An Irish Cousin; vol. 2/2

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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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. 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 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 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.”

“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 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.”

“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 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 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!”

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.”

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!”

“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 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, 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!” 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 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 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 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?”

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. 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 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 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—

“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 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 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.”

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 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, 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 afternoon 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 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 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.

CHAPTER III.

“LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST.”

“It wasn’t half-past seven, miss, when he was downstairs calling for a cup of tay 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 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 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, 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 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 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——”

“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 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?”

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.”

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.

That night the wind shifted to the south-west, and the storm that came thundering in from the Atlantic was the worst I had known since I came to Durrus. The rain had been coming down in furious floods ever since sunset, and as the night darkened in, the wind dashed it against my window till I thought the sashes must give way. The roaring of the storm in the trees never ceased, and once or twice, through the straining and lashing of the branches, I heard the crash of a falling bough. The house was full of sounds. The rattling of the ill-fitting windows, the knocking of the picture-frames against the walls of the corridor, the loud drip of water from a leak in the skylight into a bath placed to catch it in the hall. Somewhere in the house a door was banging incessantly. It maddened me to hear it, more especially now, when I was trying to determine by the sound if the door which had just been opened was that of Willy’s room. He surely must be in the house on a night like this; and yet his door had been open, and his room dark, when I had passed it on my way up to bed an hour ago.

Since he had left me in the plantation—left me sitting there in stunned horror, with the rain beating down through the laurels upon me—I had not seen or heard anything of him. He had gone without another word of explanation, without saying anything to qualify that last speech, or that could give any clue to the cause of it. It was all dark, inexplicable. I could only sit over my fire in impotent anxiety, my brain toiling with confused surmises, and my heart heavy with apprehension.

I think I never was as fond of Willy, or as truly unhappy about him, as now, when I had just received from him a slight, the idea even of which I should a few months ago have laughed at. I did not care about my own point of view—I even forgot it, in my consuming desire to find out the reason of Willy’s mysterious behaviour during the last two days. Nothing that had gone before threw any light upon the problem, unless, indeed, Michael Brian’s threat that night of the bonfire had had some incredibly sinister meaning. No, there was no adequate solution; but the bellowing of the wind in the chimney, and the sliding clatter of a slate falling down the roof, brought home to me the one tangible fact that he was still out of the house, at twelve o’clock on the wildest night of the year.

The next day was Sunday. The storm raged steadily on, putting all possibility of going to church out of the question. The shutters on the western side of the house were all closed, and I sat in the semi-darkness of the library, trying to read, and looking from time to time through the one unshuttered window out on to the gravel sweep. Broken twigs and pieces torn from the weather-slated walls were strewed over the ground. A great sycamore had fallen across the drive a little below the house, and the other trees swung and writhed as if in despair at the long stress of the gale.

Roche came in and out of the room on twenty different pretexts during the day, and made each an occasion for ventilating some new theory to explain Willy’s absence. I was kneeling on the window-seat, looking out into the turmoil, as the wind hurried the black rain-clouds across the sky, and the gloomy daylight faded into night, when he came into the room again.

“There’s a great dhraught from that window, miss,” he remarked. “You’d be best let me shut the shutthers. You’ll see no sign of Masther Willy this day, unless he’s coming by the last thrain.”

“Why, what makes you think that?” I asked eagerly.

“Well, miss, the postman’s just afther being here, and he said there was one that saw him at the station at Moycullen last night.”

“At the station—Moycullen!” I repeated, in bewilderment. “Was he going away?”

“He was, miss. Sure he was seen getting into the thrain, though the dear knows where he was going!”

“Have you told the master that he was seen there?”

“I did, miss. Sure he’s asking for him the whole day. He’s very unaisy in his mind. He’s roaming, roaming through the house all the day, and he’s give ordhers to have his dinner sent to his own room. He wasn’t best pleased when he found Masther Willy had locked up the room that’s next your own, and twice, an’ I coming upstairs, I seen him sthriving to open the door.”

“Master Willy did that to prevent Moll getting in there,” I explained. “I will tell the master so myself.”

“Don’t say a word to him, miss, good nor bad,” said Roche, shaking his knotted forefinger at me expressively. “He’ll forget—he’ll forget——” He sniffed significantly, and, as if to prevent himself from saying any more, he shuffled out of the room.

But Willy did not come by the last train; indeed, the storm was still too violent for any one to travel. I lay awake the greater part of the night, filled with feverish fears and fancies. Several times I could have been sure that I heard some one wandering about the house, and once I thought there was a shaking and pushing at the locked door of the room next to mine.

