PART I.  AN EXPERIMENT.  CHAPTER I.  THE “ALASKA.”
 “In that new world which was the old.”
There had been several days of thick, murky weather—dull, uncomplaining days that bore their burden of fog and rain in monotonous endurance. Six of such I had lived through; a passive existence, parcelled out to me by the uncomprehended clanging of bells, and the, to me, still more incomprehensible clatter which, recurring at regular intervals, told that a hungry{2} multitude were plying their knives and forks in the saloon.
But a change had come at last; and on Saturday morning, instead of the usual heaving ridges of grey water, I saw through the port-hole the broken green glitter of sunlit waves. The s.s. Alaska’s lurching plunge had subsided into a smooth unimpeded rushing through the water, and for the first time since I had left New York, the desire for food and human companionship awoke in me.
“Stewardess,” I said, “get me a cup of tea. I am going on deck.”
It was early when I came on deck. The sun was still low in the south-east, and was spreading a long road of rays toward us, up which the big steamer was hurrying, dividing the radiancy into shining lines, that writhed backwards from her bows till they were lost in the foaming turmoil astern.{3}
A light north wind was blowing from a low-lying coast on our left, bringing, as I fancied, some faint suggestion of fields and woods. I walked across the snowy deck, to where a sailor was engaged in a sailor’s seemingly invariable occupation of coiling a rope in a neat circle.
“I suppose that is Ireland?” I said, pointing to the land.
“Yes, miss; that’s the county Cork right enough. We’ll be into Queenstown in a matter of three hours now.”
“Three hours more!” I said to myself, while I watched the headlands slowly changing their shapes as we steamed past. It would soon begin now, this new phase of my life, whether I wished it or not. It had once seemed impossible; now it was inevitable. My destiny was no longer in my own control, and its secret was, perhaps, hidden among those blue Irish hills, which{4} looked as if they were waiting for me to come and prove what they had in store for me.
“Well, it has been my own doing,” I thought; “whatever comes of it, I have only myself to thank; and whether they like or dislike me, I shall have to make the best of them, and they of me.”
“First breakfast just ready, miss,” said one of the innumerable ship-stewards, scurrying past me with cups of tea on a tray.
I paid no attention to the suggestion, and made my way to a deck chair just vacated by an elderly gentleman. I could not bring myself to go below. The fresh sweet wind, the seagulls glancing against the blue sky, the sunshine that gleamed broadly from the water and made a dazzling mimic sun of each knob and point of brasswork about the ship,—to exchange{5} these for the fumes of bacon and eggs, and the undesired conversation of some chance fellow-passenger, seemed out of the question.
Moreover, I was too restless and excited to care about breakfast just then. The sight of the land had given new life to expectations and hopes from which most of the glory had departed during the ignominious misery of the last six days. I lay in my deck chair, idly watching the black river of smoke that streamed back from the funnels, and for the first time found a certain dubious enjoyment in the motion of the vessel, as she progressed with that slight roll in her gait which the sea confers upon all its habitués.
Most people appear to think that sea-sickness, if spoken of at all, should be treated as an involuntarily comic episode, to be dealt with in a facetious manner.{6} But for me it has only two aspects—the pathetic and the revolting; the former being the point of view from which I regard my own sufferings, and the latter having reference to those of others. In the dark hours spent in my state-room, I had had abundant opportunity to formulate and verify this theory, and I have never since then seen any reason to depart from it.
 
CHAPTER II.  AUNT JANE.
 “Sing Hey! when I preside.”
It may not be a very dignified admission, but one of the main causes that led to my being at present on board the Alaska, bound for Queenstown, was the incompatibility of my temper with that of my Aunt Jane.
In self-extenuation, I may mention that I had for the last twelve months lived in her house, and had thus had ample opportunity of verifying the opinion expressed by many of her most intimate friends—“That Jane Farquharson was the salt of the earth, but{8} as such was better when taken in very small quantities.”
She was a Scotchwoman of the most inflexible type. Twenty-five years of sojourn in the United States had modified none of her insular prejudices, and my mother, who was her youngest sister, had never, even during her married life, lost belief in the awfulness of her authority.
The Farquharsons were a family whose pedigree was longer than their purse; and when her younger brother, my Uncle James, had been compelled to sell the paternal acres and emigrate to California, my aunt had uprooted herself from her native land and followed his fortunes, in the full conviction that he, excellent young man though he was, would become altogether a castaway if once allowed out of range of her vigilant eye. They were orphans, and Aunt Jane, having imposed{9} upon herself the duties of both parents, took my mother with her to the Far West, where she maintained on my uncle’s ranch the straitest traditions of the elders.
Uncle James never married. Aunt Jane’s vigilance had been so conscientiously unremitting that no daughter of Heth had ever disputed with her the position of mistress of Farquharson’s ranch. But the precautionary measures that had preserved Uncle James from the snares of matrimony were a distinct failure in my mother’s case. With the unexpected revolt of a weak nature, she defied her elder sister, and committed the incredible enormity of getting married.
Men—with the exception of a legendary Scotch minister, who, if tradition spoke truly, had not long survived his betrothal to Aunt Jane—were regarded by her as the natural foes of cleanliness, economy, and piety. And of all men she considered Irishmen to be the epitome of their sex’s atrocities.{10}
It must, then, be admitted that Fate dealt hardly with Aunt Jane, when, one summer afternoon, her sister Helen came to her and told her that she had that morning been married to Owen Sarsfield, the good-looking Irishman who, a few months before, had entered into partnership with their brother. My mother has often described the scene to me—how she had found Aunt Jane grimly darning her brother’s socks; how she had received the news at first in terrible silence; and then how on my mother, white and trembling, had fallen the thunders of her wrath.
“That ne’er-do-weel Irishman! A creature that ’tis well known had to leave his home for Heaven only knows what wickedness! Did you never hear that a bad son makes a bad husband? I was right when I warned James against having anything to do with a vagabond scamp{11} such as he is, and told him no good would come of handling money that had doubtless been won at the gaming-table!”
To all this, and much more, my mother did not attempt a reply; she thought she knew more of Owen Sarsfield than her sister did. She and her husband settled down in another house on the ranch, and, notwithstanding their proximity to Aunt Jane, they were very happy.
My father, in spite of Aunt Jane’s insinuations to the contrary, was an Irish gentleman of good family, and the money which he had put into the farm had been honestly come by. Perhaps my mother never knew the exact reason of his leaving Ireland. She only told me that money troubles had led to a quarrel with his father, Theodore Sarsfield, of Durrus, in the county Cork. He had no sisters, and his younger and only brother, Dominick,{12} had sided with my grandfather against him, so that during the fifteen years he had spent in America he was as much cut off from his home as if he had been on another planet. The little that he knew of it was gathered from a few misspelt letters, written by one Patrick Roche, a special retainer of his in the old days at Durrus.
These reached him at long intervals, and usually announced some event connected with the Sarsfield family. In this way he heard of his brother’s marriage, which took place three or four years before his own. Then shortly afterwards, towards the end of the Irish famine, came the news that “The young misthris was ded, and she just after havin’ a fine young son; ’twas what the peepel war all saying that the hard times kilt her.”
My mother used sometimes to take these letters from a little old green velvet bag in{13} which she hoarded many valueless treasures, and give them to me to read. And I well remember the yellow worn papers, with the half-foreign smell of turf-smoke lingering about them. I did not then dream of how, in after-years, when that same smell of turf-smoke became very familiar, it would recall the hours I spent when a child, sitting in the shade of the verandah beside my mother’s rocking-chair, and poring with subdued excitement over these messages from the other side of the world.
The last letter which my father received was as urgent as it was brief.
“Honored Masther Owen” (it began, without any of the usual preamble of good wishes),
“The owld masther is very sick. You’d do well to cum home. Ther is them that sayes he’s askin’ for you, and{14} God knows maybe ’tis the change for deth that’s on him. The family is very poor this while back. The big house do be mostly shut up; only owld Peggy Hourihane within in the house and her daughter mindin’ the child. Me father and mother is ded. I will gos ’list for a sojer. God help us; these are bad times.
“Your faithful servant,
“Patrick Roche.”
On getting this letter, my father started at once for Ireland. I was at this time about a year old, a very ugly and stubborn little baby, so Aunt Jane has often told me; and when my mother held me high above the sunflowers at the gate, to kiss my hand to my father as he drove away, I only beat her upon the head and screamed for the pussy.{15}
That was the last chance I ever had of seeing my father. He wrote to my mother from New York, and again from Queenstown—short dispirited letters; the latter saying that he had caught a bad cold, and felt the change from a Californian to an Irish winter very severely. A week afterwards came another letter in a strange handwriting. It was from my Uncle Dominick, and it told my mother, not unkindly, the news that she never quite recovered from. The cold which my father had spoken of had turned to pleurisy, and he had died in a hotel in Queenstown the day after he landed. The writer said that, owing to the unfortunate relations that existed between him and his brother, he had not been aware of his marriage till letters that he had found in his possession informed him of the fact. He now forwarded them to her, with his brother’s few{16} personal effects, and remained, hers faithfully, D. Sarsfield.
The next mail brought a second letter from my Uncle Dominick. Since he last wrote, my grandfather had died; and by the terms of his will, in consequence of my father having predeceased him, the property and house of Durrus passed to the second son, the writer himself. “Had my father known that my brother had married,” wrote my uncle, he might possibly have made an alteration in the terms of the will; but as Owen had never seen fit to make any communication on the subject, no such provision was made. “The property has suffered much during the recent famine, but, as I feel sure that it would have been in accordance with my father’s wishes, I have ventured to place a small sum to your credit at the Bank of Ireland, with directions to forward it to your order.{17}”
My mother never allowed the correspondence thus begun with my Uncle Dominick to drop altogether, and once or twice a year she would devote a couple of mornings to the toilful compilation of a letter to the brother-in-law whom she had never seen. Looking back now, I think there was something very touching in the confident way in which she relied on his interest in those annals of my childhood which filled her letters. I came upon them long afterwards, and read them with a strange mingling of feeling, very different from the wonder and longing with which I, in those childish days, saw them despatched on the first stage of their long journey, and wished that I could accompany them into the post-bag’s grimy recesses, and go to Durrus too.
I had a very happy childhood. Either my mother or Uncle James could single-{18}handed have spoiled the best of children, and their joint efforts being devoted to giving me everything I wished for, I should, had it not been for Aunt Jane, have lived a life of lawless enjoyment. The result of their long years of subjugation was a secret exultation in the undaunted front which I bore towards my aunt, and at a very early age I had learnt to recognize the fact that we three were confederates against a common despot. Uncle James was my most daring ally, and at his instigation I committed some of my most signal and spirited misdemeanours. By the time I was sixteen, I had become, under his supervision, a young lady of varied, if unusual, attainments. I could catch and saddle my own horse; I could guide a steam-plough; I could make some attempt at Latin verse; I knew a little about the rotation of crops, and a good{19} deal of Shakespeare and Walter Scott. Aunt Jane herself took charge of my music, and I spent a daily hour of suffering at a piano as upright and unsympathetic as she was, learning from the frayed, discoloured pages of her music-books, the old-fashioned marches, and “Scotch airs with variations,” that had formed the taste of two generations of Farquharsons.
I think my mother would have been satisfied to let me grow up as I was then doing, knowing nothing of the usual more elegant accomplishments of young ladies; and it was owing to Aunt Jane’s abhorrence of my “tom-boy tricks” that the first great change in my life was made. The climax came one early summer morning, when, possessing myself of Uncle James’s gun, I crept out to try and slay one of the big “jack-rabbits” that abounded on the ranch.
My aunt from her bedroom window saw{20} the whole performance—the stalking; the unseemly grovellings and crawlings through the long grass; the deliberate aim; and, finally, the stealthy but triumphant return with the spoil.
That very day it was decided that my mother and I were to go forthwith to Boston, there to abide with a cousin of my mother’s, until such time as some of the high literary polish of that city should be imparted to me.
“Perhaps Rachel Campbell will be given patience to bear with her wild heathen-like ways,” Aunt Jane had said; and my poor mother had answered with a sigh—
“Theo is always good to me, dear Jane; but I dare say you are right, and it will be best for us to go away.”
So my mother and I set out on our long journey, little thinking that we should never see Farquharson’s Ranch again.{21}
Towards the end of our second year in Boston Uncle James died. His horse fell with him, throwing him on his head, and he only lived for a few hours afterwards, never recovering consciousness. He left all his property to my mother and my aunt; and the latter, having sold the ranch, came to live with us in Boston.
My uncle’s death was the first trouble that I had ever known; but in the near future a still greater one awaited me. I was barely twenty-two when my mother’s unexpected death seemed to bring the whole world to a standstill. I do not like to look back to the desolate days which followed. She was all I had in the world to love, and Aunt Jane’s stern, undemonstrative nature would admit me to no fellowship of sorrow.
I dare say it may have been my own fault, but after a time I found the change{22} from my mother’s unexacting governance to Aunt Jane’s rule becoming intolerable.
“Theodora has been quite ruined by poor Helen,” she used, I believe, to say to her friends. “She will do nothing now but what is right in her own eyes. I shudder to think what will become of her.”
Either my aunt’s temper or mine had disimproved with advancing years, and each day I found it harder to avoid a breach of the peace. At length a diatribe upon “the fearful irreverence to my elders which I had learnt in this godless town,” ending with reflections upon my mother’s indulgence, aroused me to angry rejoinder.
I was trying to simmer down in my own room after the encounter, and in my stormy trampings to and fro in that limited apartment, I had twice upset a photograph of a plump and smiling little boy that stood on my table.{23}
“That horrid little Willy Sarsfield!” I said, delighted to find something on which to expend my wrath; “he is always tumbling down!”
The picture had been my mother’s, one which, at her request, had been sent to her by my Uncle Dominick many years before; and as for the second time I picked it up and put it in its place, an idea came to me.
“Why should I not go to Durrus?” I said.
I did not wait for a calmer moment, but, seating myself at the table, I immediately began a letter to my Uncle Dominick. My hand shook from the excitement of my suddenly taken resolution and from a sense of its temerity, but I was at least able to make my meaning clear. I had, I said, since I was a child, longed to visit Durrus, and see my father’s relations; but hitherto this had been impossible{24} to me. Now, however, I was comparatively alone in the world, and if my uncle would allow me to pay him a visit, nothing remained to prevent my doing so.
That evening I told my aunt of the step I had taken. The heat of her altercation with me had not yet died out in her, and, though she was, as she said, beyond measure astounded, her pride did not permit her to remonstrate.
“You can do as you please, Theodora. As your mother did not see fit to leave me the control of your fortune, I do not presume to give an opinion as to your movements. I trust, however, that you may not have cause to regret the headstrong self-will which has made you unable to content yourself in a quiet and God-fearing household.”
During the days of waiting for an answer from my uncle, Aunt Jane pre{25}served the same demeanour of distant disapproval, and I began to feel that to leave her house with the weight of her displeasure still hanging over me, would be a strong measure. The morning at length came on which I tore open an envelope with the Irish post-mark, and read to her the ceremonious letter in which Uncle Dominick intimated his and his son’s great pleasure at the prospect of a visit from me.
“Very good; then I suppose you will start without delay.” Her cold voice quavered unexpectedly at the end of the sentence, and, looking up in astonishment, I saw in her hard grey eyes an unmistakable moisture. “I had no wish to drive you out, Theodora.”
“I know, Aunt Jane,” I broke in, in hasty penitence; “I never thought that for an instant.{26}”
But she hurried away before I could get any further, saying inarticulately, as she left the room, “God bless you, child, wherever you go.”
After this Aunt Jane made no further comment on what had taken place, but we found ourselves on a more friendly footing than we had ever been before; and when I said good-bye to her, I did so with the knowledge that I could always rely on her undemonstrative, but steadfast affection.
This is the history of how, on the 18th of October, 188-, I came to be reclining in a deck chair on board the s.s. Alaska, two hours from Queenstown.
CHAPTER III.  MY COUSIN WILLY.
 “Willy’s fair and Willy’s rare,
And Willy’s wondrous bonny.”
“To Miss Sarsfield, s.s. ‘Alaska,’ Queenstown. From W. Sarsfield.
“Awfully sorry I will not be able to meet you. Drive to Foley’s Hotel. Will be waiting you there.”
 
This despatch was put into my hand before I left the steamer at Queenstown. Its genial tone and eccentric grammar were quite in keeping with my ideas of an Irishman. These were at once simple and{28} definite. All Irishmen were genial; most of them were eccentric. In fact, had my uncle and cousin met me on the pier, clad in knee-breeches and tail-coats, and hailed me with what I believed to be the national salutation “Begorra!” I should scarcely have been taken aback.
The outside car on which I drove from the Cork station to the hotel was also a realization of preconceived ideas. In response to the bewildering proffers of “Inside or outside?” I had selected an “outside,” and was quite satisfied with the genuineness of the difficulty I found in remaining on it, as we rattled through the muddy streets. The carman himself was perhaps a little disappointing. His replies to my questions were not only devoid of that repartee which I had understood to be the attribute of all Irish carmen, but were lacking in common intelligence; and on{29} his replying for the third time, “Faith, I dunno, miss,” I concluded I must have hit on an unlucky exception.
The day had lost none of the brilliancy of the early morning. It seemed to me that the sun shone with a deliberate intention of welcome, and the unfamiliar softness of Irish air was almost intoxicating. Everything was conspiring to put me into the highest spirits, and I only laughed when my new dressing-bag was flung on to the pavement by the dislocating jerk with which the car pulled up in front of Foley’s Hotel.
As I walked into the hotel, the porter who had taken in my boxes, went over to a tall young man who was leaning over the bar at the end of the narrow hall, and whispered something to him. He immediately started from his lounging position, and, furtively glancing at the mirror behind the bar, he came up to me.{30}
“How do you do? I’m very glad to see you over here,” he said, with an evident effort to assume an easy cousinly manner. “I hope you didn’t mind not meeting me. I was awfully sorry I couldn’t get down to Queenstown, but I had important business in town.” It was perhaps a consciousness of the interested scrutiny of the young lady behind the bar that caused him to blush an ingenuous red as he spoke. “You’d better come on and have some luncheon,” he continued, without giving me time to answer him. “We’ve only got an hour before the train starts.”
I followed him into the coffee-room, thinking as I did so how different this well-dressed, rather awkward young man was from the picturesque and vivacious creature I had somehow pictured my Irish cousin to be. His accent, however, was unmistakably that of his native country;{31} or, rather, as I afterwards found, that of his particular part of it. His quick, low way of speaking was at first a little unintelligible to me, and almost gave me the idea that what he said was intended to be of a confidential nature; but on the whole I thought his voice a singularly pleasant one, and listened with interest to its friendly modulations.
By the time our luncheon was put on the table he was more at his ease, and had even, with a sheepish, half-deprecating glance from his light grey eyes, addressed me as “Theo.” The almost fraternal familiarity of the head waiter was, on Willy’s explanation that I was his cousin from America, extended in the fullest degree to me.
“Indeed, when I seen her coming in the door, I remarked to Miss Foley how greatly the young lady favoured the{32} Sarsfield family,” he observed blandly; “and Miss Foley said she considered she had a great likeness to yourself, captain.”
This was a little embarrassing. I did not quite know what I was expected to say, and devoted myself to my mutton-chop.
“I did not know that you were a soldier,” I said, as soon as the waiter had gone.
“Oh, well,” replied my cousin, giving a conscious twist to his yellow moustache, “I’m only a sort of one—what they call ‘a malicious man.’ I’m a captain in the West Cork Artillery Militia,” he explained; “but nobody calls me that but the buckeens hereabouts.”
I wondered silently what a buckeen was, and why it should be so anxious to maintain the prestige of the militia, but did not like to betray too much ignorance of what{33} might be one of the interesting old courtesy titles peculiar to Ireland.
Looking at my cousin as he rapidly devoured his luncheon, I noticed that, in spite of his disclaimer of military rank, he took some pains to cultivate a martial appearance. His straw-coloured hair was clipped with merciless precision, and on his sunburnt forehead, what was evidently a cherished triangle of white marked the limit of protection afforded by an artillery forage cap.
“I think I’d better be looking after your luggage now,” he said, bolting what remained of his second chop, and getting up from the table with his mouth full. “I was quite frightened when I saw those two big mountains of trunks coming along on the car after you. And then when I saw you walk in”—he laughed a pleasant, {34}foolish laugh—“I didn’t think you’d be such a swell!” he ended, with confiding friendliness.
The terminus of the Cork and Moycullen railway, the line by which we were to travel to Durrus, was crowded on that Saturday afternoon. We had ten minutes to spare, during which I sat at the window and watched with the utmost interest the concourse on the platform. It had all the appearance of a large social gathering or conversazione. Stragglers wandered from group to group, showing an equal acquaintance with all, and with apparently entire nonchalance as to the functions of the train, while the guard himself bustled about among them with an interest that was evidently quite unofficial. My carriage soon became thronged with people, between whom and their friends on the platform a constant traffic in brown-paper parcels was carried on; and I was beginning to think{35} there would be no room for Willy, who had disappeared in the crowd. But the ringing of the final bell set my mind at rest.
Contrary to the usual usage, this sound had the effect of almost emptying the train, and, the party in my carriage being reduced to two, I realized that the travellers were left in a minority by those who had come to bid them good-bye.
Willy returned at the last moment, emerging from the centre of a group of young ladies, with the well-pleased air of one whose conversation has been appreciated.
“Did you see those girls I was talking to?” he said, as we moved out of the station. “They are cousins of the O’Neills, people in our part of the world. They came down to see me off. There was a great mob there to-day, but there always is on Saturday.{36}”
“Who are the O’Neills?” I asked, feeling that some response was expected of me.
“They’re neighbours of ours. They live at Clashmore—that’s four miles from us—and they’re very nice people. Nugent, the brother, used to be a great pal of mine—at least, he was till he went to Cambridge, and came back thinking no one fit to speak to but himself.”
Not feeling particularly interested in the O’Neills, I did not pursue the subject; but Willy was full of conversation.
“I’m just after buying a grand little mare in Cork. It was that kept me from going to meet you,” he observed confidentially. “I suppose you learnt to ride at your ranch, Theo? I tell you what! I bought her for the governor, but she’d carry you flying, and you shall hunt her this winter if you like.{37}”
My cousinly feeling for Willy increased perceptibly at this suggestion.
“But,” I said, “if your father buys her, he will want to ride her himself, won’t he?”
“Is it the governor?”—with an intonation of contempt. “You never see him on a horse’s back. He’s always humbugging in the house over papers and books. I believe he used to be a great sportsman and fond of society, but he never goes anywhere now.”
The two ladies who had started from Cork with us had got out a station or two afterwards, and we had the carriage to ourselves. But the extraordinary jolting and rattling of the train were not conducive to conversation, and, seeing that I was not inclined to talk, Willy relapsed into the collar of his ulster and the Cork newspaper, and ended by going unaffectedly to sleep.{38}
It grew slowly darker. I sat watching the endless procession of small fields slipping past the window, until the grey monotony of colour made me dizzy. I leaned back, and, closing my eyes, tried to imagine the life I was going to, and to contrast its probabilities with my past experience. But a strange feeling of remoteness and unreality came upon me. I suppose that the mental exhaustion caused by so many new sights and impressions had dazed me, and I began to doubt that such a person as Theo Sarsfield had ever really existed. Willy, my Uncle Dominick, and my father flitted confusedly through my mind as inconsequently as people in a dream. I myself seemed to have lost touch with the world; my past life had slid away from me, and the future I had not yet grasped. I was a solitary and aimless unit in the dark whirl that{39} surrounded me, and the sleeping figure at the opposite end of the carriage was a trick of imagination, and as unreal as I. I became more and more remote from things actual, and finally fell from all consciousness into a sleep as sound as Willy’s.
My slumbers were at length penetrated by a shriek from the engine. I sat up, and saw that Willy was taking down his parcels from the rack; and in another minute we were in the little station of Moycullen.
A hat with a cockade appeared at the window.
“Hullo, Mick. Is it the dog-cart they’ve sent?”
“’Tis the shut carriage, Masther Willy,” said Mick; “and ’tis waiting without in the street.”
With some difficulty I followed Mick{40} through the crowd of carts in the station yard, to where a landau and pair were standing in the road. The moonlight was bright enough for me to see the fine shapes of the big brown horses, who were evincing so lively an interest in the movements of the engine that the coachman had plenty to do to keep them quiet.
“You’re welcome, miss,” said that functionary, touching his hat; and I got into the carriage, followed by Willy, with the usual number of impedimenta that appear necessary to male travelling youth.
“It’s a good long drive,” he said, arranging rugs over our knees—“twelve Irish miles. But we won’t be very long getting there. You won’t have time to be tired of me—I hope not, anyhow.”
This was more like my idea of the typical Irishman, but was, nevertheless, rather discomposing from a comparative{41} stranger. It was said, moreover, with a certain conquering air, which plainly showed that Willy was not accustomed to being found a bore. I could think of no very effective reply, so I laughed vaguely, and said I hoped I should not.
We had been driving at a good pace for about an hour, when we left the high-road and began the ascent of a long steep hill. At the top the carriage turned a sharp corner, and I saw below me, on my right, a great sheet of water all alight with the misty splendour of a full moon. Black points of land cut their way into the expanse of mellow silver, and the small islands were scattered like blots upon it.
“That’s Roaring Water Bay,” said Willy; “and that mountain over there’s called Croagh Keenan”—pointing to a shadowy mass that formed the western limit of the bay. “You haven’t anything{42} to beat that in America, I’ll bet!” An assertion which I refrained from combatting.
Our road now lay for a mile or two along the top of a hill overlooking the bay, and though Willy had done his best to make himself agreeable, I was tired enough to be extremely glad when the carriage swung sharply between high gate-posts, and we entered the avenue of Durrus.
As we passed the lodge, I caught, in the moonlight, a glimpse of the pretty face of a girl who opened the gates, and asked who she was.
“She’s the lodgekeeper’s daughter,” said my cousin.
“She looked very pretty.”
“Yes, she’s not bad looking,” he said indifferently. “There are plenty of good-looking girls in these parts.”
The drive sloped down through a park{43} to the level of a turf bog, which it skirted for some distance, and then entered a thick clump of trees, through which the moonlight only penetrated sufficiently to let me see that they were growing in a species of reedy swamp, from which, on this cold night, a low frosty mist was rising. We were soon out again into the moonlight, the horses quickening up as they came near their journey’s end. I saw a sudden gleam of sea in front, and on the left a long, low house, looking wan and ghostly in the moonlight.
CHAPTER IV.  THE MASTER OF DURRUS.
 “My father’s brother; but no more like my father than I to Hercules.”
As the carriage drew up at the hall door it was opened by a stout elderly man, who came forward with such empressement that for a moment I thought it was my uncle. Before, however, I had time to speak, he said with much excitement—
“Your honour’s welcome, Miss Sarsfield!”
Willy checked further remark on his part by shovelling our many parcels into his arms; but as soon as we had got into the hall, he let them all go, and caught hold of my hand and kissed it.{45}
“Glory be to God that I should have lived to see this day! I never thought I’d be bringing Masther Owen’s child into this house. Thank God! thank God!”
“Come, Roche, that will do for a start,” said Willy, laughing. “Keep the rest for another day. Here’s the master.”
Roche hastily let go my hand, as a tall bowed figure came across the hall to meet me.
“Well, my dear Theodora, so you have found your way at last to these western wilds,” said my uncle, and kissed me on the forehead, taking both my hands in his as he did so.
His manner was an extreme contrast to Willy’s affable familiarity, and I was struck by the absence of Irish accent in his voice, which had a mellifluous propriety of intonation.
{46}
He led me into the room he had just left, a small library, and placed a chair for me in front of the fireplace.
“You must be cold after your long journey. Sit down and warm yourself,” he said politely, adding another log to the furnace that was blazing in the old brass-mounted grate.
He rubbed his long white hands together and drew back, so as to let the light of the lamp fall on my face.
“And your—a—relatives in America—you left them quite well, I hope? I dare say they resent your desertion of them very bitterly?” He laughed a little.
I made some perfunctory reply, and sat warming one frozen foot after the other, while my uncle stood with his back to the lamp, and surveyed me with guarded intentness.
I had expected him to be perhaps formal, in an old-world, courteous way; but this{47} strained and glacial geniality was a very different thing, and disconcerted me considerably.
“How unlike he is to Willy! I wish he would not stare at me like that. I don’t think he is a bit glad to see me,” I thought, with hasty inconsequence. “Why does he not speak? Well, I will,” and I made an ordinary remark about my journey. My voice seemed to startle him from a reverie. He put his hand to his eyes, and made some alteration in the lamp before replying.
It was a distinct relief when, at this juncture, Willy came in, and offered to show me the way to my room. We passed through the dark entrance-hall, whose depths were inadequately lighted by a cheap lamp, its orange light forming a dingy halo that contended hopelessly with the surrounding gloom. At the end of{48} the hall was a broad flight of stairs, that at the first landing branched into two narrower flights leading to a corridor running round the hall. Passing along one side of this corridor, Willy opened a door at the end of it.
“Here you are,” he said; “and I told them to bring you up a cup of tea; I thought you looked as if you wanted it”—with which he took his departure.
I was grateful for Willy’s unexpected thoughtfulness in the matter of the tea. My uncle’s reception had chilled me. I was tired by my long journey, and the darkness and silence of the house had a depressing effect upon my spirits. For weeks this arrival at Durrus had been constantly in my mind, and now that it was over, the only definite emotions it seemed to have produced were disappointment and dejection.{49}
I looked round me as I sipped my tea, and did not feel enlivened by what I saw. The room was large and bare. The paper and the curtains of the two windows were alike detestable in colour and pattern. The enormous bed had once been a four-poster, but the posts had been cut down, and four meaningless stumps bore witness to the mutilation it had undergone. A colossal wardrobe loomed in a far-off corner; a round table of preposterous size occupied the centre of the room. Six persons could comfortably have dined at the dressing-table. In fact, the whole room appeared to have been fitted up for the reception of a giantess, and was quite out of proportion to my moderate stature of five feet seven.
I have always disliked more than one door in a bedroom, as it seems to me to afford to ghosts and burglars unnecessary{50} facilities; and my dislike of my gaunt apartment reached its climax when I saw a door in the corner on the farther side of the fireplace from the door into the corridor. It had been papered over along with the walls, and its consequent unobtrusiveness had almost the effect of intentional concealment. I opened it, and found that it led into a moderate-sized bedroom. The moonlight which came through the uncurtained window lay in greenish-white patches on the uncarpeted floor, and showed a few pieces of furniture, shrouded in sheets and huddled in one corner. In spite of its chill bareness, an effect of recent occupancy was given to it by a chair that stood sideways in the window with an air of definiteness, and underneath and beside it I noticed a few tattered books.
