him with an ease and cordiality intended
to cover his embarrassment and my own.
“So here you are back, Willy! We have been wondering what had become of
you.”
He did not look at me as we shook hands, but he answered, in a voice as
successfully friendly as my own--
“I was forced to go up to Cork on business. I thought I could get down
last night, but I couldn’t manage it. How are you, Nugent?” he went on
stiffly. “You’ll have a pretty wet drive home. It was pouring when I
came in.”
Nugent at once took the hint thus broadly given.
“Yes, I dare say I shall,” he said coolly. “Would you order my trap,
please?”--turning to Roche, who had not yet left the room. “Good night,
Miss Sarsfield. Does that ride hold good?”
He had taken my hand in his as he said good night, and he still held it
with a strong pressure. Something weighed down my eyelids--I could not
meet his eyes again, and I answered hurriedly--
“Yes--oh yes, I hope so! Good night.”
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CHAPTER VI.
THE HAND AT THE GATE.
“Which do you pity the most of us three?”
Most girls at three and twenty believe that they have explored their own
characters, and know pretty accurately their emotional capabilities.
They have always been taking soundings in their souls, noting eagerly
any signs of increasing depth or of shoaling water; the most trivial
incidents have a local importance and imagined connection. In fact, the
phrase, “Falling in love,” implies, in their case, a contradiction of
terms, the various phases of the disorder being accepted by its victims
with scientific recognition.
I think I must have been very deficient in this power of self-analysis.
I had always taken my life as it came, without much introspective
thought of its effect upon me, and on the one or two occasions when I
had been confronted with the necessity for knowing my own mind, I had
never found the need for searchings of heart to discover if the germs of
any unsuspected feeling were hidden there. I had taken for granted that
I must be a hard-headed, hard-hearted person, somewhat probably of Aunt
Jane’s type. I used to listen with an amused sympathy to the intricacies
of sentimental detail with which many of my friends recounted their
experiences, and had often offered, not without a certain sense of
superiority, the cold-blooded counsels of common sense.
It was to me the remotest of chances that I should ever be driven to
weigh, as they did, the value of a sentence, a word, or a look; and yet,
nevertheless, now, not three months after I had left America, this was
precisely what I found myself doing.
I awoke, the morning after Nugent’s visit, with an unfamiliar feeling of
still gladness. I knew that some strange and delightful thing had
befallen me; but I waited in dreamy security, till this new happiness
that was waiting for me in my waking life should stir me to a clearer
knowledge of itself. Slowly it all came back to me. In imagination I
lived again through what had happened yesterday afternoon. The
unacknowledged anxiety lest he should not come; the relief of hearing
that he was not leaving the country; the incredulous uncertainty as to
his meaning; and then--ah yes! I put my hand over my eyes, dizzy even
at the remembrance of the swift conviction which had taken me with such
sovereign power--then, the certainty that he loved me.
How had it all come about? How was it that, before I well understood
what was happening, my independence had been overthrown? Looking back
over the time I had known him, I could find no reasonable explanation.
Until the night of the Jackson-Crolys’ dance I had never admitted to
myself that I did more than like his society, and till then I had had
still less idea that he did more than care for mine.
With a shamefaced smile at my own foolishness, I got out my diary, and
searched through it for some mention of Nugent on the days on which I
remembered to have met him. But its bald and unimaginative record had
chronicled no description of him beyond one pithy entry after the first
day’s hunting--
“Mr. O’Neill piloted me. Dull and conceited.”
I remembered quite well the satisfaction with which I had permitted
myself this rare expression of opinion; and I laughed outright as I
thought how the girl who had written that would have despised her future
self, if she could have foreseen in what spirit it would again be
referred to. “Dull and conceited!” Had he or I changed most since that
was written? I pondered over it, and came to the conclusion that it was
with him that the change had begun. I should never have altered my
opinion of him, if he had not shown that he had altered his of me.
I slowly thought over the various stages of our acquaintance, ending, as
I had begun, with the events of yesterday. Woven in through all my
reflections had been a little thread of uncertainty and dissatisfaction.
What was the question that had been interrupted by Willy’s inopportune
arrival? Could he really have thought I was engaged to my cousin? It
seemed at first as if he had suspected it; but I knew that what I had
said was enough to convince him that he had been mistaken--that I was
sure of, from the way he had said good-bye. Well, I should certainly see
him to-morrow; perhaps even to-day, I thought, and trembled at the
thought.
When I went down to breakfast, I found that Willy had finished his. This
was practically our first _tête-à-tête_ since he had come home. Last
night he had not come into the drawing-room after dinner, and I had gone
to my room early. He was standing in the window, reading a letter, when
I came into the room, and, with a keen dart of memory, my first morning
at Durrus came into my mind. He had been standing in just that position
as I came into breakfast that first morning after my arrival, and I well
remembered the smile with which he had come forward to meet me. The
contrast of his present greeting jarred painfully on me, and dashed a
little the serenity in which I had tried to enwrap myself. The old
boyish friendliness was all gone, and in its place was a spasmodic,
constrained politeness, which was so foreign to his nature, and so
hardly assumed, that it seemed to me the most pitiful thing in the
world. I came near wishing that I had never seen Nugent, and I thought
with humiliation of what Willy would feel when he knew how much my
denials about him had been worth.
“I breakfasted earlier to-day,” he said awkwardly. “I have to be in
Moycullen at eleven o’clock. Is there anything I can do for you there?”
“No, thank you. But, Willy”--as he was leaving the room--“that reminds
me, the O’Neills want me to ride with them to Mount Prospect to-morrow.
Could I have Blackthorn?”
“Of course you can,” he answered gruffly; “you know you’ve only to order
the horse when you want him.”
“Would you come with us?” I went on timidly.
“No, thanks; I’m very busy about the farm just now.”
He opened the door and went away.
I had no heart to eat my breakfast; the tears were in my eyes as I
poured out a cup of tea, and, making no pretence of eating anything,
took it over and sipped it by the fire. All my gladness of the morning
had died out; I could only feel illogically sorry at this utter break
and severance in the old relations between Willy and me. I was still
dawdling over my tea when Roche came in to clear away the
breakfast-things. His professional eye at once detected my unused plate.
“Will I get another egg biled for you, miss? Them’s cold.”
“No, thank you, Roche. I am not very hungry this morning.”
Roche turned a shrewd eye, like a parrot’s, upon me.
“Fie, fie, miss! That’s no way for a young lady to be. And Masther Willy
wasn’t much better than yourself. You have a right to be out this fine
morning, and not sitting that way over the fire.”
Roche and I had become great friends. Early in our acquaintance I had
found out that he was the Patrick Roche whose letters had given me my
first impressions of Irish life, and I had often listened with
affectionate patience to his rambling stories of my father’s prowess in
all departments of sport. As much to escape from his acute observation
as for any other reason, I left the dining-room, and wandered aimlessly
into the hall.
A whining and scratching outside the door decided me to try what the day
felt like. I wrapped a carriage rug round my shoulders, and, putting on
the deer-stalker cap which Willy had once made over to me, I opened the
hall door, and was at once assaulted by Pat and Jinny. Having exhausted
themselves in ambitious attempts to lick my face by means of
perpendicular leaps at it, they proceeded to explain to me as well as
they could their wish that I should take them to the garden, to hunt,
for the hundredth time, a rabbit which had long set at naught the
best-laid plots for his destruction. I followed them to the old gate--a
structure in itself very characteristic of Durrus--and opened it in the
usual way, by kicking away a stone that had been placed against it, and
by then putting my hand through a hole to reach the latch, whose catch
on the outside had been broken.
I did not feel disposed to-day to help Pat and Jinny in their hunt, by
struggling, as Willy and I had so often done, through the rows of big
wet cabbages, whose crinkled white hearts showed the devastations of the
enemy, and, leaving the dogs to form their own plan of campaign, I
sauntered up and down the path between the lichen-crusted
gooseberry-trees. In spite of Roche’s recommendation of the weather, I
thought it a very cheerless morning. There was a bite in the chilly
air, and each time I turned at the end of the walk and faced the gate,
the breeze that met me was sharp and raw.
