STORM.
“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?”
That night the wind shifted to the south-west, and the storm that came
thundering in from the Atlantic was the worst I had known since I came
to Durrus. The rain had been coming down in furious floods ever since
sunset, and as the night darkened in, the wind dashed it against my
window till I thought the sashes must give way. The roaring of the
storm in the trees never ceased, and once or twice, through the
straining and lashing of the branches, I heard the crash of a falling
bough. The house was full of sounds. The rattling of the ill-fitting
windows, the knocking of the picture-frames against the walls of the
corridor, the loud drip of water from a leak in the skylight into a bath
placed to catch it in the hall. Somewhere in the house a door was
banging incessantly. It maddened me to hear it, more especially now,
when I was trying to determine by the sound if the door which had just
been opened was that of Willy’s room. He surely must be in the house on
a night like this; and yet his door had been open, and his room dark,
when I had passed it on my way up to bed an hour ago.
Since he had left me in the plantation--left me sitting there in
stunned horror, with the rain beating down through the laurels upon
me--I had not seen or heard anything of him. He had gone without another
word of explanation, without saying anything to qualify that last
speech, or that could give any clue to the cause of it. It was all dark,
inexplicable. I could only sit over my fire in impotent anxiety, my
brain toiling with confused surmises, and my heart heavy with
apprehension.
I think I never was as fond of Willy, or as truly unhappy about him, as
now, when I had just received from him a slight, the idea even of which
I should a few months ago have laughed at. I did not care about my own
point of view--I even forgot it, in my consuming desire to find out the
reason of Willy’s mysterious behaviour during the last two days. Nothing
that had gone before threw any light upon the problem, unless, indeed,
Michael Brian’s threat that night of the bonfire had had some incredibly
sinister meaning. No, there was no adequate solution; but the bellowing
of the wind in the chimney, and the sliding clatter of a slate falling
down the roof, brought home to me the one tangible fact that he was
still out of the house, at twelve o’clock on the wildest night of the
year.
The next day was Sunday. The storm raged steadily on, putting all
possibility of going to church out of the question. The shutters on the
western side of the house were all closed, and I sat in the
semi-darkness of the library, trying to read, and looking from time to
time through the one unshuttered window out on to the gravel sweep.
Broken twigs and pieces torn from the weather-slated walls were strewed
over the ground. A great sycamore had fallen across the drive a little
below the house, and the other trees swung and writhed as if in despair
at the long stress of the gale.
Roche came in and out of the room on twenty different pretexts during
the day, and made each an occasion for ventilating some new theory to
explain Willy’s absence. I was kneeling on the window-seat, looking out
into the turmoil, as the wind hurried the black rain-clouds across the
sky, and the gloomy daylight faded into night, when he came into the
room again.
“There’s a great dhraught from that window, miss,” he remarked. “You’d
be best let me shut the shutthers. You’ll see no sign of Masther Willy
this day, unless he’s coming by the last thrain.”
“Why, what makes you think that?” I asked eagerly.
“Well, miss, the postman’s just afther being here, and he said there
was one that saw him at the station at Moycullen last night.”
“At the station--Moycullen!” I repeated, in bewilderment. “Was he going
away?”
“He was, miss. Sure he was seen getting into the thrain, though the dear
knows where he was going!”
“Have you told the master that he was seen there?”
“I did, miss. Sure he’s asking for him the whole day. He’s very unaisy
in his mind. He’s roaming, roaming through the house all the day, and
he’s give ordhers to have his dinner sent to his own room. He wasn’t
best pleased when he found Masther Willy had locked up the room that’s
next your own, and twice, an’ I coming upstairs, I seen him sthriving to
open the door.”
“Master Willy did that to prevent Moll getting in there,” I explained.
“I will tell the master so myself.”
“Don’t say a word to him, miss, good nor bad,” said Roche, shaking his
knotted forefinger at me expressively. “He’ll forget--he’ll forget----”
He sniffed significantly, and, as if to prevent himself from saying any
more, he shuffled out of the room.
But Willy did not come by the last train; indeed, the storm was still
too violent for any one to travel. I lay awake the greater part of the
night, filled with feverish fears and fancies. Several times I could
have been sure that I heard some one wandering about the house, and once
I thought there was a shaking and pushing at the locked door of the room
next to mine.
When I awoke next morning, I found that the wind had been at length
beaten down by a deluge of rain, which was descending in a grey
continuous flood, as if it never meant to stop. The day dragged wearily
on. Roche had spoken truly in saying that Uncle Dominick was uneasy and
restless. It seemed to me that he never stopped walking about the house.