I went back to my own room with an{51} unexplainable shudder, slamming the door behind me, and proceeded to dress for dinner with all speed.
With the unfailing punctuality of a newcomer, I left my room as the gong sounded, and, hurrying down, found my uncle and Willy waiting for me in the library.
The dining-room was a large and imposing room. A moderate number of portraits of the most orthodox ancestral type hung, interspersed with mezzotints of impassioned Irish clergymen, on its panelled walls. A high old sideboard of what seemed to me an unusual shape stretched up to the ceiling on one side of the room, and the plate upon it twinkled in the blaze of the fire.
We sat down at the long table; and while Willy and his father were absorbed in overcoming the usual embarrassments offered by soup to the wearers of mous{52}taches, I amused myself with speculations as to who was responsible for the subtle combination of yellow and magenta dahlias that adorned the table. I concluded that the artist must have been the old butler, Roche; and as, at the thought, I involuntarily looked towards him, I found his eyes fixed upon me with the abstracted gaze of one who is trying to trace a likeness. Our eyes met, and he shuffled away, but I felt sure that he had been searching for a resemblance to the refined, well-cut, humorous face which, from a miniature of thirty years ago, I knew must be what he remembered of my father.
“It is quite an unusual pleasure to Willy and me to see a charming young lady at our bachelor-table—eh, Willy?” said Uncle Dominick, lifting his face from his now empty soup-plate, and smiling at me.
Willy, whose flow of language seemed{53} checked by his father’s presence, gave an assenting grunt.
“It is a long time since there has been a Miss Sarsfield at Durrus, and it is thirty years since she died. You will find Willy and I are sad barbarians, and we shall have to trust to you to civilize us.”
I am singularly unfitted to deal with the compliments of elderly gentlemen. On this occasion I failed as signally as usual to attain the requisite quality of playful confusion, and diverted the conversation by a question about a claret-coloured ancestor, who had been staring at me from his frame over the fireplace ever since we had sat down to dinner.
“That is my grandfather,” said my uncle. “Dick the Drinker, they called him. He neither is nor was an ornament to the family; but his wife, the beautiful Kate Coppinger, is worth looking at. In{54} fact, my dear”—with another smile and a little bow—“directly I saw you I was reminded of a miniature which we have of her.”
“I hope she looks Irish,” I responded. “I have always tried to live up to my idea of an Irish girl; but though my hair is dark, I haven’t got violet eyes.”
“No, nor any one else either. I never heard of them out of a book,” said Willy, abruptly.
It was almost his first contribution to the conversation; but his father took no more notice of him than if he had not spoken, and went on eating his dinner, taking longer over each mouthful than any one I had ever seen.
“Then, am I not like the Sarsfields?” I asked.
My uncle paused and looked hard at me for a second or two, letting his heavy{55} eyebrows drop over his eyes, with a peculiar change of expression.
“In some ways, perhaps,” he said shortly. Then, turning to Willy, “Nugent O’Neill was here this afternoon to see you about the stopping of some earths. I told him to come over and dine here some day next week. Not”—turning to me—“that he is much of a ladies’ man, but he is a gentlemanlike young fellow enough; very unlike his father,” he added, in a bitter tone.
“Why, is Mr. O’Neill very objectionable?” I said.
I felt an unmistakable kick under the table, and Willy, with an admonitory wink, slurred over my question by saying—
“I can tell you, O’Neill would be pretty mad if he heard you calling him Mr. He’s The O’Neill, and his wife’s Madam{56} O’Neill, and they wouldn’t call the queen their cousin.”
My uncle silently continued his dinner, but I noticed how unpleasant his expression had become since The O’Neill was mentioned.
I finally made up my mind that his face was one I should never care for. He was decidedly a handsome man, though unusually old-looking for his age, which could not have been more than sixty.
His thick dark eyebrows lay like a bar across his high forehead. A long hooked nose drooped over an iron-grey moustache, which, when he smiled, lifted in a peculiar way, and showed long and slightly prominent yellow teeth. His unwholesomely pallid skin was deeply lined, and hung in folds under the dark sunken eyes, giving a look of age which was further contributed to by the stoop in his square shoulders. As I glanced from him to Willy, I con{57}cluded that the latter’s blonde commonplace good looks must have been inherited from his mother.
Rousing himself from the morose silence into which he had fallen, my uncle proceeded to apply himself to the task of entertaining me by a dissertation on the trade and agriculture of California. I soon found that he had all the desire to impart information which characterizes those whose knowledge of a subject is taken from pamphlets; but I listened with all politeness to his description of the country in which I had lived most of my life. Willy maintained a discreet silence, but from time to time bestowed on me glances of sympathy and approbation. Evidently Willy did not know how to talk to his father.
As dinner progressed, I observed that, if Roche allowed his master’s glass to{58} remain empty, he was at once given a sign to refill it, and my uncle became more and more diffusely instructive.
During dessert a pause at length gave me an opportunity of changing the conversation.
“I saw such a pretty girl at your gate lodge as we drove in,” I said. “She looked delightful in the moonlight, with a shawl thrown over her head.”
If Uncle Dominick had looked black at the mention of The O’Neill, he became doubly so at this apparently inoffensive remark. Glancing for explanation to Willy, I was amazed to see that he had become crimson, and was elaborately trying to show his want of interest in the subject by balancing a fork on the edge of his wine-glass.
“Yes,” said my uncle; “she is a good-looking girl enough, and no one knows it{59} better than she does. When people in that class of life are taken out of their proper place”—with great severity—“they at once begin to presume.”
Willy upset his wine-glass with a sudden jerk. For my part, I was so taken aback by this tirade, that I thought my safest plan lay in immediate flight. Willy got up with alacrity, and, following me from the room, opened the drawing-room door. He looked confused and annoyed.
“Can you take care of yourself in there for a while?” he said. “I’ll be with you in a few minutes.”
CHAPTER V.  IMPRESSIONS
 “Groping in the windy stair,
Darkness and the breath of space
Like loud waters everywhere.”
The room was cold, and I at once made for the fire, and, to my surprise, found the hearthrug occupied by an untidy little girl, who was engaged in dropping grease from a candle over the coals to make them burn. On seeing me she sprang to her feet, and, with semi-articulate apologetic murmurs, she gathered up a coal-box and retired in confusion.
I concluded that, improbable as it{61} appeared, this was the under-housemaid, and reflected with some astonishment on the incongruities of the Durrus establishment. However, I afterwards found she held no official position, but was a satellite of the under-housemaid’s, privately imported by her as a species of body-servant or slave. In fact, at the risk of digressing, I may here add that in process of time I discovered that the illicit apprenticeship of a young relation was a common custom of the Durrus servants, and in the labyrinthine remoteness of the servants’ quarters they could be concealed without fear of attracting the master’s eye.
In spite of its top dressing of grease, the fire was not a tempting one to sit over, and I roamed round the large ill-lighted room, taking in with leisurely wonderment the style of its decorations. It was, in startling contrast to the rest of the house,{62} painted and papered in semi-aesthetic hues, pale sage-green and pink being the prevailing colours. This innovation of culture had not, however, extended itself to the furniture, which was of the solidly ugly type prevalent fifty years ago.
Heavy mahogany tables, each duly set forth with books and daguerrotypes, stood inconveniently about, causing a congestion among the lesser furniture. The pictures, which had been taken down at the repapering of the room, leaned against the wall with their faces inwards. I turned one of the nearest to me, expecting to come upon a family portrait, but found it represented a Turk of truculent aspect, worked in Berlin wool—a testimony to the amount of spare time at the disposal of the ladies of Durrus. The thick coating of dust on my fingers which was the result of this investigation did not encourage me to{63} make any further researches, and an examination of the old china on the marble cheffonier between the windows had equally disastrous results. In one corner there was an ancient grand piano, which to my astonishment proved to be in good tune. I had not been playing for very long when Willy came in, and, without speaking, placed himself beside me.
“Well, I declare!” he said, as I finished playing one of Schubert’s impromptus, “it’s a long time since I heard that old piano. I got it tuned the other day on purpose for you, and you know how to knock sparks out of it, anyhow! I heard Henrietta O’Neill playing that piece once, and it didn’t sound half so well—though, I can tell you, she thinks no end of herself.”
“By-the-by, Willy, why did you stop me when I began to speak of Mr. O’Neill?”
“O’Neill,” corrected Willy.{64}
“Oh, well, O’Neill,” I said peevishly. “But what was the harm of talking about him?”
“No harm, as far as I am concerned, but the governor hates him like poison. I believe they had some row in my grand-father’s time—I don’t know exactly what-and they never made it up since. But there’s no regular quarrel; I go to all their parties, and I think the governor rather likes Nugent and the girls.”
“What is Madam O’Neill like?”
“Oh, I get along with her first-rate,” said Willy, stretching out one of his long legs, and serenely studying the gold-embroidered clock on his sock. “But other people say she’s rather a bitter old pill; and I can tell you, she has the two girls in great order!”
I began to play as he finished speaking; but his thoughts had travelled on to my{65} other unlucky remark at dinner, for he presently interrupted me by saying in an uncertain way—
“Oh! you know that girl we were talking of at dinner, the one you saw at the gate—Anstice Brian her name is—her mother is a bit queer in her head, and she’d be very apt to give you a start if you didn’t know her ways. She’s a harmless poor creature, but she wanders about these bright nights, and she gets into the house sometimes.”
I probably looked as alarmed as I felt, for he laughed protectingly, and, drawing his chair a little closer to mine, said reassuringly—
“Never fear! She’s not half as silly as they say; and do you think I’d let her be about if there was any chance at all of her frightening you?”
“What is she like? Is she an old{66} woman?”—ignoring the reproachful warmth of this last observation.
“Is it old Moll Hourihane? She’s as old as two men—or she looks it, anyhow. She used to be my nurse till she went off her head.”
“I thought you said her name was Brian,” I said.
“That’s only her husband’s name. The women mostly stick to their own names in this country when they’re married.”
“And you’re quite sure she’s not dangerous?” I said, feeling only half reassured.
“No more than I am myself”—with a glance to see if I were going to contradict this assertion. “She has a sort of dumb madness—like a hound, you know—and she’ll never speak; though I dare say after all that’s no great loss,” he concluded.{67}
I was by this time feeling very sleepy, and hoping I should soon be able to escape to my own room, when the door opened, and my uncle came solemnly in.
“I have come, Theodora, my dear, to suggest an early retirement on your part.”
He avoided looking at Willy, and I felt that the effects of my ill-timed remarks at dinner had not yet died out. He looked haggard and troubled, and a sudden pity and sense of kinship impelled me to raise my cheek towards him as he took my hand to say good night. He stooped his head as if to kiss me, but checked himself, and after an instant of hesitation his moustache touched my forehead.
There was something repelling in his manner, but I felt that he was not unconscious of the sympathy I had intended to express. He turned and left the room, and I heard him go back to the library{68} and shut himself in, the sound of the closing door emphasizing his solitariness.
I went upstairs with the feeling of isolation again strongly upon me. The wind had risen, and on the walls of the draughty corridor each gust made the old pictures shake in their mouldering frames. At intervals, through the panes of the large skylight overhead, the moon’s light dropped in pale wavering squares on the floor of the hall below. I leaned over the balustrades watching the spectral alternations of light and darkness, as the clouds swept across the moon, till the objects beneath me seemed to take intermitting motion from the flitting of the moonbeams.
As I looked, the dim lamp in the hall flickered and went out. A gust from below circled round the corridor, lifting the hair upon my forehead and almost extinguishing my candle as it passed me.{69}
Perhaps I was overtired and nervous, but a causeless fear possessed me—the old unreasoning dread of some vague pursuit out of the darkness, that I had not felt since I was a child. I gave a terrified glance over my shoulder at the swaying pictures, and then, shielding my candle with my hand, I ignominiously ran down the corridor into my own room.
CHAPTER VI.  AN IRISH SUNDAY.
 “In Islington there was a man,
Of whom the world might say,
That still a godly race he ran,
Whene’er he went to pray.”
“Will you have your tay, plase, miss?”
The words at first mingled with the dreams which had all night disturbed my sleep. On being repeated, the unfamiliar accent, accompanied by the clink of a cup and saucer, made me open my eyes. A pleasant-looking, red-haired girl was standing by my bed, tray in hand.{71}
“You’re after having a great sleep, miss. I was twice here before, and there wasn’t a stir out of you.”
“Is it very late?” I asked, with an alarming recollection of my uncle’s punctuality.
“Oh, not at all, miss. The masther’s only just after having his breakfast.”
“What!” I gasped. “You should have called me earlier.”
“Oh, there’s no hurry, miss! Sure he always ates his breakfast by himself, and there’s no sayin’ how late it’ll be before Masther Willy’s down.”
Calmed by this assurance, I did not hurry myself over my dressing, but from time to time stopped to look at the view from my windows.
It was a quiet October day, with a grey yet luminous sky, that lit with a grave radiance the group of yellow elms that{72} divided the avenue from a heathery expanse of turf-bog, with low hills beyond. From the other window, which was almost over the hall door, I could see to the left a dark belt of trees that went round to the back of the house; and in front, at the foot of the lawn, the curve of a little bay. This was separated from the larger waters of Durrusmore Harbour by a low promontory, along whose ridge a meagre line of fir trees was etched against the grey sky. Leaning out of the window, and looking westwards towards the mouth of the harbour, I saw the Atlantic lying broad and white under the light of the soft clear morning.
I went downstairs, and as I passed along the corridor, I felt, even on this still day, the air circulating freely through broken panes in the skylight and the staircase window, making it easy to account{73} for the ghostly eddyings of the wind the night before.
Willy had apparently made an effort on my behalf at early rising, and I found him making tea when I came into the dining-room. He came forward to meet me with a complacency in which I detected a consciousness of the added smartness of his Sunday attire; and, having satisfactorily ascertained the fact that I had slept well, he installed me behind the urn to pour out the superfluously strong tea which he had just brewed.
I experienced undeniable relief in the absence of Uncle Dominick, whom at this moment I saw pacing up and down a walk leading from the house to the sea. Willy saw the direction of my eyes.
“I hope you’re not insulted by only me breakfasting with you,” he said, with ungrammatical gallantry. “You can break{74}fast with the governor whenever you like, but you will have to be down at eight o’clock to do that!”
I intimated with fitting politeness that I was satisfied with the present arrangement, and we began our tête-à-tête meal in great amity. Willy, indeed, was an excellent host. He plied me with everything on the table, eating his own breakfast and talking all the time with unaffected zest and vigour, and I began to feel as if the time I had known him could be reckoned in months instead of hours.
The necessity of writing to announce my safe arrival to Aunt Jane was one that had already forced itself upon my notice.
“I thought you’d be wanting to write a letter,” Willy said, conducting me into the drawing-room after breakfast, “and I got the place ready for you.{75}”
I sat down at the old-fashioned writing-table, and found that he had anticipated my wants with a lavish hand. Through the window I saw him, a few minutes afterwards, sauntering down the drive towards the lodge, smoking a cigarette, with two little white dogs flashing in circles round him; and as I watched him, I came to the conclusion that at first sight I had underestimated my cousin.
There was something to me half amusing and half touching in the anxiety of his little housewifely attentions to me. He was really unusually thoughtful for others; from various things he had said, it was evident that his father had allowed the whole management of the place to devolve on him, and I fell to idle speculation as to whether he ordered dinner, and if he were particular about the housemaids wearing white muslin caps; and I was only aroused{76} from these, and other equally interesting reflections by hearing the clock strike the hour at which I had been warned I must get ready for church.
My uncle was standing on the steps, with his Prayer-book in his hand, when I came downstairs. He wished me good morning, with a polite apology for not having met me at breakfast, and stood looking about him, with eyelids narrowed by the white glare from the sea, till a minute afterwards the wagonnette in which we were going to church came to the door. My uncle and I got in behind; while Willy, with Mick by his side, sat on the box and drove. Once outside the gate, we took a road running at right angles to that by which I had arrived. It went round the head of Durrusmore Harbour, and, leaving the sea behind, turned inland through large woods, which my uncle told me were{77} part of the demesne of Clashmore, The O’Neill’s place.
The road was level, and soft with the fallen red beech leaves, and the brown horses took us along it at a pace that showed they were none the worse for their journey the night before. The rough stone walls on either side of the road were covered with moss and small ferns. Here and there the wood was pierced by narrow rides—vistas in which the clumps of withering bracken repeated the brown and gold of the trees above.
“We’re going to draw this place on Friday,” said Willy, pausing in the steady flow of his conversation with Mick to give me the information. “Blackthorn will carry Miss Theo right enough, wouldn’t he, Mick? and I’ll ride the new mare.”
The village of Rathbarry, which we had now entered, consisted of a single street of{78} low, dirty-looking cottages, their squalid uniformity varied at frequent intervals by the more prosperous shuttered face of a public-house. At the end of the street, a gateway led into a graveyard, surrounded by ill-thriven elm trees, in the middle of which stood the church. It was an ugly, oblong building, with a square tower at the west end, from which proceeded a clanging as of a cracked basin battered with a spoon.
“We’re in good time,” said Willy, drawing up with a flourish before the porch. “That’s the hurry-bell only begun now, so we’ve five minutes to spare. Look, Theo! there’s the Clashmore carriage. Did you ever see such brutes as those chestnuts?”
Before, however, I had time to reply, Uncle Dominick hurried me into the church, and we took our places in opposite corners{79} of a singularly uncomfortable square pew. As we sat confronting each other in the half-empty church, we heard in the porch Willy’s voice raised in agreeable converse. Apparently his remarks were of a complimentary sort, for a girl’s voice rejoined, “Oh, nonsense, Willy!” with a laugh.
“Disgraceful!” muttered my uncle, under his breath; and the next moment three ladies swept up the aisle, followed by Willy, on whose face still beamed a slightly fatuous smile.
He immediately sat down beside me, and in a rapid whisper instructed me as to the more prominent members of the congregation.
“Those are the O’Neills”—indicating the ladies he had come in with. “Connie’s the little fair one. And look! those are the Jackson Crolys! You’d better sit up and behave, as they’ll be watching you all{80} the time. I know they all want to see what you’re like!”
“Hush! don’t talk!” I whispered back. “Here’s the clergyman.”
The service was very long. The music, which consisted of the clergyman’s daughter accompanying herself on a harmonium, with casual vocal assistance from a couple of school-children, was of an unexhilarating kind. Willy fidgeted, admired his boots, trimmed his nails, and tried to utilize every possible opening for conversation. Uncle Dominick, on the contrary, devoted his whole attention to the service, and answered all the responses with austere punctiliousness, even going so far as to try and track the clergyman’s daughter in her devious course through the hymns.
From the corner which had been allotted to me in my uncle’s pew I could not see the clergyman, and, though his voice re{81}sounded through the church, his very pronounced Cork accent made it difficult for me to understand more than a word here and there in his discourse.
The high sides of the pew debarred me from even the solace of inspecting the congregation, and, in the absence of other occupation, I could not altogether conceal the interest that I felt in the remark which Willy was laboriously spelling on his fingers for my edification. Becoming conscious, however, that Uncle Dominick’s eye, while fixed upon the preacher, had included us in its observations, I transferred my attention to the mural tablets, which on either side of the church set forth the perfections of dead-and-gone O’Neills and Sarsfields.
Having studied these for a few minutes with the mild sceptical interest usually excited by the tabulated virtues of the{82} unknown departed, I leaned back in my corner, and, in doing so, noticed a brass upon the wall slightly behind my uncle’s seat. My eye was immediately caught by my father’s name.
IN MEMORIAM.
 
THEODORE WILLIAM SARSFIELD,
 
WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE
JANUARY 10, 185-.
 
AND OF
OWEN SARSFIELD,
 
SON OF THE ABOVE,
WHO DIED SUDDENLY IN CORK,
ON HIS RETURN FROM AMERICA,
JANUARY 9, 185-.
————
THIS MONUMENT IS ERECTED BY THEIR SORROWING SON
AND BROTHER, DOMINICK SARSFIELD, OF DURRUS.
I glanced by a natural transition to my uncle, whose head all but intervened{83} between me and the brass. His expression of sombre melancholy harmonized well with the words “his sorrowing brother.”
I could guess what must have been his grief at the death of an only brother, from whom he had been perforce alienated. Till then I had scarcely realized how closely linked their lives must once have been, and I resolved that his chilly manner should not deter me from some day inducing him to speak to me of my father.
As I made up my mind to this, the clergyman’s voice ceased, and the congregation rose at the end of the sermon. We walked out of church close behind the O’Neills, and outside the porch Madam O’Neill stopped to shake hands with my uncle. Then, turning to me—
“I need not ask to be introduced to you, my dear. I knew your poor father very well indeed in days gone by.” This was{84} said in a dry attenuated voice, but through the elaborate pattern of her Maltese lace veil, her eyes looked kindly at me. She was small and refined looking, with little artificial airs and graces which told that she had been a beauty in her day; and what remained of a delicate complexion was carefully sheltered from the harmless light of the grey sky by a thick parasol.
Uncle Dominick’s impatience to get away only gave me time to say a word or two in answer to her salutation.
“Come, Theodora,” he said, with the smile that lifted his moustache and showed all his teeth. “We must not keep the horses waiting;” and bidding the madam and her two daughters, who had been standing behind her, good-bye, he led the way down to the gate.
Willy was already on the box of the wagonnette, and was talking to a dark,{85} quiet-looking young man who was standing with one foot on the wheel.
“Then you’ll see about having those earths stopped,” Willy said, leaning over, and emphasizing what he was saying with the handle of the whip on his hearer’s shoulder. “Oh, here they are! Theo, let me introduce Mr. O’Neill. I was just telling him he must be sure and have a fox for you at Clashmore this week.”
“I shall do my best,” said Mr. O’Neill, as he took off his hat; but he did not look particularly enthusiastic as he spoke.
We had no sooner driven off, than Willy twisted round on the box to speak to me.
“Well, what do you think of Nugent?” he said rather eagerly.
“He is nice looking,” I replied critically; “but I do not like his expression. I cannot say he is what I should call either cheerful or agreeable looking.{86}”
“Oh, he’s not half a bad chap,” said Willy, with a leniency which was possibly the result of the pleasure with which young men listen to the depreciation of their fellows. “He’s jolly enough sometimes; but he can put on a bit of side when he likes, and I dare say he thinks he is thrown away down here. Henrietta’s like him in that sort of way, but Connie has no nonsense about her.”
I decided that Connie’s was the laugh that I had heard in the porch before service, and thought that of the two I should be more likely to prefer Henrietta.
Ever since we had left church the sky had been darkening, and when we reached Durrusmore Harbour, the distant headlands were almost hidden in a white mist. The south-west wind blew it towards us from the sea, and by the time we got home a thick fine rain was coming steadily down.{87}
Lunch, with Uncle Dominick at the head of the table, was a more serious business than breakfast had been, and old Roche’s shuffling ministrations added to the general solemnity. I was, however, amused by the affectionate solicitude with which he nudged me in the elbow with the dish of potatoes, indicating with his thumb a specially floury one, and concluded that this was the singular method he took of showing that his regard for my father had extended itself to me.
When lunch was over Willy announced his intention of walking to Clashmore, to see about borrowing a side-saddle for me, he said—an act of self-sacrifice which I was not slow to attribute to the fascinations of Miss Connie O’Neill. Uncle Dominick retired to a private den at the end of a dark passage leading from the hall to the back of the house; and a few minutes later,{88} Willy, in a voluminous mackintosh, set forth on his errand, followed by the fox terriers in a state of amiable frenzy, the result of the abhorred Sunday morning incarceration. I became aware that I was thrown upon my own resources, and, with the prospect of a wet afternoon before me, I felt my spirits sinking perceptibly.
To finish my letter to Aunt Jane was at least better than doing nothing. I took up a strong position in front of the library fire, and disconsolately applied myself to filling the big sheet of foreign paper on which I had embarked in the morning.
CHAPTER VII.  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{90} 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{91} 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{92} 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{93} 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{94} 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{95} 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{96} 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.
CHAPTER VIII.  SCHOOLING.
 “Rode he on Barbary? Tell me, gentle friend,
How went he under him?”
“This is the prettiest low-born lass——”
“And so she gave you a great fright? Well, now, wasn’t that too bad? I wish I’d caught her at her tricks, and I’d soon have packed her about her business. You know, they say she was the best step-dancer in the country when she was a girl; and to think of her going dancing under your window, and you taking her for a ghost!{98}”
Willy’s amusement overcame his sympathy, and he laughed loud and long.
I had been impelled to confide my alarm of Sunday night to him when we were on our way round to the stables to see the horses, on the following morning, and I now rather resented his refusal to see anything but the ludicrous side of the incident.
“You are very unsympathetic. I am sure you would have been just as frightened as I was,” I said. “She looked exactly like a ghost; and in any case I should like to know why she selected my window to dance under?”
“She meant it for a compliment, of course. I suppose she thought you’d be a good audience. I’ve seen her now and again jack-acting there in front of the house, but I’m afraid all I said was to tell her go home. But then, I’m not sympathetic like you!{99}”
We had stopped to discuss the point at the spot whence I had seen Moll emerge, and now walked on past the untidy old flower-garden to the yard.
It was a large square, of which three sides were formed by stables and cowhouses, the house itself being the fourth, and was only redeemed from absolute ugliness by a row of four great horse-chestnut trees, which grew out of a grassy mound in the middle. We arrived in time to surprise the two little fox terriers, Pat and Jinny, in the clandestine enjoyment of a meal with the pig, whose trough was conveniently placed by the scullery door. On seeing us, they at once endeavoured to dissemble their guilty confusion by an unworthy attack on their late entertainer. This histrionic display did not, however, deceive Willy in the least. The dogs were ignominiously called off, and the pig was left master of the situation.{100}
I wondered, as I looked round, if all Irish yards were like this one. Certainly I had never before seen anything like the mixture of prosperity and dilapidation in these solid stone buildings, with their ricketty doors and broken windows. Through the open coach-house door I saw an unusual amount of carriages, foremost among them the landau in which I had driven from Moycullen, with a bucket placed on its coach-box in order to catch a drip from the roof. A donkey and a couple of calves were roaming placidly about, and, though there was evidently no lack of stable-helpers and hangers-on, everything was inconceivably dirty and untidy.
The horses were, however, well housed and cared for. My future mount, “Blackthorn,” was the first to be displayed. He was a big black horse, with an arched back and an ugly head; but he had a look of{101} power and intelligence which provided me with materials for a sufficiently laudatory criticism. In the next box, the bay mare Willy had bought in Cork was pushing her nose through the bars over the door to attract our attention.
“That’s the one kept me from going to meet you at Queenstown,” said Willy, opening the door, and catching the mare by the head. “She’s a nice little thing, but I’ll know better another time than to throw you over for her. Stand, mare!”—as that animal made a vigorous remonstrance at being deprived of her sheet.
“She looks as if she knows how to go,” I said. “What are you going to call her?”
“Don’t you think you might christen her for me?” Willy answered, with an insinuating glance at me from under his{102} black eyelashes. “Just to show you don’t bear malice for my leaving you to cross Cork all alone.”
Notwithstanding the access of brogue with which this was said, there was something in the look which accompanied it at which, to my extreme annoyance, I felt my colour rise.
“Of course I don’t bear malice. I never even expected you to meet me,” I said, turning to stroke the mare’s shoulder. “If you really want a name for her, suppose you call her ‘Alaska.’ That was the steamer I came over in, and they say she’s the fastest on the line.”
Willy received this moderate suggestion with enthusiasm. “If she turns out half as good as she looks,” he said, as we walked out of the yard, “you shall have her for yourself to ride.”
“I think you are very rash to put me{103} up on your horses when you don’t in the least know how I can ride.”
“Ah! well, I’ll trust you; though, indeed, after the funk you were put into by poor old Moll, I suppose I may expect to see you turning back at the first fence.”
To this sally I vouchsafed no reply.
“I must take the mare out this afternoon,” he continued, “to try can she jump. Blackthorn wants shoeing, or you should ride him; but I thought perhaps you’d like to walk up to the farm to see me schooling the mare. It’s only as far as those fields opposite the lodge that I’ll go.”
This was, I thought, a very good suggestion. A prospective day with the hounds made me anxious to see what Irish fences were like, and we settled to start early in the afternoon.
At lunch Uncle Dominick was more conversational than I had yet seen him.{104}
“What have you been doing with yourself this morning, Theo, my dear?”—for the first time adopting the more familiar form of my name. “The roses in your cheeks do credit to our Irish air.”
Uncle Dominick’s faded gallantry always had the effect of making me shy and constrained. I laughed nervously, and before I could reply Willy struck in—
“She was round to the stables with me, sir.”
“Oho! so that was it, was it?” said my uncle, with the smile I disliked so much; and I felt that at that moment my cheeks more resembled peonies than roses.
“I was showing her the new mare,” said Willy, “and we’re going to call her ‘Alaska,’ because that’s the ship that”—here he stopped—“because that’s the fastest ship between this and America.”
“Why, is not that the vessel that{105} brought you to us from America?” said Uncle Dominick, pursuing his advantage with unexpected facetiousness. “I think it is an admirable name, and will always have pleasant associations for you and me, eh, Willy?”
Willy made no reply, and my uncle rose from the table, apparently well satisfied with himself, and left the room humming a tune.
It was a softly brilliant afternoon. I thought, as I started for the farm where I was to see Alaska put through her paces, that I had never, even in America, seen anything like the glow of the yellow leaves against the blue sky—a blue so intense that it seemed to press through the half-stripped branches. The thick drifts of fallen leaves rustled like water about my feet, and floated on the surface of the pools which the rain of yesterday had formed in{106} the low swampy ground under the clump of elms at the bend of the avenue. Just here a deep dyke ran parallel with the drive, separating it from the turf bog which I had seen from my bedroom window. Across it was a rough bridge of logs, from which a raised cart-track wound over the bog like a long brown serpent. I crossed the bridge and leaned upon the rusty iron gate that closed the approach to the bog road. The keen scent of the sea came to me across the heathery expanse, mingled with the pure perfume of the peat, and I regretted that my promise to Willy prevented me from following the meandering course of the cart-track over the headland, to where I heard the hollow draw of the sea on the rocks at the other side.
Retracing my steps, I went up the avenue, and found Willy with the two dogs waiting for me outside the gate. In{107} the fence on the other side of the road was an opening partially filled by a low wall of loose stones—locally called a gap.