When I awoke next morning, I found that the wind had been at length beaten down by a deluge of rain, which was descending in a grey continuous flood, as if it never meant to stop. The day dragged wearily on. Roche had spoken truly in saying that Uncle Dominick was uneasy and restless. It seemed to me that he never stopped walking about the house. I heard him constantly moving backwards and forwards, from the library to his own study, and every now and then the sound of his footsteps in Willy’s room overhead would startle me for an instant into wondering if Willy had come home.

The long waiting and suspense had got on my nerves, and the gloom and silence made the house seem like a prison. I could neither read nor play the piano. I was debarred from even the society of Pat and Jinny, as, on the first day of the storm, their muddy footmarks in the hall had made my uncle angrily order their exile to the stable. I almost looked forward to dinner-time. I should then at least have occupation, and a certain amount of society, for half an hour, and there was something usual and conventional about it which would be a rest after the tension and loneliness of the day.

Rather to my surprise, I found my uncle standing in the hall when I came downstairs to dinner.

“What a terrible day this has been!” he said, as he offered me his arm. “This rain makes the air so oppressive,” he sighed, “and I have a great deal to trouble me.”

He helped me to soup, and, having done so, got up and walked over to the fireplace.

“I have no appetite at all,” he said. “I suppose it is caused by loss of sleep, but I really have a positive distaste for food.”

He turned his back to me, and leaned his forehead against the high mantelshelf, while I went on with my dinner as well as I could. After a little time, however, he came back to the table.

“Dear me! I am forgetful of my duties! Will you not take a glass of wine? You must be tired after your long drive in the snow from Carrickbeg.” Mentioning a station between Cork and Moycullen.

I stared. “But I have not been out to-day.”

He put his hand to his head. “How forgetful I am!” he said hastily. “But the fact is, I am so upset by anxiety about Willy that I do not know what I am saying.”

“Then, have you heard that Willy is at Carrickbeg?” I asked excitedly.

“No, my dear, no,” he said, shaking his head two or three times; “I know nothing about him. I confused Carrickbeg with Moycullen. Till a few years ago, Carrickbeg was our nearest station, and in those days travellers did not arrive here till one o’clock in the morning—one o’clock on a cold snowy morning.” He slowly repeated to himself, with a shudder.

I felt very sorry to see how unhinged he was by what he had gone through, and I tried to persuade him to eat something, but without success. He poured himself out a glass of port, and, having drunk it, again left his chair and stood by the fire, fidgeting with a trembling hand with the objects on the mantelshelf. Dinner was soon over, and, not liking to leave Uncle Dominick, I drew a chair over to the fire and sat down. He did not seem to notice me, but began to pace up and down the room, stopping now and then by one of the windows as if listening for sounds outside; but the noisy splashing of the water that fell from a broken eaveshoot on to the gravel, was all that was to be heard.

“There!” he said at last, in a whisper; “do you hear the wheels? Do you hear them coming?”

I jumped up and listened too. “No, I can hear nothing.”

“I did hear them,” he said positively. “I know they are beginning.”

I could not understand what he meant, but I went to the nearest window, and was beginning to unbar the shutters, when there came a loud ring at the hall-door bell.

“I told you he was coming,” my uncle said. “I must get out some brandy for him after his long drive in the snow.”

The hall door was opened, and I heard Roche’s voice raised excitedly, and then the rustle of a mackintosh being thrown off. I ran to the door, and, opening it, met Willy coming into the room.

His face was all wet with rain, and his hair was hanging in damp points on his forehead. He took my outstretched hand and shook it, and, without answering my incoherent questions, walked past me into the room. My uncle was still standing by the window, holding with one hand to the heavy folds of the red curtain.

“What! Willy!” he said, coming forward, and staring at Willy with wild eyes in which frightened conjecture slowly steadied into reassurance. “Was it you who drove up?” A sort of sob shook his voice. “My dear boy, I am rejoiced to see you; but, good heavens, how wet you are!”—going to the sideboard and pouring out a glass of brandy. “Here, you must drink this at once.”

“I don’t want it,” said Willy; “I don’t want anything.”

He stood still looking at his father, who, from some cause or other, was shaking in every limb.

“How did you get up to the house, Willy?” I interposed. “Did you know of the tree that was blown across the avenue?”

“They told me of it below at the lodge, and I walked from the corner,” he answered. “I’ve got something to say to you, sir,” he went on, addressing his father. “You needn’t go away, Theo; you might as well hear it too.”

Uncle Dominick lifted the glass of brandy to his lips, and swallowed it at a gulp.

“Well, my dear boy,” he said, with a smile, and in a stronger voice, “let us hear what you have got to say.”

“It’s easy told,” Willy said, putting his hands into his pockets. “I went up to Cork on Saturday night, and Anstey Brian followed me this morning, and I married her there.”

CHAPTER V.

GOOD-BYE.