MOLL.
“Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush suppos’d a bear!”
Willy did not come home till dinner-time, when he reappeared in
exceedingly good humour. I, on the contrary, felt the vague ill-temper
of a person who has spent a wet Sunday afternoon in solitude, and I
found dinner long and dull. In the drawing-room after dinner, I sought
the resource of music to raise my spirits; but I was debarred from even
this last consolation, for Willy implored me to “let the piano alone,”
as his father disapproved of music on Sunday.
We finally settled down in armchairs by the fire, and I discovered that
Willy possessed in a high degree the feminine faculty of sitting over a
fire and talking about nothing in particular. He pretended to no
superiority to the minor gossip which forms the ripples in the current
of country life, and he had quite a special gift of recounting small
facts with accuracy and detail, and without any endeavour to exalt his
talent as a story-teller. His tales had, in consequence, a certain
intrinsic freshness and merit, and till bedtime we maintained a
desultory, but on the whole interesting conversation.
When I got up to my room, I found it full of smoke and extremely cold.
The window had been opened to let out the smoke, and the chintz curtains
rustled and flapped in the draught. Making up my mind after a few
minutes that even turf smoke was preferable to the cold disquiet of the
wind, I went to the window to close it, and noticed with a good deal of
amusement that, the pulley being broken, the housemaid had supported the
sash with one of my brushes.
There was something in this misplaced ingenuity which was eminently
characteristic of the slipshod manner of life at Durrus, and by force of
contrast my thoughts travelled back to my mother’s orderly household. I
leaned against the shutter and looked out, beset by poignant
recollections of a time when life without my mother seemed an
impossibility, and when Durrus was no more to me than a place in a fairy
story.
The wind had blown away most of the fog, and the rain had ceased, but a
thin haze still blunted the keenness of the moonlight. I gazed at the
dark shapes of the trees in the shrubbery till I lost the sense of their
reality, and they came and went like dreams in the uncertain light. In
my ears was still the throb and tremor which seven days and nights spent
in listening to the screw of the _Alaska_ had imprinted on my brain, and
my thoughts and surroundings seemed alike hurrying on in time to its
pulsations. I was at length roused to realities by a sound which at
first seemed part of the light chafing of the laurel leaves, but which
in a few moments became detached and distinct from the vague noises of
the autumn night.
It came nearer, and gave the impression of some stealthy advance in the
wet grass under the trees. At length, at the verge of their shadow, just
opposite my window, I heard the gravel crunch under a soft footstep.
The next instant a woman’s figure slid into the dim light, and came out
across the broad gravel sweep with a rhythmical swaying gait, as though
moving to music.
Half-way to the house she stopped, and, raising her arms above her head
with a wild gesture, she began to step to and fro with jaunty liftings
and bendings of her body, as though she were taking part in a dance.
Backwards and forwards she paced with measured precision; then, placing
her hands on her hips, she danced with fantastic lightness and vigour
some steps of an Irish jig. Suddenly, however, she checked herself; she
knelt down, and, turning a pale face to the sky, she crossed her hands
on her breast and remained motionless.
Her absolute stillness had in it an intensity almost more dreadful than
the strange movements she had previously gone through, and I stood
staring in inert terror at the grey kneeling figure, with a face as
white as that which was still turned rigidly skywards in what appeared
to be the extremity of supplication. Just then the moon shone sharply
out, hardening and fixing in a moment the limits of light and darkness,
and, as if with a sudden movement, it flung the shadow of the praying
woman on the ground before her. She started, and slowly rose to her
feet, and, with her hands still crossed on her bosom, turned her face
towards me. I saw the moonlight glisten in her wide-open eyes, which
were fixed, not on me, but on the window of the room next to mine. Then
opening her arms wide, she let them fall to her side with an extravagant
obeisance, and sidled back into the impenetrable shadow of the trees.
There was I know not what unearthly suggestion about this weird dance
and agonized devotion, that seemed to paralyze my mind, and render it
incapable of any thought except fear. I stood bewilderedly looking at
the spot where the darkness had swallowed up her figure; but before I
had time to collect my ideas, she reappeared at a little distance, and,
as well as I could see, turned up a path which led through the shrubbery
in the direction of the lodge.
As she passed out of sight, I suddenly remembered what Willy had said to
me about Anstey’s half-witted mother. This strange dancer was, then, no
ghost nor dream-creature, sent on a special errand to me, as I had first
feared, and then, with returning courage, had almost hoped might be the
case.
She was only “old Moll Hourihane.” It was a simple explanation, and
perhaps a humiliating one; but, in spite of my anxiety to possess a
ghost-story of my own, I accepted it with relief. I shut the window and
locked my door, and, though still trembling all over with cold and
excitement, I went to bed, thankful that “Mad Moll” had introduced
herself to me from without, instead of first appearing to me within the
walls of Durrus.
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[Illustration: text decoration]