“I’ll take her in at this gap,” Willy said, turning the mare to give her room, and then putting her at the gap. Alaska, however, had probably her own reasons for preferring the road, for she refused with a vicious swerve, and a lively contest between her and her rider ensued.
The latter’s difficulties were considerably complicated by Pat and Jinny, who, with ostentatious activity, insisted on crossing and recrossing the gap at the most critical moments. When Jinny at length took up a commanding position on its top-most stone, in order to watch, with palpitating interest and ejaculatory yelps, Alaska’s misbehaviour, Willy’s temper gave way.
“Theo,” he said, with suppressed fury,{108} “will you for goodness’ sake take that—that infernal dog out of my way?”
I captured Jinny, and held her wriggling in my arms, until at length Alaska, with a bound that would have cleared a five-barred gate, went into the field.
I climbed on to a gate-post, from whence I could conveniently see the schooling process. Willy was a fine rider, and Alaska acquitted herself very creditably; but after a quarter of an hour spent on my gate-post, I began to find it rather cold, and, Willy having gone to more distant fields in search of further educational difficulties, I decided to go home without him. Outside the gates was a large gravel sweep, with high flanking walls, forming a semicircular approach, and in these, at some height from the ground, several niches had been made, large enough to hold life-sized figures. As I turned to get down, I saw that a{109} young girl was standing in one of the niches. She was leaning slightly forward, steadying herself with one hand on the wall, while with the other she shaded her eyes, as if looking after Willy’s departing figure.
On seeing me, she jumped quickly down, and ran to open one of the small gates. I recognized the shy, pretty face of Anstey Brian, and stopped inside the gate to speak to her.
“If Mr. Sarsfield comes, will you tell him I have gone home?” I said; and was turning away, when Anstey, with a nervous blush, said, in a soft, deprecating voice—
“Oh, miss, I beg your pardon! I was very sorry to hear you got anny sort of a fright from my mother last night. It’s just a little restless she is, those last few nights, and my father’d be greatly vexed if he thought you got anny annoyance by her.{110}”
I assured her that my alarm had only been momentary, wondering vaguely how she had heard anything about it.
“Indeed, miss, she’d hurt no one. She’s this way, foolish-like, this long time.”
“How long is it since it began?” I said, with interest.
“I never remember her anny other way, miss, though my father says she was once a fine, handsome girl, and as sensible as yourself, miss.”
“Did her mind go from an accident?” I asked.
“Why, then, indeed, miss, I don’t rightly know. She had some strange turn in her always, and afther I was born she got quare altogether; and that’s the way she is ever since. Dumb, like she couldn’t spake, and silly in her mind.”
I was looking in the direction of the lodge while she spoke, half unconsciously{111} noting how thickly the ivy trails hung over its small windows, when I became aware of a face looking out at me through one of them.
I could distinguish little of it beyond the wide-open, pale eyes, which were fixed upon me with a concentrated, half-terrified intentness; but with a momentary return of last night’s unreasoning panic, I knew it to be the face of the woman of whom we were speaking. Something of this must have been shown in my expression, for Anstey, following the direction of my eyes, said—
“Don’t be frightened at all, miss. Sure that’s only poor mother. Will I bring her out here for your honour to see?”
But I had no wish for any close acquaintance, so hastily saying that, as it was already dark, I had no time to stay, I wished Anstey good night.{112}
I must confess that, as I walked away from the lodge, I was haunted by the frightened glare of Moll Hourihane’s eyes. There had been something in their expression which, beneath the oblivion of insanity, seemed almost to struggle into recognition. At the remembrance of them, I felt the same unconquerable dread creep over me again, and I hurried along the avenue towards home. To my imagination, the patches of grey lichen on the trees repeated in the growing twilight the effect of the grey face at the darkened window. The dead leaves awoke as I trod on them, and followed me with whisperings and cracklings. It was a relief to leave the little wood behind, and to see in the library windows the flickering glow which told of a good fire, and suggested tea.
I was surprised and annoyed by the unwonted nervousness which had lately{113} affected me. I prided myself upon being a singularly practical, unimaginative person; and yet now, for the third time since my arrival at Durrus, my self-possession had been disturbed by a trivial event, which I should formerly have laughed at. I walked rapidly to the house, determined for the future to give no toleration to my foolish fancy, and to——
“Here you are!” said Willy’s voice from the hall door. “Come on and have some tea.”
CHAPTER IX.  “THE TURF, THE CHASE, AND THE ROAD.”
 “Ford. Old woman! What old woman’s that?
. . . . . . . . . .
A witch, a quean, an old cozening quean!
Have I not forbid her my house?”
It occurred to me several times during the next few days, how strangely little I saw of my uncle. Except at luncheon and dinner, he seldom or never appeared, even in the evenings preferring to sit alone over his wine in the gloomy dining-room, while Willy and I were in the drawing-room. At ten o’clock regularly the door would open, and his tall austere figure would{115} appear, holding my candle ready lighted; and with the same little speech about the advantages of early hours for young people, he would wish me good night, politely standing at the foot of the stairs as I went up. As a rule, I did not see him again until luncheon next day, and I wondered more and more how he spent his time.
Willy seemed to know little more about his father’s occupations than I did.
“Oh, I don’t know what he’s up to,” he had said, when I asked him. “He prowls about the place from goodness knows what awful hour in the morning till breakfast, and he sits in that den of his all day, more or less. I’ve plenty to do besides watching him.”
Whether or not this was Willy’s real reason for avoiding his father, it was a sufficiently plausible one. All outdoor{116} affairs at Durrus were under his control, and at any time during the morning he might be seen tramping in and out of the stable, or standing about the yard, giving orders and talking to the numerous workmen in a brogue in no way inferior to their own.
I may mention here that Willy, in common with most Irish gentlemen when speaking to the lower orders, paid them the delicate, if unintentional, compliment of temporarily adopting their accent and phraseology. I had plenty of opportunities of noticing this, as Willy evidently considered that the simplest method of providing for my amusement was to take me about with him as much as possible. I had at first rather dreaded the prospect of these constant tête-à-têtes, but I soon found that my cousin had always plenty to talk about, and was one of the only men I have ever met who was a good listener.{117}
He contrived to include me in most of his comings and goings about the place. He took me down to the cove to see the seaweed carried up the rocks on donkeys’ backs to be spread on the land; or I watched with deep interest while the great turf-house was slowly packed for the winter with the rough chocolate-coloured sods; or, standing at a little distance, I listened with respect to his arbitration of a dispute between two of the tenants, who generally accepted his verdict as if it had been a pronouncement of the Delphic oracle. He was very popular with the country people, as much perhaps from his invincible shrewdness as from his ready good-nature, and subsequent observation has shown me that nothing so much compels the respect and admiration of the Irish peasant as the rare astuteness that can outwit him.
Thursday was fair day at Moycullen, and{118} Willy, who regarded the attending of fairs as both a duty and privilege, proceeded thither with the first light of day. To say at cock-crow would scarcely be an exaggeration, for, knowing well the absurdity of expecting any servant within the walls of Durrus to call him, he had—so he informed me—resorted to the extraordinary device of putting over-night a vigorous barn-door cock on the top of his wardrobe. This bird’s relentless cries at dawn were, as may be imagined, of a sufficiently rousing character, and in consequence Willy’s arrival at even the most distant fairs was as a rule timely.
The result of his absence was a solitary morning for me, and lunch alone with Uncle Dominick. Although faintly alarmed at the latter prospect, I was at the same time glad of the chance which it offered of getting to know him a little better.{119}
But in this I was disappointed. My uncle did not abate an atom of his usual impenetrable civility, and conversed with me on entirely uninteresting topics, with a fluency that was as admirable as it was provoking. I was absolutely at a loss to understand him; and, being a person sensitive to the opinions of others, I puzzled myself a great deal as to what he thought about me. The compliments which he never lost an opportunity of making, and his evident desire that Willy should do all in his power to make my visit agreeable to me, were not, I felt sure, any real indications of his feelings. That he took an interest in me, I was certain. Often I surprised in his cold eyes a still scrutiny, a watchful appraising glance that suggested mistrust, if not dislike; and although his manner was distant and self-engrossed, I had a conviction that little that I said or did escaped him.{120}
It was a depressing day. A quiet rain trickled steadily down, and through the blurred windows the trees looked naked and disconsolate against the threatening sky. I made up my mind that it was not a day to go out, and, with a pitying thought of Willy at the fair, I heaped turf and logs upon the library fire, and determined to write a really long letter to one of my friends in America.
After a period of virtuous endeavour with this intent, I discovered that I was becoming bored to stupefaction, and gave up the struggle. There was something in the air of Durrus antagonistic to letter-writing; or perhaps it was the impossibility of writing about a place which was so different from anything that I or my correspondents had been accustomed to, and was at the same time so devoid of interest for them. I bethought me of a{121} certain old book of field-sports which Willy had commended to my notice, and I wandered round the dusty shelves, looking for it among the exceptionally uninteresting collection of books which formed my uncle’s library. Not being able to find it, I took the bold step of going to his room to ask him if he could tell me where it was.
As I went down the long dark passage that led to his room, I was keenly alive to the temerity of the proceeding, and knocked at the door with some trepidation.
“What is it?” came an unencouraging voice from within.
“Oh! I only wanted to ask you about a book, Uncle Dominick,” I began.
The door was opened almost immediately.
“Come in, my dear Theo,” said my uncle, with what was intended for a smile of welcome. “What book is it you want?{122}”
I explained, adding that Willy had recommended the book to me.
“Oh, Willy told you of it, did he?” said my uncle, with interest; “and you cannot find it in the library?”—turning towards a large cupboard that filled a recess on one side of the chimney-piece. “Perhaps I have it in here.”
I heard a faint jingle of glass as he opened it; but the doors of fluted green silk, latticed with brass wire, prevented, from where I was standing, my seeing inside. My uncle ran his finger along one of the shelves in search of the book I wanted. Meantime I looked curiously about me.
It was a small, dingy room, disproportionately high for its size, with county and estate maps hanging on its damp-stained walls. A handsome old escritoire stood in the corner to the right of the lofty window{123} that faced the door by which I had entered. On one or two tables, dusty pamphlets and papers lay about in a comfortless way. Right in front of the fire was a battered leather-covered armchair, in which my uncle had been sitting, though there was no book or newspaper to indicate that he had been occupied in any way.
“It is an unusual thing to hear of Willy recommending a book. I suppose this is due to your civilizing influence?” said my uncle, emerging from the recesses of the cupboard with the book in question in his hand.
“Oh, well,” I replied, laughing, “this is not a very high class of literature.”
“It is, nevertheless, a classic in its way,” he said, opening the book; “and the prints are very good indeed.”
I came and stood beside him, looking at the illustrations with him.{124}
“The Regulator on Hertford Bridge Flat,” “The Race, Epsom,” “The Whissendine Brook”—we studied them together, Uncle Dominick becoming unexpectedly interesting and friendly in his reminiscences of his own sporting days when he was a young man at Oxford.
As he paused in looking at the pictures to enlarge upon an experience of his own, the pages slipped from his stiff bony fingers, and, turning over of their own accord, remained open at the title-page. There I saw, in faded ink, the words, “Owen Sarsfield, the gift of his affectionate Brother, D. S.”
My uncle looked at the inscription for half an instant, and, drawing a quick breath, closed the book.
“Uncle Dominick,” I said, with a sudden impulse, “won’t you tell me something about my father? My mother could never{125} bear to speak of him, and I know so little about him.”
He turned his back to me, and replaced the book in the cupboard, feeling for its place in the shelves in a dull, mechanical way.
“I hate to give you pain,” I went on; “but if you knew how much I have thought about him since I have been here! I have always so connected him and Durrus together in my mind.”
He walked back to the fireplace, and placed one hand on the narrow marble shelf before answering.
“There are many circumstances connected with your father which make it painful for me to speak of him,” he began, in a very quiet, measured voice. “I loved him very dearly; we were always together until his lamentable quarrel with my father.{126}”
He walked to the window, and stood looking out through the streaming panes, with his hands behind his back. After a few moments of waiting for him to speak again, I could bear the silence no longer.
“But what was the quarrel about? Was it my father’s fault?”
“It is a hard thing to say to you,” replied my uncle, turning round and looking past me into the fire, “but, under the circumstances, I feel that it is my duty to let you know the truth. Your father unfortunately got into money difficulties while at Oxford, which he was afraid to mention to his father. He went to London to study for the Bar with these debts still hanging over him, while I came home and undertook the management of the property.” He paused, and passed a large silk handkerchief over his face. “Owen always had a passion for the stage; he got en{127}tangled with a theatrical set in London, and finally he took the fatal step of making himself responsible for the expenses of an—in fact, of a travelling company of actors, with, I need hardly tell you, what result. Instead of the enterprise paying his debts, as he had hoped, he found himself liable for large sums of money.”
Uncle Dominick came back to the fireplace, where I was standing nervously grasping the shabby back of the leather armchair. I suppose my face told of the anxious conjectures that filled my mind, for, looking at me not unkindly, my uncle went on.
“I did all I could for him with my father, but he was a man of very violent temper, and was absolutely infuriated with Owen. He paid the debts, but he refused to see Owen again, and insisted on his leaving the country. I contrived to see{128} him before he left England, and from that day until I got his letter saying he was ill in Cork, I neither heard of nor from him.”
“But,” I broke in, “why did he never write to you?”
My uncle hesitated, and drew his hand heavily over his moustache. I saw that it trembled. He sat down in the chair by which I stood, and did not answer. I put my hand on his shoulder.
“Surely he had not quarrelled with you, Uncle Dominick? Or was it that you—that you thought he had behaved too——” I could not finish the sentence.
“No, no, my dear,” he said quickly; “I had no such feelings. I would have done anything in the world for him at that time.” He cleared his throat and continued huskily, “It was Owen who misjudged me, who misconstrued all my efforts on his behalf, who ignored my offers of assistance.{129} I cannot bear to think of what I went through,” he ended hastily, leaving his chair and again walking to the window. It was a French window, and a few stone steps led from it to the grass outside. He opened one door and looked down the drive.
It was getting darker, and the rain came driving in from the sea in ghost-like white clouds, as he stood there motionless, and apparently oblivious of the drops that fell from the roof on his head and shoulders.
“Are you looking out for Willy?” I said at length.
“Oh, Willy! Yes; is he not home yet?” he answered absently, closing the window.
“Is there any portrait of my father in the house?” I asked as he turned towards me, ignoring his remark about Willy in my anxiety to put a question that since my arrival at Durrus I had often wished{130} to ask, and feeling that it might not be easy to find another opportunity of reopening the subject.
“There is one, taken when he was a child; it hangs in the corridor outside your bedroom door.”
“But I think there are two portraits of boys there,” I persisted. “I am afraid I should not know which was his.”
My uncle rose wearily from his seat. “If you wish, I will show it to you now,” he said. “If you will go upstairs, I will follow you in an instant.”
I went slowly up the passage, and before I had reached the foot of the stairs he overtook me, and we went up together. He had his crimson silk handkerchief in his hand, and I remember wondering why he kept pressing it to his mouth as we walked along the corridor side by side.
A faint light shone through the open{131} door of the room over the hall door, the one that opened into mine, and against the grey light I saw in the window a crouching figure indistinctly silhouetted.
My uncle saw it too. With a muttered exclamation of anger, he walked quickly past me to the open doorway.
“What are you doing here?” he said sternly. “You know I desired you not to come upstairs, and this is the second time this week I have found you here.”
He stepped back to one side, and a tall woman with a shawl covering her bent shoulders shuffled out of the room. I had already guessed that it was Moll Hourihane, and I shrank back into the doorway of my own room; but she stopped, and, stretching out her neck towards me, she fixed her eyes upon my face with an expression of hungry eagerness.
“Did you hear what I ordered you?{132} Go down at once,” repeated my uncle, placing himself between her and me. “Let me never find you here again.”
She immediately turned and slunk away round the far side of the corridor, and, looking back once more at me, disappeared through the door that led to the servants’ quarters.
I gave a sigh of relief. “That woman terrifies me,” I said. “I wish she would not look at me in that dreadful way.”
“You need not be alarmed”—he spoke breathlessly and with unusual excitement—“she is perfectly harmless; but I do not choose to have her roaming about the house. These are the pictures of which we were speaking,” he continued. “The one to the right was done of me, and this—this is the other”—pointing to an old-fashioned looking portrait of a pretty dark-haired boy holding a spaniel in his arms.
CHAPTER X.  THE MOYCULLEN HOUNDS.
 “On the first day of spring, in the year ’93,
The first recreation in this countheree,
The King’s counthry gintlemen o’er hills, dales, and rocks,
They rode out so gallant in search of a fox.”
Blackthorn looked sedately amiable as Tom led him up to the hall door next morning, and I felt as I looked at him that I might safely trust him to initiate me into the mysteries of cross-country riding in the county Cork.
The day was lovely—sunny and mild, with a lingering dampness in the air that told of light rain during the night. I{134} settled myself in the saddle, intoxicated by the idea that I was actually going out hunting for the first time, though I could not help a tremor of anxiety as I wondered if Willy would find his confidence in me had been misplaced.
I could hear him now in the hall, knocking down umbrellas and sticks in search of his whip, and presently, in response to his shouts, old Roche came shuffling to his aid.
“I was putting up your sandwiches, sir,” he said.
“Go on, and give hers to Miss Theo, and hurry,” said Willy’s voice, in a tone indicative of exasperation.
Roche bustled out on to the steps with a small packet in his hand, a jovial smile on his face. He looked at me, and his face changed.
“My God! ’tis Master Owen himself!” he said, as if involuntarily. “I beg your{135} pardon, miss,” he continued, coming down the steps and putting the sandwiches into the saddle-pocket. “I suppose ’twas the man’s hat, and the sight of you up on the horse, made me think of the young master, as we called your father.”
Willy, at all times a carefully attired person, was to-day absolutely resplendent in his red coat and buckskins, and as we rode slowly down the avenue, I was impelled to tell him how smart both he and the mare looked. He beamed upon me with a simple satisfaction.
“Do you think so? Well, now, do you know what I was thinking? That no matter how good-looking a girl is, she always looks fifty per cent. better on a horse.”
“That is a most ingenious way of praising your own horse,” I said.
“Ah now, you know what I mean quite{136} well,” rejoined Willy, with a look which was intended to be sentimental, but, by reason of his irrepressibly good spirits, rather fell away into a grin.
The meet was to be at the Clashmore cross-roads, and we passed many people on their way there. White-flannel-coated country boys and young men—“going for the best places to head the fox,” as Willy observed with bitterness, and little chattering swarms of national-school children. Every now and then a young farmer or two came clattering along, on rough, short-necked horses, whose heavy tails swung from side to side as they trotted at full speed past us, and an occasional red coat gave a reality to the fact that I was going out fox-hunting. The cross-roads were now in sight, and I saw a number of riders and people who had driven to see the meet, waiting for the hounds to come up.{137}
“Why, I declare, here are the two Miss Burkes coming along in that old shandrydan of theirs with the bedridden grey pony!” said Willy, looking back. “Hold on, Theo. I must introduce you to them; they’re great specimens.”
We allowed the pony-carriage to overtake us, and Willy, pulling off his hat with as fine a flourish as his gold hatguard would allow, asked leave to introduce me.
“With the greatest of pleasure, Willy. Indeed, we’d no idea till yesterday, when we met Doctor Kelly in town, that Miss Sorsefield had arrived.” This from the elder Miss Burke, a large, gaunt lady with a good-humoured red face and an enormous Roman nose, and a curiously deep voice, whose varying inflections ran up and down the vocal scale in booming cadences.{138}
“You ought to be riding the pony, Miss Burke. She looks in great form.”
“Oh, now, Willy! you’re always joking me about poor old Zoé. You’re very naughty about him. Isn’t he, Bessy?”
The younger Miss Burke, thus appealed to, replied with a genteel simper, “Reely, Mimi, I’m quite ashamed of the way you and the captain go on. Don’t ask me to interfere with your nonsense. We hope, Miss Sarsfield”—turning a face that was a pale dull replica of her sister’s towards me—“to have the pleasure of calling upon you very soon. But oh, my gracious! there are the dogs and Mr. Dennehy coming! And look at us keeping you delaying here! Good-bye, Miss Sarsfield. I hope you’ll obtain a fox.”
At the cross-roads we found the master of the Moycullen hunt, a big, wild-looking man with a long reddish-grey beard and{139} moustache, seated on an ugly yellow horse with a black stripe, like a donkey’s, down his back.
“How do you do, Mr. Dennehy?” said Willy, as we rode up. “Nice day. This is my cousin, Miss Sarsfield. I hope you’ll show her some sport. Morning, Nugent. How are you, Miss Connie? Do you see the new mount I have?” and Willy forgot his duties as my chaperon, in a lively conversation with Miss O’Neill.
Mr. Dennehy, with what was, I believe, unwonted condescension, began to speak to me.
“I’m delighted to see you out, Miss Sarsfield,” he said in a slow, solemn brogue. “I hope we’ll have a good day for you, and if there’s a fox in Clashmore at all, these little hounds of mine will have him out.”
I did not know much about hounds, but even to inexperienced eyes these appeared{140} to be a very motley collection. Mr. Dennehy saw me look with interest at two strange little animals, somewhat resembling long-legged black-and-tan terriers.
“Well, Miss Sarsfield, those are the two best hounds I have, though they’re ugly creatures enough. And there’s a good hound. Loo, Solomon, good hound! That’s a hound will only spake to game.”
Here Mr. Dennehy produced a battered little horn, and with two or three bleats upon it to collect his hounds, he put the yellow horse at a yawning black ditch that divided the road from a narrow strip of rough ground, perpendicularly from which rose a steep hill covered with laurels. The yellow horse took the ditch and the low stone wall on its farther side with unassuming skill, and he and Mr. Dennehy were presently lost to sight in the wood.
Willy now came up to me with Miss{141} O’Neill and her brother, and I was introduced to the former, a small, fair-haired girl in a smart habit, with brown eyes and rather a high colour. She nodded to me with cheery indifference, and continued her conversation with Willy, leaving me to talk to her brother.
This I found to be a somewhat difficult task. His manner was exceedingly polite, but he appeared to be engrossed in watching the covert, and we finally relapsed into silence. At intervals Mr. Dennehy’s red coat showed between the low close-growing trees as he led his horse through the covert, and we could hear his original method of encouraging his hounds.
“Thatsy me darlins! Thatsy-atsy-atsy! Turrn him out, Woodbine! Hi, Waurior, good hound!”
I felt inclined to laugh, but as no one else seemed amused, I refrained and waited{142} for further developments. Presently, with a few words to Willy, Mr. O’Neill put spurs to his big bay and galloped off. In a moment or two, Miss O’Neill, without further ceremony, followed her brother to the other end of the covert, and Willy and I remained with about twenty other riders on the road.
“See here!” he said in low, excited tones. “You keep close to me. Old Dennehy’s got a beastly trick of slipping away with his hounds directly they find, and making fools of the whole field, leaving them the wrong side of the covert. But I think we’re in a good place here. Whisht! wasn’t that a hound speaking? Come on this way.”
We set off down the road helter-skelter after Mr. O’Neill and Connie, but were stopped by an excited rush of country boys with shouts of, “He’s gone aisht! H{143}e’s broke the far side!” and at the same instant Mr. and Miss O’Neill came pounding down a ride out of the covert.
“It’s just as I thought; Dennehy’s gone away with the hounds by himself,” called out Mr. O’Neill. “A country fellow saw the fox heading for Lick, and Dennehy all alone with the hounds, going like mad!”
At this juncture I think it better not to record Willy’s remarks.
“It’s all right, Nugent,” said Connie. “I know a way over the hill lower down.”
“Don’t mind her, Theo,” said Willy in my ear; “just you stick to me.”
We had galloped past the eastern bound of the wood, and as he spoke he turned his horse and jumped the fence on the right of the road. Blackthorn followed of his own accord, and I found that an Irish bank did not feel as difficult as it looked.
Willy turned in his saddle to watch me.{144}
“Well done! that’s your sort,” he shouted. “Hold him now, and hit him! This is a big place we’re coming to.”
We were over before I had time to think, and to my horror I saw that Willy was making for a hill that looked like the side of a house, covered with furze.
“There’s a way up here, but you’ll have to lead. Nip off! I’ll go first.”
I was fearfully out of breath, but Willy allowed no time for delay. Up the hill we scrambled, Blackthorn leading me considerably more than I led him. After the first few seconds of climbing, I felt as if it would be impossible to go on. My habit hindered me at every step. Blackthorn’s jerks and tugs at the reins nearly threw me on my face, and the fear of Willy alone prevented me from letting him finish the ascent by himself. When at last we reached the top, Willy and I were both so much out of{145} breath that we could not speak, and I wished for nothing so much as to lie down. But Willy, with a blazing face, made signs to me to mount at once, and, jerking me into the saddle, we again set off.
The top of the hill which we had now gained was rough, boggy ground. Down to our right lay the gleaming laurel covert, and in front of us the hill sloped gradually down into a low tract of bog and lakes, with hills beyond. We could see nothing of any one, but a countryman, on the top of a bank above the wood, waved semaphore-like directions that the hounds were running to the north-east.
“Hullo! here’s Nugent,” said Willy, in a not over-pleased voice, and as he spoke I saw Mr. O’Neill’s bay horse coming along over the hill. He soon overtook us, looking, I was glad to see, as heated and dishevelled as Willy and I.{146}
“I knew that way of Connie’s was no use, so I came back and went up the hill after you. Where are the hounds?”
“Going north-east, a fellow told me. But look! By Jove! there they are on the hill across the bog, and going straight for Killnavoodhee.”
“There is only one way to pick them up,” said Nugent, with what seemed to me unnatural calm—“we must cross the bog.”
“But, my dear fellow, I don’t believe there’s a way across, and once we got in, we’d not get out in a hurry.”
“Do you mind trying, Miss Sarsfield?” demanded Mr. O’Neill.
“Whatever Willy likes,” I said.
“Oh, all right,” said Willy. “Fire away, but you’ll have to pay for the funeral, Nugent.”
We had now reached the foot of the hill, and we rode rapidly along the verge{147} of the bog for a short distance till we came to where an old fence traversed it in a north-easterly direction.
“Here’s the place. If we can get along the top of this, we shall just hit off their line,” Mr. O’Neill said. He went first, and the horses picked their way along the top of the bank like cats, though the sides crumbled under their feet, and sometimes the whole structure tottered as if it were going to collapse into the deep dykes on either side. At last it broke sharp off, at a pool of black mire. Our guide dismounted and jumped down into the bog, pulling his horse after him, and we slowly dragged our way through the heavy ground to the farther side of the bog.
Here we were confronted by the most formidable obstacle we had yet come to. It consisted of a low, soft-looking bank, with an immense boggy ditch beyond it.{148}
“We’ve got to try it, I suppose,” said Willy, “but it’s a thundering big jump, and there’s a deuced bad landing beyond the water.”
He and Mr. O’Neill remounted, and the former put his horse at the place. The bay’s hoofs sank deep in the bank, but he took a spring that landed him safely on the opposite side on comparatively firm ground. My turn came next.
“Whip him over it!” exclaimed Willy.
I did so as well as I was able, but the treacherous ground broke under Blackthorn’s feet, and he all but floundered back into the ditch as he landed.
“Oh, Willy!” I cried, “I’m afraid you’ll never get her over now that the bank is broken.”
But Willy was already too much occupied with Alaska to make any reply. She refused several times, but finally, yielding to{149} the inevitable, she threw herself rather than jumped off the bank, and the next moment she and Willy were in the ditch.
I was terrified as to the consequences, and was much relieved when I saw Willy, black from head to foot, crawl from the mare’s back on to the more solid mud of the bank on our side. Without a word he caught Alaska by the head, and began to try and pull her out. His extraordinary appearance, and the fact that he was much too angry to be in the least conscious of its absurdity, had the disastrous effect of reducing both Mr. O’Neill and me to helpless laughter.
“I am very sorry, Willy,” I panted, “and I am delighted you’re not hurt; but if you could only see yourself!”
Willy silently continued his efforts.
“Oh, Mr. O’Neill, do get down and help him,” I continued.{150}
“I don’t want any help, thank you,” returned my cousin, with restrained fury. “Come up out of that, you brute!”—applying his hunting-crop with vigour to the recumbent Alaska, who thereupon, with two or three violent efforts, heaved herself out of the slough. All this time Mr. O’Neill had been grinning with that unfeigned delight which all hunting-men seem to derive from the misfortunes of their friends.
“You have toned down that new coat, Willy,” he remarked; “and I must say the little mare takes to water like an otter.”
“Oh, I dare say it’s very funny indeed!” retorted Willy, leading Alaska on to the higher ground where we were standing; “but if you’d an eye in your head you’d see the mare is dead lame.”
“By George! so she is. That’s hard{151} luck. She must have given herself a strain.”
“Well, whatever ails her, there’s no use in your standing there looking at me,” replied Willy. “I can get home all right. I don’t want Theo to lose the run, and you’ll head them yet if you put on the pace.”
His magnanimity was almost more crushing than his wrath. I was filled with contrition for my heartless amusement, and begged to be allowed to stay with him. But I was given no voice in the matter; my offer was scouted, and before I had fairly grasped the situation, I was galloping up a narrow mountain road after Nugent O’Neill.
CHAPTER XI  NUGENT O’NEILL.
 “He is the toniest aristocrat on the boat.”
After we had gone about a quarter of a mile, my companion pulled up.
“I think our best chance is to wait here,” he said, “From the way the hounds were running, they are almost certain to come this way eventually.”
The road up which we had ridden formed the only pass between the hills on either side of us, and beyond was a low-lying level stretch of country.
“If he’ll only run down that way{153}——” Mr. O’Neill began, but suddenly stopped, and silently pointed with his whip to the hill at our right.
“What is it?” I asked, in incautiously loud tones.
He looked for an instant as if he were going to shake his whip at me, and again pointed, this time to a narrow strip of field beside the road. I saw what looked like a little brown shadow fleeting across it, and in another moment the fox appeared on the top of the wall a few yards ahead of us. He looked about him as if considering his next move, and then, seeing us, he leaped into the road and, running along it, vanished over the crest of the hill.
Mr. O’Neill turned to me with such excitement that he seemed a different person. “Here are the hounds!” he said, “and not a soul with them.”
Down the hill the pack came like a{154} torrent, and were over the wall in a second. They spread themselves over the road in front of us as if at fault; but one of the little black-and-tan hounds justified Mr. Dennehy’s good opinion by picking up the line, and at once the whole pack were racing full cry up the road.