It was early in January--the deadest time of all the year, I thought,
looking round. Not a sign of spring, no feeling even of the hope of it;
and somehow, in this cold, leaden atmosphere, my own hopes began to lose
half their life. I turned and once more walked towards the gate,
thinking that I would call the dogs from their futile yelpings at the
mouth of the hole to which the rabbit had long since betaken himself,
and would go for a walk. I was not more than half-way down the path,
when I saw a hand put through the hole in the gate. As it felt for the
latch, I quickly recognized its lean pallor; the gate opened, and Uncle
Dominick came into the garden.
“Good morning, my dear,” he said. “I thought I saw you going into this
wilderness of ours that we call a kitchen garden, and I followed you in
the hopes of having a little chat.”
He was evidently in the best of humours--nothing else could have
accounted for this unwonted desire for society, and, in spite of the
dark rings under his eyes and the yellow sodden look of his skin, he
looked unusually benign and cheerful.
“Perhaps you will take a turn with me round the garden,” he continued
affably. “I can see you are not dressed for a longer walk; although I do
not for a moment wish to disparage your costume. Indeed, I do not know
that I have ever seen you wear anything that became you more than that
cap of Willy’s.”
I turned with him, and we walked slowly round the grass-grown paths
which followed the square of the walls, stooping every now and then to
save our eyes from the unpruned boughs of the apple-trees.
“Dear me! this place is shockingly neglected,” my uncle said, twitching
a bramble out of my way with his stick; “in old days it was a very
different affair. My mother used to have four men at work here, and I
remember well when it was the best garden in the country.”
We had by this time come to the dilapidated old hothouse, and we both
stood and looked at it for a few seconds. Through the innumerable broken
panes, and under the decaying window-sashes, the branches of a
peach-tree thrust themselves out in every direction, as if breaking
loose from imprisonment.
“Ah, the poor old peach-house!” said Uncle Dominick, digging a weed out
of the path with the heel of his boot--“that was another of my mother’s
hobbies. I wish I had the energy and the money to get this whole place
put to rights,” he continued, as we walked on again; “but I have neither
the one nor the other. I shall leave all that for Willy to do some day;
for he is fond of the old place. Do you not think so, my dear?”
“I am sure he is,” I answered, rather absently; my thoughts had strayed
away to to-morrow’s ride.
“I suppose you have seen Willy this morning? Did he seem in better
spirits than he was in last night? I don’t know that I ever saw him so
depressed and silent as he was at dinner,” said my uncle.
“Did you think so?” I replied guiltily. “I think he seemed all right
this morning.”
“I am very glad to hear it. I was quite distressed by his manner;
indeed, latterly I have frequently noticed how variable his spirits have
been.”
I did not speak, and Uncle Dominick went on again with a little
hesitation--
“I will confess to you, my dear Theo, that before you came Willy had
been causing me very serious anxiety. You see, this is a lonely place;
the O’Neills are much away from home, and he had no companions of his
own age and station.”
“No, I suppose not,” I said, considerably puzzled as to the drift of all
this.
My uncle stroked his long moustache several times.
“Well, my dear, you know the old proverb, ‘No company, welcome
trumpery;’ that, I am sorry to say, is what the danger was with Willy.
It came to my knowledge that he was in the habit of--a--of spending a
great deal of his time in the house of--“--he hummed and hawed, ending
with suppressed vehemence--“in the house of one of my work-people.”
I held my breath, with perhaps some presentiment of what was coming.
“Yes,” my uncle said, bringing his stick heavily down on the ground; “I
heard, to my amazement and horror, that the attraction for him there was
the daughter, an impudent girl, who was evidently using every means in
her power to entangle him!”
“An impudent girl!” What was it that he had once said about a girl who
had been taken out of her proper place, and had at once began to
presume? In the same instant the answer flashed upon me--Anstey! Of
course, it was she. How had I been so blind?
My uncle was silent for a few moments, and my thoughts raced back to
incidents, unconsidered at the time, but which now recurred, fraught
with a new meaning. I understood it all now--the girl standing in the
niche at the lodge gate; the words which I had overheard at the
plantation; last of all, the figure in the rain at the hall door on the
night of the dance.
“I was delighted to see, after you came, what an influence for good you
at once seemed to exert over him,” Uncle Dominick began again. “I cannot
say how grateful to you I have felt. The thought that Willy might be led
on into doing anything to lower the family preyed upon me more than I
can tell you, and it gave me the greatest pleasure to see what his
feelings for you were.”
What could I say? Horror at this new complication about Willy, pity for
Anstey, and the knowledge of what my uncle so obviously expected of me,
were pursuing each other through my mind.
“I feared, from his behaviour last night, that there had occurred some
misunderstanding between you.” He stood still, and looked at me
interrogatively. “Of course, I do not ask for your confidence in the
matter, but I think you know as well as I do what effect anything
serious of that kind would have on him.”
Honesty compelled me to speak. “I ought to have told you before,” I
began falteringly, “that I was thinking--I had almost settled that I was
going back to America.”
“To America? Impossible!” he exclaimed, in a startled but dictatorial
voice; then, forcing a laugh, “Of course, I know you are a very
independent young lady, but I have belief enough in you to think that
you would not desert your friends.”
“I cannot do what you want me to,” I said incoherently; “I should be
staying here on false pretences. I must go away.”
“Nonsense!” he said impatiently. “I beg your pardon, my dear, but your
ideas of duty appear to me a little peculiar. I think, _all things
considered_, you could scarcely reconcile it--I will not say with your
conscience, but with your sense of honour--to let Willy ruin his whole
life without stretching out a hand to stop him.”
“But I don’t know what you mean. You know I would do almost anything for
Willy; but why should I be bound by my ‘sense of honour’ to stay here?”
I spoke stoutly, but in my inmost soul I dreaded his answer.
“Well,” said my uncle, with a disagreeable expression, “I think that
most people would agree with me, that a young lady is bound in honour
not to give such encouragement to a man as will raise hopes that she
does not mean to gratify.”
There was truth enough in what he said to make me feel a difficulty in
replying. We had come to the gate, and he opened it for me.
“I do not wish to press you on this subject, my dear, but I am sure
that, after you have thought it over a little, your fairness, as well as
your kind heart, will make you feel the truth of what I have been saying
to you.”
That was all he said, but it was enough. I went back to the house,
feeling that, whatever happened, trouble was before me.
Roche met me on the steps with a note on a salver. I knew the
handwriting, and opened it with a pulse quickened by a delightful glow
of confidence and expectancy. I read it through twice over; then,
mechanically replacing it in the envelope, I went up to my own room,
and, throwing myself on my bed, I pressed my face into the pillow and
wished that I were dead.
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CHAPTER VII.
“THIS HIDDEN TIDE OF TEARS.”
“Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been.”
“Ah me! my heart, rememberest thou that hour,
When foolish hope made parting almost bright?
Hadst thou not then some warning of thy doom?”
The fire in the library was dying out. I had been sitting on the
hearthrug in front of it for some time, with my elbows resting on the
seat of a low armchair, from whose depths Jinny’s snores rose with quiet
regularity. The window had been grey with the last of the dull light
when I first sat down there, and, without stirring, I had watched the
grey fading by imperceptible changes from mere blankness into an
absolute darkness, that invaded the room and filled it like a cloud.
The turf fire, with soft noises of subsidence, had sunk lower and lower
in the grate, and, abandoning its effort to light up the heavy lines of
bookshelves, now did little more than edge with a feeble glow the shadow
of the chimney-piece upon the ceiling. A few minutes before, a flicker
had leaped up from the red embers; it had not lasted long, but the
transient glare had made my eyes ache. For two or three seconds
afterwards the blackened fragments of a sheet of note-paper had been
shaken and lifted uncertainly by the thin turf smoke, and they were now
drifting away with it up the chimney. My hand, lying open upon my knee,
still retained the sensation of holding something which had been clasped
tightly in it all the afternoon--the letter which I had just burnt--and
it seemed to me that in my heart there was the same sense of emptiness
and loss.
It had cost me something to burn it, and as the flame crept over the
pages, I had come near snatching it back again. But after all there was
no need to keep it; its contents were not so long nor so intricate, I
thought bitterly, that there was any fear of my forgetting them.
“DEAR MISS SARSFIELD” (it began),
“My sister has asked me to tell you that she has been obliged to
change her plans, and is leaving Clashmore to-morrow instead of
next week. She desires me to say how sorry she is at having to give
up the ride to Mount Prospect, and to go away without seeing you.
