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 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 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 sunshine 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 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 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 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 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 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 himself 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 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 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 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 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 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.
“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.
“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 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 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 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 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, 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.
“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 nowadays 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?”
“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 unconscious 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 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 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 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 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 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.”
“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.”
“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 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 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.”
“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?
“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. “Don’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.”
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 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.
“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 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.”
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 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.
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 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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.”
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.”
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 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 misunderstanding 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 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. 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.