I have often looked back with considerable amusement to that moment. I was suddenly possessed by a kind of frenzy of excitement that deprived me of all power of speech. I heard my companion tell me to keep as close to him as I could, but I was incapable of any response save an inebriated smile and a wholly absurd flourish of my whip.
As this does not purport to be a hunting-story, I will not describe the run which followed. I believe it lasted fifteen minutes, and included some of the traditional “big leps” of the country. But to me it was{155} merely an indefinite period of delirious happiness. I scarcely felt Blackthorn jump, and was only conscious of the thud of the big bay horse’s hoofs in front of me and the rushing of the wind in my ears, At last a wood seemed to heave up before me; the bay horse was pulled up sharply, and I found myself almost in the middle of the hounds.
“By George! he’s just saved his brush,” said Mr. O’Neill, breathlessly; “he’s gone to ground in there, and I am afraid we shall never get him out. I hope you are none the worse for your gallop,” he continued politely. “It was pretty fast while it lasted.” He dismounted as he spoke, and began to investigate the hole in which the fox had taken refuge, and while he was thus engaged I saw Mr. Dennehy on his yellow horse coming across the next field. When he came up he was, rather to{156} my surprise, amiably pleased at our success in picking up the hounds, and regretted we had not killed our fox.
“You two and meself were the only ones in this run,” he said.
My thoughts at once reverted to poor Willy. I asked Mr. Dennehy if he had seen anything of him, and heard that he had passed my cousin, slowly making his way home.
“Oh, I think I ought to go home at once,” I said to Mr. O’Neill. “I might overtake him if you will tell me where I am to go.”
“If you will allow me, I think you had better let me show you the way,” he answered, with a resumption of the stiff manner which had at first struck me. Although I was quite aware that politeness alone prompted this offer, my ignorance of the country made it impossible for me to{157} refuse it. Trusting, however, that by speedily overtaking Willy I should be able to release my unwilling pilot, I wished Mr. Dennehy good morning, and we made the best of our way to the nearest road.
Our way lay through what seemed to me a chessboard of absurdly small fields. I could not imagine where all the stones came from that were squandered in the heaping up of the walls that divided them from each other, nor did I greatly care, so long as the necessity of jumping them gave me something to amuse me, and made conversation with Mr. O’Neill disjointed and unexacting.
What little I had seen of him at the covert-side had not inspired me with any anxiety to pursue his acquaintance, and once we had got out on to the road, with all the responsibilities of a tête-à-tête staring us in the face, my heart died within me.{158} Never had I met any one who was so difficult to talk to. I found that I was gradually assuming the ungrateful position of a catechist, and, while filled with smothered indignation at my companion’s perfunctory answers, I could not repress a certain admiration for the composure with which he allowed the whole stress of discourse to rest upon my shoulders. I at length made up my mind to give myself no more trouble in the cause of politeness, and resolved that until he chose to speak I would not do so.
A long silence was the result. We rode on side by side, my companion staring steadily between his horse’s ears, while I wondered how soon we should be likely to meet Willy, and thought how very much more I should have preferred his society.
“I suppose you find this place rather{159} dull?” Mr. O’Neill’s uninterested voice at last broke the silence. “I have always heard that American young ladies had a very gay time.”
I at once felt that this insufferable young man was trying to talk down to my level—the level of an “American young lady”—and my smouldering resentment got the better of my politeness.
“I very seldom find myself bored by places. It is, as a rule, the people of the place that bore me.”
“Really,” he returned, with perfect serenity. “Yes, I dare say that is true; but ladies do not generally get on very well without shop and dances.”
“Strange as it may appear, neither of those entrancing occupations are essential to my happiness.”
Mr. O’Neill turned and looked at me with faint surprise, but made no reply.{160} Another pause ensued, and I began to repent of my crossness.
It was clearly my turn to make the next remark, and I said, in a more conciliatory voice—
“I suppose you don’t have very much to do here, either?”
“Oh, I am not here very much, and I can always get as much shooting and fishing as I want; but I fancy my sisters find it rather dull.”
“Are your sisters fond of music? I was very glad to find a piano at Durrus.”
His face assumed for the first time a look of interest.
“My elder sister plays a good deal; and Connie has a banjo, though I cannot say she knows much about it; and I play the fiddle a little. I believe in these parts we are considered quite a gifted family.”
I felt that I had, so to speak, “struck ile.{161}”
“Do you play the violin?” I said, with excitement. “I delight in playing accompaniments! I hope you will bring your music with you when you come to dinner.”
“Oh, thanks very much; my sister always accompanies me,” he responded coolly.
His deliberate self-possession was infinitely exasperating in my then state of mind, and I repented the enthusiasm that had laid me open to this snub. I was hurriedly framing an effective rejoinder, when he again spoke, this time in tones of considerable amusement.
“Do you see that man leading a lame horse down the road? If he is not a chimney-sweep, I think he must be your cousin.”
As we came nearer, I was secretly unspeakably tickled by Willy’s inky and{162} bedraggled appearance; but I was too proud to join in Mr. O’Neill’s open amusement, until I noticed for the first time the incongruously rakish effect imparted to Willy’s forlorn figure by the fact that his hat had been crushed in. My injured dignity collapsed, and, holding on to my saddle for support, I laughed till the tears poured down my cheeks.
It was at this singularly unpropitious moment that Willy, hearing our horses’ feet, turned round.
“Oh, there you are!” he called out. “Did you meet the hounds?” Then, in a voice which showed his good temper had not returned. “You seem to be greatly amused, whatever you did.”
I thought it better to ignore the latter part of the sentence, and dashed at once into a confused account of our exploits, Mr. O’Neill helping out my narrative with{163} a few geographical details; to all of which Willy listened with morose attention.
“And Blackthorn jumped splendidly, Willy,” I said. “I was so sorry you weren’t there.”
“H’m!” said Willy; “very kind of you, I’m sure.”
Mr. O’Neill saw that the situation was becoming strained.
“As I can’t be of any further help to you or Miss Sarsfield,” he said, “I think I will go back and look for the hounds;” and, wishing us good-bye, he rode off.
“Well,” Willy began viciously, “you seem to find O’Neill cheerful enough, after all.”
“Indeed, I don’t, Willy,” I said, with vigour; “he was perfectly odious.”
“You didn’t look as if you thought him so a while ago, when you were both near falling off your horses with laughing. I{164} suppose”—with sudden penetration—“that it was at me you were laughing.”
“Oh no, Willy; at least, it was not exactly you—indeed, it was only your hat.”
Even at this supreme moment the air of disreputable gaiety of Willy’s headgear was too much for me, and my voice broke into a hysterical shriek. This was the last straw. With a wrathful glance, he turned his back upon me, and stalked silently on beside Alaska. Blackthorn and I followed meekly in the rear, and in this order we soberly proceeded to Durrus.
CHAPTER XII.  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{166} 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 be{167}ginning 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{168} 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,{169} 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{170} 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{171} worked so quickly? Was this subtle familiarity and satisfaction with my new life merely the result of ?sthetic 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{172} 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{173} 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;{174} 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,{175} 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.{176} 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.
CHAPTER XIII.  A DINNER-PARTY.
 “Go, let him have a table by himself!
For he does neither affect company,
Nor is he fit for’t, indeed.”
In spite of the incontestable success of my decorations, which drew forth the admiration of even the superior Henrietta O’Neill, I felt, before we had arrived at the period of fish, that the dinner-party was likely to be a failure.
Uncle Dominick had, of course, taken in the elder Miss O’Neill, and as far as they were concerned nothing was left to be desired. Conversation of a fluent and{178} high-class order was evidently her strong point. She at once entered upon a discussion of Irish politics with my uncle in a manner deserving of all praise, and as I surreptitiously studied her pale, plain, intellectual face, with the dark hair severely drawn back, and heard her enunciate her opinions in clearly framed sentences, I became deeply conscious of my own general inferiority.
Nevertheless, I did what in me lay to talk to Nugent O’Neill, who had taken me in, thus leaving to Willy the necessary and, as I thought, congenial task of entertaining Miss Connie. Nothing could apparently be better arranged. Nugent had exchanged his frigid, uninterested civility of the day before for an excellent semblance of sociability, beneath which, as it seemed to me, he concealed a curious observation of all that I said. He had{179} a dark clever face, with strong well-cut features, and blue eyes, with a pleasanter expression in them than I had at first expected to see there. His voice would have been monotonous in its quietness and unexcitability had it not been for a certain humorous, semi-American turn which he occasionally imparted to his sentences. He annoyed me, but at the same time he was interesting; moreover—which was to me a very strong point in his favour—he was evidently as much alive as I to the fact that for the next hour and a half it would be our solemn duty to amuse each other, and to that intent we both performed prodigies of agreeability.
But Willy was the cause of disaster. I became gradually aware that silence was settling down upon him and Connie, and that, instead of devoting himself to her, he, with his eyes fixed on me and my partner,{180} was listening moodily to what we were saying. When this had gone on for some minutes, during which Connie crumbled her bread and looked cross, I was exasperated to the point of bestowing a glance upon him calculated to awaken in him a sense of his bad manners. Far, however, from accepting my reproof, Willy returned my look with a gaze of admiring defiance, and projected himself into our conversation by flatly contradicting what Nugent was saying. The latter rose many degrees in my estimation by ignoring the interruption till he had reached the end of his sentence. Then, with a tolerating smile, he looked past me to Willy, and asked him what he had said.
Willy’s dark eyebrows met in a way that unpleasantly reminded me of his father.
“If it wasn’t worth listening to, it’s not worth repeating,” he said aggressively.{181}
Terrified by the turn things were taking, I struck in quickly, “Oh, Willy! have you told Miss O’Neill what you heard to-day about the Jackson-Crolys giving a ball?”
“No; I thought she’d have heard it herself,” he returned ungraciously.
“As it happens, I had heard nothing about it,” said Connie, from the other side of the table; “but I cannot say that I feel much excited at the prospect of one of their dances.”
“I am looking forward to it immensely,” I said, persevering with my topic. “I want very much to see a real Irish ball.”
“Yes,” said Nugent, reflectively; “you will see that to great perfection at the Jackson-Crolys’. They excel in old Irish hospitality. They do that kind of thing in quite the traditional way. Little Croly offers you whiskey the moment you get{182} into the hall; and, though you may not believe it, Mrs. Jackson-Croly orders champagne to be put into all the carriages when people are coming away. The guests are generally pretty happy by that time, and she says it is to keep their hearts up on the way home.”
“That’s quite true,” observed Connie; “and, as well as I remember, you were not at all above drinking it next day.”
“Do they dance jigs at these entertainments?” I asked. “If so, I am afraid I shall be rather out of it.”
“Oh yes,” said Willy, with what was intended to be biting sarcasm; “and horn-pipes and Highland flings. They always do at Irish dances.”
“Nonsense, Willy! They don’t really, do they, Mr. O’Neill?”
“It is always well to be prepared for emergencies,” he answered, “so I should{183} advise you to have some lessons from Willy. I have been told that step-dancing is his strongest suit.”
“Who told you that?” demanded Willy.
“One of our men was at McCarthy’s wedding the other day, and said he saw you there.”
“Oh yes,” supplemented Connie. “He said, ‘The sight would lave your eyes to see Mr. Sarsfield and that little gerr’l of owld Michael Brian’s taking the flure, and they so souple and so springy.’”
Willy did not appear to be at all amused by this flattering opinion, or by the admirable accent in which it was repeated. On the contrary, he looked rather disconcerted, and, with a glance towards the other end of the table, he said awkwardly—
“Oh, one has to do these sort of things now and then. The people like it, and it doesn’t do me any harm.{184}”
“On the contrary,” said Nugent, “I am sure it is a most healthy exercise. But I thought it rather spoiled your leg for a top-boot.”
Willy was known to favour knee-breeches as being especially becoming to him, and at this, to my great relief, he turned his back upon us, and plunged into an ostentatiously engrossing conversation with Connie. At last we were in smooth water, and with almost a sigh of relief I heard Nugent take up the thread of our discourse at the point where Willy had broken it off.
It was evident that he could be pleasant enough when he chose; and though I felt that this new development was almost as offensive in another way as his deliberate dullness yesterday, I was now very grateful for its timely help. At the same time, I bore in mind with resentment my unremunerated toil during our ride, and{185} reflected bitterly on the fact that people who only talk when it pleases them, receive far more credit when they do so than those who from a sense of duty exhaust themselves conversationally.
Uncle Dominick and Henrietta had up to this not caused me a moment’s anxiety. We were now at dessert, and yet the flow of their discourse had never flagged. In fact, my uncle seemed at present to be delivering a species of harangue, to which Henrietta was attending with a polite unconvinced smile. This was all as it should be, and my respect for Henrietta’s social gifts increased tenfold. Unfortunately, however, it soon became evident that the discussion, whatever it was, was taking rather too personal a tone, and my uncle’s voice became so loud and overbearing that Nugent and I were constrained to listen to him.{186}
“You amaze me,” he was saying. “I cannot believe that any sane person can honestly hold such absurd theories. What! do you mean to tell me that one of my tenants, a creature whose forefathers have lived for centuries in ignorance and degradation, is my equal?”
“His degradation is merely the result of injustice,” said Miss O’Neill, coolly adjusting her pince-nez.
“I deny it,” said my uncle, loudly. His usually pale face was flushed, and his eyes burned. “But that is not the point. What I maintain is that any fusion of classes such as you advocate, would have the effect of debarring the upper while it entirely failed to raise the lower orders. If you were to marry your coachman, as, according to your theories of equality, I suppose you would not hesitate to do, do you think these latent instincts of refine{187}ment that you talk about would make him a fit companion for you and your family? You know as well as I do that such an idea is preposterous. It is absurd to suppose that the natural arrangement of things can be tampered with. This is a subject on which I feel very strongly, and it shocks me to hear a young lady in your position advance such opinions!”
Henrietta’s face assumed an aggravating expression, clearly conveying her opinion that further argument would be thrown away. Uncle Dominick gulped down a glass of wine, and glared round the table. There was a general silence, and I took advantage of it to make a move to the drawing-room.
I was wholly taken aback by my uncle’s violence, and could not help fearing that the number of times his glass had been replenished had had something to say to it.{188} Willy’s temper had also been so uncertain that I dreaded an outbreak between him and his father, and, in the interval of waiting for their reappearance, I found myself making the most absent and ill-chosen answers to Henrietta’s questions upon the culture and political status of American women, while I listened anxiously for the sound of the opening of the dining-room door. My only consolation was, that Nugent would, for his own sake, do his best to keep the peace, and I was surprised to find how much I relied on his powers of doing so.
In my preoccupied state of mind, it is not to be wondered at that Henrietta soon appeared to come to the conclusion that I was incapable of giving her any information on the subjects in which she was interested, and that I was generally a person of limited abilities. She leaned back in her chair{189} with the exhausted air of one who relinquishes a hopeless task, and, taking up a photograph-book, she tacitly made me over to her sister.
Connie’s ideas ran in less exalted grooves. The run of the day before was to her a topic of inexhaustible interest; and when she found that my humility in the matter of hunting equalled my ignorance, she expanded into extreme graciousness, and was soon in the full tide of narration. The story-teller who treats of hunting with any real enthusiasm generally loses all mental perspective, and sacrifices artistic unity to historical accuracy. Then, as now, I was amazed at the powers of memory and merciless fidelity to detail with which those who have taken part in a run can afterwards describe it, and I listened with reverence befitting the neophyte to Connie’s adventures by flood and field.{190} Foxes and fences, hounds and hunters, were revolving in my brain, when the opening of the door brought the story to a conclusion, and Willy came into the room, followed by Nugent. He marched directly to the sofa where I was sitting, and deposited himself beside me with such determination that the rebound of its springs almost lifted me into the air.
This behaviour was really intolerable. Willy had not before shown any very pronounced partiality for me, and why he should have selected this evening for a demonstration of affection it would be hard to say. One thing was clear: it must be suppressed with a strong hand, or a dead-lock would ensue. Nugent was standing on the hearthrug, with apparently no prospect of entertainment before him save what he could derive from talking to his sisters; while those two young ladies were{191} well aware that no reasonable hostess could ask them to dinner and expect them to devote their evening to conversing with their brother, and, pending action on my part, were sitting in expectant silence. I turned upon Willy in desperation.
“You must talk to them,” I hissed in his ear.
To which, with equal emphasis, he whispered back, “I won’t!” fixing upon me a blandly stubborn gaze that infuriated me beyond the bounds of endurance.
I leaped from my seat, and, with a timely recollection of Nugent’s violin, I walked over to him and asked if he had remembered to bring it. He admitted apologetically that it was in the hall, adding, with unexpected modesty, that he had only brought it because I had asked him to do so. I had some acquaintance with the ways of amateur violinists, and speedily{192} recognized the diffidence which conceals a yearning to play at all hazards. My intention to dislike him was softened by the discovery that he was not at all points so superior as I had believed, and I was pleased to notice some hurry and trepidation in his manner while he was tuning his violin. Henrietta advanced upon the piano with an air of sisterly resignation, and, concealing a yawn, tapped a note for Nugent to tune by.
While he was thus engaged, I cast an anxious eye round the room. My uncle had now come in, and, with his elbow on the chimney-piece, was looking into the fire. Connie had taken possession of the ancient photograph-book which her sister had put down, and, in company with Willy, was silently and methodically turning over its yellow pages. Well did I know its contents. Ladies in preposterously{193} inflated skirts, with rows of black velvet round the tail; and gentlemen clad from head to heel in decent black, each with his back to an Italian landscape, and his tall hat on a Grecian pedestal near him—all alike undistinguishable and unknown. I felt sincerely for Connie; but other occupation there was none, and I had done my best on her behalf.
I was at first inclined to agree with Nugent in his own estimate of his playing, and I saw with unworthy amusement that he was extremely nervous; but as he went on he steadied down, and played with considerable sweetness and delicacy. The keen notes vibrated in the dim, lofty room, and tingling in the many hanging crystals of the old glass chandelier. I forgot the indignation which he had yesterday aroused in me, and remained leaning on the piano, conscious only of the pleasure I was re{194}ceiving, until the player ceased, and began to unscrew his bow preparatory to putting it away.
“Please play something else,” I said hastily. “Won’t you try this Suite of Corelli’s? I know it so well.”
“I am afraid my sister doesn’t know the accompaniment,” he answered, with a dubious look at Henrietta, who was rising from the piano.
Her bored manner had already told me that she looked on accompanying her brother as a task beneath her powers, and the thought struck me with paralyzing conviction that I ought to have asked her to play a solo. However, this was not the moment to rectify the error; Nugent was lingering over the putting away of his violin, with an obvious desire to play again.
{195}
“I suppose it would be too much to ask you to try it?” he said to me, after another glance at Henrietta’s unresponsive face.
“Perhaps if it was not very difficult I might be able——” I said, and checked myself, remembering the snub I had received on that very subject.
But now that I had admitted so much, Nugent held me to my word, and firmly proceeded to arrange the piano part on the desk for me.
“I don’t envy you, Miss Sarsfield,” remarked Henrietta, with a cold little laugh; “Nugent’s ideas of counting are excessively primitive.”
Decidedly Henrietta was annoyed.
“I am the class of savage who cannot count more than five,” he replied, addressing me; “but I do my best.”
Miss O’Neill laughed again. “You will have to play it for him,” she said, moving{196} away from the piano; “Nugent is a regular bully.”
I scarcely liked being coerced in this way, but I yielded; and we played the piece I had asked for, as well as several others, before I remembered my duties as hostess. Willy had forsaken Connie and the photograph-book, and had again left her and Henrietta to talk to each other, while he propped himself against the chimney-piece, and gazed moodily at Nugent and me.
I could not have believed that he would have left me in this dastardly way to bear the burden and heat of the entertainment, and I made a second effort to keep things going by begging Miss O’Neill to play. But this time I was unsuccessful; she would not be propitiated. A look passed between her and her sister, whose banjo I now had little doubt had been secreted in{197} the hall; while I, in violation of all the laws of civility, had myself been monopolizing the piano. They both got up from their places.
“I should have been delighted,” said Henrietta, “but I am afraid it is getting rather late. My dear Nugent”—calling to her brother, who was carefully swaddling his violin preparatory to putting it away—“we really ought to be getting home. The carriage must have been waiting some time; and I am sure”—in a lower voice—“that Mr. Sarsfield has had quite enough of us.”
I looked at my uncle, who during the violin-playing had sunk into an armchair, and had shaded his eyes with his hand, as if listening attentively. He had not moved since we stopped, and looked almost as if he were asleep; but there was something in his attitude that conveyed the{198} idea of deep dejection rather than of slumber.
The general stir of departure roused him. He rose slowly, and said good night with a little more than his usual sombreness.
CHAPTER XIV.  IN SOCIETY.
 “Ah! Then was it all spring weather?
Nay, but we were young and together.”
“Society is now one polished horde
Formed of two mighty tribes, the Bores and Bored.”
One day at Durrus was very like another. By the time I had been there three weeks or a month, the days stretched out behind me into indefinite length, separating me more and more from my past life.
Looking back to that time, it seems to resolve itself into one long tête-à-tête with Willy. Quiet rides with him through the damp brown woods, or now and then a day with the Moycullen hounds; drives{200} to return the visits of such of the natives as had called upon me; walks across the turf bog to where the old graveyard hangs over the sea, to watch the sun drop below the horizon. “Bound for America,” says Willy. “I wonder if you’d like to be going back with him?” I had no doubts in my own mind on the subject, though I did not feel called upon to say so to him. I was now quite certain that, in spite of various drawbacks, I enjoyed my life at Durrus very much.
I have said that I had had callers. After the O’Neills, among the first to come and see me were Mrs. Jackson-Croly and her daughters, and the Burkes, whose acquaintance I had already made.
These ladies all made their appearance on the same afternoon; but before the Burkes arrived I had an undiluted quarter of an hour of the Jackson-Crolys, during{201} which time the magnificence of Mrs. Croly’s manner was only equalled by the fashionable languor of her daughters’. I naturally tried to talk to them of such local subjects as I knew anything about, but found that the meanest topic on which they would consent to converse was Dublin Castle, and the affability displayed to them by the lord-lieutenant—“left’nant,” they pronounced it—during the past season. With these lofty themes I was quite unfitted to grapple, and had sunk into a subordinate place in the conversation when the Miss Burkes were announced.
They were both exceedingly cordial and friendly, and Miss Mimi began almost immediately to rally me with ponderous facetiousness on my exploits on the day of the hunt.
“Oh, Miss Sarsfield! what’s this we hear about you and Mr. O’Neill? Spring{202}ing away through the country after the fox, and leaving poor Willy in the ditch! Oh, fie!”
I feel that it is hopeless to convey any adequate idea of Miss Mimi’s voice by any system of spelling; but the fact that in her vocabulary “fie,” was pronounced “foy,” may serve as some indication of her manner of speech.
At her ingenuous observation I became aware that the eyes of Mrs. Jackson-Croly and her two daughters were riveted upon me with undisguised interest, and I hastened to explain how it was that Willy had been left behind. But Miss Burke paid little heed; another and more exciting topic had suggested itself to her.
“Well, Mrs. Croly, is it true that you’re going to give us a dance at Mount Prospect?” she began. “Why, you’re a wonderful woman for dissipation! We’d all{203} he dying down with dulness only for you.”
Mrs. Jackson-Croly, metaphorically speaking, descended with one leap from the pedestal on which she had hitherto posed for my benefit. Forgetful of the demeanour befitting one who moved in vice-regal circles, she dragged her chair, still seated upon it, across the floor, till she had placed herself knee to knee with Miss Burke, and they were soon deep in calculation as to the number of “dancing gentlemen” who could be relied on for the forthcoming ball.
A few days afterwards, Nugent O’Neill rode over to ask Willy and me to lunch at Clashmore on the following day. I had once or twice met him and Connie out hunting, and the latter and Henrietta had come over to call, after their dinner at Durrus. On these occasions my acquaintance with Connie had made rapid progress;{204} she was a girl whom it was not difficult to know and to like; but with her brother I seemed to have come to a standstill. I must admit to having felt rather disappointed at this, as since the night of the dinner-party I had believed that, under favouring circumstances, he would be a person with whom I should find myself on many points in sympathy. On this occasion he certainly did not carry out my theory. After a great deal of profoundly uninteresting conversation with Willy, in which a self-respecting wish not to be out of it alone induced me to make a third, they both went round to the stables, and I watched him ride away with a return of my old resentment towards him.
Nevertheless, I had to allow to myself that he had not been more dull than was suitable to the subject on which Willy had chosen to harangue him—the question of{205} how and where best to lay out and level a tennis-ground in the lawn at Durrus was not one which lent itself to a display of epigram, but I could not see why they should have talked about it the whole time.
I speculated with a good deal of interest on Nugent’s probable demeanour at luncheon the next day. I could not make up my mind if his unenthusiastic manner was the result of conceit or of an inborn distrust of “American young ladies.” It was certainly provoking that the one Irishman I had hitherto met who seemed to have a few ideas beyond horses and farming, was either too uninterested or too distrustful to expend them upon me.
“I suppose it is the arrogant timidity of these eldest sons,” I reflected, with a touch of republican scorn. “I wish I could tell him that he can talk to me without fear of ulterior designs on my part.{206}”
The day of the Clashmore repast was bright and cold. Willy had put Alaska into the dog-cart to drive me there, and we all three started in very good spirits.
“Willy,” I said, as we spun along the hard road, “you have never told me anything about The O’Neill. I am rather nervous at the idea of meeting an Irish chieftain in his own lair. Ought I to kiss his hand? I am sure you ought to have driven over a couple of fat oxen and a he-goat as propitiatory offerings.”
“By the hokey! I’ll do nothing of the sort,” said Willy. “I can tell you, he is not the sort to refuse them if I did. But I’ve no objection to your kissing his hand, if you like.”
“How kind of you!”
“And he’ll have still less. Mind you, he’s a great old buck, and expects every girl who goes to Clashmore to make love to him.{207}”
“Oh, Willy!” I cried, in real alarm, “for goodness’ sake don’t let him come near me. I never have anything to say to old men, and yet they invariably want to talk to me.”
“Then, my dear, you’d better look out. The madam will have it in her sleeve for you if he’s too civil; she doesn’t approve of his goings on.”
“Well, one comfort is, I shall probably be in his black books in five minutes, as you say it is one of the seven deadly sins to call him Mister O’Neill. I could no more call him ‘O’Neill’ than I could fly; I should feel as if I were talking to a coachman.”
“Oh, I dare say he’d put up with more than that from you! You’re just his sort. I know he’ll tell every one you are ‘a monstrous fine girl.’ You know, he likes them tall and dark and hand{208}——”
“Do hold your tongue!” I interposed. “You are most offensive.”
“Well, never mind,” said Willy, consolingly. “Maybe he won’t look at you, after all. There’s that big English girl we saw in church with them last Sunday—Watson, I think Nugent said her name was—I dare say he devotes himself to her all the time. Though,” he added, “I don’t see why I shouldn’t go in for her myself”—with a glance at me to see how his shaft had sped.
“Oh, I hope you will!” I said; “it would interest me so much.”
I thought Willy looked a little crestfallen, and he said no more on the subject.
As I walked cautiously across the highly polished floor of the Clashmore hall, preceded by an eminently respectable young footman, I was amused to find that my mind was occupied in unfeigned admiration{209} of the cleanliness of the house. This, then, was the result of six weeks’ residence at Durrus. I had become so inured to untidiness, and a generally lenient system of cleansing, that the most ordinary household virtues had acquired positive instead of merely negative value.
The big, bright drawing-room seemed full of strangers, who, as I came in, all stopped talking. I caught, however, my own name, spoken in a voice unmistakable, even in the undertone in which it said, “I declare, there’s Miss Sarsfield herself!” and I had the uncomfortable conviction that Miss Mimi Burke, in common with the rest of the room, had been discussing me.
I advanced with uncertain speed across the wide space of glowing carpet which separated me from Madam O’Neill, my last few steps being considerably accelerated by the sudden uprisal from under my feet of{210} an abnormally lengthy dachshund, which had lain coiled unseen in my path.
“That detestable dog of Henrietta’s!” said Madam O’Neill, as she shook hands with me; “he is always getting in the way. How do you do, Miss Sarsfield? Robert dear, this is Miss Sarsfield.”
A stout, elderly gentleman, in a light suit of clothes, and with one of the reddest faces I have ever seen, stepped forward with a very polite bow and expansive smile, and shook hands with me. This was my host, but the warning I had received against encouraging his attentions had so alarmed me, that as soon as was decently possible I turned my back upon him and began to talk to Henrietta. I had been aware all the time of Willy’s observation, and now, as I turned and met his malevolent eye, I felt with dismay that my face was slowly turning a good fast colour,{211} analogous to Turkey red. Deeply conscious of this, and of the unsparing glare of light from the large plate-glass windows, I spent some singularly uncomfortable moments, until the booming of the gong interrupted Miss O’Neill’s comments on the weather.
I suppose that every one has at some period of their life felt the absurdity of being led forth processionally to an entirely commonplace meal, to which one is quite capable of walking unassisted on one’s own legs. I was never more keenly alive to this than on the present occasion, when, thrusting my hand with some difficulty inside The O’Neill’s bulky arm, and feeling at least a head taller than he, we with all dignity led the way into the dining-room.
I looked round the luncheon-table to see how people had arranged themselves. My neighbour on the right was the Reverend{212} Thomas Horan, Rector of Rathbarry, a dull-looking man, with a saffron complexion, and hair and beard of inky blackness, whose speech in private life was little less unintelligible than his pulpit utterances. Opposite to me sat Nugent O’Neill and Miss Watson. She was an ordinary type of smart English girl, tall, fair, square shouldered, and well dressed, and apparently rather fond of the sound of her own high, unmodulated voice. She, evidently, had no difficulty in talking to Nugent. I caught from time to time such fragments of their discourse as, “Saw your college get a bump,” “Up for commemoration week,” “Ladies’ eights”—by which latter phrase I wondered if he were referring to her size in gloves.
The view to my right was impeded by the portly form of Miss Mimi Burke, who was next Mr. Horan, she and that divine{213} interchanging much lively badinage, in tones suggestive of a duet between two trombones. Beyond her I could just discern the feeble profile of a red-haired youth of nineteen or twenty, who was subsequently introduced to me as Mr. Barrett.
The O’Neill had been up to this too busy in dissecting two ducks of unusually athletic physique to speak to me; but he had from time to time—
“Looked upon me with a soldier’s eye,
That liked, but had a rougher task in hand.”