She would write herself, but is too much hurried. I fear that I
must make the same apologies on my own account, as I find that I
shall have to go to London in a few days, and may possibly not
return before the summer; and, as I am afraid I shall not be able
to get over to Durrus, perhaps you will kindly let me say good-bye
by letter.
“Sincerely yours,
“NUGENT O’NEILL.”
Nothing could have been more simply put; nothing could have expressed
more incisively the writer’s meaning. Even in the first moment of
reading it, I had been at no loss to understand it. In the legitimate
amusement of flirting with “An American girl,” he had gone a little
farther than he had intended, and he now lost no time in removing any
undue impression that his words might have made upon her. What was it
that Willy had told me long ago--how long ago?--“He could tell you many
a queer story of a Yankee girl he met at Cannes!”
Possibly he would now be able to add another “queer story of a Yankee
girl” to his _repertoire_--how, in the course of a most ordinary
flirtation, he had discovered one afternoon that this girl was losing
her head, and how he had been obliged to leave the country so as to
avoid further difficulties.
The last scrap of the letter fluttered upwards out of sight as this
idea, which it had suggested, came into my mind. The intolerable sting
of the thought acted on me like physical pain. I started up, but by the
time I was on my feet I was ashamed of it. “No,” I said to myself
vehemently, “he would never do that; I have no right even to think it of
him. And although, I suppose, he has changed his mind now for some
reason or other, I know he was in earnest when he was speaking to me; I
am sure of it. Perhaps _he_ lost his head too--men very often say more
than they intend--and then when he got home he thought better of it, and
felt it was only fair to let me understand as soon as possible that he
meant nothing serious. How could I have been such a fool as to let half
a dozen words upset my peace of mind?” I asked myself desperately.
“Whatever he meant by them, it is no use my thinking about him any more.
I had better begin at once, as he has done, to try and forget it all,” I
thought, as I groped my way out of the room; “but just now I feel as if
it would take me all my life.”
As I dressed for dinner, I shrank from the prospect of the long
difficult hours that lay between me and the solitude of my own room. But
I think that my powers of further suffering must have been exhausted; a
benumbing weariness was my only sensation as I sat at the dinner-table,
and, looking from my uncle to my cousin, felt, in some far-off way, that
our lives were converging to their point of closest contact, perhaps to
their climax of mutual suffering.
I had not energy to talk, and I occupied myself for the most part in
efforts to keep up the semblance of eating my dinner. Willy went on with
his in a kind of resigned surliness, taking as little notice of me as
was compatible with common politeness. This state of things I should
much have preferred to any open signs of enmity or friendship, if I had
not noticed that my uncle was narrowly observing us, and was even making
various attempts to involve us both in the conversation, which had
hitherto been little more than a monologue upon his part. Beyond an
occasional grunt, Willy did not even try to respond; and as for me,
though I did my best, utter mental and bodily fatigue made the framing
of a sentence too laborious for me.
Several times during the progress of dinner, I found that Roche was
looking at me with anxious interest; and once or twice he came to my
rescue with unexpected tact, by quietly changing my plate as quickly as
possible, so that my uncle should not see how little I had eaten of what
he had sent me.
Dinner was longer, and Uncle Dominick more determinately talkative, than
usual; but at last there came a break in his harangue, and I took
advantage of it to make my escape into the drawing-room. I sat for a
long time over the fire by myself, lying in an armchair without any wish
to move. I felt as if I had sunk to the bottom of a deep sea, whose
waves were rushing and surging over my head, and I wondered dully if
this was what people felt like when they were going to have a bad
illness. My mind kept stupidly repeating one short sentence, “Let me say
good-bye! Let me say good-bye!” They were the last words I had seen of
Nugent’s letter as it curled up in the flame of the library fire, and
they now beat to and fro in my brain with sing-song monotony.
I believe I must have dozed, for the noise of the door opening aroused
me with a shivering start. Willy came into the room with a newspaper in
his hand, and, sitting down at the other side of the fire without
speaking to me, began to read it. I fell back in my chair again, waiting
till the striking of ten o’clock should give me a reasonable excuse for
going to bed. The crackling of Willy’s newspaper and the sleepy tick of
the clock were the only sounds in the room. I had never before seen
Willy read a newspaper so attentively, and I watched him with languid
interest from under my half-closed eyelids, while he steadily made his
way through it. Now he had turned it inside out, and was reading the
advertisements; certainly it did not take much to amuse him. Could he
have felt, on that day after the dance, as dead to all the things that
used to interest him as I did now?
It was only four evenings ago since I had listened miserably to the
passionate words which I had not been able to prevent him from saying;
he must have forgotten them already, or how else could he sit there with
such stolid composure? If he could recover his equanimity in four days,
perhaps in a week I should have begun to forget that persistent sentence
which still kept pace with my thoughts.
The dining-room door opened and shut with a loud bang, and I heard the
sound of uncertain footsteps crossing the hall. The crackling of the
newspaper ceased, and a sudden rigidity in Willy’s attitude showed me
that he was listening. The step paused outside the door, and then, after
some preliminary rattling, the handle was turned. Willy jumped up and
walked quickly to the door, as if with the intention of stopping whoever
was there from coming in. Before he reached it, however, it opened, and
I saw that it was his father whose entrance he had been trying to
prevent.
“It’s not worth while your coming in, sir,” he said; “Theo’s awfully
tired, and she’s going to bed.”
“Tired! what right has she to be tired?” said my uncle, loudly, coming
into the room as he spoke. He put his hand on Willy’s shoulder and
pushed him to one side. “Get out of my way! Why should I not come in if
I like?”
He walked very slowly and deliberately to the fireplace, and stood on
the rug with his back to the fire, swinging a little backwards and
forwards from his toes to his heels. There was some difference in his
manner and appearance which I could not account for. His face was
ghastly white; a scant lock of iron-grey hair hung over his forehead;
and the dark rings I had seen about his eyes in the morning had now
changed to a purplish red.
“And what have you two been doing with yourselves all the evening?
Making the most of your time, Willy, I hope? Perhaps that was why you
tried to keep me out just now?”
He began to laugh at what he had said in a way very unusual with him.
“Theo,” Willy said abruptly, interrupting his father’s laughter,
“you’re looking dead beat; I’ll go and light your candle.”
“What are you in such a hurry about?” demanded Uncle Dominick, turning
on Willy with unexpected fierceness. “Don’t you know it is manners to
wait till you’re asked?”
Willy did not answer, but went out into the hall; and I, feeling both
scared and angry, got up with the intention of following him as quickly
as possible.
“Good night, Uncle Dominick,” I said icily.
He bent forward and took hold of my arm, leaning his whole weight upon
it.
“Look here,” he whispered confidentially; “how has that fellow been
behaving? You haven’t forgotten our little talk this morning, eh?”
“I remember it quite well, Good night,” I repeated, trying to pull my
arm from his detaining hand, and move away.
The action nearly threw him off his balance; he gave a stagger, and was
in the act of recovering himself by the help of my arm, when Willy came
back with the lighted candle.
“For goodness sake, let her go to bed,” he said, striding over to where
we were standing, and looking threateningly at his father.
Uncle Dominick dropped my arm. “What the devil do you mean by
interfering with me, sir?” he said. “Let me tell you that I will not
stand this behaviour on your part any longer! I suppose you think you
can treat your cousin and me as if we were no better than your low
companions? I know where you spent your afternoon to-day. I know what
those infernal people are plotting and scheming for. But I can tell
you, that if they can make a fool of you they shall not make one of me!
This house is mine. And you may tell them from me, that as sure as I am
standing here”--emphasizing each word with a trembling hand, while he
clutched the mantelshelf with the other--“you shall never set foot in
it, or touch one penny of my money, if----”
“Look here!” said Willy, stepping forward between me and his father;
“that’s enough; you’d better shut up.”
“How dare you speak to me like that? Your conduct is not that of a
gentleman, sir!--not that of a gentleman! I say, sir, it is
not--that--of----” His voice had grown thicker and more unsteady at
every word.
“Here’s your candle,” said Willy, thrusting the candlestick into my
hand; “you’d better go.”
“She shall not be ordered about by you!” thundered my uncle, making an
ineffectual step or two to stop me. “She shall stay here as long as I
like. I will be master in my own house. Come back here!”
He spoke with such fury that I was afraid to go, and looked irresolutely
to Willy for help. But before he could speak, my uncle’s mood had
changed.
