POUL-NA-COPPAL.
“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.”
I am not very clear as to what happened next, Mrs. Rourke told me
afterwards that I had burst into the kitchen with “a face on me like
death,” only able to say, “The master--go to the master!”
After that, I suppose I somehow made my way to the drawing-room, as I
next remember walking to and fro between the window and the fireplace,
with a confused feeling that by doing so I should steady my whirling
brain.
He had called me “Owen.” He had mistaken me, in his madness or delirium,
for his dead brother--a mistake which my strong likeness to my father
made easy to understand; but neither madness nor delirium could account
for all he had said. “You were very ill when you came.” “They all think
that you’re buried in Cork; but you’re not, you know!” “I declare to God
I never did anything to you.” “She asked me to help her to take
you--there--out through that window.”
What had all this meant? He certainly believed he was speaking to my
father. If I could only think it out quietly! What had Moll Hourihane to
say to my father, and what had she done to him that he should be afraid
of her?
Then he had spoken of “the old man’s funeral”--my grandfather’s funeral.
How, even in his ravings, could he have forgotten that his brother died
two or three days before his father? It was no use; I could not think it
out. I must wait until my brain was calmer, till my thoughts had ceased
to reel and spin. I was only groping in the dark--in a darkness from
whose depths one persistent idea was thrusting itself at me like a
sword.
The distant sound of wheels on the drive reminded me that it was past
the time at which I was to start for Garden Hill. I hastily resolved to
wait and see Dr. Kelly before going there, and I rang the bell in order
to send a message to that effect out to the yard. No one answered it for
some time, but at length the door opened. I was standing by the fire,
with my elbows on the mantel-shelf and my forehead in my hands, and,
hearing a bashful murmur in Maggie’s voice, I said, without turning
round--
“Tell Tom I shall not want the trap until I send for it.”
The door closed, but footsteps advanced into the room.
“Well, what is it?” I said wearily, taking down my arms.
There was no answer, and, turning round, I found myself face to face
with Nugent.
I looked at him stupidly, without taking the hand which he had
conventionally held out to me. He drew it back quickly.
“How do you do?” he said very stiffly. “Miss Burke asked me to leave a
message for you on my way home. She hopes you do not forget that she
expects you this afternoon. She thought you would have been with her at
tea time.
“I could not go,” I answered, without moving.
“Miss Burke desired me to say that you were not to disappoint her,”
going on conscientiously with his message, “as Dr. Kelly had told her
there was no necessity for your staying with Mr. Sarsfield.”
“My uncle has been much worse. I must wait and see Dr. Kelly.”
My lips were stiff and cold, and I moved them with difficulty. It did
not occur to me to ask him to sit down; my only wish was that he should
go away while I was still able to keep up the semblance of an ordinary
demeanour. He looked at me for a moment.
“I am very sorry to hear that Mr. Sarsfield is worse. Miss Burke had no
idea of that when she sent the message.”
“I do not know when I shall be able to go to her. Perhaps never!”
The last words forced themselves out against my will; he must see now
that something was wrong. Why did he not go?
“Is there any message I can give Miss Burke for you? If I could be of
any use----” he began, less formally than he had hitherto spoken.
“No, thank you; nothing,” I answered, still standing motionless.
There was a brief pause. Nugent glanced at the clock, and then again
looked at me. He hesitated for a moment, as if waiting for me to speak;
then, finding I did not do so, he picked up his gloves from the table by
which he was standing.
“I think I must say good afternoon now,” he said, this time without
offering to shake hands with me. “I hope there will be a better account
of your uncle to-morrow before I start. I have only come down for a day
about some business.”
I did not attempt any reply, and he left the room.
The stress was over, and, after an instant, I wondered why it had been
so great. It was a long time now since I had thought myself near
breaking my heart about him; when he came in, it had not so much as
beaten faster. I had felt stunned, but it was only by the shock of
seeing him again at such a moment. Now I assured myself that I was glad
he had come and taken my thoughts for a little time from those ghastly
ravings of my uncle. Seeing him had been a kind of assurance that things
were going on in the usual way, and that I was not living in a
nightmare. I was sorry that I had not taken his hand; by not doing so I
must have given him a false impression, and I even wished now that he
had stayed longer. In a few minutes I should have lost that feeling of
faintness, and have been able to talk naturally to him.
The drawing-room had become very dark. I felt as if I were the only
creature alive in the house, and Uncle Dominick’s words were again
beginning to crowd back with new and insistent suggestion. I would not
stay indoors any longer. There was still some daylight, and it would be
better to wait outside in the fresh air till Dr. Kelly came.
I walked down the drive till I came to the fallen tree. I was more weak
and shaken than I had believed, and I sat down on one of the great limbs
that had sprawled along the ground. There was a heavy silence in the
air; the sky was low and foreboding, and a watery streak of yellow lay
along the horizon behind the bog. A rook rustled close over my head,
with a subdued croak; I watched him flying quietly home to the tall elms
by the bog gate. He was still circling round them before settling down,
when a sound struck on my ear. I sprang to my feet and listened. It had
come from the bog; and now it rose again, a loud, long cry, the cry of a
woman keening. Every pulse stood still as I heard it, and I held to a
branch of the tree for support, as the wail grew and spread upon the
air.
