A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY.
“And wouldst thou leave me thus? Say Nay.”
A lowering grey sky succeeded the sunshine of the day of the hunt. I
crawled down late to breakfast, feeling very stiff after yesterday’s
exertions, and was on the whole relieved to find that Willy had gone out
for a long day’s shooting, and that till lunch at least I should have no
one to entertain but myself.
The evening before had been, as far as Willy had been concerned, of a
rather complicated type. I had done all in my power to efface from his
mind the memory of my unfortunate laughter, but until dinner was over he
had remained implacable. Uncle Dominick, on the contrary, had been
unusually bland and talkative. It appeared that Madam O’Neill and her
eldest daughter had called on me while I was out, and my uncle, having
met them on the drive, had brought them in, given them tea, and had even
gone so far as to ask the two girls to come with their brother to dinner
the next night. He had given me to understand that this unusual
hospitality was on my account--“Although,” he added, “I have no doubt
you two young people are quite well able to amuse each other.” The look
which accompanied this was, under the circumstances, so peculiarly
embarrassing, that, in order to change the conversation, I made the
mistake of beginning to describe the hunt. Too soon I discovered that
to slur over Willy’s disaster would be impossible, and my obvious
efforts to do so did not improve matters.
“So you went off with young O’Neill,” my uncle had said, with a change
of look and voice that frightened me; and nothing more was said on the
subject.
My discomfiture was perhaps the cause of the alteration in Willy’s
demeanour after dinner. Success far beyond my expectations, or indeed my
wishes, was the result of my conciliatory advances. I went to bed
feeling that I had more than regained the position I had held in Willy’s
esteem, and a little flurried by the difficulties of so ambiguous a
relationship as that of first cousins.
From all this, it may be imagined that when I heard from Roche that “the
masther was gone to town, and would not be home for lunch,” I regarded
the combined absences of Willy and his father as little short of
providential.
I observed that the magenta and yellow dahlias which had decorated the
table on my arrival still held their ground, albeit in an advanced stage
of decay; and, remembering the glories of the autumn leaves, I suggested
to Roche that with his permission I might be able to improve upon the
present arrangement.
A little elated by the expectation of surprising Willy with the unusual
splendour of the dinner-table, and not without an emulative thought of
the O’Neills, I determined to ransack the shrubberies for the most
glowing leaves wherewith to carry out my purpose. A few minutes later, I
left the house with a capacious basket in my hand, feeling a delightful
sense of freedom, and full of the selfish, half-savage pleasure of a
solitary and irresponsible voyage of discovery.
I wandered down the nearest path to the sea, and, keeping to the shore,
came to the little promontory which, with its few ragged trees, I could
see from the windows of my room. There was a certain romance about this
lonely wind and wave beaten point that had always attracted me to it.
When, in the early light, I saw the fir trees’ weird reflection in the
quiet cove, I used to wonder if they had ever been a landmark for some
western Dick Hatteraick; and now, as I scrambled about, and tugged at
the tough bramble-stems that trailed in the coarse grass, I was half
persuaded that any one of the rough boulders might close the entrance of
a smuggler’s long-forgotten “hide.”
I had soon gathered as many blackberry-leaves as I wanted, and, sitting
down beside one of the old trees, I leaned my cheek against its seamy
trunk and looked across the grey rollers to the horizon.
A narrow black line stole from behind the eastern point of Durrusmore
Harbour, leaving a dark stain on the sky as it went, and from where I
sat I fancied I could hear the beat of machinery.
It was the first time I had noticed the passing of one of the big
American steamers, and I watched the great creature move out of sight
with a strange conflict of feeling. Uppermost, I think, was the thought
of what my regret would be if I were at that moment on board her, bound
for America. I was a little ashamed when I reflected how soon the newer
interests had superseded the old. I had been but a week in Ireland, and
already the idea of leaving it for America was akin to that of
emigration. What, I wondered, was the charm that had worked so quickly?
Was this subtle familiarity and satisfaction with my new life merely the
result of æsthetic interest, or had it the depth of an inherited
instinct?
I could not tell; I could only feel a strange presentiment that my
existence had hitherto been nothing but a preface, and that I was now on
the threshold of what was to be, for good or evil, my real life.
I picked up my basket and retraced my steps down the little slope, till
I again found myself in the shrubbery walk. On one point my mind was
clear. My liking for Durrus was in no perceptible degree influenced by
my feeling for my uncle and my cousin. I reiterated this to myself as I
strolled along in the damp shade of over-arching laurels towards the
plantation which lay between the sea and the lodge.
Uncle Dominick was anything but a person to inspire immediate
affection; and then Willy--well, Willy certainly had many attractive
points, but, although he was a pleasant companion, he could not be said
to be either very cultured or refined.
I left the path and strayed through the wood, stopping here and there to
rob the branches of their lavish autumn loveliness. A sluggish little
stream crept among the trees, and along its banks the ferns grew
thickly. I knelt down in the stubbly yellow grass beside it, where the
pale trunk of a beech tree stooped over the water, and picked the small
delicate ferns that were clustering between its roots. Having gathered
all within reach, I still knelt there, watching a little procession of
withered beech-leaves making their slow way down the stream, and
studying my own dark reflection on the water.
I was at length startled by the sound of voices that seemed to come
from the path I had just left, but from where I was, the thickness of
the intervening laurels prevented me from seeing to whom they belonged.
It soon became evident that one of the speakers was a country girl. She
was talking rapidly and earnestly; but what she said was unintelligible
to me till she and her companion came to the point in the path which was
nearest to me, when, after a momentary pause, the soft voice broke out--
“Ye won’t lave me for her, will ye, now? Ye _said_ ye’d hold by me
always, and now----”
Something between a sob and a choke ended the sentence. Several sobs
followed; and then the girl’s voice went on excitedly--
“Ah! ’tis no use your goin’ on like that; ye know ye want to have done
with me entirely.”
I could hear no reply; but that reassurance and consolation were offered
was obvious, for as the footsteps died away I heard something like a
broken laugh from the girl, with some faint echo of it from a man’s
voice.
“Who can she be?” I thought, with instinctive compassion. There was a
certain perplexing familiarity in the low pathetic voice, and I walked
home, feeling unnecessarily depressed and troubled by what I had heard,
and wondering sadly at the self-abandonment which had led to such an
appeal.
The path by which I returned skirted the garden and formed a loop with
the one by which I had first entered the wood. As I approached the
broader walk, I saw a girl’s figure flit down the other path, and I had
just time to recognize it as being that of Anstey Brian. Simultaneously
came the recollection of the pleading voice in the wood, and in an
instant I knew why it had been familiar.
“Then it must have been Anstey,” I thought, feeling both sorry and
surprised. The entreaty in her voice had made it very plain how serious
a matter her trouble was to her, and the helplessness of her quick
surrender showed that she had lost all power of resistance or
resentment. I was astonished to think that so pretty a girl as Anstey
should have cause to reproach her sweetheart with want of constancy.
“Who could he be?” I wondered. Then, remembering that the path she was
on was a usual short cut from the lodge to the yard, I came to the
conclusion that one of the Durrus stablemen must have been the object of
this broken-hearted appeal. I determined that I would try and find out
something further about Anstey and her lover, and wondered if it would
be of any use to mention the subject to Willy.
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