“Let her go if she likes,” he said suddenly, staring at me with a sort
of stupefaction. “Good God! Let her go if she likes; let her go!” he
cried, covering his eyes with his hands and dropping into a chair, and
as I slipped out of the room I heard him groan.
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CHAPTER VIII.
PAIN.
“Go from me. Yet I know that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow.”
I do not often get a headache, but the one which woke me next morning
seemed determined to bring my average of pain up to the level of that of
less fortunate people. All day long it pressed like a burning cap over
my head, till my pillow felt as if it were a block of wood, and the thin
chinks of light that came through the closed shutters cut my eyes like
the blades of knives. The infrequent sounds in the quiet house--the
far-off shutting of a door, the knocking of the housemaid’s broom
against the wainscot in the corridor, or an occasional footstep in the
hall--all jarred upon my aching brain as if it had lost some accustomed
shelter, and the blows of sound struck directly upon its bruised nerves.
The wretchedness of the day before had given way to the supremacy of
physical suffering. I lay in my darkened room, thinking of nothing
except how best to endure the passing of the slow hours. Once, as the
clock in the hall struck three, I was conscious of some association
connected with the sound, and remembered that this was the hour at which
I should have been starting for Mount Prospect.
But it had all lost reality. Even the horror of that scene with my uncle
and Willy in the drawing-room had been for the time obliterated, wiped
out by the pain, of which it had partly been the cause. All that I felt
was that some trouble surely was there, and, though in abeyance for
to-day, it was already in possession of to-morrow, and of many
to-morrows.
When, on the next morning, after breakfast in bed, I made my way
downstairs, I felt as if a long time had gone by since I had crossed the
hall. The house was cold and deserted. I dreaded meeting my uncle, but I
saw no one; there was not even a dog to wish me good morning. In the
drawing-room, the fire had only just been lighted; the blinds were drawn
to the top of the windows, showing the various layers of dust in the
room, from the venerable accumulation under the piano, to the lighter
and more recent coating on the tables. I went straight to the
writing-table, and, regardless of the cheerless glare from the sheet of
grey sea, I began a letter to Aunt Jane.
Upstairs, in the early hours of the morning, it had seemed an easy and
not disagreeable thing to do--to write and tell her that my Irish visit
was over, and that, as soon as her answer had come, I should be ready to
start for America. But when the letter was closed and directed, I sat
looking at it for a long time, feeling that I had done something akin to
making my will. The best part of my life was over; into these past three
months had been crushed its keenest happiness and unhappiness, and this
was what they had amounted to. They had none the less now to fall into
the background, and soon would have no more connection with my future
life than if they had never been.
I had convinced myself so thoroughly that by writing to Aunt Jane I had
closed this epoch in my life, that when, a few minutes afterwards, Willy
came into the room, I was almost surprised to find that he was as
awkward and constrained as when I had seen him last.
“Oh! I didn’t know you were in here, Theo,” he said apologetically,
stopping short half-way across the room. “I only came in to look for a
pen.”
“Come in, Willy,” I answered, with an appearance of ease which was the
result of the high, unemotional standpoint on which I had taken up my
position. “I have just finished my letter-writing.”
“I hope your head’s all right to-day? The governor was asking after you
yesterday,” he said, rolling his cap in his hands, and looking at the
ground. “He was very sorry to hear your headache was so bad.”
I knew that he was trying, as well as he could, to apologize for his
father’s outbreak and its too obvious cause.
“That was very kind of him,” I made haste to answer. “My headache is
quite well. I was thinking of going out, as it looks as if the east wind
had gone.”
“Yes, it’s a nice day. I dare say it would do you good to go out.”
Nothing could have made me feel more plainly the break that had come in
what had been such “a fair fellowship” than his making no offer to come
with me, and I realized with sharp regret that I had done well in
writing that letter to Aunt Jane.
Willy turned to leave the room.
“I wanted to tell you about this letter,” I said. “I have just written
to Aunt Jane to say that I am going back to America in about a
fortnight.”
His back had been towards me when I began to speak, but he faced round
with an exclamation of astonishment.
“What! going away? Why are you doing that?”
His face was red with surprise, and he had forgotten his shyness.
“I thought Uncle Dominick would have told you. I spoke to him a couple
of days ago.”
“He never said so to me. On the contrary----” Willy stopped. “I mean, he
didn’t give me the least idea you were going.”
“For all that, I am afraid I must go. I have been here an immense time
already,” I said, finding some difficulty in maintaining an easy and
conventional tone.
“Indeed, you haven’t!” he blurted out. “You know you told me you meant
to stay on into the spring, and--and you know”--looking steadily over my
head out of the window while he spoke--“there’s no reason why----”
“Oh yes, there is, Willy,” I said, interrupting him. “Poor Aunt Jane has
been by herself all this time. I ought not to leave her alone any
more.”
“Well, and won’t you be leaving us alone too?”--still without changing
the direction of his eyes.
“Oh! you will be no worse off than you were before I came,” I answered,
with the hasty indiscretion of argument.
He did not reply, and I had time to be sorry for my thoughtlessness,
before he said, with an assumption of carelessness--
“Well, I’m going out now, and I advise you to do the same.” He left the
room; but, reopening the door, put his head in--“I say, don’t send that
letter,” he said, and shut the door again before I could answer.
I did not meet Uncle Dominick at lunch. Roche told me not to wait for
him, as he was not well, and would probably not come in; and I had
almost finished my solitary meal before Willy appeared. He and I were
both more at our ease than we had been at our first meeting that
morning. I do not know what had operated in his case, but for myself, I
felt more than ever that I had become a different person--a person to
whom nothing mattered very much, whose only link with the everyday life
of the past and present was a very bitter and humiliating pain.
“I have to go into Moycullen this afternoon,” said Willy, occupying
himself very busily with the carving of the cold beef. “I was wondering
if you might care to ride there. The horse wants exercise, and I thought
perhaps--you said something about wanting fresh air----”
I did not know how to refuse an invitation so humbly given, although my
first inclination had been to do so.
“It is rather a long ride,” I began doubtfully.
“Well, you can turn back whenever you like.”
I debated with myself. As I was going away so soon, it could not make
much real difference to any one; and Uncle Dominick had specially asked
me not to neglect Willy. Besides--I could not help it--some faint hope
struggled up in my heart that in Moycullen I might hear something of the
O’Neills.
“Very well,” I said finally; “I will go with you.”
Willy and I had often ridden to Moycullen. It was a long ride, but we
had established a short cut across the fields at one place which
considerably shortened the distance; though experience had shown us that
the amount of jumping it involved, and the rough ground to be crossed,
did away with any great saving of time. To-day we went in off the road
at the usual gap, and as we cantered over the grass to the accustomed
spot in each fence, the free stride of the horse, and the tingling of
the wind in my cheeks, brought back the old feeling of exultant
independence, the last remnant of my headache cleared away, and for the
time I even forgot that quiet, incessant aching at my heart.
One or two successful conflicts with his horse had done much to restore
Willy’s confidence and self-possession.
“It’s a long time since we had a ride now,” he said, after we had come
out over a bank on to the road again.
“Yes; I was just thinking the same. I am very glad I came out.”
“We must try and get a look at the hounds next week; they meet pretty
close--that is to say”--continuing his sentence with something of a
jerk--“if you’re not too busy packing for America then.”
I did not answer, and Willy said nothing more until we had pulled up
into a walk on some rising ground, from which we could see the town of
Moycullen straggling out of an opening between two hills, its
whitewashed houses showing dimly through the blue smoke which lay about
it like a lake.
“And did you send that letter, after all?” Willy said, in an unconcerned
way.
“Yes,” I answered; “you know I always write to Aunt Jane on Friday.”
“Then you mean to say you are really going back?”
I nodded.
“Well, I suppose you know best,” he said coldly.
Alaska put her foot on a stone, and stumbled slightly.
“Hold up, you confounded fool!” he said, chucking up her head roughly,
and digging his spurs in.
The mare reared and plunged, and to steady her we broke into a trot,
which brought us into the crooked, crowded streets of Moycullen.
It was market-day, and the carts that had come in with their loads of
butter, turf, fowls, and old women blocked our way in every direction. I
remained on my horse’s back while Willy went off about his business, and
for the next half-hour I only caught glimpses of him, doubling round the
immovable groups of talkers, and eluding the beggars with practised
skill as he dived in and out of the little shops. Willy’s satisfaction
and confidence in the warehouses of Moycullen, and the amount of
shopping which he contrived to do there, had always been a matter of
fresh surprise to me.