And when the last limb had been distributed, he turned his crimson face and gleaming eyeglass upon me.
“And why haven’t we seen you out with the hounds lately, Miss Sarsfield?” he began, in a wheezy, luscious voice, with a suspicion of brogue in it. “Nugent brought home such accounts of your doings{214} that I went out myself in hopes of seeing you show us all the way.”
I modestly disclaimed all credit for the glories of the run which had made such a sensation. “And I have only been able to go out once or twice since,” I added; “the meets have been so far away, and Willy has only two horses.”
“Ah! I wish you’d let me give you a mount. Your father has done as much for me many a day when I was a youngster; and I think you and I ought to be great friends”—this with a gaze of deep feeling from the unglazed eye.
“Thank you; you are very kind,” I murmured discomposedly, looking towards the little madam to see if she were noting the behaviour of her lord.
But no; the pink ribbons and marabout tufts of her elaborate cap were nodding complacently towards Willy, who was{215} talking to her with enviable ease and fluency.
Willy’s skill in talking to elderly ladies amounted to inspiration. At present both Madam O’Neill and Miss Bessie Burke were hanging on his words, with every appearance of rapt interest; while I, the beloved of old men, could make no fitting rejoinder to the advances of my host. “But then,” I reflected, in self-extenuation, “old women are infinitely preferable to old men.”
“Ah yes!” The O’Neill went on, “how much you remind me of your father! The same wonderful dark eyes——”
“Mine are grey,” I interrupted, in as repressive a manner as possible.
The objects in question immediately underwent a close scrutiny.
“No matter—no matter; they have the same depth of expression. ‘That ey{216}e’s dark charm ’twere vain to tell,’ eh? Isn’t that what Byron says?”
Of the appropriateness of the quotation my plate alone was in a position to give an opinion, as on it my eyes were immovably fixed.
“I say, sir,” said Nugent, suddenly, from across the table, “did you know that Miss Watson was a great fortune-teller? You ought to show her your hand.”
Nothing loth, O’Neill laid his fat white hand on the table for Miss Watson’s inspection. She at once opened the campaign in a masterly manner, by pronouncing it to be that of a “flirt,” and I felt that the chieftain’s entertainment need no longer be a matter of anxiety to me.
Looking at his father with a peculiar expression, in which amusement seemed to predominate, Nugent listened for a minute or two to Miss Watson’s ingenious in{217}sinuations and pronouncements. Then he turned to me.
“Do you believe in chiromancy, Miss Sarsfield? It seems to me an adaptable sort of science.”
CHAPTER XV.  AN AMERICAN GIRL.
 “She’s always been kind of off-ish and partic’lar for a gal that’s raised in the woods.”
Luncheon was over. The elders of the party had returned to the drawing-room, where they were seated in a state of contented satiety, discussing their servants, their gardens, and the Church of Ireland Sustentation Fund, according to their age and kind.
In the billiard-room, a four-handed game was going on. Willy and Miss Watson were playing Connie and Mr. Barrett; and, as billiards was not one of my accom{219}plishments, I preferred, notwithstanding polite offers of instruction, to sit in a window-seat and look on.
Nugent at first undertook the office of marker; but as he tried at the same time to explain the intricacies of the game to me, complications in the scoring soon arose, accompanied by violent altercations with the players. Finally, he was expelled with ignominy, it having been proved that he had marked Miss Watson’s most brilliant break to her opponents.
“I thought I should never have come alive out of that,” he said, sitting down in the window beside me; “Miss Watson looked as if she was going to convince me with the butt end of her cue, and I have no ambition to have a row with Willy. I shouldn’t have much of a chance.”
I thought, nevertheless, that he looked well able to take care of himself, as he{220} leaned back against the window-shutter, and began to roll a cigarette, while the sun slanted in upon his light, firm figure and well-shaped head, striking a pleasant dazzle into his blue eyes as he glanced at the players.
“Do you know Mr. Jimmy Barrett?” he asked, in cautious tones, as that youth, his freckled face pink with anxiety, sprawled across the table to play his stroke.
“No, I don’t know him, but I remember seeing him out hunting.”
“He’s a very fine rider, but that’s about all he’s good for. From the appearance of things at present, he will have cut the cloth in the course of the next five minutes. If Connie is going to give lessons in billiards, she ought to keep a private table for her disciples.”
Nugent had laid his tobacco-pouch on the seat beside him while he was speak{221}ing; it was covered with crimson plush, and his monogram, sumptuously worked in gold thread, adorned the flap. I thought it, on the whole, rather vulgar.
“I am thankful that I was not decoyed into playing,” I said. “I must say all my sympathies are with Mr. Barrett; he did not want to play in the least, and I am sure he does not look as if he were enjoying himself.”
“I deny that he was decoyed into playing,” said Nugent, argumentatively, lighting his cigarette and leaning back again with an air of leisurely satisfaction; “and, anyhow, he is not a case in point. The mere fact that you are an American is about fifty points in your favour. You would probably lick all our heads off by the sheer force of instinct and power of intimidation.” He took up his tobacco-pouch, and looked at it absently. “Yes,{222} you’re a great nation. For instance, this very fine thing is of Yankee origin, and I don’t believe the worker of it had ever done anything of the kind before. It was done, as the Irishman played the fiddle, ‘by main strength,’ and yet look at it!”
“It’s very gay,” I said, regarding it with chilly disfavour.
Nugent looked at me meditatively, as he put it back into his pocket. “Does that mean professional jealousy?” he asked. “Are you also a worker of tobacco-pouches?”
“I can’t work any more than I can play billiards,” I said, with some enjoyment of the admission.
“No? What a pity!” said Nugent, a little inattentively. “Do you know, I once taught an American girl billiards, and after she had played for a week, she used to beat me pretty nearly every time.{223}”
“But I think I told you before I was not an American girl,” I said energetically. “Every one here persists in calling me American, and I am nothing of the kind; I am Irish!”
“It seems to me you are very anxious to ‘go back on’ your native land,” he said, looking at me through his half-closed eyelids; “you won’t allow yourself to be called American, and you don’t even speak the language.”
“That is the regular British fallacy. You all expect us to talk through our noses, and say, ‘Wal, stranger.’”
“Not at all. I am awfully well up in modern American fiction, and I know all about the Boston young woman and her high-class conversation. I assure you, there is no one on earth that I should be so much afraid of.”
“I am sure you took that idea from{224} Henry James’s ‘Bostonians,’ but they are not all as superior and conscientious as Olive Chancellor was in that. Certainly I am not, and I lived for a long time in Boston.”
“Really!” he said, opening his eyes; “I had no idea of that. I think,” he went on, after a moment’s pause, “you might have mentioned it before, and saved me from giving myself away as I did.”
“You have said nothing very compromising so far,” I said, stooping down to help Henrietta’s dachshund in an attempt to scramble on to my lap; “but I thought it kinder to warn you while there was yet time.”
He laughed rather foolishly, and slowly knocked the ash off his cigarette against the window-sash. “All the same,” he said, “I think I was quite right in what I said. By the way, I got a lot of new{225} fiddle music to-day. I wonder if you would come and have a look at it? Perhaps we could try over some?”
“I am afraid it is rather late,” I said hesitatingly. “I should like to do so very much, but I think the game must be nearly over, and we ought to go home then; it gets dark so quickly.”
“Well, perhaps you would allow me to bring it over to Durrus some day? My sister is very slow at reading music, and I think I remember your saying that you did not mind playing accompaniments.”
I did remember saying so quite well, and also the manner in which the intimation had been received; but I magnanimously determined to let bygones be bygones, and consented with a good grace.
The game was, as I had said, coming to a conclusion. Willy was playing, and{226} evidently playing extremely well—striding round the table with silent purposeful rapidity, while Miss Watson triumphantly proclaimed the score as his break mounted. Connie, ignoring the dejection of her unhappy little partner, was leaning back against the wall, humming a little bitter tune, with the air of having lost all interest in the proceedings.
“I think Connie looks as if she had enough of Jimmy’s billiard-playing,” said Nugent, with brotherly discernment; “she doesn’t like being beaten a bit. There’s an end of Willy’s break. Now, Jimmy,” he called out, “they only want three of game—42 plays 97; it’s a good game to win!”
Mr. Barrett advanced to the table, looking with a sickly smile to his partner for an encouragement which he did not receive. Nugent and I left our window, and{227} came closer to see the finish of the game. We had not long to wait. Taking prolonged aim at the red ball, Mr. Barrett dealt his own a faltering tap; it rolled slowly across the table, and, without touching either of the other balls, sank unobtrusively into a side pocket.
“Three to us. Game!” said Miss Watson. “I think we did pretty well, Mr. Sarsfield. I told you you were good at games as soon as I looked at your hand.”
“Why, have you had your fortune told, Willy?” I said.
“Yes,” he said shortly. “Are you quite sure you’ve told me everything?”—turning from me to Miss Watson.
“Oh dear, no! not more than half. I shall think about your hand, and tell you the rest another day,” said Miss Watson, with great suavity. “Irishmen’s hands{228} are so puzzling—so contradictory, you know; but I suppose all Irish people are that, aren’t they?”
“Never mind, Mr. Barrett,” I heard Connie saying; “we will play them again some other time. Now, good people, won’t you all come and have some tea?” she continued. “You had better not lose time, or there will be none left. Mr. Horan gets through tea and cake like a Sunday school—four cups at least, and two slices with every cup! So if you and Willie are going to have any more palmistry, Georgie, we certainly shall not wait for you.”
In the drawing-room, we found Madam O’Neill, Henrietta, and Mr. Horan sitting over the tea-table; the latter with his handkerchief spread over his knees, and a general greasiness of aspect suggestive of buttered toast. The Burkes had gone,{229} and, to my unbounded relief, The O’Neill did not appear.
“It’s just as I said,” whispered Connie; “there isn’t an atom of toast or hot cake left. Did you see mamma just now hiding the sponge-cake behind the slop-basin to get it out of his way? I see the Burkes have gone,” she went on. “If you could only have heard old Mimi singing your praises before you came to-day! She said it was ‘deloightful to have that sweet young creature settled in the country,’ and that, ‘considering you had been brought up among the Americans, you really spoke English as well as she did.’ Was not that what she said, Nugent?”
Her brother laughed, and sat down beside me.
“You see, what I told you is quite true,” he said, “though perhaps I did not put it as nicely as Miss Burke did. As an{230} American young lady, you are a failure in these parts.”
“I am delighted to hear it,” I replied. “If you had not formed a preconceived idea that I was a Yankee, I know you would have noticed my Cork brogue at once.”
While we were talking, Willy came up.
“Are you nearly done your tea?” he demanded. “The trap is at the door some time.”
He remained standing before me, as if he expected me to get up at once. That something had annoyed him was evident, and, feeling that delay was unadvisable, I swallowed my tea with all possible despatch, and made my adieux.
Nugent came to the hall door with us.
“Then, may I come over on Tuesday?” he said, tucking in the rug for me, while Willy silently picked up the reins, and took the whip out of the rest, “or any{231} other day that would suit you would do for——” The rest of the sentence was lost, as Willy, without further ceremony, drove away.
“Very well—Tuesday!” I screamed back, as we whirled down the avenue. “My dear Willy, I don’t know why you were in such a desperate hurry,” I went on, rather crossly.
“Well, how was I to know he had anything more to say?” retorted Willy, with equal ill-temper. “I’m sure he had plenty of time to settle everything before we left the house. I wasn’t going to keep the mare standing, if he chose to go on prating there.”
“I don’t suppose another five seconds would have done her any mortal injury, and I think you might have risked it for the sake of civility.”
He did not answer, and we drove along{232} in silence, Willy maintaining a demeanour of unbending severity, and affecting to be altogether occupied with his driving.
“Very well,” I said to myself, “if he likes to sulk, he may; I won’t take any notice of him.”
No word was spoken for at least a mile. Alaska trotted steadily on, under the leafless beeches, and along the road by the sea, till she at length slackened to walk up a hill.
“Are you cold, Theo?” Willy did not turn his head, but I felt that the olive branch had been extended.
“Not particularly,” I said, as indifferently as possible.
“I put a wrap into the trap for you”—stretching a long arm over the back of the seat, and dragging a cloak from the depths. “You must be perished in that thin coat. Here, let me put this round you.{233}”
He wrapped me in it with unnecessary care, and while he was doing so he said suddenly,
“I’m awfully sorry if I was rude to you. You know that——” His voice broke, and he stopped as suddenly as he had begun. I put up my hand to fasten the cloak for myself, and was rather startled to find it caught and fervently squeezed.
“Oh!” I said, withdrawing my hand sharply, “you were not in the least rude to me. I did not mind a bit. We had a very pleasant day on the whole, I think,” I continued inconsequently; “and did you see how beautifully I behaved to The O’Neill?”
I fancy Willy looked a little disappointed at his apology being disposed of so quickly.
“No, I can’t say I did,” he answered, in{234} an injured way. “I had plenty to do talking to the madam.”
“Yes, I saw you. I was looking at you with the deepest admiration all through lunch. And, by the way, what do you think of Miss Watson? She seems to be a wonderful billiard-player.”
“I thought you were too busy talking to Nugent to notice what we were doing,” said Willy, with some return of sulkiness. “It didn’t look as if you found it so hard to talk to him, as you’re always saying you do.”
“But I assure you we were looking at the game, Willy. I don’t understand billiards, so you can’t expect me to watch every stroke.”
“Well, I only know that I spoke to you one time, and you were so much taken up with talking about Boston or something, that you never even heard me.{235}”
“Then you must have said it absolutely in a whisper,” I said, in heated self-defence. “Mr. O’Neill was not saying anything in the least interesting, only that he should never have thought I had been brought up in America.”
“H’m!” said Willy, in a more mollified tone. “He must have meant that for a compliment. I know what he thinks of Yankee girls. He’s told me many a queer story of one he met at Cannes last winter.”
We rounded a turn in the road, and in the twilight I could see the Durrus woods spreading darkly down to the sea. It would take another ten minutes to reach home, and, though Willy was simmering down, I knew that we were still on dangerous ground.
“What did Miss Watson say of your hand?” I asked, with the view of changing the conversation. “Did she tell you that{236} you had ‘no sense of humour, and homicidal tendencies, combined with unusual conscientiousness’? That’s what a man once told me.”
“No,” answered Willy, quite seriously; “she didn’t say very much about my character. She was looking at my line of heart most of the time, I think. She told me that I would have ‘two great passions’ in my life, and that I was to be married soon.” He stopped, and looked at me.
“How exciting!” I said hurriedly. “My man did not tell me any of those interesting sort of things.”
“She said my line of fate was broken,” resumed Willy, “whatever that may mean. She told me I had a very good line of intellect, but it wasn’t properly developed. I dare say the last part of that’s true enough,” he added, with a sigh. “I never{237} got a chance to learn anything when I was a boy. The governor sent me from one dirty little school to another for a couple or three years, and then the national schoolmaster had a go at me, and that’s about all the education I ever had.”
“I dare say you get on just as well without being very good at classics and those sort of things. And, you see, you passed your exam. for your captaincy in the West Cork quite easily,” I said, with a rather lame attempt at consolation.
“That’s quite a different thing; any fool could do that. What makes me sick is to see Nugent and chaps like him, who have been to Harrow and Oxford, and all the rest of it—and here I’ve been stuck all my life, without a chance to get level with them. It’s when I’m talking to you that I feel what an ignorant brute I am!”
“I hate to hear you talk like that,{238} Willy,” I said, really distressed. “I never thought you so—not for an instant. On the contrary, I think you know more than any one I ever met—about practical things; and if you don’t look where you’re going, you will drive over that old woman who is going in at the gate”—as we turned sharply off the road at the Durrus lodge—“and I believe it is that dreadful old Moll, too. I am thankful to say I have not seen her for ever so long.”
CHAPTER XVI.  FERRETING.
 “I do perceive here a divided duty.”
It was early in December, a showery, blustry afternoon; but I was sitting out of doors in the hay. The men had been cutting away the great rick in the haggard; they had taken a slice off it, down almost to the ground, and I had burrowed myself a comfortable bed among the soft trusses, with my back against the bristling, newly shorn wall of hay that towered above me like a gable. The dogs were standing beside me in different attitudes of intensest{240} attention, their eyes fixed, like mine, upon a hole in the foundations of the rick, from which at this moment a pair of legs in corduroys and gaiters were protruding.
“Have you come to them yet?” I called out.
A muffled grunt was all that I could hear in answer; but after a moment or two, the body belonging to the legs was drawn out of the hole.
“I’ve got one of the brutes,” said Willy, holding up his hand, with a ferret hanging limply from it. “I don’t know how I’ll get the other; those rats must be miles back in the rick. I’ll have to go up for one of the young Sweenys to help me to move some of the stones under the rick.”
“I think in that case I shall go home,” I said. “I suppose you’ll take hours over it.”
“Oh no! Do wait a bit; we won’t be{241} any time. You can have my coat if you’re cold,” said Willy, dropping the reclaimed ferret into its bag. “I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
He climbed the wall of the haggard, and took a short cut across the field to where the whitewashed walls of Sweeny’s cottage showed through the red twigs of the leafless fuchsia hedge that incongruously surrounded it.
I took out my watch as soon as he had started, and saw that it was half-past three. Willy seemed to have forgotten that this Tuesday afternoon was the one on which Nugent had said he would come over. I had taken care to say something about it at breakfast, but had done it so lamely and inopportunely that I was not sure whether Willy had heard me; and a kind of awkwardness had prevented me from reminding him of it when he had asked me{242} after luncheon to come out with him to the haggard, where a thriving colony of rats had been that morning discovered.
Willy and I were now on terms of the most absolute intimacy. His daily companionship had become second nature to me—something which I accepted as a matter of course, which gave me no trouble, and was in all ways pleasant. But, for all that, I had begun to find out that in some occult way I was a little afraid of him. He was unexpectedly and minutely observant, and, where I was concerned, appeared to be able to take in my doings with the back of his head. It was this gift, combined with his unostentatious acuteness, that made me sometimes feel foolish when I least wished it, and lately had made any mention of Nugent’s name a difficulty to me.
At all events, at this particular moment I did not feel disposed to explain matters,{243} and I settled myself again in the hay, hoping that the capture of the ferret would allow me, by the natural course of things, to get home in time without having to remind Willy of my expected visitor.
The demesne farm, as it was called, was at some distance from the house—at least ten minutes’ walk down a stony lane, worn into deep ruts by the passing of the carts of hay; and now that the ruts had been turned into pools by heavy showers, it was anything but a pleasant walk. The boreen passed through the fields in which Willy had schooled Alaska; it came out into the road near the lodge, and thence led directly to the house, whose gleaming slate roof and tall chimneys I could see from where I was sitting, above the trees of the plantation. The short December day was already beginning to close in; the setting sun was level with my eyes, and was{244} sending broad rays up the long slope that lay between the farm and the sea. Everything for the moment was transfigured; all the wet stones and straw lying about the yard shone and glistened. The pigs were splashing through pools of liquid gold; and the geese, who were gabbling in an undertone near the hayrick, looked blue on the shadow side, and silver-yellow on the side next the sun—one could believe them capable of laying nothing but golden eggs. The wind was going down with the sun, and it seemed as if we should have no more rain; but there was a dangerous-looking black cloud over Croaghkeenen. I wondered if Nugent had come. That cloud certainly meant rain; perhaps it would serve as an excuse to get home.
Willy was as good as his word about coming back quickly, and brought with him not one, but two small sons of the{245} house of Sweeny, with shock heads of hair, as fluffy as dandelion seed, and almost as white, and big grey eyes that looked doubtfully at me from under the blackest lashes and out of the dirtiest faces I had ever seen in my life.
“Come, Timsy,” said Willy to the smaller of the two, “in you go; and if you get a grip of him at all, hold on to him, no matter if he eats the nose off your face.”
In no wise discouraged by this injunction, Timsy crawled into the hole, until nothing but the muddy soles of his bare feet were visible. But the ferret was evidently beyond human reach. I sat impatiently enough, looking on, and trying to summon up courage to say that I would go home, when I felt a drop or two of rain on my hand, and saw that the heavy cloud now shut Croaghkeenen altogether out of view,{246} and that a thick shower was coming across the sea and along the slopes of Durrus. In another instant we were enveloped in a gusty whirl of rain.
“Run to the Sweenys’, Theo!” cried Willy, jumping up from his knees, and abandoning his attempt to push little Sweeny deeper into the hole; “we must shelter there.”
“Couldn’t we get home?” I said, standing undecidedly in the downpour, and thinking with despair that my deserted visitor was possibly arriving at Durrus now.
“No; you’d be drowned getting there. Come on.”
We ran up the lane as fast as was possible from the nature of it, with the mud splashing up at every step, the rain trickling down the backs of our necks, and the dogs racing along with us, getting{247} very much in the way by ridiculous jumps at the bag in which Willy carried the ferret, and evidently believing that this unusual rushing through the mud was only a prelude to something far more thrilling. I picked my way after Willy through the Sweenys’ yard, along a path which ran precariously between a manure heap and a pool of dirty water, and saw Mrs. Sweeny flinging open her door to receive us.
“Oh, ye craytures! ye’re dhrowned! Come in asthore. Get out, ye divil!”—slapping the bony flanks of a calf which was trying to thrust itself into the house. “Turn them hins out, Batty! Indeed, ’tis a disgrace to ask ye into that dirty little house, and me afther plucking a goose.”
We entered the low, narrow doorway; and the hens, seeing that they were hemmed in, and disdaining even at this{248} extreme moment to yield to Batty’s practised pursuit, took to their wings, and flew past our heads through the doorway with varying notes of consternation.
“Did anny wan iver see the like of thim hins?” demanded Mrs. Sweeny, dramatically, while she dragged forward a greasy-looking kitchen chair. “I’m fairly heart-scalded with them—the monkeys of the world! Sit down, ochudth, sit down why!” she went on, addressing me, her broad red face beaming with pride and hospitality. “Indeed, me little place isn’t fit for the likes of ye! Sure, wouldn’t ye sit down, Masther Willy, till I get ye a dhrink of milk? Run away, Bridgie”—this in an undertone to a grimy little girl—“and dhrive in the cows.”
She produced another chair for Willy, the discrepancy in the length of whose legs was corrected by a convenient dip in{249} the mud floor of the cottage, and Willy sat down, and at once began a diffuse and cheerful conversation with her.
The fates certainly seemed to be against me. This shower would probably last for some time, and it would be impossible to say that I wanted to go home until it was over. I looked at my watch; it was already nearly four. Nugent would very likely come early—he had said that he would be over some time before tea—and would hear that I had gone out, and had left no message or explanation of any kind for him. It was very exasperating, but, as long as this deluge of rain lasted, all I could do was to sit still and possess my soul in as much patience as possible.
The cabin had more occupants than, in its doubtful light, I had at first noticed. In the smoky shadow of the overhanging{250} chimney-place was huddled, on a three-legged stool, a very small old man in knee-breeches and a tail-coat, who was smoking a short pipe, and still held in his hand the battered tall hat which he had taken off on our entrance. He was our hostess’s father-in-law, one of the oldest tenants on the estate, and he sat, as I had often seen the old country men in the cabins sit, smoking and dozing over the fire, and looking hardly more alive to what was going on than the grey, smouldering lumps of turf on the hearth. In the dusky recess at the foot of a four-poster bed, which blocked up one of the small windows, Batty and two other children were hiding behind each other, and were staring at us as young birds might. Pat and Jinny were vulgarly snuffing among Mrs. Sweeny’s pots and pans, with an affectation of starvation which but ill-assorted with what I knew of their{251} recent luncheon. Now they had come, with stunning unexpectedness, on a cat, crouched on the dresser, and, when called off by Willy on the very eve of battle, remained for the rest of their visit in agonized contemplation of her security. From a hencoop in the corner by the bed came faint cluckings; the goose which Mrs. Sweeny had been plucking lay with its legs tied beside the red earthen pan, in which it might have seen its own breast feathers, and tried to console itself by pecking feebly at the yellow meal which had been spilt on the ground in front of the chickens’ coop.
Mrs. Sweeny was sitting on a kind of rough settle, between the other window and the door of an inner room. She was a stout, comfortable-looking woman of about forty, with red hair and quick blue eyes, that roved round the cabin, and{252} silenced with a glance the occasional whisperings that rose from the children.
“And how’s the one that had the bad cough?” asked Willy, pursuing his conversation with her with his invariable ease and dexterity. “Honor her name is, isn’t it?”
“See, now, how well he remembers!” replied Mrs. Sweeny. “Indeed, she’s there back in the room, lyin’ these three days. Faith, I think ’tis like the decline she have, Masther Willy.”
“Did you get the doctor to her?” said Willy. “I’ll give you a ticket if you haven’t one.”
“Oh, indeed, Docthor Kelly’s afther givin’ her a bottle, but shure I wouldn’t let her put it into her mouth at all. God knows what’d be in it. Wasn’t I afther throwin’ a taste of it on the fire to thry what’d it do, and Phitz! says it, and up{253} with it up the chimbley! Faith, I’d be in dread to give it to the child. Shure, if it done that in the fire, what’d it do in her inside?”
“Well, you’re a greater fool than I thought you were,” said Willy, politely.
“Maybe I am, faith,” replied Mrs. Sweeny, with a loud laugh of enjoyment. “But if she’s for dyin’, the crayture, she’ll die aisier without thim thrash of medicines; and if she’s for livin’, ’tisn’t thrusting to them she’ll be. Shure, God is good—God is good——”
“Divil a betther!” interjected old Sweeny, unexpectedly.
It was the first time he had spoken, and having delivered himself of this trenchant observation, he relapsed into silence and the smackings at his pipe.
“Don’t mind him at all, your honour, miss,” said his daughter-in-law, seeing my{254} ill-concealed amusement. “Shure, he’s only a silly owld man.”
“He’s a good deal more sensible than you are,” said Willy, returning to the subject of Honor.
The rain poured steadily down. I thought of Nugent, and could fancy his surprise at hearing that I was not at home. It was not, I argued to myself, so much that I was sorry to miss him, as that I hated being rude; and it certainly was rude to have gone out on the day he had settled to come, without even leaving a message. What an amazing gift of the gab Willy had! Rain or no rain, it was clear that he and Mrs. Sweeny meant to talk to one another for the rest of the afternoon.
The old man in the chimney-corner had watched me during all this time, and muttered to himself every now and then—what, I could not understand. We must{255} have been sitting there for ten minutes at least, when the two boys whom Willy had left to look for the ferret came dripping in, with the object of their search safely housed in a bag, and silently stationed themselves along with their brothers and sisters in the corner by the bed.
“Is the rain nearly over?” I asked the elder.
“I dunno, miss,” he replied, bashfully rubbing the sole of his foot up and down the shin of the other leg.
“I can tell you that,” said Willy, getting up and going to the door. “I don’t think it looks like clearing for another quarter of an hour.”
“Then I don’t know what I can do,” I said, in unguarded consternation.
“Why,” said Willy, turning round and looking at me with his hands in his pockets, “what’s the hurry?{256}”
“There is no hurry exactly,” I said, feeling very small and cowardly; “but I thought you knew—at least, I think I told you this morning, that Mr. O’Neill said he would come over to-day.”
I wondered if this simple sentence gave any indication of the effort it was to me to say it.
“I can’t say I remember anything about it,” Willy answered, in what I am sure he thought a crushingly chilly voice.
“Oh yes, indeed I did tell you,” I said, getting up and following him to the door; “but you sneezed just as I was saying it, and the voice is not yet created that could be heard through one of your sneezes.”
I knew that he was rather proud than otherwise of his noisy sneezes, and I laughed servilely, and looked up, hoping that he would laugh too. But there was nothing approaching to amusement in his{257} face. It was red and forbidding, as he looked out into the rain that was thrashing down in the dirty yard. He had still a good deal of hay and hayseed about his coat and hat, and altogether I thought it was not one of his most becoming moments.
“I don’t know if you’d like to start in that,” he said; “but if you would, I’m quite ready to go with you.”
If I had been alone, I should probably have faced a wetting in order to get back to the house; but now I was both too proud and too shy to accept Willy’s offer.
“I think I shall wait a little longer,” I said, going back to my chair by the fire.
“Himself’s afther sayin’,” said Mrs. Sweeny, as I sat down, “that he’d think ’twas your father he was lookin’ at, an’ you sittin’ there a while ago.”
Old Sweeny removed his pipe from his lips, and cleared his throat.{258}
“Manny’s the time I seen the young masther sit there,” he said, in a sort of harsh whisper, turning his bleared and filmy old eyes towards me—“the way she”—he pointed a crooked forefinger at me—“is now, afther he bein’ out shootin’ or the like o’ that; ‘Be domned to ye, Sweeny, ye blagyard,’ he’d say to me, ‘dickens a shnipe is there left on yer land with your dhraining; I’ll have ye run out of the place,’ he’d say. That’s the very way he’d talk to me, as civil and pleasant as yerself. Begob, ye have the very two eyes of him, an’ the grand long nose of him!”
I acknowledged the compliment as well as I knew how, and old Sweeny went on again, punctuating his sentences with long and noisy pulls at his pipe.
“Faith, there was manny a wan of the Durrus tinants would rather ’twas their{259} own son was goin’ to Ameriky than him when he went; and manny a wan too that’d have walked to Cork to go to his funeral. That was the quare comin’ home that he had—to die an’ be berrid in the town o’ Cork. I’ll niver forget that time. Shure the night he died in Cork—’twas the night before the owld masther dyin’ too—I wasn’t in me bed, but out in the shed with a cow that was sick. There was carridges dhriving the Durrus avenue that night,” he said, his voice getting lower and huskier; “I heard them goin’ the road, an’ it one o’clock in the morning! And the big shnow comminced afther that agin.”
“What carriages were they?” I asked, with a little superstitious shiver.
The old man looked furtively round, and took his pipe out of his mouth.
“God knows!” he said mysteriously; “God knows! But they say there do be{260} them that wait for the Sarsfields agin they’re dyin’. There was wan that seen the black coach and four horses goin’ wesht the road, over the bog, the time the owld man—that’s Theodore’s father—died; and wansht,” he went on impressively, “there was a Sarsfield out, that time the Frinch landed beyond in Banthry Bay, and the English cot him an’ hung him; but those people took him and dhragged him through hell and through det’th, and me mother’s father heard the black coach taking him wesht to Myross Churchyard.”
Old Sweeny had let his pipe go out during the telling of the story, and he left me to make what I could of it, while he poked about for a piece of burning turf wherewith to rekindle his pipe. Willy was still standing by the door.