Some one came down the steps of the French window of my uncle’s study,
and ran across the grass towards me, and I recognized Roche in the
twilight.
“Did ye see him?” he called out. “Did he pass this way?”
“Who?” I answered, starting forward.
“The masther--the masther!” he cried, and then stopped as the keen rose
again from the bog. “God save us, what’s that? ’Tis from the bog--’twas
the bog he was talking of all day! Run, miss, run, for the love of God!”
I hardly waited to hear what he said, but ran for the bog gate as I have
never run before or since. The air was full of the crying; the pantings
of my breath made it beat in waves in my ears, as I came along under the
trees. The gate was wide open, and I could see no one in the gloom ahead
of me as I blindly followed the sound along the rough cart track. I
strained my eyes in the direction it came from, running all the time,
and I soon saw, or thought I saw, against the pale light of the sky, a
figure down in the bog to my right. I made for it, stumbling and
tripping among the tussocks of heather and grass-grown lumps of peat,
once, in my reckless haste, falling over a great piece of bogwood that
stood out of the soft ground. The figure was that of a woman, who was
kneeling, keening and wringing her hands, on the farther side of the
black Poul-na-coppal, by which I had once seen Moll Hourihane, and,
hurrying with what speed I could round its broken, shelving edge, I
found that the surging thought which had grown during my run into an
unreasoning conviction had been right--the woman was Moll herself.
That she, who was supposed to be unable to utter a sound, should be
making this outcry did not then strike me as strange.
“Where is the master?” I said breathlessly. “What are you crying for?”
For all answer, she flung her arms high over her head, and extended them
both with a frantic gesture downwards, towards the water, and then fell
again to clapping her hands and beating her breast. At the same moment
the irregular fall of footsteps sounded in the road, and I called out
with all the strength left to me. At my voice, Moll’s crying, which had
ceased as I first spoke to her, broke out anew; but I paid no heed to
her, and taking a step forward, peered with a sick terror down at the
inky gleam of water in the bog hole. It was quite still, but water was
dripping from a plant of bog myrtle that hung out over the edge, and,
putting my hand on it, I found it was all wet, as if it had been
splashed.
The voices of the men were close to me; I staggered back to meet them,
and sank down on the ground as Tom came up to me.
“Did you find him, miss? Is he here?”
“He’s there,” I said wildly; “ask Moll! He has killed himself!”
My face was turned toward the road, and as I spoke I saw near me on the
dark ground a glimmer of something white that did not look like a stone.
I dragged myself towards it. It was a book lying open, a book with
pictures, and, dark as it was, I recognized the outlines of one of them,
“The Regulator on Hertford Bridge flat.”
It was the book which I had seen my uncle put into his pocket. I did not
want any more proof of what had happened, and letting the book fall, I
covered my face with my hands and lay prone in the heather. Moll’s
keening had stopped altogether; footsteps hurried past, and I heard
excited voices in every direction round me.
“Get ropes and a laddher!”
“Yerrah, what use is that, man? There’s twenty foot of mud in the
bottom! Go get a boat-hook.”
“‘Twas in here he jumped whatever. Do ye see the marks of his feet?”
Then Roche’s voice, in broken explanation--
“He was cowld, and I wasn’t out of the room three minutes getting the
hot jar an’ blankets, an’ whin I got back, he was gone out the window!”
“Well?” said another voice.
“I ran to Miss Theo, who was sitting below at the three,” went on Roche;
“an’ we heard the screeching, an’ we run away down----”
“Where’s Miss Sarsfield now?” said the first voice imperatively.
I knew the voice now; the ground rocked and heaved under me, flashes
came and went before my eyes, and for an instant the voices and
everything else melted away from me.
When my senses came back to me, I felt that I was being lifted and
carried in some one’s arms, but by whom I did not know.
“Put me down,” I murmured; “I am able to walk.”
I was placed gently on my feet.
“All right now; I’ll take Miss Sarsfield home,” said Nugent’s voice: “go
back and help Dr. Kelly. Can you come on now?” he asked, “we are not far
from the gate, and my trap is close to it.”
I tried to answer him, but my voice was almost gone, and my knees shook
under me when I made a step forward. He put his arm round me without a
word, and, supported by it, I managed to get as far as the bog gate, but
there my strength failed me.
“I am afraid I cannot go any farther,” I said, tottering to the low bank
beside the road, and sinking down on it. “Please don’t trouble about
me.”
He sat down beside me, and, putting his arm round me again, drew my head
down on to his shoulder.
“Why did you send me away from you?” he said, bending his face close to
mine.
“I don’t know,” I whispered, trembling.
“Must I go away now, my darling?”
I said nothing, but in the soft darkness his lips met mine, and in a
moment all the grief and horror of the last week slipped away from
me--everything was lost in the long forgetfulness of a kiss.
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