Beggars pestered me; little boys exasperated me by offers to hold
Blackthorn, regardless of the fact that I was on his back; and women
clustered round me on the pavement and discussed my lineage and
appearance, but I was too dispirited to be much amused by their
comments. The glow of my gallop had faded out; I felt cold and tired,
and thought that Willy had never before been so long over his shopping.
At last he appeared unexpectedly at my horse’s shoulder.
“I was thinking that you must be dead for want of your tea. I’ve just
ordered some at Reardon’s, and you must come and drink it before we go
home.”
I assented without much interest, and began to push Blackthorn through
the crowd. At the hotel I dismounted, and followed Willy listlessly into
the dark, unsavoury commercial room, the only available apartment in
which we could have tea. Its sole occupant got up in obedience to a
whisper from the boots, and hurriedly conveyed himself and his glass of
whiskey and water from the room which had been allotted to him and the
gentlemen of his profession, and I sat down at the long
oil-cloth-covered table and began to pour out the tea, while Willy
battered the fire into a blaze. He had evidently made up his mind to be
cheerful, but as evidently he was not quite certain as to what to talk
about.
I listened with as much intelligence as I could muster to such pieces of
news as he had picked up during his shopping, but our conversation
gradually slackened, and finally came to a full stop. I slowly drank the
contents of my enormous teacup, wondering why it was that at country
hotels the bread and butter and the china were alike abnormally thick. I
noticed that Willy had looked at me undecidedly once or twice during
the last few minutes, and at length he said, in a way that showed he had
been framing the question for some time--
“I suppose, if you went to America, you’d be coming back again?”
“Come back!” I echoed. “No, I do not think there is the least chance of
my doing that.”
I had finished my tea, and got up as I spoke.
“Then you’ve done with the old country altogether?”
“Yes; altogether,” I answered resolutely, turning aside to study one of
the oleographs on the walls.
I could not have said another word, but, in a sort of defiance of my own
weakness, I began to hum a tune, one that had been in my mind
unrecognized all day. Now as I hummed it the straining sweetness of the
notes of a violin filled my memory, and I knew where and how I had heard
it last.
Willy said nothing more, but finished his tea, and, getting up, rang the
bell and ordered the horses to be brought round. We had to stand for a
minute in the doorway while they were coming. A cold wind was springing
up with the sunset; the pale yellow light was contending with the newly
lighted street-lamps, and over my head a large jet of gas flickered
drearily behind the name “Reardon” on the fan-light.
“Hullo! look at the Clashmore wagonette,” Willy said suddenly. “It’s
coming along now behind that string of turf-carts.”
The turf-carts lumbered slowly down the narrow street, the chestnuts and
wagonette having, perforce, to follow at a foot-pace. On the box,
sharply outlined against the frosty sky, I saw Nugent’s figure, and
inside was a huddled mass of furs, which I supposed was Madam O’Neill.
My first instinct was to shrink back into the hall, but it was too late;
Willy was already taking off his hat, and I bowed mechanically as Nugent
lifted his, and drove past without speaking.
We rode quickly and steadily homewards through the darkening hills, an
occasional word only breaking the silence between us. I had no wish to
speak, no wish for anything but to escape from this miserable place, and
to forget all that had happened to me since the night when I had first
driven along this very road. This was the fulfilment of the foolish,
unacknowledged hope which had been my real reason for to-day’s ride. I
had met Nugent, and could take home with me the certainty that I had
made no mistake as to what his letter had meant, and that he, for his
part, would be quite sure that I had treated him, and was now treating
my cousin, in a manner worthy even of the evil traditions of “American
girls.”
It was quite dark when we got to Durrus, but, as the gates swung back, I
could see that it was Anstey who had opened them for us. I rode through
a little in advance of Willy, who had checked his horse in order to let
me go first. I thought I caught the sound of a whispered word or two
from Anstey, and, with the clang of the closing gate, I distinctly heard
Willy say in a low voice, “No, I can’t.”
I rode fast up the avenue so that he should not overtake me. I was sick
at heart at this confirmation of what my uncle had told me. Everything
was going wrong. I had spoilt my own life, and now I had to stand by
and see Willy ruin his, knowing that I had it, perhaps, in my power to
save him, and yet feeling incapable of doing so.
When I met Uncle Dominick at dinner, his manner was more blandly
affectionate than I had ever known it, and but for the recollections
which his haggard face called up, I should have thought that the scene
of two nights ago had been a dream.
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CHAPTER IX.
GARDEN HILL.
“Was this to meet? Not so; we have not met.”
Wednesday was the Burkes’ At Home day. They were the only people in the
country who had taken to themselves a “day,” and to go and see them, and
to eat their peculiarly admirable cakes, had become a recognized method
of spending that afternoon. To-day, at about four o’clock, when I came
in, their small drawing-room was full of people, and their confidential
little copper tea-kettle was already making incessant journeys between
the fireplace and the tea-table.
Mr. Jimmy Barrett was carrying about cups of tea, steering his perilous
way among the low velvet-covered tables and basket chairs with a face
expressive of the liveliest apprehension. He was the only young man
present--a fact in itself sufficiently overwhelming, and now made doubly
so by the attentions which, _faute de mieux_, were being bestowed upon
him by Miss Dennehy, a young lady whom I remembered as having been much
sought after at the Mount Prospect dance.
He took the first opportunity of sitting down in an unconspicuous
position behind his mother’s chair, from whence he returned feeble and
evasive rejoinders to the badinage levelled at him from the sofa, on
which were seated Miss Dennehy and the rector’s daughter, Miss Josie
Horan. His mother, a lady whose ample proportions were a tacit reproach
to her son’s meagreness of aspect, reclined imposingly in a chair by
the fire, and several other ladies whom I did not know were sitting
round the room.
The Misses Burke and their mother welcomed me effusively.
“Where’s Willy? I haven’t seen him this long while,” said Miss Mimi,
regarding me with an expression of heartiest curiosity and good
fellowship.
“No, indeed,” said Mrs. Burke; “we were wondering what had become of you
both.”
She was a brisk little old lady, whose bright black eyes and hooked nose
were suggestive of an ancient parrakeet, and whose voice further carried
out the idea. I knew well that any cross-examination that she might
subject me to would be as water unto wine compared with Miss Mimi’s, and
I gladly turned and addressed myself to her, and left Willy, who had
just come into the room, to satisfy Miss Mimi’s thirst for information.
His entrance caused a perceptible flutter in the room, and the occupants
of the sofa at once began a loud and attractive conversation.
“I’m _dying_ to hear more about the ball,” began Miss Horan. “Aggie,
you’re really no good at all”--this with artless petulance to Miss
Dennehy. “I’m sure Captain Sarsfield could give a better account of it.
_He_ wasn’t sitting on the stairs all the time; were you, Captain
Sarsfield?”
“I don’t think she should ask us these questions, should she, Captain
Sarsfield?” responded Miss Dennehy. “I think ’tis very wrong to tell
tales out of school!”
I, from the low chair which I had taken beside Mrs. Barrett, listened in
some anxiety to a discussion which for both Willy and me was of so
singularly discomposing a character. Willy, however, was equal to the
occasion. Having fittingly assured Miss Dennehy of his abhorrence of
tale-bearing, he provided himself with a cup of tea and a wedge of cake,
and proceeded with unimpaired equanimity to seat himself on the sofa
between Miss Horan and Miss Dennehy.
I had seldom seen Miss Horan, except behind the harmonium in her
father’s church, and should certainly never have suspected her of the
social gifts which she now displayed. She had a flat little face, set in
a shock of hair which had once been short and had not yet become long.
Her pale blue eyes almost watered with pride and excitement, as she
found that her conversation with Willy was attracting the attention of
the rest of the room.
“And who was the belle of the room, Captain Sarsfield?” she asked, when
Willy had comfortably settled down to his tea.
“Well, as you weren’t there, Miss Horan,” answered my cousin,
shamelessly, “I wasn’t able to make up my mind about it.”
A delighted titter ran round the room at this sally; as it ceased, Mrs.
Barrett broke the monumental silence which she had hitherto preserved.