“I think it’s cleared up enough for you to start now,” he said coldly, “and if you{261} want to get back to the house, you’d better start before it comes on heavy again.”
“Oh, very well, if you like,” I answered, with equal indifference. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Sweeny.”
Mrs. Sweeny was taking a bowl from the dresser, from which haven of refuge she had driven her cat with one swing of her brawny arm. It shot past Willy out of the door, followed by a flying white streak, which inference rather than eyesight told me was composed of the pursuing Pat and Jinny.
“Look at that, now!” remarked the cat’s mistress; “that overbearin’ owld cat’d be sittin’ there, thwarting thim dogs, and she well able to run for thim; an’ I wouldn’t begridge them to ketch her nayther. She’s a little wandhering divil that have no call to the place.” She came forward with the bowl in her hand.{262} “See here, Masther Willy; here’s eight beautiful pullet’s eggs, the first she iver laid, an’ you’ll carry them wesht to the house for Miss Sarsfield to ate for her brekfish—mind that, now!” She gave him a slap on the back. “Och, there’s no fear but he’ll mind!” she said, winking at me. “He’d do more than that for yourself, and small blame to him!”
Willy took the bowl from her without taking any notice either of the innuendo or the slap which accompanied it, and marched out of the house with sulky dignity.
CHAPTER XVII.  POTATO CAKES.
 “The tenacious depths of the quicksand, as is usual in such cases, retained their prey.”
The rain was not by any means over when we came out into the field. It was half-past four, but, though the sun had sunk, the clouds had lifted, and the misty orange light of the after-glow filled the air. A slim scrap of a moon had slipped up over the hill to the eastward, and the bats were swooping round our heads as we picked our way across the muddy yard of the demesne farm.
“I think you’ll find the field drier than{264} the bohireen,” said Willy, in the same distant voice which he had last spoken; “we can get over the wall here.”
He took my hand to help me over, but dropped it as quickly as possible, and walked on with unnecessary haste, keeping a little in front of me. The field was, as he had said, rather better than the lane, but my feet sank in the soaked ground, the pace at which we were going took my breath away, and I began to be left behind. Willy still stalked on unrelentingly, with the enviable unpetticoated ease of mankind in wet weather.
“I wish you wouldn’t go so fast,” I called out at last. “I can’t possibly keep up if you go at that pace.”
He slackened at once.
“I thought you wanted to go fast,” he answered, without looking back.
“I don’t particularly care,” I said, as I{265} struggled up alongside of him. “I should think Mr. O’Neill must have gone home some time ago.”
Willy made no comment. I took out my handkerchief and wiped the last raindrops from my face, feeling a good deal aggrieved by his behaviour.
“Your cap’s all wet too,” he said, looking down at me from under his eyelids—“soaking, and so is your coat,” putting his hand on my shoulder for a moment. “I think I ought to have carried you home in a turf-basket. Look at this bad bit here we’ve got to go through.”
“Thank you,” I said snappishly, taking off my wet cap and shaking the rain from it as I went, “I should rather not. I am about as wet as I can be now. It certainly was capital weather to go out ferreting in.{266}”
We were now at the “bad bit” of which Willy had spoken,—a broad, dark stripe, vivid green by daylight,—across a hollow in the field, with a gleam of water here and there in it.
“You’d much better let me carry you over this,” said Willy, stopping.
“No, thank you,” I said again, eyeing, however, with an inward tremor, the long distances between the tussocks of grass which might serve as stepping-stones. “You have the eggs to carry, and I have no wish to be dropped with them into the bog.”
“Ah! nonsense now; you know there’s no fear of that,” he said, and put his arm round me as if to lift me. “Do let me.”
“I am not going to be carried,” I said, with determination. “If you’d only let me alone, I should get over quite well.{267}”
He did not take his arm away, and bent down over me.
“You’re always getting angry with me these times,” he said.
“No, indeed I’m not,” I answered, trying to speak pleasantly, and to move forward at the same time.
His quick breathing was at my ear, and for one moment his lips touched my hair; the next I was floundering with a burning face through the deepest of the quagmire. At every step my feet sank ankle-deep; I dragged out each in succession with an effort that nearly pulled my boots off, and when I gained firm ground again, my feet had become shapeless brown objects, weighed down with mud, with which my skirt was also thickly coated. Willy had made no further effort to help me, and, having followed me across with caution, walked silently beside me as I hurried{268} along, trying to ignore my uncomfortable and ignoble plight.
But one field now divided us from the road, and as I scrambled up on to the high fence I heard wheels, and saw something moving along it away from the Durrus gate.
“That must be Mr. O’Neill’s trap!” I cried excitedly, jumping down after Willy, who was already in the field. “Oh, Willy, do run and stop him! I must explain——”
“There’s no earthly use in trying to catch him now,” Willy answered morosely. “I’m not going to kill myself running after him, like a fool, for nothing at all.”
“Very well,” I rejoined; “if you won’t go, I will.”
My indignation with Willy alone sustained me through that dreadful run. I had to cut diagonally across the field in order to intercept Nugent. The ground{269} was soft and sticky; my mud-encumbered skirt clung round me; and I should have had scant chance of catching him but for the fact that the road, curving a little at this point, led over a steep and stony bit of hill. I reached the wall of the field just as the horse was breaking into a trot at the top of the hill; but, fortunately for me, the groom at the back of the dog-cart saw the walking-stick which I feebly brandished to attract his attention—I had no breath wherewith to shout—and, recognizing me, called to his master to stop.
Nugent pulled up, and, turning round, took off his hat with a face of such astonishment that I became all at once aware of the appearance which I must present, but I came forward with a gallant attempt to appear unconscious of my heated face and general dishevelledness.
{270}
“How are you?” I panted. “I intended to be at home. Won’t you——?” Here my breath failed me, and I was obliged to eke out my sentence with a gesture in the direction of Durrus.
“Oh, thanks; it doesn’t matter in the least. Don’t let me take you back any sooner than you had intended,” replied Nugent, in a voice that told he had been nursing his wrath to keep it warm.
“I was going home,” I said, more intelligibly. “I am very sorry, but we were delayed by the rain.”
He got out of the dog-cart and shook hands with me across the low wall, on the farther side of which I was standing.
“There has certainly been a pretty heavy shower,” he said, looking at me uncertainly, but, as I thought, with a dawning amusement.
“Hasn’t there? Awful!” I said, smearing my wet hair back behind my ears, and{271} putting on the cap which I had clutched convulsively in my hand during my run across the field. “We had to shelter in a cottage for ever so long.”
“Who is we?”
I looked round for my late companion, but he was nowhere to be seen.
“Willy was with me,” I said; “but he declared that it was no use trying to catch you, and—and I suppose he has gone home.”
Nugent said nothing, but climbed on to the wall with as much dignity as his macintosh would permit, and helped me over it. I was very unfortunate, I inwardly reflected; I first got wet through, and then one cross young man after another dragged me over these horrible wet stone walls. However, I said aloud—
“You must come back and have some tea; it is quite early still.”
He hesitated.{272}
“Thanks, I am not sure if I shall have time; but perhaps, in any case, you had better let me drive you home.”
The step of the dog-cart was a very high one, and as I put my foot on it to get up, the full beauties and proportions of my boot—a shapeless mass, resembling a brown-paper parcel—were revealed. My eyes met Nugent’s, and we both laughed, he unwillingly, I with helpless realization of my appearance.
“I am not fit to get into anything better than a pigstye or a donkey-cart,” I said apologetically. “I really am ashamed of myself from every point of view, moral and physical.”
“But what on earth have you been doing?” he asked, as we turned and drove towards Durrus. “Have you been out snipe-shooting in the bog with Willy?{273}”
“No,” I answered cheerfully; “something much more vulgar.”
“It certainly does look more as if you and he had been digging potatoes, but I did not quite like to suggest that.”
Something in his manner offended me.
“That was just it,” I said, not choosing to explain. “Willy is rather short of farm hands just now, and I have had my first lesson in ‘sticking’ potatoes.”
“I should think you will find that a useful accomplishment in Boston.”
“Knowledge is power,” I said combatively. “Probably the next time you see me, I shall be learning to sell pigs in the fair at Moycullen.”
“Very likely. I believe Americans—I beg your pardon, I mean people from America—like to do a country thoroughly when they get there. I suppose you go in for experiments as much as the others?{274}”
“Why, certainly! I guess that’s why I came over here; I’m experimentalizing all the time.”
“Really!” said Nugent, without appearing to notice my elaborate Americanisms. “And is your experiment successful so far?” He looked me full in the face as he spoke.
“Yes, so far,” I answered, with an unexplainable feeling that sincerity was required of me, and noting inwardly the blue impenetrability of his eyes.
He said nothing for a minute or two; then, without any apparent connection of ideas—
“Is Willy corning home to hear us play?” he asked. “Have you taught him to appreciate high-class music yet?”
“I don’t think he wants any teaching,” I said, with an instinctive wish to stand up for my cousin; “he has a wonderful ear, and his taste is really very good.{275}”
“Really!” in an uninterested voice.
“Yes,” I said positively; “I believe he has a real talent for music, if he had only been given a chance.”
“He did not get much of a chance at anything, I believe,” Nugent said, in what seemed to me a patronizing way.
“No, he certainly did not. I think very few people know all the disadvantages he has had, and I am quite sure that very few people would have done as well as he has if they had been in his place.” This with some warmth.
“I am sure I shouldn’t, for one,” replied Nugent, quietly taking to himself the generality which I had thought both telling and impalpable. “But then, I dare say—— Why, there he is!” interrupting himself, as we turned into the avenue and came in sight of Willy, who was walking very fast towards home.{276}
He got out of our way without looking back, and only nodded to us as we passed. I saw the bowl of eggs in his hand, and knew by the defiant way in which he carried it that he was ashamed of it.
“Your fellow-labourer seems to have had a peaceful time collecting eggs whilst you were sticking the potatoes,” said Nugent, with again the suggestion of a sneer. “He certainly does not look as if he had done as much hard work as you.”
“No; he has not run all the way across a field, as I did just now.”
Nugent coloured. “I deserved that,” he said, and laughed. Then, after a moment’s pause, “And I don’t think I did deserve your taking such trouble to stop me.”
“Of course, you may have some inner sense of unworthiness,” I answered, mollified, “that must remain between you and{277} your own conscience; but it was very rude of me not to have been at home, and I did not mind the run half so much as writing the letter of apology which I should have felt you had a right to.”
“And which I should not have believed,” said Nugent. “It was so wet that I should have been quite certain that you were sitting over the fire with Willy all the time, and told Roche to send me away because you felt as if playing violin accompaniments would be a bore.”
“Appearances would have been against me,” I admitted; “but I should have enclosed my boots as circumstantial evidence”—advancing one disreputable foot from beneath the rug—“and perhaps also one of the potato-cakes which I had ordered specially for your benefit.”
A loud twanging snap from the violin-case under the seat startled us both.{278}
“By Jove!” exclaimed Nugent; “that is the E string, and I have not another with me.”
“Then we can’t have any music,” I said, with unaffected dismay. “What a pity! So I brought you back for nothing, after all.”
“Don’t say nothing,” he said; “think of the potato-cakes!”
“That may be your point of view,” I said regretfully; “but when I was running across that field I was thinking of Corelli.”
“I had hoped,” remarked Nugent, looking sideways at me, as he pulled up at the hall door, “that you might have had some incidental thoughts about the way in which you had treated me.”
“I cannot argue any more until I have had my tea,” I said, getting out of the trap, and trying to stamp some of the mud off my boots on the steps.{279}
“Perhaps I had better go home,” he suggested. “As Corelli is out of the question, I suppose I shall not be wanted.”
“Just as you like.”
“But I want the potato-cake you promised me.”
“Then, I think you had better come in and get it,” I said, going into the house. “I don’t approve of outdoor relief.”
CHAPTER I.  MRS. JACKSON-CROLY AT HOME.
 “Fate’s a fiddler, life’s a dance.”
“O’Rorke’s noble feast will ne’er be forgot
By those who were there, and those who were not.”
It was the day of the Jackson-Crolys’ dance, for which we had in due course received our invitations, gorgeously printed on gilt-edged cards. Willy and I were sitting over the library fire after tea, and had already begun to contemplate the combined horrors of dressing for a ball and eating a half-past six o’clock dinner,{281} when Uncle Dominick stalked in, with a basket in his hand, which he handed to me with a note, saying austerely that one of the Clashmore servants had just ridden over with it.
The note was from Connie.
“My dear Theo,” it began—I had seen a good deal of the O’Neills lately, and Connie and I had arrived at calling each other by our Christian names—“we are sending you over some yellow chrysanthemums, as you said you were going to wear white. Mamma will, of course, be delighted to chaperon you, and thinks you had better come here first, and drive on in our carriage; and we can take you home and put you up for the night, as Willy may want to stay later than you do. Nugent is, I think, very proud of the bouquet. He constructed it himself, and has spent the greater part of the morning{282} over it in the conservatory. Certainly, as far as wire goes, it is all that can be desired; there are at least ten yards of that in it.”
“I should have thought you might have found some flowers for your cousin here, Willy,” remarked Uncle Dominick, while I was reading the letter to myself.
“There’s nothing fit for any one to wear,” answered Willy, gloomily. “I was out this morning to see, and there was nothing but a few violets.”
“I am sorry you did not pick them,” I said, with pacific intention; “I should have been very glad to wear them. They think it would simplify matters if I slept at Clashmore to-night,” I went on. “I think it would be a good plan, if you don’t mind, Uncle Dominick?”
“It is entirely for you to decide, my dear,” he said coldly; “you can make any{283} arrangements that you like. The man is waiting for an answer.”
“Well, I will sleep there,” I said, goaded to decision by his ungracious manner.
I accordingly wrote a note to Connie to that effect, and, having sent it, went up to dress.
With the aid of the ministrations of Maggie, the red-haired housemaid, who had developed a deep attachment for me, I was arriving at the more advanced stages of my toilet, when I heard a knock at my door.
“I’ve got you some violets,” said Willy’s voice, “but I’m afraid they’re not up to much. I’ve left them outside.”
I heard him run down the passage to his own room, and, opening the door, I saw a small bunch of violets lying on the ground. I picked them up; there were very few of them, and they were drenched with rain. Willy must have been all this{284} time toilsomely searching for them with a lantern in the dark.
“Has it been raining, Maggie?” I asked.
“’Deed, then, it has, miss, and teeming rain this half-hour.”
So he must have gone out in the rain to pick them for me. Poor Willy!
I fastened them into the front of my dress with a sudden ache of pity, and looked at those other flowers on my dressing-table, the feathery golden chrysanthemums showing through a mist of maidenhair, with something that was near being distaste. Their coming had not been altogether a surprise to me; in fact, I had been more or less looking out for them all day. But somehow Willy’s bunch of violets had taken away most of my pleasure in them, and when I came downstairs I laid the bouquet with my wraps, out of sight, on the hall table.{285}
We hurried through our early dinner, but before we left the dining-room I received a mysterious intimation from Roche to the effect that Mrs. Rourke would like to see me outside.
Mrs. Rourke was the cook, and, inly marvelling what she could have to say to me, I went out into the hall. There, to my no small surprise, I was confronted, not only by Mrs. Rourke, but by the whole strength of the Durrus indoor establishment. There they all were—housemaid, dairy-maid, and kitchen-maids, with their barefooted subordinates lurking behind them, and from them, as I appeared, a low-breathed murmur of approval arose.
“Well, miss,” began Mrs. Rourke, in tones of solemn conviction, “ye might thravel Ireland this night, and ye wouldn’t find yer aiqual! Of all the young ladies ever I seen, you take the sway!{286}”
“Glory be to God! ’tis thrue!” moaned a kitchen-maid, in awestricken assent.
“Why, you can’t half see her there, Mrs. Rourke,” said Willy, coming out of the dining-room; “hold on till I get a lamp.”
He came back with the tall old moderator lamp from the middle of the dinner-table, and, holding it up, stood so that the light should fall full on me. Seldom have I felt more foolish than I did at that moment; but I did my best to live up to the position.
“And what I say, Masther Willy,” continued Mrs. Rourke, taking up her parable in the manner of a prophetess, “is that I never seen a finer pair than the two of ye, and ye do well to be proud of her! And I hope it won’t be the last time I’ll see herself and yourself going out through that door together—nor coming in through it nayther!”
This dark saying was received by the{287} chorus with various devotional expressions of satisfaction.
“Yes, Mrs. Rourke,” said my uncle’s voice from behind me, in tones of unusual affability, “I think we have no reason to be ashamed of our representatives.”
I was beginning to feel that I could bear this dreadful ceremonial no longer, when, with sincere inward thanksgiving, I heard the grinding of wheels on the gravel.
“There is the carriage,” I said, turning to Willy, who had all this time been silently holding up the lamp; “do put down that thing, and get me my cloak.”
My uncle himself put my wraps upon me, and stood with me in the open doorway while Roche laid a strip of carpet down the wet steps. As I stood waiting in the doorway, I saw a woman standing in the rain, just outside the circle of light thrown from the carriage lamps. She{288} pressed forward a little as I came down the steps, and then drew quickly back with what sounded like a sob. The momentary gleam of the carriage lights had shown me who it was.
“Willy,” I said, as we drove away, “did you see Anstey Brian standing there? I am almost sure she was crying. What could have been the matter with her?”
“You must have made a mistake,” he said; “maybe it wasn’t Anstey at all. Anyhow, if she wants to cry, there’s no need for her to go and stand out there in the rain to do it.”
He spoke with an annoyance that puzzled me. I was quite certain that I had seen Anstey; but, remembering that for some reason the subject of Moll Hourihane and her daughter had always been an unfortunate one with Willy and my uncle, I said no more.{289}
We had been asked to the Jackson-Crolys’ for nine o’clock, but, although it was not much more than half-past when the Clashmore carriage arrived at Mount Prospect, several heated couples whom we encountered in the hall were proof that the dancing had already been going on for some time. On coming down from the cloak-room, we saw at the foot of the stairs a small, bald-headed gentleman, moving in an agitated way from leg to leg, and apparently engaged in alternately putting on and taking off his gloves.
“That’s Mr. Jackson-Croly,” whispered Connie, rapidly; “he’s an odious little being! Don’t dance with him if you can possibly help it. I always tell lies to escape him; I lose less self-respect in that way than by dancing with him.”
She had no time to say more, as Madam O’Neill had by this time advanced upon{290} our host with a benignity of aspect born of the consciousness of a singularly becoming cap and generally successful toilette. For a moment I thought he was going to make her a courtesy, so low was his reverence on shaking hands with her.
“It was so kind of you to come, Madam O’Neill,” he said, speaking through tightly closed teeth in a small, deprecating voice; “and the weather so unpleasant, too; yes, indeed! But we’ve quite a nice little number of friends dancing in there already, and we’re expecting another carful of partners for the young ladies”—with a bow to Connie and me—“from the bank in Moycullen.”
“That will be delightful!” said Connie, with a brilliant smile, giving me at the same time an expressive pinch.
She was looking very pretty, and was in the highest spirits, consequent, as I{291} soon found, on an advanced flirtation with a Captain Forster, then staying at Clashmore. Pending his arrival, however, she condescended to dance with Mr. Jimmy Barrett, who, his usual red-hot appearance accentuated by the fact that he was wearing the hunt uniform, had waylaid us in the hall, and he now carried Connie off, while I followed the Madam and Mr. Jackson-Croly into the drawing-room. There we were received by Mrs. Jackson-Croly, imposingly attired in ruby silk and white lace. Unlike her obsequious spouse, Madam O’Neill’s diamonds and acknowledged social standing had no over-aweing effect upon her, and in her greeting to us she abated no whit of her usual magnificence of manner.
“’Twas too bad Miss O’Neill was from home and couldn’t come,” she observed condescendingly. “I have lots of gentle{292}men looking for partners—quite an ‘embrasse de richesses.’ There were so many asking for invitations, and I didn’t like refusing. You must let me present some of them to you, Miss Sarsfield.”
The two rooms in which the dancing was going on were brightened by the red coats of several members of the Moycullen Hunt, and one of these was presently captured by Mrs. Croly and introduced to me. While I was putting his name down for a dance, the rest of our party were ushered in by Mr. Jackson-Croly.
“The Clashmore gentlemen, Louisa, my dear,” he announced, with chastened pride.
The O’Neill soon made his way to me.
“Well, Miss Sarsfield, what are we to have? I see the next is a polka. I can’t manage these new-fashioned waltzes, but I flatter myself I can dance a polka.”
With inward trepidation I consented,{293} and was occupied with the usual difficulty of refastening my pencil to my card, when card and all were quietly taken out of my hand.
“Now, Theo, how about those dances you promised me? I’m just going to put my name down for them”—scribbling away on my card as he spoke.
“Nonsense, Willy; give me back my card at once.”
“No fear; not till I’ve done with it. Well, this will do for a start,” he said, at length returning me my card, black with his initials, and departing without giving me time to remonstrate. As he went away, Nugent came up.
“Can you give me a dance?” he asked. “I am afraid it is not very likely, after the amount of time Willy has spent over your card. I never saw him write so much before in his life; he looked as if he were writing a book.{294}”
“Oh, I think I have some left,” I said, resolving to do as I thought fit about Willy’s dances.
“Then, may I have 6, 11, 13, and 18, if you are here; and supper?”
“I am afraid I can’t give you supper,” I said, glancing at the large “W” scrawled through the four supper extras on my card; “but you can have the others, I think.”
“Thanks; that is very good of you. I think the next thing to be done is to ask Mrs. Croly for a waltz”—making a survey of the room as he spoke. “I always do, and she always pretends to strike me with her fan, and says, ‘I suppose you’re mistaking me for Sissie,’ and is arch. I should watch if I were you; I am sure you would like to see her looking arch.”
I was, unfortunately, not privileged to see this phase of my hostess, as The O’Neill had already stationed himself beside me, so as not to lose a bar of his polka.{295}
“Lots of people here to-night, Miss Sarsfield. You must feel as if you were back in Boston, eh? Ah, there’s the music! Let us start while we have plenty of room.”
He danced with the self-assertive vigour peculiar to small fat men, and we stamped and curvetted round the room in circles so small that I found it difficult to keep on my feet.
“That wasn’t bad,” he gasped complacently, as we staggered to a corner and rested there, while he mopped his purple forehead. “You dance like a fairy, Miss Sarsfield. But, upon my soul, I think they get more pace on every year. That woman at the piano—Mrs. What’s-her-name? Whelply, isn’t it?—why, she’s rattling away as if the devil was after her.”
Looking about me, I saw with deep amusement that Willy had selected Miss Mimi Burke as his partner, and was{296} charging with her through the throng at reckless speed. Her face, blazing with heat and excitement, showed no unworthy fears for her own safety; and as, with her chin embedded in Willy’s shoulder, they sped past, she cast an eye of exhilarated recognition at me.
“By Jove!” wheezed O’Neill, still breathless from his exertions; “old Mimi’s got a wonderful kick in her gallop still. She’s getting over the ground like a three-year-old!”
To me the appearance of my cousin and his partner was more suggestive of a large steamer going full speed through smaller craft, Miss Mimi’s rubicund face representing the port light; but I kept this brilliant idea to myself.
“I hope Willy knows how to steer,” I said. “He does not take things so easily as your son appears to do.{297}”
Nugent was performing what was only too evidently a duty dance with one of the Misses Jackson-Croly—a very young lady, with fuzzy hair and a pink frock. They wound sadly along, as much as possible on the outskirts of the darting crowd, Nugent’s expression of melancholy provoking his more agile parent to a laugh of mingled contempt and self-complacency.
“Take things easily!” he repeated; “why, he’s a regular muff. Who’d ever think he was a son of mine? If I were dancing with a spicy little girl like that, I wouldn’t look as if I were at my own funeral. Shall we have another turn?” and before I had time for a counter suggestion we were again hopping and spinning round the room.
I had no reason to complain of lack of attention on the part of my hostess, and I and my card were soon in a state of equal{298} confusion. The generic name of Mrs. Jackson-Croly’s “dancing gentlemen” appeared to be either Beamish or Barrett, and had it not been for Willy’s elucidation of its mysteries, I should have thrown my card away in despair.
“No, not him. That’s Long Tom Beamish! It’s English Tommy you’re to dance with next. They call him English Tommy because, when his militia regiment was ordered to Aldershot, he said he was ‘the first of his ancestors that was ever sent on foreign service.’”
Willy’s dances with me were, during this earlier part of the evening, sandwiched with great regularity between those of the clans Beamish and Barrett, and I found him to be in every way a most satisfactory partner. He was in a state of radiant amiability, and proved himself of inestimable value as a chronicler of interest{299}ing facts about the company in general. He was, besides, strong and sure-footed—qualities, as I had reason to know, not to be despised in an assemblage such as this. I carried for several days the bruises which I received during my waltz with English Tommy. It consisted chiefly of a series of short rushes, of so shattering a nature that I at last ventured to suggest a less aggressive mode of progression.
“Well,” said English Tommy, confidentially, “ye see, I’m trying to bump Katie! That’s Katie”—pointing to a fat girl in blue. “She’s my cousin, and we’re for ever fighting.”
There seemed at the time nothing very incongruous about this explanation. There was a hilarious informality about the whole entertainment that made it unlike any I had ever been at before. Every one talked and laughed at the full pitch of their lungs.{300} An atmosphere of utmost intimacy pervaded the assemblage, and Christian names and strange nicknames were bandied freely about among the groups in the corners. The music was supplied by volunteers from the ranks of the chaperons, at the end of each dance the musician receiving a round of applause, varying in volume according to the energy and power of endurance displayed. The varieties of style and time thus attained were almost unimaginable, and were only equalled by the corresponding vagaries of the dancers, whose trampings and shufflings and runnings were to me as amazing as they were unexpected.
I could see Madam O’Neill sitting in state at the end of the room, surrounded by lesser matrons, her boredom only alleviated by the acute disfavour with which she viewed the revels.{301}
“Do you know where Connie is, my dear?” she said, with pale asperity, as I came up to her after a dance. “I have not seen her for the last four dances.”
I was well aware that Connie and Captain Forster had long since established themselves in the conservatory, but Madam O’Neill was too full of her grievance to give me time to reply.
“I am perfectly horrified at what you must think of all this,” she went on. “Even here I never saw such a noisy, romping set. You know, we are quite in the backwoods here—all the nice people live at the other end of the county—and you mustn’t take these as specimens of Irish society.”
I was spared the necessity of replying by the appearance of Nugent.
“Nugent, where is Connie?” demanded the Madam again. “It is too bad of her{302} to make herself so remarkable in a place like this.”
“Oh, she’s all right; she’s with Forster somewhere,” he answered, with the incaution of total indifference. “Here’s your host coming to take you in to supper, and I advise you to avoid the sherry. This is our dance, No. 11,” he said to me. “We had better not lose any more of it.”
 
END OF VOL. I.
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{2} 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{3} 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{4} 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!{5}’”
“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.{6}
“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,{7} 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.{8}”
“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{9} 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{10} 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{11} 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?{12}”
“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{13} 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{14} 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.{15}
“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.{16}
“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{17} 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.
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,{19} 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{20} 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.{21}”
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{22} 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{23} 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.{24}
“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{25} 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.{26}”
“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{27} 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{28} 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{29} 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.{30}
“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{31} 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.
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{33} 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{34} 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 sun{35}shine 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{36} 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{37} 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{38} 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{39} 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{40} 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 him{41}self 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{42} 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{43} 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{44} 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{45} 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{46} 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.{47}
“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.{48}
“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{49} 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{50} 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{51} 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{52} 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,{53} 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.
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 nowa{55}days 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?{56}”
“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 un{57}conscious 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{58} 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{59} 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{60} 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{61} 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{62} 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.{63}”
“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.{64}”
“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{65} 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{66} 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.{67}”
“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?{68}
“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. “Do{69}n’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.{70}”
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{71} 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.{72}
“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{73} 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.”
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{75} 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.{76}
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{77} 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{78} 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.{79} 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,{80} 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{81} 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 {82}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{83} 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{84} 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{85} 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{86} 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{87} 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{88} 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.{89}”
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.{90}”
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{91} 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 misunder{92}standing 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{93} 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.{94} 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.
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 im{96}perceptible 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{97}—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{98} 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{99} 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{100} 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;{101} 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{102} 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{103} 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{104} 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.{105}
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.{106} “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, interrupt{107}ing 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,{108}” 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{109} 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.{110}”
“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.
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{112} 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,{113} 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.{114}
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{115} 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{116} 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?{117}”
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{118} 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{119} 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.{120}
“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{121} 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.{122}”
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.{123}
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,{124} 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{125} 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{126} 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{127} 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{128} 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{129} 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{130} 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.
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.{132}
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 meagre{133}ness 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{134} 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{135} 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,{136} 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{137} 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 Clash{138}more; 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{139} 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{140} 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{141} 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 Burk{142}e’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.{143}
“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{144} 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,{145} 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{146} 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.{147}
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.{148}
“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.
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{150} 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,{151} 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{152} 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.{153} 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{154} 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{155} 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.{156} 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{157} 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{158} 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.{159}”
“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{160} 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.{161}”
“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 {162}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{163} 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!{164}”
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.{165}”
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!{166}”
“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{167} 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,{168} 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!{169}” 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{170} 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{171} 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{172} 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.
CHAPTER II.  “BUT WHERE IS COUNTY GUY?”
 “What shall assuage the unforgotten pain,
And teach the unforgetful to forget?”
I lay awake for a long time after I got into bed, and I had not been long asleep when some sound wakened me. I was at first not sorry to awake; I had been sleeping uneasily and feverishly, and my dreams had been full of disasters and difficulties. I did not trouble myself much as to what the sound was—probably a rat, as the house was overrun with them—and I tried to see the face of my watch by the light of the fire, which was still burning brightly.{174} I had made out that it was half-past one, when I again heard a sound. It was a movement in the next room, as if a chair had been pushed against by some one moving cautiously in the dark. I do not pretend to being superior to irrational terrors at night, and now the blood rushed back to my head from my heart, as I sat up in bed and tried to persuade myself that what I had heard was the effect of imagination.
There was dead silence for a few seconds, and then a hand was passed over the other side of the paper-covered door, as if feeling for the latch. I could not have moved to save my life, and remained sitting bolt upright, with my eyes fixed upon the door. It was a weak and badly fitting one, made of single planks, and at first refused to open, but it had finally to yield to the pressure applied to it. It opened with a jerk, and I{175} saw by the firelight that the figure which appeared in the doorway was neither ghost nor burglar, but was that of the woman whose special mission it had seemed to be to terrify me ever since I came to Durrus.