I heard him constantly moving backwards and forwards, from the library
to his own study, and every now and then the sound of his footsteps in
Willy’s room overhead would startle me for an instant into wondering if
Willy had come home.
The long waiting and suspense had got on my nerves, and the gloom and
silence made the house seem like a prison. I could neither read nor play
the piano. I was debarred from even the society of Pat and Jinny, as, on
the first day of the storm, their muddy footmarks in the hall had made
my uncle angrily order their exile to the stable. I almost looked
forward to dinner-time. I should then at least have occupation, and a
certain amount of society, for half an hour, and there was something
usual and conventional about it which would be a rest after the tension
and loneliness of the day.
Rather to my surprise, I found my uncle standing in the hall when I came
downstairs to dinner.
“What a terrible day this has been!” he said, as he offered me his arm.
“This rain makes the air so oppressive,” he sighed, “and I have a great
deal to trouble me.”
He helped me to soup, and, having done so, got up and walked over to the
fireplace.
“I have no appetite at all,” he said. “I suppose it is caused by loss of
sleep, but I really have a positive distaste for food.”
He turned his back to me, and leaned his forehead against the high
mantelshelf, while I went on with my dinner as well as I could. After a
little time, however, he came back to the table.
“Dear me! I am forgetful of my duties! Will you not take a glass of
wine? You must be tired after your long drive in the snow from
Carrickbeg.” Mentioning a station between Cork and Moycullen.
I stared. “But I have not been out to-day.”
He put his hand to his head. “How forgetful I am!” he said hastily. “But
the fact is, I am so upset by anxiety about Willy that I do not know
what I am saying.”
“Then, have you heard that Willy is at Carrickbeg?” I asked excitedly.
“No, my dear, no,” he said, shaking his head two or three times; “I know
nothing about him. I confused Carrickbeg with Moycullen. Till a few
years ago, Carrickbeg was our nearest station, and in those days
travellers did not arrive here till one o’clock in the morning--one
o’clock on a cold snowy morning.” He slowly repeated to himself, with a
shudder.
I felt very sorry to see how unhinged he was by what he had gone
through, and I tried to persuade him to eat something, but without
success. He poured himself out a glass of port, and, having drunk it,
again left his chair and stood by the fire, fidgeting with a trembling
hand with the objects on the mantelshelf. Dinner was soon over, and, not
liking to leave Uncle Dominick, I drew a chair over to the fire and sat
down. He did not seem to notice me, but began to pace up and down the
room, stopping now and then by one of the windows as if listening for
sounds outside; but the noisy splashing of the water that fell from a
broken eaveshoot on to the gravel, was all that was to be heard.
“There!” he said at last, in a whisper; “do you hear the wheels? Do you
hear them coming?”
I jumped up and listened too. “No, I can hear nothing.”
“I _did_ hear them,” he said positively. “I know they are beginning.”
I could not understand what he meant, but I went to the nearest window,
and was beginning to unbar the shutters, when there came a loud ring at
the hall-door bell.
“I told you he was coming,” my uncle said. “I must get out some brandy
for him after his long drive in the snow.”
The hall door was opened, and I heard Roche’s voice raised excitedly,
and then the rustle of a mackintosh being thrown off. I ran to the door,
and, opening it, met Willy coming into the room.
His face was all wet with rain, and his hair was hanging in damp points
on his forehead. He took my outstretched hand and shook it, and,
without answering my incoherent questions, walked past me into the room.
My uncle was still standing by the window, holding with one hand to the
heavy folds of the red curtain.
“What! Willy!” he said, coming forward, and staring at Willy with wild
eyes in which frightened conjecture slowly steadied into reassurance.
“Was it _you_ who drove up?” A sort of sob shook his voice. “My dear
boy, I am rejoiced to see you; but, good heavens, how wet you
are!”--going to the sideboard and pouring out a glass of brandy. “Here,
you must drink this at once.”
“I don’t want it,” said Willy; “I don’t want anything.”
He stood still looking at his father, who, from some cause or other, was
shaking in every limb.
“How did you get up to the house, Willy?” I interposed. “Did you know of
the tree that was blown across the avenue?”
“They told me of it below at the lodge, and I walked from the corner,”
he answered. “I’ve got something to say to you, sir,” he went on,
addressing his father. “You needn’t go away, Theo; you might as well
hear it too.”
Uncle Dominick lifted the glass of brandy to his lips, and swallowed it
at a gulp.
“Well, my dear boy,” he said, with a smile, and in a stronger voice,
“let us hear what you have got to say.”
“It’s easy told,” Willy said, putting his hands into his pockets. “I
went up to Cork on Saturday night, and Anstey Brian followed me this
morning, and I married her there.”
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