“My Jimmy,” she said, in a heavy, distinct voice, that lent an almost
Scriptural tone to her utterances, casting an eye of disfavour at Miss
Josie, “told me that Miss Sarsfield and Miss O’Neill were the belles of
the ball.”
Deep as was my dismay at this unlooked-for statement, it was far
excelled by that of its originator. On Willy’s arrival he had altogether
effaced himself; but now, from his refuge behind his mother’s chair, I
heard him inarticulately disclaiming the dashing criticism attributed to
him.
“Oh,” said Miss Mimi, jovially, “we all know that Jimmy has an eye for a
pretty girl! I thought,” she continued, addressing Miss Dennehy, “they
were very bad about introducing people the other night. Didn’t you,
Aggie?”
“Really, _I_ didn’t notice it, Miss Burke; but I heard a great many
complaining about it, and I know the Croly girls like to keep their
gentlemen friends to themselves,” Miss Dennehy replied.
“Well,” said Miss Horan, “I saw Sissy Croly yesterday, and she said
that, indeed, she was introducing gentlemen all the evening. Oh, and she
was _mad_ with the O’Neills! She said that Connie O’Neill thought no one
good enough to dance with but that officer they had staying at
Clashmore; and as for Mr. O’Neill, he pretended he was engaged for
every dance, and her fawther”--it was thus that Miss Horan pronounced
“father”--“found him, after supper, sitting in the library reading the
paper.”
“Oh, I dare say,” said Miss Dennehy. “I know he was engaged to me for
the last extra, and as he didn’t choose to come for it, I didn’t choose
to wait for him; did I, Captain Sarsfield?”
Mrs. Burke’s continuous twitter of talk did not so engross me that I
could not hear all this, and remember that it was Willy who, after his
unavailing search for me, had become Nugent’s substitute, and something
in the rigid twist of his neck away from my direction told me that he
too had not forgotten the antecedents of that dance. Since her last
speech Mrs. Barrett had been as silent as she was motionless. I should
almost have thought she was asleep, but her eyes wandered to each
person’s face as they spoke, and somehow suggested to me the idea of an
intelligent restless spirit imprisoned in a featherbed. She now saved
Willy the necessity of replying.
“I wonder why the young ladies in this country are so anxious to dance
with Nugent O’Neill, as they all abominate him so much?” she inquired
solemnly.
Miss Horan and Miss Dennehy looked speechlessly round for sympathy at
this accusation, but before their indignation found words, a diversion
was created by the entrance of Mrs. Jackson-Croly and her daughters.
Miss Sissy Croly lingered at the door to speak to some one in the hall.
I recognized the voice which replied to her, though I could not hear the
words, and some instinct of self-defence made me rush into conversation
with Jimmy Barrett before Nugent followed Miss Croly into the room.
Since the day I had gone into Moycullen I had been slowly and, as I
thought, successfully hardening my heart. I had made a mistake, but it
was not an irretrievable one, and here was an opportunity of proving to
myself how little it had really affected me. So I talked sedulously to
Mr. Jimmy Barrett, until, Mrs. Croly’s greetings to the Burkes over,
manners demanded that I should shake hands with her. Nugent was standing
near, speaking to Miss Burke, and as I turned from Mrs. Croly he paused
in his conversation.
“How do you do, Miss Sarsfield?” he said formally; then, after a
moment’s silence, he spoke again to Miss Burke--“Yes, I was to have
started off yesterday, but I could not manage it, and I thought I
should like to see you before I go, as I may not be back again for some
time.”
“Why, every one is going away from the country!” said Miss Mimi,
directing her discourse to me. “Willy was saying, now this minute, that
he was afraid you were thinking of being off too?”
“Yes; I have been thinking of it, but I am not sure. I have to wait for
an answer from my aunt in Boston before I arrange anything,” I said,
with a confusion which took me unawares.
Miss Burke looked at me with delighted sagacity.
“Oh, now, I know quite well what that means! I don’t believe you’re
going away at all--do you, Mr. O’Neill?”
In spite of my own embarrassment, it gave an indefinable pleasure to
see, in the imperfect light afforded by Miss Burke’s lace-shrouded
windows, that Nugent’s imperturbable face was slowly changing in colour
from its usual brown to a dull crimson.
But Miss Mimi, in the fullness of her heart, did not wait for his
answer.
“I’ll talk to Willy about it,” she went on. “I’ll engage _he_ won’t let
you be running away from us like this!”
The fact that Nugent had turned away, and was speaking to Miss Croly,
gave me sufficient assurance to make some airy response. But I had lost
confidence in myself, and, cutting short the conversation, I again took
refuge in my chair near Mrs. Barrett.
For some little time Mrs. Jackson-Croly’s voice dominated the room, and
obviated all necessity for conversation on the part of any one else. She
also was talking of going away.
“Yes, Mrs. Burke,” she said; “I’m thinking of taking the girls to
Southsea. There’s such nice military society there. I always like to
take them to England as often as I can, on account of the accent. I
loathe a Cork brogue! My fawther took me abroad every year; he was so
alormed lest I’d acquire it, and I assure you, when we were children, he
used to insist on mamma’s putting cotton wool in our ears when we went
to old Mr. Flannagan’s church, for fear we’d ketch his manner of
speaking.”
“Dear, dear!” said Mrs. Burke, sympathetically, wholly unmoved by this
instance of the refinement of Mrs. Croly’s father. “Poor old Johnny
Flannagan! He had a beautiful voice in the pulpit. I declare”--turning
to me--“sometimes you’d think the people out in the street would hear
him, and the next minute you’d think ’twas a pigeon cooing to you.”
At another time I should probably have been inclined to lead Mrs. Burke
on to more reminiscences of this gifted divine, but my sole idea now was
to get away as soon as possible. I looked to see if Willy had nearly
finished his tea, but found that it was still in progress; in fact, when
I looked round, Miss Dennehy and Miss Horan were engaged in throwing
pieces of cake into his open mouth, loud laughter announcing equally the
success or failure of their aim. Willy caught my eye, and guiltily shut
his mouth.
“Do you want the horses, Theo?” he said, rightly interpreting my look,
and hastily getting up from the sofa, while small pieces of cake fell
off him in every direction. “I’ll go round and see about them.”
“Now, you needn’t be in such a hurry, Willy,” said Miss Burke, getting
up. “There’s just light enough left to show your cousin my new Plymouth
Rocks. I’ve been telling her all about them; and I’ve the doatiest
little house built for them in the yard! Come along, Miss Sarsfield;
we’ll slip out by the greenhouse while he’s getting the horses;” and,
snatching up a purple woollen antimacassar from the back of the chair,
she wrapped her head and shoulders in it, and with total unconsciousness
of her extraordinary appearance she led me out of the room.
The evening had grown very cold. I had felt smothered in the little
drawing-room, but now I shivered as I stood by the wired enclosure in
the corner of the garden, watching the much-vaunted Plymouth Rocks
picking and scratching about their gravel yard, and listening with
simulated intelligence to Miss Burke’s harangue upon their superiority
to all other tribes of hens. Beyond the fact that hens laid eggs in
greater or less profusion, I knew nothing about them. But, fortunately,
Miss Mimi’s enthusiasm asked for no more than the stray word or two of
ignorant praise with which I filled up her infrequent pauses.
My eyes took in, without losing any detail of absurdity, the effect of
her large face and majestic nose, surmounted by the purple antimacassar,
but my brain did not seem to receive any definite impression from it.
Every faculty was deadened by the battle between pride and despair that
was being fought out in me again. I had persuaded myself that that fight
was over and done with; but now as I stood in the damp twilight, and
looked at the firelit drawing-room windows, I felt that this time
despair might be likely to get the mastery.
Miss Mimi’s voice broke strangely in on my thoughts.
“Well, now, wait a moment till I go round to the back,” she said. “Me
greatest beauties are roosting in the house; but I must run into the
kitchen for the key, and then I can get in and poke them out for you to
see them.”
She went round through a door in the thick fuchsia hedge, which
encircled the garden and divided it from the yard, and left me standing
by myself in the chilly silence of the evening. I had almost forgotten
what I was waiting there for, though it could not have been more than
three or four minutes since Miss Burke left me, when I heard steps come
through the yard, and the faint smell of cigarettes penetrated the
hedge. A horse’s hoofs clattered on the stones as it was led out of the
stable.
“Well, good-bye, Nugent,” said Willy’s voice. “Will you be away long?”