“What do you want?” I demanded, as courageously as I could, though my voice was less valiant than I could have wished.
Moll advanced a step into the room, keeping her face down and half averted from me, while her large hands kept clutching and plucking at the cloak she wore.
“Go away,” I said, feeling exceedingly frightened. “You know you are not allowed to come in here.”
She stopped still for a moment, and looked at me. The deep shadows which the fire threw on her face made it look absolutely appalling. Her lips moved incessantly, and her malevolent expression, as she glanced at me out of the corners of{176} her eyes, made me feel certain that she was trying to curse me; but, except a guttural mouthing sound, I could distinguish nothing. While this imprecation, or whatever it was, was going on, she kept edging sideways towards the sofa, and, cautiously putting out her hand, she picked up the large cushion that was on it.
Still watching; me intently, she moved towards the bed, crushing and working the pillow about in her hands. I had no idea what she was going to do, and wildly thought of making a rush past her to the other door, and escaping down the corridor; but, beside the disadvantage of leaving a stronghold where, if the worst came to the worst, I could always pull the clothes over my head, I had a horrible fear that she might run after me. I determined to make a last effort, and, before she could come any closer, I said determinately{177}—
“If you do not go away at once, I shall call the master.”
At this, to my unspeakable relief, she looked hastily round over her shoulder, and let the cushion fall. Drawing the hood of her cloak over her head, she slowly retreated into the room out of which she had come, and with a final roll of her dreadful eyes upon me, she closed the paper-covered door after her. I listened intently, and presently heard the rustle of her cloak against the walls as she went down the corridor, and soon afterwards a door in some distant part of the house opened and shut.
I drew a long breath; she was out of the house now. I got up, and, with shaking limbs, dragged my big Saratoga trunk against the paper-covered door, and, having locked the other one, felt comparatively secure. As might be expected, I{178} did not get to sleep again very easily. I had always been aware of Moll’s animosity towards me, but this was the first time it had taken active form. As my nerves steadied down, I remembered the sounds that Willy and I had heard in the avenue on the way home, and I wondered if jealousy on Anstey’s account could have been Moll’s motive in following us, and then in making her way, with what seemed like a sinister intention, up to my room. Yet it was hard to believe that such a creature as she was could comprehend and act upon an idea of the kind. I drowsily tried to connect this dreadful visit with her husband’s words to Willy at the lodge, but before I could arrive at any satisfactory conclusion I fell asleep.
At breakfast I told Willy the greater part of what had happened, but I made as light of it all as I could. He was out of{179} spirits, and not like himself, and I had put off saying anything to him about it until we had almost finished breakfast. When I had ended my story, he pushed back his chair from the table and got up.
“I’ll make them sorry for this,” he said vindictively, his face flushing darkly as he spoke. “I’ll teach that old scoundrel Brian to let Moll come up here frightening you! You look as white as a sheet this minute.”
“I am sure I am nothing of the kind,” I answered, trying unsuccessfully to look at myself in the silver teapot; “there is nothing the matter with me. If you will fasten up that little door into the other room before this evening, I shall be perfectly happy.”
“Never fear but I will,” he said; “and it’ll be very queer if I don’t fasten up that old hag too.{180}”
He stalked out of the room. I heard him go upstairs and along the corridor, and presently the noise of hammering echoed through the house.
I met him in the hall soon afterwards, putting on his cap to go out.
“I fixed that door the way it won’t be opened again in a hurry,” he said, with grim satisfaction, “and I’ve locked the other; and now I’m going to be off to fix Moll herself. She’s not such a fool but she’ll understand what I’m going to say to her!”
“I wonder what the attraction in that room was for her?” I said. “I have seen her in there several times.”
“Goodness knows! There was nothing in it, only an old broken chair she had by the window, and there were a couple of books on the floor that I suppose she stole out of the study to play with. One looked{181} like an old diary, or account-book, or something. I meant to bring it to show you, but I left it in my room with the hammer and nails.”
“I am very much obliged to you for shutting up that door,” I said, with sincere gratitude. “I had no idea you were going to do it for me at once. You are a most reliable person.”
He had taken his stick out of the stand, and had opened the hall door; but he stopped and looked back at me.
“I think I’d do more than that for you,” he said, almost under his breath, and went out of the house.
It was a fine morning, and I finally went for a walk along the cliffs with the dogs. I expected to hear all about Willy’s encounter with Moll at luncheon; but, on my return to the house, I heard, to my surprise, that he had ridden into Moycullen,{182} and would probably not be home for dinner.
The afternoon lagged by. I had tea early, in the hope of shortening it; but the device did not have much success. As the evening clouded in, rain began to beat in large drops against the windows, and the rising wind sighed about the house, and sent puffs of smoke down the drawing-room chimney. I despised myself for the feeling of forsakenness which it gave me; but I could help it no more than I could hinder some apprehensive recollections of Moll’s entry into my room. A childish dread of having all the darkness behind me made me crouch down on the hearthrug, with my back to the fire, and rouse Pat from a satiated slumber to sit on my lap for company. Something about the look of the fire and the sound of the rain was compelling my thoughts back to the after{183}noon when I sat and waited here for Nugent. I did not try, as I had so often tried before, to drive away those thoughts, or to forget the withheld possibilities of that afternoon. Once more I gave myself over to the fascination of unprofitable remembrances, yielding to myself on the plea that it was to be for the last time. After to-day they would be contraband, made outlaws by the power of a resolution which I had newly come to—a resolution that I had been driven to by the combined forces of pity and sympathy and conscience; but to-day, for one final half-hour, I would allow them to have their way.
Dinner-time came, and with it no appearance of Willy. Uncle Dominick had for some time given up his custom of waiting in the library to take me in to dinner, and Willy and I usually found him{184} sitting by the fire in the dining-room when we went in. To-night, when I came in alone, he remained seated in his chair.
“We may as well give Willy a few moments’ law,” he said. “I hear he rode into Moycullen.”
“He told Tom when he was going that you weren’t to wait dinner for him, sir,” interposed Roche.
“What business could he have that would detain him so late?” said my uncle, slowly rising and taking his place at the table. “Can you throw any light upon this absence, Theo?”
He looked anxious and surprised when I told him that Willy had said nothing to me about it. Several times during dinner he harked back to the same subject, and I was more struck than ever by the nervous uncertainty of his manner, and the strange way in which one idea took possession of{185} his mind. He looked so ill and worn, that before I left the room compassion made me screw up my courage to ask him if he would not sit with me in the drawing-room, instead of going to his own study by himself.
He shook his head. “You are very good, my dear; it is very kind of you to express a wish for my society. But I am much occupied in the evenings—letters to write, accounts to go over. Besides, I am used by this time to being alone—ah yes!” He walked feebly over to the door, and opened it for me to leave the room. “You must forgive me,” he said.
To my amazement, he stooped down as I passed, and, putting his hand on my shoulder, he kissed my forehead.
“LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST.”
 
 
“‘Uncover ye his face,’ she said;
‘Oh, changed in little space!’”
“When Pity could no longer look on Pain.”
“Faith, I don’t know anny more than yourself, miss. ’Twas twelve o’clock last night when he come home, and Tom says the mare was in such a sweat when he brought her in that he thought she’d never stop breaking out in the stable.”
“Where has he been all the morning? Did he breakfast long before I did?”
“It wasn’t half-past seven, miss, when he was downstairs calling for a cup of tay{187} from the servants’ breakfast, and, afther he taking it, he went out of the house,” Roche answered, rising stiffly from his knees after he had swept up and replenished the drawing-room grate.
“It is very curious,” I said to myself, going over to the window and looking out on the lawn, where the dogs were engaged in a long, unsatisfactory wrangle over a duck’s claw. “I wonder what has become of him?”
“Miss Theo,” began Roche, impressively, depositing his coal-scuttle in the middle of the floor, “I don’t like the way Masther Willy is, and that’s the thruth. Maggie told me he wasn’t in his bed last night at all; and Tom was saying he had a face on him that would frighten you when he ordhered the horse yesterday.”
Something in Roche’s manner implied reproach and inquiry, and I felt obliged to{188} defend myself. “There was nothing the matter with him when I saw him last, yesterday morning.”
“Is that so, miss?” said Roche, picking up his coal-scuttle preparatory to leaving the room. “Well, miss, maybe I’m only an owld fool afther all, but there’s things going on I don’t like.”
Luncheon came, and again I had to eat it in no better company than my own. I began to feel seriously troubled about Willy, and finally put on my things and went round to the yard to see if I could hear anything about him there. He had been in the stables early that morning, to see the mare get her feed, Mick told me, and he thought he had seen him, a while ago, going round the shrubberies towards the plantation.
There had been sharp, sleety showers all the morning, and one of them now began{189} to fall so heavily that I had to take refuge in a stable while it lasted. I watched it impatiently, as it whipped the surface of the puddles about the yard and drove the fowls to the friendly shelter of the coach-house, and at the first signs of its abating I started for the plantation to look for Willy. By the time I reached the front of the house, the shower was quite over, and was driving out to sea. A wet gleam of sunlight shone on the trees, making every branch and twig show with pale distinctness against the bank of purple cloud behind; a pilot-boat was beating in to Durrusmore Harbour in the teeth of the cold south-easterly wind; the curlews screamed fitfully as they flew inland over my head, and I was weatherwise enough by this time to know that a storm was not far off.
The shrubberies were chilly and dripping,{190} and their narrow walks were covered with soaking withered leaves, but they were sheltered from the wind. I hurried along them, not very certain of where I was going, or what my exact intention in looking for Willy was. I had come to the place where I had once left the path to gather ferns by the stream, and was beginning to realize the absurdity of expecting to find him here, half an hour at least since Mick had seen him, when, at the angle where the two paths meet, I came suddenly upon him.
He was sitting on a tumble-down old rustic seat, with his elbows on his knees, and his face hidden in his hands.
“Willy!” I cried, starting forward, “what is the matter? Are you ill?”
He raised his head, and looked at me vacantly, and for the moment I felt almost as great a shock as if I had seen him lying{191} dead there; if he had been dead, his whole look could hardly be more changed than it was now. A bluish-grey pallor had taken the place of his usually fresh colouring; his eyes were sunk in dark hollows, but the lids were red; and I saw, with a shame at surprising them there, the traces of tears on his cheeks.
“I’m all right,” he answered, turning his face away without getting up; “please don’t stay here, Theo. It’s only that my head’s pretty bad.”
A small brown book was lying on the seat beside him, and he put it into the pocket of his coat while he was speaking. I was too bewildered to move.
“You’d better go in,” he said again; “it’s awfully cold and wet for you to be out here.”
The feeling that I was prying upon his trouble, whatever it was, made me take a{192} few undecided steps away from him; but, looking back, I saw that he had again relapsed into his old position, and with an uncontrollable impulse I came back.
“I won’t go away, Willy,” I said, sitting down beside him; “I can’t leave you here like this. Won’t you tell me what it is that is troubling you?”
He neither lifted his head nor spoke, but I could hear the quick catchings of his breath. A thrust of sharp pity pierced my heart.
“Do tell me what it is, Willy,” I repeated, careless of the break in my voice, putting one hand on his shoulder, and trying with the other to draw one of his from his face.
He was trembling all over, and when I touched him he started and let his hand fall, but he turned still further from me.
“Don’t,” he said huskily. “You can’t do any good; nothing can{193}——”
“What do you mean?” I said, horror-struck at the settled despair in his voice. “What has happened to you?”
“It’s no use your asking me questions,” he answered more calmly. “I tell you there’s nothing the matter with me.”
“I don’t believe you” I said. “Something has happened to you since yesterday morning. Is it anything that I have done? Is it my fault in any way?”
“No, it is not your fault.” He stood up, and went on wildly, without looking at me, “But I wish I had died before you came to Durrus! I wish I was in the graveyard out there this minute! I wish the whole scheming, infernal crew were in hell—I wish——”
“Oh, stop, Willy!” I cried—“stop! You are frightening me!”
He had been standing quite still, but he had flung out his clenched hand at every{194} sentence, and his grey eyes were fixed and dilated.
“I don’t know what I’m saying; I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he said, sitting down again beside me. “I had no right to say that—about wishing I was dead before you came. Your coming here was the best thing ever happened to me in my life. I’ll always thank God for giving me the chance of loving you; and no matter what happens, I always will love you—always—always——”
He caught my hand as if he were going to draw me towards him, but, checking himself, he let it fall with a groan.
“It’s all over now,” he said. “Everything’s gone to smash.”
A rush of wind shivered through the laurels, and shook a quick rattle of drops from the shining leaves.
“Why should it all be over? Why should not it begin again?{195}”
I said it firmly, but it seemed to me as if I were listening to some one else speaking.
“What do you mean?” He stared at me.
“I mean that perhaps I made a mistake,” I said, beginning to hesitate—“that perhaps, that night at Mount Prospect, I was wrong in what I said to you——”
“You’re humbugging me!” he said fiercely, without taking his eyes from my face. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Yes, I do know,” I answered, still with that feeling that another person was speaking for me. “I’ve thought about it before now, and I thought perhaps, if you would forgive——”
“Forgive! I don’t understand you. Do you mean to say you would marry me?”
“Yes.{196}”
He looked at me stupidly, and staggered to his feet as if he were drunk.
“I’m having a fine time of it!” he said, with a loud harsh laugh. “She says she’ll have me after all, and I’ve got to say ‘No, thank you!’”
He swayed a little as he stood opposite to me, and then, falling on his knees, he laid his head on my lap, and broke into a desperate sobbing.
CHAPTER IV.  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{198} 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{199}—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,{200} 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{201} 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{202} 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{203} 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{204} 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{205} 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{206} 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{207} 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;{208} “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{209} 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.{210}
“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.”
CHAPTER V.  GOOD-BYE.
 “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!’”
There was dead silence for some seconds, Uncle Dominick was the first to break it.
“You married her?” he said slowly, the words falling from his lips like drops of acid. “You mean to say she is your wife?”
Willy nodded stubbornly.
My uncle stood looking at him, the blood mounting in dark waves to his pale face, till I should scarcely have known him. He{212} made a stammering attempt to speak, and moved some steps forward towards Willy, groping with his hands in front of him as if he were blind, before the words came.
“Leave the house!” he gasped, in a high, shrill voice—“leave the house!”—swaying as if shaken by the passion that filled him—“you infernal, lying scoundrel, or I will kick you out like a dog!”
He stopped again to take breath, but recovering himself caught at the collar of Willy’s coat as if to put his threat into execution.
“You needn’t trouble yourself,” said Willy, raising his arm and retreating before his father’s onslaught. “You’ve seen pretty nearly the last of me now; but, whether you like it or no, I’m going to stay here for to-night.”
Uncle Dominick grasped at the edge of{213} the sideboard to steady himself, his face so dark and swollen that I thought he was going to have a fit.
“Stay here!” he roared, the full tide of rage breaking from him with ungoverned savageness. “Stay here! I’ll see you damned before you spend another night in this house!”
“Now, look here,” said Willy, in a hard, overbearing voice, keeping his eyes fixed on his father’s face, “it’ll be the best of your play to keep quiet. I’m going to stay here, and that’s the end of it!”
His insolent manner appeared to cow my uncle. The colour began to fade from his face, and his expression became more controlled, though it was more evil than ever when he spoke next.
“And your bride? May I ask if she has done me the honour of coming here?” He wiped a thin foam from his lower lip{214} with his trembling hand. “Or is she perhaps at her father’s residence?”
Willy turned his face so that I could not see it. “She’s in Cork,” he said.
“I suppose you intend eventually to return here after your honeymoon?” my uncle went on, with a nasty smile, pouring out and drinking another glass of brandy, while he waited for Willy’s reply.
“I’ve done with this place for ever,” answered Willy steadily, looking straight at his father. “I married Anstey Brian for a reason that maybe you know as well as I do.”
“What do I know about your reasons for degrading yourself?” interrupted my uncle, dashing his hand down upon the sideboard with a return of his first fury. “I only know one thing about her, and that is, that she and her family shall get no good of their infamous plotting!”—the{215} glasses on the sideboard clashed and rang as he struck it again. “You shall never own a stick or a stone of Durrus!” he cried in his harsh, broken voice. “Your cousin shall have it all—your cousin shall get everything I have. I will see to that this very night!”
“Oh, all right,” Willy answered coolly; “the sooner the better. But I may as well tell you that if you went down on your knees to me this minute, I wouldn’t touch a halfpenny, nor the value of one that belonged to you. I’ve money enough to take me to Australia, and when I go away to-morrow morning it will be for good and all.”
I had up to this stood by a scared and silent spectator; but now I tried to make my voice heard—
“I won’t have it, Uncle Dominick,” I said, half choked with my own eagerness.{216} “It is no use leaving it to me; I won’t have your money.”
Uncle Dominick took no notice of me at all. He had sat down on the chair nearest him, his passion having seemingly exhausted his strength, and his hand on the table beside him shook and twisted as if he had lost all control over its muscles.
Willy spoke to me for the first time.
“See here, Theo,” he said gently, also ignoring my protest, “you’d better go on upstairs out of this; you can’t do any good here.” He glanced at his father. “Do go now, like a good girl; he and I have got things to settle before I go.”
He put his hand on my shoulder, and half pushed me to the door.
“Promise you won’t let him do that,” I said, trying to hold the door as he opened it. “Tell him I won’t have it.”
He did not answer; but, disengaging{217} my fingers from their grasp of the door, he held them in his for an instant.
“I’ll see you again,” he said; and then shut the door and left me standing outside.
I waited for a long time in the drawing-room, but Willy did not come. Ten and eleven struck; the fire died out, and the candles on the chimney-piece burned down till the paper which fitted them into their sockets took fire and began to flare smokily. I went out into the hall and listened, but could hear no sound of voices. Some one was moving about upstairs. Perhaps Willy had gone up by the back stairs from the dining-room. Perhaps he had changed his mind and did not want to see me after all, I thought, making my way up to my room in unutterable weariness and despondency.
There was a light under his door when I passed, and I stopped uncertainly outside.{218} He was dragging boxes about, and opening and shutting drawers; evidently he was packing. Should I call him? This would be my last chance of seeing him, as he was going away by the early train in the morning. But with the thought, the remembrance of Anstey fell like a shadow between him and me. What could I say to him if I were to see him? How could I ignore the subject which must be uppermost in both our minds? And yet, how could I bring myself to speak of it? Most likely he had felt this same difficulty, and had purposely avoided meeting me.
I went slowly on from his door, and into my own room, trying to realize the impossible thought that I had seen the last of Willy. Willy, the trusty comrade of many a day’s careless pleasuring; who had taken me out schooling and ferreting, and had ransacked every hedge to cut for me{219} superfluous numbers of the flattest of black-thorns, and the straightest of ash plants—Willy, with whom I used to gossip and wrangle and chaff in the easiest of intimacy; who had been, as he himself would have expressed it, the “best playboy” I had ever known. I could not believe in this grim ending, that would have been grotesque, if it had not been so tragical. Willy married to Anstey Brian, and going away for ever to-morrow morning, and going without even saying good-bye!—these were things too hard and too sorry to be taken in easily.
A knock came at my door.
“Theo, are you there? Could I see you for a minute?”
I opened the door and went out into the corridor. Willy was standing there in his shirt-sleeves.
“I heard you coming up,” he began{220} quickly, “and I came to say ‘Good-bye.’”
“Oh, Willy!” I said wretchedly, “are you really going?”
“Yes; I’m off by the early train,” he answered. “It’s late now; I won’t keep you up.” He put out his hand to me. “Good-bye,” he said.
I took his hand, and held it, unable to say a word.
“Good-bye,” he repeated, in a whisper.
“Willy,” I cried suddenly, “why did you do it? Why did you do it?”
“I can’t tell you—I had to. Maybe, some day——” he broke off. “I must go. Will you say ‘Good-bye’ to me?”
“I will,” I said, carried away by the restrained misery of his voice, and putting my arms round his neck. “You’ve been too good to me—oh, Willy, my dear, I’ve brought you nothing but bad luck. Good-bye.{221}”
I kissed his cheek—he was my only cousin, and I was never going to see him again—and then I tried to draw myself away from the grasp that was tightening round me, but it was too late.
“I’ll never say ‘Good-bye’ to you,” he said fiercely, straining me to him. “I won’t let you go till you tell me if you meant what you said to me in the wood. Was it me you cared for, after all?”
“Don’t ask me, Willy,” I implored. “Let me go!”
“I won’t!” he answered, with reckless passion, trying to press his lips against mine.
I put my hands over my face, with a shrinking which told me in a moment the depth of the self-delusion which had carried me to the point of saying I would marry him. He must be told the truth now, no matter what it cost.{222}
“I meant that I was fond of you,” I said; “but I never was in love with you.”
“I see,” he said bitterly. He let me go at once. “Then it was Nugent, after all.”
I turned away without answering, but at my own door I stopped, and again held out my hand.
“Willy,” I said, breaking into tears, “say ‘Good-bye.’”
He took my hand again, and kissed it softly; he was crying too.
“God help us both!” he said. “Good-bye.”
A RESOLVE.
 “Sad is my fate; I must emigrate
To the wilds of Amerikee.”
Old Irish Song.
“In the fresh fairness of the spring to ride,
As in the old days when he rode with her.”
The postmaster at Rathbarry was evidently not in the habit of despatching many telegrams. He was now standing in the street, scratching his red beard, and looking thoughtfully up at the single wire which dropped from the tarred pole—literally the last outpost of civilization—down through the roof of his little shop,{224} while I read to him the message with which I had ridden over early on Tuesday morning.
“You know where Boston is?” I asked, when I had finished; “Boston, in America, you know?”
“Boyshton, miss?” he said, correcting my pronunciation. “I do, miss. Sure I think it’s there that me sisther’s son is a plumber these five years.”
“Well, listen,” I said, beginning to read it aloud again, “‘To Farquharson, 16, Charles Street, Boston. Start for Boston February 6th. Theo.’ Are you quite sure you understand it? It is very important.”
“No fear at all, miss,” he answered, and went into his shop to get my change.
This was a lengthy proceeding, which involved the sending of a little girl to the public-house opposite, and an argument, as to the amount to be returned to me,{225} between Mr. Cassidy, the postmaster, and his daughter. However, I was in no particular hurry to get back, and Blackthorn never objected to standing. The day felt more like May than the second of February. The only tokens of yesterday’s rain were the swollen yellow streams in the gutters on either side of the narrow street, and the delicate clearness of the sky. It was so enticingly mild and spring-like, that by the time that Mr. Cassidy had brought me my change, I had made up my mind to go home by the longer road, instead of by the usual way round the head of the harbour.
The road I had chosen went past the Clashmore entrance gates, and as I rode slowly along it, I noticed the ravages which the storm had worked in The O’Neill’s woods. Half-uprooted firs and beeches leaned forlornly against their{226} neighbours in every direction among the plantations that sloped to the road, and torn boughs hung over the demesne wall. Near the big front gates a group of men was collected in the road, where a tree had, in falling, partly broken down the wall. As I came near, one of them, a short, square man, detached himself from the others, and, lifting his hat, walked towards me. To my astonishment I found that it was O’Neill himself.
“How do you do? I’m delighted to see you,” he began effusively. “I see you’re surprised to find me here. I came down from Dublin on Saturday, to settle some business, and I’ve been shut up ever since by the storm. I dare say you’ve had plenty of it at Durrus?” He hardly waited for my answer. “And what have you been doing with yourself all this time?” he went on. “I don’t think{227} you look quite the thing—very charming, of course”—with a wave of his hand—“but still not as blooming as you did when I saw you last.”
“I have been in the house a good deal lately,” I answered evasively; “the weather has been so bad.”
“Has Willy come back from Cork yet?” O’Neill asked, turning to look at where his men were working as he spoke. “I heard that he was there yesterday.”
There was no use in trying to conceal a fact that would soon become common property.
“Yes,” I answered, in a constrained voice, “he came home last night, but not to stay; he—he went away again this morning.”
“Ah!” said O’Neill, still watching the sawing and chopping of the fallen tree; “has he gone away for long?{228}”
“Yes; I am afraid he has.”
“Gone to England, has he?” pursued O’Neill, running his pudgy hand along my horse’s neck.
“No,” I replied unwillingly; “at least, I believe he is going there first.”
“Then he is going to emigrate?” O’Neill said quickly, forgetting his endeavour to appear ignorant, and looking at me through his eye-glass with undisguised excitement.
I made no answer.
“The fact is,” O’Neill went on, clearing his throat, “I heard some rumour that he had got into trouble; but I hoped it might not have been true. These people,” with a glance at his workmen, “delight in exaggerating, especially if it is bad news.”
Then it had become common property.
“What did they tell you?” I said faintly.{229}
O’Neill’s red face got a trifle redder.
“Well, it sounds preposterous, but they had some cock-and-a-bull story that he had—a—in fact,” he said, looking considerately away from me, “they said he was married.”
“It is quite true,” I said, with despairing candour; “he has married the daughter of the man at the lodge, and he—that is to say—they, have started for Australia.”
“God bless my soul!” ejaculated O’Neill. “Dear, dear, how very shocking! I couldn’t believe it when those fellows told me about it this morning. What a pity it all is—a nice young fellow like that ruining himself in such a way, and we all thought——” He stopped and stammered, perhaps becoming aware for the first time of the connection between the news we were discussing and my pale face and red eyes. “I mean, we had never anticipated anything of this kind.{230}”
I began to gather up my reins preparatory to saying good-bye.
“I hope Madam O’Neill is quite well? I have not heard from Connie for a long time.”
“Oh, quite well—quite well, thank you. I left them in Dublin.” Then, laying his hand on the reins as if impelled by irresistible curiosity, “I suppose your uncle is very angry with Willy?”
I assented.
“Ah! very naturally; but, upon my soul, I think it was as much his own fault as any one else’s. He never could get on with his own family, you know. There was your poor father, now—the dearest fellow in the world—my greatest friend—though, of course, he was a good deal older than I,” O’Neill threw in parenthetically,—“he never hit it off with him. He hasn’t spoken to me for years past because{231} I backed up Owen when he got into trouble with his father; and there was that other business about Owen’s funeral—a hole and corner affair—no one given any notice about it, the poor dear fellow buried in Cork as if he were a pauper!” O’Neill paused, and blew his nose with indignant vigour. “But all that’s neither here nor there,” he resumed; “all I mean to say is, that Dominick was not the man to make the best of a young fellow. That poor boy Willy never got a chance. He was brought up, as you might say, among the common people; and, now I come to think of it, we did hear something of this girl before—but that was before you came, you know. Ahem!”—he cleared his throat—“it really is most incomprehensible.”
“I am afraid I must say good-bye, O’Neill,” I said hurriedly, each of his words giving me a fresh stab; “and I do not{232} know if I shall see you again, as I am going away on Saturday. I am going back to America.”
O’Neill looked as aghast as was possible for a person of his complexion.
“That’s the worst news I have heard yet. How can you treat us so cruelly?” he said gallantly. “You come over and break all our hearts, and then off you go, and leave us to mend them as best we can.”
“I hope it is not as bad as all that,” I said, with a sickly smile. “I won’t say good-bye to you now; I am sure I shall see you again before I go—perhaps at Miss Burke’s to-morrow.” And I rode quickly away, without heeding the farewell words that he shouted after me.
To say the truth, I could not face another good-bye, even with O’Neill, and I trotted home at a good pace along the{233} muddy road, doing my best to outstrip the associations that every fresh turn in its familiar windings called up.
There was a note for me on the hall table when I arrived.
“Miss Burke left it herself, miss,” said Roche, “and she hopes you’ll send over an answer this afternoon. She wanted to see the masther, but sure he’s not able to see any one—and no wondher, faith, no wondher!”
The note was written on the small coquettish paper, with a golden “Mimi,” engrossed on the corner, which was affected by Miss Burke, and her good-natured, untidy handwriting had sprawled over all four sides of the sheet. She said that she “heard that Willy was gone,” and, without making any further comment, she asked me if I would come and stay with them for as long or as short a time as I might wish.{234} She hoped I would come to-morrow, if possible, as it was their “at home” day, and I might meet a few friends; and she remained, mine most affectionately, Mary Burke.
I considered the matter. It certainly would be a relief to get away from Durrus and its horrible silence and forsakenness, even for a night or two. To-day was Tuesday; I did not start till Saturday. If I went over to Garden Hill to-morrow afternoon, timing my arrival so as to evade the “few friends,” I could stay there till Friday morning. I knew it would make no difference to my uncle; I could tell him about it when I saw him at dinner: and I sent a note telling Miss Burke that I should be very glad to go over to her to-morrow afternoon. But I did not see my uncle at dinner.
“He’s not at all well, miss,” Roche said{235} mysteriously. “I was telling him a while ago that ’tis for the docthor he should send; but indeed, he was for turning me out of the room when I said it.”
“Do you think he would like to see me?”
“Don’t go near him at all to-night, miss,” Roche answered, with unexpected urgency. “He’ll be betther to-morrow—you’ll see him then.”
But I did see my uncle again that night. When I went upstairs to bed, I was startled by seeing his tall figure, in his dressing-gown, standing outside the door of the room which Willy had locked. He had a large bunch of keys, and was trying them one after the other in the lock.
“Perhaps you can help me with these,” he said, looking round as I came up to him. “I am almost sure that one of these keys opens this door, but I cannot find it.{236}”
His hand trembled so much, that the keys were shaking and jingling as he held them out to me.
“I am afraid Willy has got the key——” I began.
“But, my dear, I think it is very probable that we shall find Willy in that room,” he said, in a low confidential voice, pressing the keys upon me. “I cannot think why he remains in there. I have tried several times to-day to open the door, but that fellow Roche keeps pestering me. I believe he is in league with Willy.”
My own hand was trembling almost as much as my uncle’s, but I did not dare to refuse to take the keys, and I made a pretence of trying one in the lock. He watched me anxiously for a moment.
“No, my dear, I see it is no use trying to-night. You are tired, and so am I”—he sighed deeply, and put his hand to his{237} chest,—“this oppression that I am suffering from tries me terribly. I will go to my room and see if I can get a little rest. I need rest sadly.”
“Yes, you look very tired,” I said, in as ordinary a voice as I could manage, handing the keys back to him.