“Yes; I dare say I shall not be home for some time. I am thinking of
going abroad for a bit.”
“Abroad? Where to? Is it to Cannes again? Or will you take a run over
to--to the U-nited States?” said Willy, with an indifferent assumption
of an American accent.
One or two movements from the horse filled the brief silence which
ensued, and when Nugent spoke again it was evident he had mounted.
“No,” he said; “that’s about the last place I should ever want to go to.
Well, good-bye. I suppose I shall find you here when I get back?” He
went on a few steps, and stopped. “Say good-bye to Miss Sarsfield for
me, will you?” he said, and rode out of the yard.
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PART III.
PROFIT AND LOSS.
CHAPTER I.
A THREAT.
“With morning wakes the will, and cries,
‘Thou shalt not be the fool of loss.’”
“A night of mystery. Strange sounds are swept
Through the dim air.”
Aunt Jane’s answer to my letter had come. It had been much what I
expected it would be; she said she would be satisfied to see me back at
any time I saw fit to come, and she even unbent so far as to say that
the sooner that was, the better pleased she would be.
That was a week ago, and I was still at Durrus. If I had kept to my
original idea, I should by this time have been on the Atlantic; but the
steamer by which I had meant to have sailed was only taking to Aunt Jane
a letter, in which I had for the present, at all events, postponed my
return. I had not been able to explain very clearly my reasons for
changing my mind--principally for the excellent one that I was not quite
certain what they were. As the date on which I had settled to go came
nearer, it had appeared to me that the imperative necessity for my
leaving Durrus became more and more imaginary.
I had gradually come to take fresh views of life. It was not very long
since I had seen, for the first time, a new aspect of it, and had weakly
given myself over to its enchantment. But since then I had made up my
mind that that aspect was one that did not concern me personally any
more, and I now believed that there was nothing to prevent me from
going on with my life in the old way, as if I had never had that glimpse
of another possible future.
My idea that on Willy’s account I ought to go away had changed into the
directly opposite conviction, that on his account I ought to stay. What
my uncle had said to me about him that morning in the garden had not, I
must admit, very greatly disquieted me. I knew very well--I could not
help knowing it--that what he had said was true, and that it was my
influence which, though unintentionally on my part, had driven Anstey’s
into the background. But I would not believe his warning that there was
any further danger in the future.
Poor little Anstey! Uncle Dominick’s hints had made me think with a
great deal of unavailing pity about her. The recollection of her soft
eyes and deprecating voice made his definition of her as “an impudent
girl” singularly inappropriate. I had very little doubt but that Willy,
being both susceptible and idle, had amused himself, for want of better
occupation, by making love to her, and, so far from pitying him for
being “entangled,” all my sympathies were on the side of the
“entangler.” Even if he had ever had any real feeling for her, it had
become, I was very sure, a thing of the past; and, knowing Uncle
Dominick’s strong wish that I should stay at Durrus, I believed that he
had ingeniously used this imaginary peril as a reason for my doing so.
However, that whispered interchange of words at the gate on the way home
from Moycullen, gave unexpected reality to his fears as to the
consequences of a “misunderstanding” between Willy and me. Here was his
prophecy being fulfilled, and I was all the angrier with Willy from the
haunting feeling that it was I who had to a great extent revived this
undesirable state of things. It was of no use to try and persuade myself
that I had no real moral responsibility in the matter. My conscience had
developed an exasperating sensitiveness in connection with Willy, and
was persistently deaf to the excellent arguments which I brought to bear
upon it. I began to wonder whether it might not be possible to undo some
of the harm I had done, by beginning over again with Willy on new
lines--by adopting a friendliness so frank and so unsentimental, that he
should gradually be led into a state of calm and cousinly companionship.
I lost no time in trying the experiment, but after a few days I had to
confess to myself that it was uphill work. Willy was baffling, more
baffling than I had believed he ever could be. I did not even know
whether he appreciated the cheerfulness which I sometimes found it so
hard to keep up. There was a latent moroseness about him by which,
perhaps from its unaccustomedness, I could not help being a little
overawed. It bewildered me and set me at fault to see him spend the
evening, as he often did, in virtuously reading some standard work,
instead of wasting it in our old good-for-nothing way, by sitting over
the fire and doing nothing more profitable than playing with the dogs
and talking illiterate gossip. I could not make him out. I had once
thought his character a very simple one, so much so as to be almost
uninterestingly transparent, and this new complexity occupied my mind
and mystified me considerably. I suppose mystery is always interesting,
and just then I was inclined to cling to anything that led my thoughts
away from myself. At all events, whatever might have been the cause, I
thought and speculated about him more than I had ever done before.
On the day that we went to the Burkes’, he had been more
incomprehensible than ever. He rode there with me in a state of such
profound gloom, that I wondered if it were the result of some
culminating quarrel with his father. I certainly could never have
anticipated the admirable way in which, during the visit, he comported
himself; still less his continued good spirits on the way home. I did
not at the time understand their cause, but I afterwards knew that it
was what had happened that afternoon that had, to a great extent,
cleared the atmosphere. It was now more than a fortnight since then, and
he had had no very serious relapse into moodiness. We had pretty nearly
arrived at the ideal friendly but unromantic footing that I had hoped
for--quite enough for me to permit myself a little self-glorification,
and going back to America any sooner than I had intended seemed more
unnecessary than ever. Uncle Dominick had effaced himself almost
entirely from our lives. Dinner was now the only time during the day
that I saw him, and he used to sit and listen to what we were saying
without joining in it. There was nothing about him to remind me of his
outburst that night in the drawing-room. When he spoke, it was usually
to say something which, for him, was almost affectionate, and his manner
often showed traces of feebleness and exhaustion which were very new
with him.
Thursday, the 28th of January, was Willy’s twenty-fifth birthday. We
had fitly celebrated it by going out hunting, and, having come home
hungry after a good day’s sport, were now, in consideration of having
had no lunch, indulging in poached eggs at afternoon tea.
“The men in the yard tell me that there are to be great doings to-night
in honour of me,” Willy remarked, when the first sharp edge had been
taken off his appetite. “There’s to be a bonfire outside the front gate,
and Conneen the piper, and dancing, and everything. It means that I’ll
have to send them a tierce of porter, and that you’ll have to turn out
after dinner and go down and have a look at them.”
“So long as they don’t ask me to dance, I shall be very glad to go. But
would your father mind?”
“Mind? Not he! You’re such a ‘white-headed boy’ with him these times,
you can do what you like with him. By Jove, he’s a deal fonder of you
than he ever was of me!” said Willy, with ungrudging admiration.
“I am sure he is not,” I said lazily, and as much for the sake of
contradiction as from any false modesty. “It is most unlikely. I know if
I were he, I should naturally like you better than I like myself.”
“What on earth are you trying to say?” said Willy. “Would you mind
saying it all over again--slowly?”
“I mean,” I said, slightly confused, but sticking to my point--“I mean
that if I were your father, I should see a great many more reasons for
being fond of _you_ than I should of _me_.”
“Well, as far as I can make that out,” said Willy, grinning
exasperatingly, “it seems to me that it’s a pity you’re not my father.”
“You know perfectly well what I mean. Just suppose that I was your
father----”
“I’d rather not, thanks.”
I did not heed the interruption. “I should be much fonder of you----”
“Then, why aren’t you?”
“I don’t care what you say,” I said, feeling I was getting the worst of
it; “I know what I mean quite well, and so would you, only that you
choose to be an idiot.” And, getting up, I left the room with all speed,
in order to have the last word in a discussion which was taking a rather
difficult tone.
The sea-fog had crept up from the harbour towards evening, and it fell
in heavy drops from the trees upon Willy and me as we walked down the
avenue after dinner to see the bonfire. There was no moon visible, but
the milky atmosphere held some luminous suggestion of past or coming
light. It was a still night; we could hear the low booming of the sea in
the caves below the old graveyard, and the nearer splashing of the
rising tide among the Durrus rocks.
“There’s no sound I hate like that row the ground-swell makes out there
at the point,” said Willy. “If you’re feeling any way lonely, it makes
you want to hang yourself.”
“I like it,” I said, stopping to listen. “I often lie awake and listen
to it these nights, when the westerly wind is blowing.”
“Maybe you’d get enough of doing that if you were here by yourself for a
bit, and knew you’d got to stop here. I tell you you’ve no notion what
this place is like in the winter. Sometimes there’s not a creature in
the country to speak to from one month’s end to another.”
“I ought to know something about it by this time.”
“You think you do,” he answered, with a short laugh. “But you can’t very
well know what it was like before you came, no more than you can tell
what it will be like when you’re gone.”
We moved on again.
“Cannot you ever get away?” I asked sympathetically.
“No; how could I leave the governor? I tell you,” he went on, “that if
you were boxed up here with no one to talk to but him, you’d go anywhere
for company.” He stopped for a moment. “Do you know that, before you
came here last October, I was as near making a fool of myself as ever a
chap was”--breaking off again, but continuing before I could speak--“I
believe I didn’t care a hang what I did with myself then. I suppose
you’ll think that I’m an ass, but it’s very hard to have no one at all
who cares about you.”
“I am sure it must be,” I said, feeling very uncomfortable, and walking
quickly on.
I had a nervous feeling that in confidences of this kind I might find
the “calm and cousinly” footing that I so much desired, slipping from
under my feet.
We were now near the gate, and could already hear the squeals of the
bagpipe, and see the glare of the bonfire in the fog. All round the
semi-circular sweep outside the lodge, a row of women and girls were
seated on the ground, with their backs to the ivy-covered wall, while a
number of men and boys were heaping sticks on to a great glowing mound
of turf that was burning in the middle of the road. The barrel of porter
which Willy had sent was propped up in one of the niches in the wall,
and in the other niches, and along the top of the walls, were clustered
innumerable little boys.
As Willy and I came through the open gates, a sort of straggling cheer
was set up by the men, which was shrilly augmented and prolonged by
shrieks from the children in the niches. Willy walked up to the bonfire.
“Well, boys,” he said, “that’s a great bonfire you have. I’m glad to see
you all here.”
At this moderate display of eloquence there was another cheer, and as it
died away, a very old man, in knee-breeches and tail-coat, came forward,
and, to my intense amazement, kissed Willy’s hand.
“I’m a tenant in Durrus eighty-seven years,” he said, “an’ if I was
dyin’ this minute, I’d say you were the root and branch of your
grandfather’s family! Root and branch--root and branch!”
I was not given time to ponder over the meaning of this occult
commendation, for an old woman, darting forward, snatched Willy’s hand
from the man. She also began by kissing it resoundingly, but, with an
excess of adoration, she flung it from her.
“On the mout’! on the mout’!” she screamed, flinging her arms round him;
and then, dragging his face down to hers, she suited the action to the
word.
Willy submitted to the salute with admirable fortitude; but, in order to
avoid further demonstrations of a similar kind, he called upon Conneen
the piper to play a jig. I heard from the other side of the road a long
preliminary drone, and the piper, a weird-looking, crippled hunchback,
seated on a donkey, began to produce from his bagpipes a succession of
sounds of varying discordancy, known as “The Foxhunter’s Jig.”
I drew back into the smaller gateway to watch the dance. The figures of
the four dancers showed darkly against the background of firelit, steamy
fog, and the flames of a tar-barrel which had just been thrown upon the
bonfire glared unsteadily on the faces of the people, and on the glowing
network of branches overhead. Willy was one of the four who were
dancing, and was covering himself with glory by the number and intricacy
of his steps. He had chosen as his partner the stout lady in whose
cottage we had once sheltered from the rain, and above the piercing
efforts of the bagpipes to render in “The Foxhunter’s Jig” the various
noises of the chase, the horn, the hounds, and the hunters, the plaudits
of the audience rose with more and more enthusiasm.
“More power, Masther Willy!”
“Tighten yourself now, Mrs. Sweeny!”
“Ah ha! d’ye mind that for a lep! He’s the divil’s own dancer!”
I looked on and listened to it all from the gateway, feeling, in spite
of my Sarsfield blood, a stranger in a strange land. I did not recognize
many of the people about me; beyond some of the junior members of the
Durrus household, who nodded to me with the chastened, reserved
friendliness of the domestic servant when away from her own roof, and
Mary Minnehane, whose white teeth shone in a broad grin when I looked at
her, I knew no one. Neither Anstey nor her mother were anywhere to be
seen, though I had looked up and down the row of faces several times for
them. A small, ugly old man, whom I knew to be Michael Brian, the
lodge-keeper, was in charge of the barrel of porter. I noticed during
the dance that, although he never took his eyes off the dancers, he did
not applaud, and before it was over he left the barrel in the care of a
subordinate, and went past me into the lodge.
In a minute or two he returned, bringing Anstey with him, and she began
to help him in dispensing the porter. The niche in which it was placed
was quite near to where I was standing, and I could hear him scolding
her in a low voice. She looked frightened and unhappy, and Willy’s
half-confession on the way down made me watch her with a peculiar,
pitying interest. When the jig had ended with a long squeal from the
pipes, intended, I presumed, to represent the fox’s death-agony, Willy
led his breathless partner back to her place, and slowly made his way to
me, amid a shower of compliments and pious ejaculations.
“Phew I’m mostly dead!” he said, leaning against the gatepost beside
me, and fanning himself with his cap. “Mrs. Sweeny has more going in
her than ten men, and dancing on the gravel is no joke.”
While he was speaking, I saw that his eye had fallen on Anstey, and
almost imperceptibly he faced more and more in my direction, till his
back was turned to her and her father. Another dance began, but, instead
of joining in it, he lighted a cigarette and went on talking to me.
“Perhaps we’d better be getting home,” he said presently. “You must have
seen about enough of it.”
We moved from where we were standing into the carriage-drive, and he
said a general good night to the assemblage. The jig was stopped, and
one of the dancers shouted--
“Three cheers for Masther Willy!”
“Huzzay!” rose the chorus.
“And three cheers for Miss Sarsfield!” called out a woman’s voice,
which I fancied I recognized as my friend Mary Minnehane’s, and another
“Huzzay!” arose in my honour.
Willy looked at me with a beaming face.
“Do you hear that, Theo? You see, _they_ think a good deal of you too.”
“It’s very kind of them,” I replied, retreating precipitately into the
darkness; “but I hope they don’t expect me to make a speech.”
“Masther Willy!”
I heard a hoarse whisper behind me, and, looking back, I saw that old
Michael Brian had followed Willy through the gates.
“Masther Willy, aren’t you goin’ to dance with my gerr’l?”
“No, I’m not; I’m going home,” said Willy, roughly. He turned away, but
Brian caught his sleeve.
“Ah! come back now and dance with her,” he said, in a part bullying,
part wheedling voice; “don’t give her the go by.”
Willy wrenched away his sleeve.
“Go to the devil! You’re drunk!” he said, in a low angry voice.
“Dhrunk is it? Wait a while, and you’ll see if I’m dhrunk,” said Brian,
following him as he turned from him, and speaking more threateningly.
“Dhrunk or sober, there’ll be work yet before ye’re done with me.”
Willy made no remark on what had taken place as he joined me where I was
standing a few paces in advance of him. I did not know what to say, and
we walked silently away up the avenue. The noise of the bagpipes died
away behind us in the fog, and the moaning rush of the tide, now full
in, on the strand, was again the only sound to be heard. We had got into
the darkness of the clump of elms, when Willy stopped short.
“I thought I heard some one there in the trees,” he said. “I wonder if
that old blackguard----” He did not finish the sentence, and we both
listened.
“I don’t hear anything now, whatever,” he said, moving on. But before we
had gone more than a few steps, I heard a twig snap.
“There _is_ something there,” I said apprehensively, coming closer to
him. He felt for my hand, and put it into his arm.
“Never mind; very likely it’s only a stray jackass; don’t be frightened
at all.”
We walked on quickly until we were in the open beyond the little wood,
and we were near the house before he spoke again.
“Theo, I think I’ve made the most miserable hash of my life that ever
any one did. You needn’t say anything, and you needn’t think that I’m
going to say anything that would annoy you anyway; but I just feel that
everything’s gone against me, and I may as well chuck it all up.”
“Oh, that’s nonsense, Willy!” I said, trying to speak with more
cheerfulness than I felt. “That is a very poor way of looking at
things.”
“Very likely, but it’s the only way I’ve got.” We were on the steps by
this time, and he opened the hall door. “Anyhow, it doesn’t make much
difference how I look at them; I suppose it will all come to the same
sooner or later.”
He shut the door with a bang, and I went upstairs.
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