“Do I? Well, to tell you the truth, I have been quite unable to sleep lately. I am so much disturbed by these hackney carmen who make it a practice to drive past the house at all hours of the night; I hope they do not annoy you? I have told them several times to go away, but they simply laugh at me. And the strange thing is,” he continued, leaning over the rail of the corridor and looking suspiciously down into the hall, “that though that tree is still lying across the avenue, it does not stop them in the least—they just drive through it. Well, good night, my dear,” he{238} said, nodding at me in a friendly way; “we must give it up for to-night, but we shall unearth Master Willy to-morrow.”
He nodded again, and walked away down the corridor.
CHAPTER VII.  THROUGH THE FRENCH WINDOW.
 “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.”
When Maggie came into my room next morning, she told me that Dr. Kelly had been sent for.
“The masther was very bad all the night, and it wasn’t daylight when Misther Roche come down and said Mick should go for the docthor.”
I dressed as quickly as I could, and,{240} when I came downstairs, found that Dr. Kelly was already with my uncle. I rang the bell, and, after an unusual delay, Roche answered it.
“You had better ask Dr. Kelly to come in to breakfast,” I said.
“Very well, miss; he’ll be going now in a minute. He’s with the masther in the little study.”
“In the little study?”
“Yes, indeed, miss. At four o’clock this morning he lepped out of his bed, and nothing would do him only to go downstairs; first he was for going away out of the house down to the bog, or the like o’ that, an’ when I was thrying to stop him, he says, ‘Let go,’ says he, ‘Poul-na-coppal is the only place,’ says he; ‘we’ll be late if we don’t go now!’ and I was put to me thrumps to howld him.”
“Did you tell Dr. Kelly all this?{241}”
“Oh, bedad, I did, miss!” said Roche, with modest pride, “and more too. There he is now in the hall. I’ll go tell him you want to spake to him.”
The little doctor’s vulgar authoritative voice and complacent manner inspired me with a certain confidence in him, though what he said about Uncle Dominick was not very reassuring.
“It’s hard enough to say how it’ll go with him,” he said, sitting down opposite to me at the breakfast-table. “Yes, thank you, I take three lumps; I’ve a very sweet tooth. Of course, he’s not as young as he was, y’ know; it’s a nasty attack, and his constitution’s greatly pulled down since I saw him last.”
Beyond this he did not seem inclined to give an opinion, and began to tell me about some Shakespeare recitations, in which, it appeared, he was to take a{242} prominent part. But I reverted to the subject of my uncle’s illness at the first opportunity.
“Oh, never fear, he’ll pull round; but we’ll have to be very careful of him,” he said, hurrying through his breakfast with practised rapidity.
“He was wandering in his head last night,” I said tentatively.
“Oh, I know that, I know that,” he replied, rubbing his truculent red moustache violently with his napkin; “Roche told me all about that.”
“Because,” I went on, “if you thought there was anything serious, I would not go over to Garden Hill to-day. Miss Burke asked me to spend a few days with her,” I explained.
“Well, why not?” broke in Dr. Kelly, brusquely. “Now, if you don’t mind me telling you so, it would be the best thing{243} you could do”—screwing up one small intelligent eye and looking at me observantly. “You just want a little change, and Roche is well able to mind your uncle”—he gave his tea-cup a swing to collect what remained of the three lumps before swallowing its contents. “Well, I must be off now. I’ll be at Miss Burke’s meself this afternoon, and I’ll call in here again on my way home. Good morning.”
Roche was waiting in the hall, and I heard Dr. Kelly’s last words.
“Mind, now, you keep a good eye on him. I’ll send over the medicine.”
Up to this I had not been able to examine the contents of the post-bag, and I now went over to the sideboard and shook them out. There was nothing in it but a circular or two, and a small flat parcel. I turned over the latter, and saw with a start my own name in Willy’s cramped{244} boyish handwriting. Cutting the string quickly, I found inside another wrapping of paper, carefully tied up, and sealed with his well-remembered signet-ring. Under the string a half-sheet of note-paper, folded in two, had been slipped. There were only a very few words written in pencil on it.
“I think you have a right to this, and some day I would like you to see it, but please don’t open it till my father is dead. Yours ever, W.”
I turned the parcel over and over. It felt like a book with a soft cover; but why Willy, of all people in the world, should send me a book, and what it could have to say to Uncle Dominick was more than I could fathom.
It was no use trying to think about it. Everything lately had gone beyond my powers of comprehension. I was sick of{245} conjectures, and exhausted by unexplainable disasters. I would not let myself think of Willy; it did not bear thinking of, that he was now turning his back on his own home, for no apparent reason, except the contradictory one that he had married, contrary to his father’s wishes, a girl whom he did not love. One comfort was, that I also was soon to leave Durrus behind me, and in my case it would certainly be for ever. Even if Uncle Dominick had meant anything by his threat of leaving me his property, it did not make any difference to me. Nothing would induce me to have anything to say to it. Willy would have to come home and take possession when the time came, and I would go on living my peaceful uneventful life in the house in Charles Street with Aunt Jane. That was what it was going to be, I deter{246}mined—a placid, unexciting existence; an occasional classical concert; a literary tea or two; no more dances or frivolities—I had in the last two or three months grown too old for them.
I went up to my room and began to get through some preliminary packing before lunch, and as with a heavy heart I folded up and laid in my trunk the dresses which I had bought in Boston with such pleasant anticipations, Aunt Jane’s words came back to me with humiliating force—“I trust you will not have cause to regret the headstrong self-will which has made you unable to content yourself in a quiet and God-fearing household.”
The morning went quickly by, and, when I had finished packing, I sat down by the window with an aching back and a hot head, but nevertheless with satisfaction in the thought that the big trunk{247} which I had just filled and locked need not be opened again until it had once more taken up its quarters in the house in Charles Street. Some irrational sentiment had made me defer the packing of my habit till the last moment, and when I did at last lay it on the top of my dresses, I slipped the parcel Willy had sent me into its folds.
I raised the window, and looked out into the mild still air. By this time next week, Willy and I would both be on the sea, being carried to opposite ends of the earth, without anything to connect us for the future, except this parcel, which he had forbidden me to open. It seemed to me, as I looked out at the woods of Durrus, the place that I was so fond of, and that yet I almost hated, that it was a true saying—
“Life is a tale told by an idiot, ...
... signifying nothing.”
{248}
The sky was dark and sullen, with layers of overlapping clouds roofing it down to the horizon, and on the lonely sea-stretches there was not so much as a fishing-boat to be seen. The place was unusually deserted, and in nothing was Willy’s absence more clearly shown than in the fact that the fallen sycamore was still lying across the bend of the avenue, no attempt having even been made to cut away the branches. I looked away from it with a shudder, remembering Uncle Dominick’s dreadful confidences about it the night before, and I wondered how I should summon up courage enough to go into his room to say good-bye to him. It seemed unnatural to leave him when he was ill; but I knew very well that I could be of no real use to him, and the mere thought of another scene such as that of last night actually made my blood run cold.{249}
A sound of the snapping of twigs made me again look in the direction of the fallen tree, and I saw that a woman, whom I soon recognized as being Moll Hourihane, was breaking away some of the smaller branches, and making them into a bundle for firewood. It was the first time I had ever seen her occupy herself rationally, or that I had been able to watch her in unobserved security, and my eyes followed her movements with a fascinated curiosity as she made herself a large bundle, and, having hoisted it on to her back with surprising ease, crossed the grass between the house and the drive, and walked along close under the windows until she reached the end one, which was the French window of my uncle’s study. She stood for a moment or two outside, looking in, and then drew her hand once or twice down the glass.{250}
I had leaned as far out of my window as was possible, and I now called out to her, “Go away! You will disturb the master. Go away at once!”
She drew back from the window, and looked up, shading her eyes with her hand, to see where my voice had come from. She soon saw me, and I again motioned to her to go away. Instead, however, of doing so, she stood quite still, and throwing back her head, she fell into a sort of paroxysm of voiceless laughter, pointing at me, and rolling her head from shoulder to shoulder. Seeing that she paid no attention to what I said to her, I was on the point of leaving the window to go and look for Roche, when the French window was opened, and Roche himself came out, and with a torrent of abuse, delivered in voluble Irish, he drove her away.
“The divil’s cure to her!” I heard him{251} say to himself as she retreated, “coming frightening the masther like that!”
“Roche,” I called, “how is the master?”
“Oh, a dale betther, miss,” he replied, coming under my window. “He was quite aisy till that owld one came with her ugly face at the window. But sure you can see him to-day before you go; he’s quite composed in his mind. He was asking for yourself just now.”
In order to be quite sure of missing most of Miss Burke’s friends, I had not ordered the trap till half-past four, and I put off going to see Uncle Dominick until about a quarter of an hour before the time I was to start. At the door of his study I met Roche coming out.
“Go in, miss; he’s getting on first-class. I’ll have a cup of tay ready for you agin you’re coming out,” he said, opening the door for me.{252}
My uncle was standing by the window, with a book in his hand. He gave a quick glance at me as I came in.
“Yes, they are capital prints,” he said, as if in continuance of a conversation. “I am glad you have come. There is very little light left; but if you will come to the window, I will show them to you.”
He had on the long Paisley shawl dressing-gown which he had worn the night before; his figure looked immensely tall against the dull light; and his high bowed shoulders, with his head sunk on his chest, gave him the appearance of some forlorn sick raven.
“I have come to say good-bye to you for a day or two,” I said, going over to the window. “I am going over to the Burkes’.”
“Well, you will have time to look at this book before you go,” he answered,{253} turning over its leaves with a sort of suppressed eagerness. “This now, do you remember showing me this?” He held the book towards me, and I saw that it was the old volume of “The Turf, the Chase, and the Road,” which my father had given him, and he and I had once before looked over together. “That is a long time ago now.”
“Yes,” I replied, glad to find that he was so easy to talk to; “I can hardly believe that it is only three months since I came.”
He looked fearfully ill and wasted; he was shaking from head to foot, and his restless, bloodshot eyes kept wandering from the book to the trees outside. Whatever Dr. Kelly might say, I was certain that he was much worse than he had even been last night. I could not pretend to myself that I was fond of him; but after{254} all, now that Willy was gone, I was practically the only relation he had left in the world, and I felt more and more that it would be heartless of me to go away and leave him in such a state.
He did not appear to notice what I had said, and I went on—
“I don’t really care about going to the Burkes’ in the least, Uncle Dominick. I would quite as soon stay with you, if you would like me to.”
“Stay with me! What do you mean?” he said, with some surprise, slipping the book into the wide pocket of his dressing-gown. “You only came last night—or was it the night before?—and, of course, you must stay. You will have to attend the old man’s funeral. You know”—with a low laugh—“they all think that you were buried in Cork; but you’re not, you know—you’re not.{255}”
He had laid his trembling hand on my wrist to emphasize what he said, and I was afraid to move.
“No, do not go,” he went on, his voice getting more and more hurried. “I want you to see about that fallen tree. They cannot possibly get the hearse up to the door while it is there. Why are you looking so frightened, Owen? She is not here. You know, you were very ill when you came, and I had to get her to look after you. She was looking in through the window a little time ago; but Roche hunted her away, and she can’t do you any harm now.”
I was almost too terrified by this time to be able to conceal my fear; but I said, as calmly as I could—
“I am not afraid of her. I think it is time for me to go now; let me send Roche to you.{256}”
“No, no!” he whispered anxiously, clutching my wrist more tightly, “he knows nothing about it; he wasn’t here. No one knows but Mary Hourihane, and it was all her fault. Owen!” he cried, his voice rising hysterically, “don’t stare at me! I declare to God I never did anything to you until she came in and asked me to help her to take you—there—out through that window—out to Poul-na-coppal.” He dragged me from the window into the dark corner by the fireplace. “Hide there! Be quick! lest she should see you!” he panted, his teeth chattering, and the perspiration breaking out on his forehead. “I hear her coming. There she is!” fixing frenzied eyes on the wall opposite. “Look at the bog-mould on her hands. She says she did it for my sake! Don’t let her come near me; she will put her arms round my neck, and I shall die!{257}” He let go my hand, and made a rush to the window. “She is out there too!” he said, with an awful cry, turning back and cowering again in the corner by the fireplace; “and there—and there; she is everywhere! Don’t leave me, Owen!”
But his appeal did not stop me in my flight from the room for help.
CHAPTER VIII.  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{259} 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,{260} 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{261} 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{262} 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.{263}”
“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{264} 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{265} 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{266} 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,{267} 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{268} 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{269} 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,{270} 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.{271}”
“’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{272} 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.{273}”
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.
CHAPTER IX.  A HERITAGE OF WOE.
 “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.”
It was Friday afternoon, two days since the evening when Nugent had driven me away from Durrus to Garden Hill. The sun was shining into Miss Burke’s drawing-room, and through the window I caught occasional glimpses of Miss Burke herself in her garden, examining the hotbed,{275} standing with arms akimbo to direct the operations of the garden boy, or ejecting an errant Plymouth Rock, that had daringly flown over the fuchsia hedge into the garden from the yard.
“Do you remember that afternoon when you said good-bye to Willy out there?” I said, looking round at Nugent, as Miss Burke slammed the garden gate on the intruder. “I was there by the henhouse all the time.”
“Yes, I knew you were—I was watching you out of the window while I was being talked to by Miss Croly.”
“Then why did you say what you did about America to Willy? You must have known I could hear.”
“I wanted you to hear. I thought then that you had treated me very badly. In fact, I am not at all sure that I don’t think so still.{276}”
I left the window in which we were standing, and went back to the armchair which Mrs. Barrett had once so abundantly filled.
“I want to ask you something,” I said; “what was it—why—I mean, what made you write me that letter?”
“Because, under the circumstances, it was about the only thing for me to do”—in a tone which told of past indignation. “I was warned off!”
“I never warned you,” I said, trying to appear absorbed in studying the figures on the Japanese screen that I was holding.
“No, I dare say you did not; but it came to pretty nearly the same thing when you got your uncle to do it for you.”
“I! I never did anything of the kind!”
“But your uncle himself told me——” he began, and stopped.{277}
“Told you what?” I said, sitting bolt upright.
“Well,” he answered reluctantly, “that last day I was at Durrus—after the ball, you know—your uncle sent for me, and he told me you were engaged to Willy.”
“I engaged to Willy!” I cried hotly. “How could he have——”
The words died on my lips; I could not now dispute about anything Uncle Dominick had said.
“He said more than that,” said Nugent, coming and standing over me; “he said he thought—he was pretty sure, in fact—that you wanted me to know it” (reddening at the recollection), “and so then, of course——”
It was a hard thing to hear. The falsehood had come near spoiling both our lives, and with the thought of it the remembrance of the time that was over{278} came like a wave about me—the wretchedness and bewilderment, the heart-ache and the hidden strivings with it, the effort for Willy’s sake. I looked up into the troubled blue eyes that were fixed on mine, and, with such a reaction from pain as comes seldom in a life, I stretched out both my hands.
“Oh, Nugent,” I said, calling him by his name for the first time, “why did you believe it?”
He took hold of my hands, and knelt down beside me. “I think,” he said, in a low voice, “because I loved you so much.”
I could not now say more than this, even to Nugent. Uncle Dominick had only been buried this morning, and all that had happened that last afternoon was still fresh in my mind. They had recovered his body from the bog hole the same night, after{279} long searching, and a telegram had been sent to try and catch Willy before he started. But it had been too late; he and Anstey had sailed for Melbourne a few hours before the telegram had gone, and now a second message had been sent to Melbourne to await his arrival there. There had been very few at the funeral, Nugent said; he and his father, and old Mr. McCarthy, the solicitor, and Dr. Kelly, who had conducted the inquest, were, with the Durrus servants, the only people there.
“They went by the old road across the bog,” he said, in answer to a question from me. “It was a lovely morning, just like spring. I looked at Poul-na-coppal as we walked past, and you can see at once that something unusual has happened there. The banks are all muddy and trampled, and the heather and bog myrtle that used{280} to grow round it are torn and broken down. You wouldn’t know it.”
“Not know Poul-na-coppal! I wish I could think I should ever forget it.”
“They had had the mausoleum opened,” Nugent went on. “I can just remember seeing it open before, when I was six years old, and they took me to old Theodore’s funeral—by way of a treat. It’s an awful old place.”
“Oh, Nugent,” I said, “was Moll Hourihane there?”
“No, I hear she has gone off her head altogether, and just sits by the fire and says ‘Gibber’ all the time—or words to that effect.”
“Nonsense!”
“Well, that is what your friend Tom told me. I was quite glad to hear that she was turning into a good conventional idiot, after all.{281}”
“Was old Brian there?”
“Yes; he had the cheek to ask me if I knew who was to get the property. He is as ill-conditioned an old ruffian as I ever saw. I told him that till the will was read, no one knew anything about it.”
“I hope your father went up to the house to hear it,” I said, with an uneasy recollection of my uncle’s threat to disinherit Willy in my favour.
“I have not the least doubt he did—in fact, I believe McCarthy asked him to do so; but as I knew it could be of no special interest to any one but Willy, I came right on here. It seemed to me as if I would prefer it.”
Miss Mimi’s gardening occupied her till nearly tea time; at least it was not till then that we heard her voice reverberating in the hall.{282}
“See now, Joanna, be sure and put plenty of butter on the toast, and don’t wet the tea till I ring the bell. The mistress and Miss Bessie will be home from Moycullen soon, and”—in a lower voice—“there’s Miss Sarsfield and Mr. O’Neill in the drawing-room.”
Here there came a ring at the bell.
“Mercy on us! who’s this?” exclaimed Miss Burke; “and me in me awful old gardening clothes!”
We heard her hastily retreat into the room opposite, and then, in a muffled voice, issue her directions.
“Say I’m not at home, Joanna, and Miss Sarsfield’s not able to see any one!”
“Good woman,” murmured Nugent.
The door was opened, and Joanna’s steadfast assertions that “all the ladies were out of home,” were reassuringly audible; but the next instant we heard{283} Miss Mimi emerge from her refuge, and shamelessly betray her confederate.
“Don’t mind Joanna, O’Neill! Come in, come in! I never thought it was you!”
“How do you do, Miss Burke?” said O’Neill; “I am glad you are not as inhospitable as Joanna!” Here followed an apologetic giggle from Joanna, and O’Neill continued. “And how is your guest? Better, I hope.”
“Oh, the poor child! She was awfully bad yesterday; she never lifted her head from the pillow all day. I think some one was greatly disappointed when he came to inquire! But come in and see her; she’s in the drawing-room.”
O’Neill’s manner when he came in, was, I at once felt, somewhat shorn of its usual intimate devotedness, and I discerned in it a certain striving after a paternal tone.{284} He shook my hand with a pressure and a shake of his head, that were meant to convey at once a facetious reproach and forgiving congratulation, and as soon as possible took advantage of the cover afforded to him by Miss Burke’s appropriate witticisms, and, after a word or two, left my side. Miss Mimi’s exuberant enthusiasm soon became a trifle wearying to the objects of it, and although O’Neill gallantly seconded her, I think he was as glad as either Nugent or I when the return of Mrs. Burke and Miss Bessie, and the arrival of tea, caused a diversion.
Soon afterwards, however, he again came up to where I was sitting.
“I want to say a word or two to you, my dear Miss Theo,” he said. I guessed that they would be on the subject which I most dreaded, but which was, I knew, inevitable. “It is about that sad business,{285}” he went on, drawing his chair up to mine; “very deplorable it has all been—very shocking—and so trying for you! And how fortunate that Nugent turned back that evening with Kelly! He says he scarcely knows why he did; but I dare say it is not impossible to imagine his reason!”—with a temporary relapse from the paternal tone. “However, what I wanted to say to you was this; when your uncle’s papers were searched to-day, two wills were found, one of comparatively old standing, in Willy’s favour, and the other—well, you can hardly call it a will—was dated only a few days ago—the first of this month,—it was quite incomplete, neither finished nor signed, but in it it was clear that his intention had been to leave everything he possessed to you. Unluckily, for want of the signature, it is perfectly valueless——” He broke off, and stuck his eye{286}-glass into his eye in order to observe me more intently.
“I am very glad,” I said in a low voice. “I would not have taken it.”
“Well, you see, it was only to be expected that he should want to punish Willy for that outrageous marriage of his. Upon my word, I should have done the same if Nugent had done anything of the kind—or, I may say, if he hadn’t done precisely what he has done!”
I paid no attention to O’Neill’s implied compliment.
“Poor Willy!” I said, more to myself than to him; “no matter what the will had been, I would never have taken what ought to have been his.”
“Ah! that’s all very nice and kind and romantic,” said O’Neill, wagging his head sapiently, “but you ought to remember that your father was the eldest son, and{287} that it was only by what you might call a fluke that he did not inherit. I always thought that it was a wonderful stroke of luck for Dominick, old Theodore’s outliving your father. Why, if Owen had held out a couple of days longer, Durrus would be yours this minute! It certainly was an iniquitous thing,” he went on, in a wheezy, indignant whisper, “that your grandfather never took the trouble to find out anything about Owen—where he was, if he was married and had any children, and all that kind of thing. But not a bit of it! If Owen survived him, well and good, he got the property; but if he didn’t, Dominick was to have it—no reference made to Owen’s possible heirs—nothing! Upon my soul, it puts me in a passion whenever I think of it!”
O’Neill pulled out his handkerchief, and began to polish his heated countenance.{288}
I did not answer. While he was speaking, that idea which had haunted me since my last meeting with my uncle again thrust itself into my mind, and I began to feel that there might have been a motive for such a tragedy as had been shadowed in his ravings. I could not sit here with those loud, cheerful voices round me, and O’Neill’s red, interested face opposite to me. I knew he was expecting me to speak, but I could not find words to do so. It was vain to look to Nugent to interpose, as he was with difficulty holding his own against the combined assault of Mrs. Burke and her two daughters, who were delightedly making him the occasion to parade venerable jests that had seen hard service in many a previous engagement.
“It was a funny thing now, Willy’s marrying that girl. D’ye know had he{289} any notion of his father’s intentions?” began O’Neill again, hitching his chair still closer to mine with the evident intention of starting a long and satisfactory discussion.
I had been rapidly forming various schemes of escape, but I was spared having to carry out any of them by the timely intervention of Joanna, who at this juncture appeared at the door and announced that “Misther Roche had brought over Miss Sarsfield’s luggages from Durrus, and would be thankful to speak to her in the hall.”
As I crossed the room, Nugent followed me.
“What’s the matter?” he whispered. “You look regularly tired out.”
“I am going to speak to Roche,” I answered. “Will you come with me?”
The first object that I saw in the hall{290} was the Saratoga trunk which I had packed for America, and my other luggage was blocking up the narrow passage. The sight of the big trunk recalled to me the day that I had packed it, and a sudden thought of Willy’s parcel came to me. He had said that I was not to open it till after his father’s death, but that then, for his own sake, he would like me to see it. Perhaps it would throw some light on all these mysteries that had thickened round me since I had made the experiment of this visit to Ireland. I could hardly wait to talk to poor old Roche, and to listen to his lamentations over the downfall of the Durrus family. I was burning to open my trunk and see what must be, as far as Willy was concerned, the final word on the subject. At last Roche had said all he had to say. I sent him down to the kitchen to have a consolatory cup of tea with Joanna,{291} and then, with Nugent’s help, I eagerly unbuckled the heavy straps and unlocked my trunk. There, on the top of all, lay my habit, and, with a very shaking hand, I drew out of its folds the little brown paper parcel.
We took it into the dining-room, where we should be free from interruption.
“Will you open it?” I said, sitting down by the table, and trying to prepare myself for whatever fresh revelation was coming.
Nugent cut the string and took the paper off.
“It’s a book of some kind,” he said, sitting down beside me. “It looks like a diary. And here is a letter for you, from Willy, I suppose.”
“Give it to me,” I said breathlessly. “And will you see what the book is about?{292}”
The letter was a long one, and was written from Foley’s Hotel, Cork.
“Tuesday afternoon, February 2nd.
“My dear Theo” (it began),
“I found this book in the room next yours the morning I went to nail up the door. When I went down after that to the lodge to abuse Brian about letting Moll up to the house, he threatened me in what I thought a queer way. While I was there Moll came in, and when she saw me, she tried to hide a book she had in her hand. I just saw the cover of it, and I knew it was the one I had picked up that morning and left down in my own room. I took it from her, and when I was coming home I looked at it. Then I knew right enough what old Brian had been driving at. You’ll see for yourself when you read it.{293}
“All the same, I know now that the biggest part of the fault was Moll’s, though that time I didn’t think so. Anyhow, I knew that my father had swindled you, and that if what I thought was true, I hadn’t a right even to speak to you; and I thought the only way out of it was to do what I knew would make the governor leave the property away from me. Besides, Brian knew, and he told me plain enough, that if I did not do what he wanted, he would disgrace my father and all the family. But I wouldn’t have minded that so much only for the thought of its being your father, and thinking that it was mine who had robbed him, and worse. But, as I told you before, it was really Moll who did it. She thought she’d square things for the governor, and that then, maybe, he’d marry her. He told me that himself. She was so sold then when he wouldn’t do{294} it, that it, and everything else, sent her off her head. That room she used to be in was your father’s, and I hear now she used to be playing there all the time with the little book. I suppose she knew somehow that it was his, and the servants never noticed one way or the other.
“I will never forget what you did for me. I was very near shooting myself that afternoon after you were talking to me in the plantation, but I thought that would only make it worse for you.
“This is the longest letter I ever wrote, and now I have no more to tell you. We will be starting for London directly, and we sail to-morrow. Maybe before you open this you will have heard from me again. Anyhow, don’t forget me.
“Willy.
“P.S.—You see now that you’re bound to take the property.”
CHAPTER X.  LEX TALIONIS.
 “And now Love sang; but his was such a song,
So meshed with half-remembrance hard to free.”
The tears crept to my eyes, and, standing there unshed, blurred the closely written lines, as I read them, and heard in every sentence Willy’s voice telling me the miserable story. Nugent was still turning over the leaves of the book when I finished the letter.
“I can’t make this out,” he said. “It is a diary of your father’s for the year 185—, and the curious thing is that it seems from it that he died at Durrus instead of in Cork.{296}”
“Here,” I said helplessly, handing him the letter, “read this, and tell me what it all means.”
He put the diary into my hand, but half drew it back again.
“You ought not to look at it,” he said. “You’re not fit to stand all this trouble.”
“I must see it,” I said agitatedly. “Don’t stop me, Nugent.”
He still held my hand, with the book in it.
“Listen!” I said in a whisper. “I have something to tell you.”
I had been burdened longer than I could bear with the dread of the possible meaning of those strange things that my uncle had said in his delirium, and now by the light of Willy’s letter, all these broken sentences were beginning to shape and group themselves into something that could be understood. I did not wait to think, or to try{297} and arrange coherently what I was going to say, but with a feeling of feverish hurry driving me, I told Nugent everything that I could think of that bore in any way on my father’s death. It was not easy to tell, and towards the end of my story my voice began to fail me.
“Never mind, my darling,” he said, putting his arm close round me, “don’t think of it any more.”
“I can’t think of anything else,” I said, unclasping his hand from mine, and putting the letter into it. “Read this.”
He read it, and, without speaking, took up the diary again.
“I believe I understand it all now,” he said. “There is very little in the diary, but there is enough to make it pretty clear what happened. Do you see here; your father got to Cork on the 9th of January, and instead of dying on that day, as is{298} said on the brass in the church, he did not even start for Durrus till the 10th. I will read it to you, and you will understand it for yourself.
“‘January 9.—Arrived in Cork. Felt very ill. Wrote to Helen, also to Dominick, telling him to expect me to-morrow. Weather very cold.
“‘January 10.—Felt too ill to leave by early train. Came by the six o’clock instead. Got to Carrickbeg at nine p.m. Did not see any one I knew. Got outside car. Very cold night; snow. Arrived Durrus one a.m. Found that my father had died this afternoon. Feel very ill myself. Am in my old room over hall-door.
“‘January 11.—Did not get up. Fear I have a touch of pleurisy. Wish Helen were here. D. has only once been in to see me, and there seems to be no one to{299} attend to me. Have asked the woman to light a fire in my room, but she has not done so. D. tells me she is the only servant in the house. He says the property has been nearly ruined in the famine. Must write to Helen to-morrow about coming here.’”
This was the last entry in the book, and Nugent had some difficulty in reading it, as the writing was weak and the ink had faded. The pages were rubbed and soiled, and the leaves were dog’s-eared, but none had been torn out, and, considering its age and the ill-usage it had probably received, the book was in very good condition.
“You see,” Nugent said, when he had finished reading, “your father certainly survived your grandfather, and it is very easy to see why your uncle was anxious for people to believe the contrary. He knew your mother was a long way off, and{300} that there was no one here to ask any inconvenient questions. The famine had made most people leave the country. I believe my father was the only person who made any trouble about it.”
“Yes, yes,” I said excitedly, remembering my meeting with O’Neill on the way home from Rathbarry; “he said something to me about it once. Go on.”
“Well,” went on Nugent, with, as I now think, some pride and pleasure in the office of elucidator, “as a matter of fact, your father probably died on the 11th or 12th, and I must say it looks as if there had been some foul play about it. Your uncle’s object was of course to settle things so as to be able to assert that your father had died before your grandfather, and had been buried in Cork. I haven’t a doubt that he and Moll managed to get his body out through that French window, and that{301} then they carried it between them to Poul-na-coppal, and put it in there, where they knew it would never be found or thought of.”
“Oh, that explains——” I began; but Nugent was now too interested in what he was saying to stop.
“Of course, he may have died naturally, but I am bound to say I don’t think he did. I should say that that old madwoman was quite capable, then, of putting a pillow over a sick man’s face, if she had any reason for doing so——”
“Stop!” I cried, interrupting him. “I remember now that I thought she wanted to do that very thing to me, the night she came into my room.”
Nugent’s clear exposition broke down.
“My darling,” he said, catching me in his arms again, “I don’t know how you ever lived through that awful time, all{302} alone, with no one to stand by you; and to think that if I hadn’t been fool enough to believe that old blackguard——”
“Don’t say anything against him,” I said, rather indistinctly, by reason of my face being hidden in the collar of his coat. “It’s all over now, and I shouldn’t mind anything—only for poor Willy. You must write to him. Tell him that nothing would ever induce me to have Durrus, if it was mine fifty times over; tell him that for my sake he must abide by his father’s will, and not waken up a thing that is over now and done with; tell him that I beg of him to come home again——”
“I’ll do nothing of the sort,” said Nugent, lifting my face and looking suspiciously into it. “I believe you cared a great deal more about Willy than you ever did for me.”
“I don’t know why I didn’t,” I answered,{303} midway between laughter and tears. “He was a thousand times nicer to me than you were—but, somehow, I always liked you best.”
 
THE END.